Sunday, January 23, 2011

"We Are All Khaled Said"

"... As of Friday morning, nearly 69,000 people had signed on to the Jan. 25 protest on the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page.  
Traditional opposition groups have also started to join the call for protest on Tuesday.....and so, clues to how Tunisia’s revolution might affect the region’s other autocratic regimes might be found in Cairo next week, especially since cyberactivists and traditional ones alike seem to be joining forces. Tuesday will be the first real test of whether the revolution is contagious or not. 
Opposition to Mubarak has been brewing for some time, but only disjointedly. Protests have come and gone, and plans for large-scale demonstrations often fizzle. The Egyptian police state, meanwhile, can be brutally effective at crushing dissent. And in the aftermath of Tunisia, the government is playing close attention; it has unleashed a wave of positive propaganda and released political prisoners.  .... 
Despite all the buzz building up to the January 25 protest, however, ElShaheeed is well aware of the difficulties in translating Internet clicks to support on the ground. To that end, he has been using the page to urge people to organize by traditional means as well, even posting links to flyers to be downloaded and distributed—today, activists distributed leaflets to people coming out of Friday prayers. But he says only Tuesday will tell whether these efforts have been enough...."

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