Christopher Milam's List: 3.6 Digital Citizenship

• At one point, protesters trapped a police Humvee on an overpass near the Nasr City camp and pushed it off, according to images posted on social networking sites that showed an injured policeman on the ground below, near a pool of blood and the overturned vehicle.
• The Health Ministry said 235 civilians were killed and more than 2,000 injured, while Ibrahim said 43 policemen died in the violence.
• Three journalists were among the dead: Mick Deane, 61, a cameraman for British broadcaster Sky News; Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz, 26, a reporter for the Gulf News, a state-backed newspaper in the United Arab Emirates; and Ahmed Abdel Gawad, who wrote for Egypt's state-run newspaper Al Akhbar. Deane and Elaziz were shot to death, their employers said, while the Egyptian Press Syndicate, a journalists' union, said it had no information on how Gawad was killed.
• "If I have to die, I will die," said the father of one child carrying several bottles of beer he said he intended to use as firebombs.
• "It has become difficult for me to continue to take responsibility for decisions I disapprove of, and I fear their consequences," he said in the letter that was emailed to the AP. "I cannot take responsibility before God, my conscience and country for a single drop of blood, especially because I know it was possible to spare it.
• "This is a pivotal moment for all Egyptians," said Kerry, who spoke by phone with the foreign minister. "The path toward violence leads only to greater instability, economic disaster and suffering."

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• "Mubarak thought he was God," Ali Asam, 50, said as he stood just outside Tahrir Square, named after the Arabic word for liberation. "He killed the people, he beat the people, and we won."
• The government's efforts to control the message by cutting off the Internet and phones, and by arresting scores of journalists and activists, similarly backfired. Each day, ever greater numbers of Egyptians turned out to the square to see for themselves the movement reshaping their country.
• "They wanted to scare us," said Al-Marwa Mostafa Fahray, 33.
• "I knew even if I had to die, or even if my kids had to die, I should come and fight with the people; you have to sacrifice to get something great,"
• In the first days of the protests, they were attacked with high-pressure water hoses, tear gas, birdshot, rubber bullets and live ammunition. Protesters responded with rocks, but also with pamphlets instructing demonstrators to appeal to the police as fellow Egyptians.

  • This is not true. Protesters responded with more than just rocks. 
• And when pro-Mubarak forces - many of them thought to be paid thugs and undercover police - attacked anti-government demonstrators, the protesters fought back but did not escalate the violence.

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• On Friday night in Tahrir Square, the euphoria was intoxicating and the joy unparalleled

• The violence erupted when protesters pushed aside a barricade topped with barbed wire several hundred yards from the palace walls. Police fired tear gas, and then retreated. With that barricade removed, protesters moved closer to the palace's walls
• Protesters also commandeered two police vans, climbing atop the armored vehicles to jubilantly wave Egypt's red, white and black flag and chant against Morsi. Nearly two hours into the demonstration, protesters were mingling freely with the black-clad riot police
• "This is the last warning before we lay siege to the presidential palace," said Mahmoud Hashim

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• Despite attempts to block Twitter, Facebook and other sites (the government denies it was responsible), a Facebook page devoted to Friday's planned protests had more than 80,000 followers as of 2 p.m. ET Thursday, compared with some 20,000 the previous day.
• Following Twitter comments with hashtags such as #Cairo, #jan25 and #Suez generates a huge flood of tweets
• but there are also scores of rumors, much invention and plenty of hyperbole.
• But social media can help tip off journalists about developments in places they can't get to. For example, it's been difficult (and risky) for foreign journalists to report from the city of Suez, which appears to have seen some of the worst violence of the past few days. But a steady stream of tweets and blog entries, as well as photos and cell-phone video, has provided at least some guidance on the rapidly evolving situation there.
• One Twitter entry, for example, called for a march at 3 p.m. Thursday in Giza, a suburb of Cairo. Another on Wednesday called people to Tahrir Square in central Cairo. Of course, there is a weakness in such methods -- because the authorities can also read them
• Online activists -- normally young professionals and often multilingual -- have also been quick to find ways to combat the interruption of social media sites, with links to sites offering free downloads. One message read: "Nokia users in Egypt, use Snaptu application and Twitter and Facebook will never go down."

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• In a post written for Hope140, @alya1989262 shared the following:
   

  Twitter is a very important tool for protesters, as evidenced by the fact it and Facebook were repeatedly blocked in Egypt as the protests flared up. We use it to campaign and spread the word about protests/stands---hashtags are invaluable in that respect, and to share news quickly and efficiently, with our own 140-char commentary on them, and subsequently have conversations with random people/complete strangers. But most importantly, it allows us to share on the ground info like police brutality, things to watch out for, activists getting arrested, etc.