Tens of Thousands Protest In Cairo, Twitter Blocked

Haffner writes "Protests in Cairo, Egypt have now reached the tens of thousands. Police have deployed water cannons and tear gas. I am writing this live from Cairo, where I witnessed a throng of 1000-3000 march towards Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. I also witnessed 300-500 protesting on one of the bridges heading downtown. Most importantly, twitter has been blocked by many national carriers." Why Twitter? As reader pinkushun writes "Using Twitter and Facebook, the people instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities. The police could not keep up – and predictably, resorted to violence. Sadly this has led to three known deaths thus far." Update: 01/26 02:05 GMT by T : Jake Appelbaum is tweeting up a storm about the state of the active filters.

wikileaks?

[vasanth]

wonder if wikileaks was the proverbial flap of a butterfly's wing??

Tunisia effect?

[Black Parrot]

FWIW, some of the pundits were wondering aloud whether the Tunisian 'revolt' was going to spread throughout the region.

Most importantly?

[dangitman]

Most importantly, twitter has been blocked by many national carriers."

Those are some pretty odd priorities. I would have thought "tens of thousands protesting" is a little more important than some online service being blocked.

News just in: Asteroid about to impact Earth, extinction event imminent, but more disturbingly, I can't log in to Slashdot!"

Re:Foreign policy history

[Thing 1]

I thought 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia. So, how many of the remaining 4 were from Egypt? (Sincere question.) And, answered fairly quickly: exactly one [wikipedia.org] of the hijackers was from Egypt (Mohammed Atta). (And yes, your statement is pedantically true; "one" is "a number".)

Re:Most importantly?

[jackbird]

I think they mean "importantly," as in "the powers that be are recognizing the power of this tool for organizing protest, and are taking steps to counteract it rather than simply ignoring it." This is also why it's "news for nerds" rather than "geopolitics for wonks" (or "shit you really, really need to know for Egyptians," lest we gloss over the actual human element of the story).

Re:Technology knows no right from wrong

[Keen Anthony]

Don't be naive. But if you must, don't be insulting. It's not spouting off to point out the Muslim Brotherhood is a major rival, one with tremendous populist support, and one which could very easily destroy any secular movement. Nothing parent has said requires a stretch of the imagination. I'd wait until we see microblogging and vlogging activity from a large number of secularist rioters before I believe this is a pro-democracy rally à la Tiananmen Square.