What the World Didn’t See in Tehran

Iranian state television yesterday broadcast the soap operas and covered the news about Rafael Nadal’s withdrawal from Wimbledon and Pakistani operations against the Taliban as if they were the most important stories in the world. Meanwhile, arriving over the internet transom, rough and insistent and bloody, were the tiny electronic dispatches from protesters forced off the streets of Tehran, shaky videos from a city screaming for help. For outsiders tuned into the blog posts, Facebook updates, Tweets and YouTube videos, the torrent of information was compelling and confusing, emotional and rife with rumors, full of sound and fury signifying …

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Pirate Party wins surprise Euro seat, calls for Web freedom

A Swedish political party which wants to legalize file-sharing on the Internet scored a surprise victory Sunday when it took a seat in the European parliament. The Pirate Party won 7.1 percent of the Swedish vote to claim one of the country’s 18 seats in the European parliament. “Together we have changed the landscape of European politics,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told file-sharing news Web site TorrentFreak after the win

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