Scary to think there are governments like that in 2011 (ok, North Korea excluded). To shut off the cellphone service?! That's f'd up.. in all that mess to not be able to call your love ones and friends..
... and afaik, the internet was shut down just because there were messages online that lead to terrorism or some. I might be wrong here, but it was because there were bad toughts flying all around the place.
Edit: And lets be honest, the president is 82 years old (afaik) - no wonder why this is happening. The guy probably doesnt know how important internet is in modern day life.
I could list more than a few that are this way I'm afriad... Us in the West are just so far removed from it that we have began to think it non-existant.
Guess what, they are afraid that their people realize how powerfull thousands of man with pitchforks and torches can be.
First Tunesia, now Egypt, Jordan somewhat too, nobody knows about Syria.
If the revolution fire spreads we might see a proper free Belarus soon.
Because the internet is the final frontier, its the last space left that humans can't control short of trying to shut it off completely, although governments are having a good go.
Probably cos none of them have internet, so they can't post....sorry someone had to say it.
Their government isn't doing themselves any favours by not listening to the people they SUPPOSEDLY represent. Hopefully no too many casualties (govt or civ) and it can be resolved, but i doubt it.
Well politics nowadays is somehow upside down, people vote for their parties and politician to represent, help and lead them but instead they are acting as bosses and order people what to do, not doing what people want (of course not talking about stupid things like people want 100x higher incomes), like coming to a restaurant where you order your favorite food, they'll bring you some garbage and when you say to waiter "what the hell is this?" he replies "stfu and eat the garbage or if you don't like it pay and go away"...and you just stfu and eat the garbage. egyptians were tired of eating garbage because they paid for proper meal. egypt is huge fail of modern world, when millions of people in your country tell you to stfu and gtfo, but youre still there fighting...pointless and useless
first thing I checked was it there was a post from an Egyptian but surprisingly not...
reminded me of south park...episode Overlogged...maybe there is a small piece of internet somewhere in Egypt...they just have to find it...
however it is not funny what can happen in these days...relatively not far from fully civilized and develeped Europe there are still countries where this can happen...
it is, since this midday. Apparently Mubarak calculated that if videos from the escalating protests appeared on the internet, foreign nations would stop their support for the protesters.
He did not anticipate that it would be this clear for everyone that all the violence came from his people (policemen, bribed inmates) alone (at least that's what a arabic correspondent said on German TV ~5 minutes ago).
They rode armed with machetes and sticks on horses and camels(!) into the relatively peaceful and completly unarmed crowd.
I don't side with the government or the muslim brotherhood the protesters are supporting. They both suck ass. This exact same thing happened in Iran 1979 and the democracy lasted about..ohhh one month before secular authoritarianism and ayatollah khomeini took over. And we all know how wonderful that was for everybody.
I'm not following the situation play by play but I think that Hillary Clinton recently sided with the protesters saying that the egyptian government had no right to use violence against the protesters, or shut down communications. I'm all for the people overthrowing an autocrat (we already have our strongest ally in the Middle East), I just don't trust them to come up with anything 1. Better (more free), or 2. Lasting.
The protests are in large part organized and fueled by the Muslim Brotherhood whose stated goal is to instill the Qur'an and Sunnah as the "sole reference point for ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community,and State." That sounds an awful lot like Secular Authoritarianism, which is exactly what Iran got after 1979.
On the other hand, for Egypt, their stated goals are "freedom of personal conviction... opinion... forming political parties... public gatherings... free and fair elections..." Which is great but again Iran had all of that for a very short time after the government was overthrown, now of course they have none of those things.
I just think that everyone should chill the hell out, now that the Egyptian government is very aware that the people are going to overthrow them, the US and UN can put pressure on the government to reform instead of going down a path that has already ended in very bad places. I don't support Mubarak at all because he is obviously not a good dude, but I cannot support the Muslim Brotherhood either.
