Christopher Marshall's List: Egyptian Revolution

• ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ Facebook group and accompanying YouTube campaign.
• connecting a new generation of Egyptian activists.
• Even mobile phones, while near ubiquitous, were little used in campaigns by the labour movement and the judiciary.
• social networking is a prominent force in certain layers of Egyptian society.
• These groups are using Facebook to create fully formed publishing cycles and advocacy campaigns, with limited to no use of external websites.
• efficiency
• complexity
• Facebook as an advocacy and press management tool by certain opposition groups.
• spin machine
• a Facebook group to collect popular anger and let the media know.
• sufficient for expressing both their political wills.
• technology has the ability to impact a people’s consciousness as much as their physical realities.
• Basic text messaging remains among the most inclusive technologies.

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• June 8, 2010, has secured a rightful place in history
• Khaled Mohamed Said
• who had been beaten to death by the Egyptian police.

• “All young Egyptians had long been oppressed, enjoying no rights in our own homeland.”
• Ghonim tapped into a shared frustration that became immediately evident online. Two minutes after he started his Facebook page, 300 people had joined it. Three months later, that number had grown to more than 250,000.
• What bubbled up online inevitably spilled onto the streets
• “We Are All Khaled Said” helped ignite an uprising that led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and the dissolution of the ruling National Democratic Party.
• Ghonim — who was arrested during the height of the protests — reluctantly became one of the leading voices of the Arab Spring.
• The Middle East is home to roughly 100 million people ages 15 to 29.
• Through blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the Web has become a haven for a young, educated class yearning to express its worries and anxieties.
• The Internet, Ghonim says, was “instrumental in shaping my experiences as well as my character.”
• “January 25: Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment.”
• “We needed to have everyone join forces: workers, human rights activists, government employees and others who had grown tired of the regime’s policies,”

• If the invitation to take to the streets had been based solely on human rights, then only a certain segment of Egyptian society would have participated.”
• A year after Mubarak’s ouster, it remains to be seen exactly how and when — or whether — Egypt will transition to a better democracy
• that revolution begins with the self: with what one is willing to stand for online and offline, and what one citizen is willing to risk in the service of his country.

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• Mr Mubarak ruled for 30 years, suppressing dissent and protest, and jailing opponents.
• "The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard," Mr Obama said. "Egypt will never be the same again."
• "In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, citizens, during these very difficult circumstances Egypt is going through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from the office of president of the republic and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country," he said.

• "what he has given" to Egypt but acknowledging popular power.

   
• The military high command is headed by Defence Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

• Mr Mubarak has already left Cairo and is in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where he has a residence, officials say.

   
• "The people have brought down the regime," they chanted in reaction to the news of his eventual resignation less than 24 hours later.

• "You cannot comprehend the amount of joy and happiness of every Egyptian at the restoration of our humanity and our freedom."

   
• "This nation has been born again. These people have been born again, and this is a new Egypt," he told al-Jazeera TV.
• The anti-government protests that began on 25 January were triggered by widespread unrest in Egypt over unemployment, poverty and corruption.

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