Tuesday, February 08, 2011

You say you want a revolution

An interview with the Google exec whose Facebook page helped trigger the demonstrations in Egypt. Finally all of those naive and idealistic predictions about the power of the internet are coming true :-)

NYTimes: ... some new demonstrators said they had joined the protests after watching an emotional television interview on Monday night with Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive who was snatched off the street nearly two weeks ago, for his role in helping to organize the revolt as the administrator of a popular Facebook page.

One protester in Tahrir Square on Tuesday, Ahmed Meyer El Shamy, an executive with an international pharmaceutical company, told The Times, “many, many people” had resolved to join the demonstration “because of what they saw on TV last night.”

During that interview, Mr. Ghonim acknowledged that he had been the anonymous administrator of the Facebook page We Are All Khaled Said, dedicated to the memory of a 28-year-old Egyptian man beaten to death by the police in Alexandria on June 6, 2010, which helped spark the protests.

More video at the NYTimes link above. (Sorry, I just realized the version below doesn't have subtitles. Unless you speak Arabic you have to click through to the Times; the last video shows Ghonim's emotional reaction when shown pictures of protestors who died.)

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