The Guardian reports:
An emotional television interview given by a young Egyptian Google executive who was arrested after playing a key role in using the internet to spark the uprising against Hosni Mubarak is being hailed as a landmark moment in the ongoing revolt after it struck a chord across Egypt and beyond.
Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager who became a hero to anti-government protestors after he went missing on 27 January, confirmed in the interview following his release that he was behind a highly influential Facebook page that helped lead to what he described as “the revolution of the youth of the internet.”
Before his appearance on Monday on a privately owned Egyptian television channel, the father-of-two was held in repute by many who believed that he was the anonymous activist behind a Facebook page named after a young Egyptian businessman whose death at the hands of police in June set off months of protests.
The page, “We are all Khaled Said”, became one of the main tools for organising the demonstrations that started the revolt in earnest on 25 January.
Click “CC” button (lower right) to turn on English subtitles.
The Australian media is cowardly saying the revolt is cooling down. The latest bigpondnews reporting that “Mubarak fights unrest with pay rise”!!! What a shoker!!!! Oh well… this is the country which went on to invade Iraq and Afeghanistan on the War Criminal Bush line “Saddan had WMD and is threating our way of life”…
They receive the War Criminal Gates and Rice almost bending over to them.
Pepe Escobar has an excellent article at AsiaTimes about the US/israel/Mubarak contra revolution moves.
Years from now we will know how the ObaOba administration worked franticly to destroy Egypt’s democracy.
ObaOba has his darling torturer Suleiman pretending to do an “ordely transition”…
After watching this interview, I can’t understand how any parent could not have “empathy” towards the Egyptian people and how they have endured these past 30+ years! This situation, for better or worse, is repeated throughout the World, yet it takes something like this, to bring it to the forefront, bef0re the rest of the World becomes aware. The really sad part of it all, is that the U.S. is complicit in what is/has taken place over the years up to the present. This really calls into question the true values of the U.S. & other Western Governments. I suppose the view inside the Governments has to do with “out of sight, out of mind” or “as long as it’s not in my back yard”!
The interview reminds me of the Libyans I worked with in pre-Qadaffi days — particularly during the ’67 war. In those days the Arabs’ openness and innocent community-ism was regarded as a weakness — they appeared gullible and prone to chase after phantoms. They were thus taken advantage of — in Palestine, in Libya, and in most regions of the Middle East.
It seems that all the covert operations, secret crimes, and brutality of Israel, America, and their Mubarak-like puppets has grounded their innocence in a healthy skepticism and honed it into a shared movement of the heart. Of course the Americans do not understand what has happened — the Israelis likely understand and are appalled at what it means. The Arabs will be much harder for strangers to fool and much closer to their brothers and sisters in need. A new solidarity; a powerful change and a powerful promise for the future.
This interview shows perfectly well the breaking of a human being when in the hands of political police. Wael Ghonim was blindfolded for several days and maybe also handcuffed all the time. We know that political prisoners are always tortured in Egypt, in Israel, in the USA (the latest case is Bradley Manning in total isolation 24 hours a day) and maybe there is no country in the world which has not its torturers for political prisoners. The big majority of these prisoners are fighting for their rights and freedom and dignity, in opposition to the corrupt power system and therefore are in no way a danger for the society! Quite the opposite: they have a big sense of justice! As long as the responsibles in power are not able to accept a critical counter force they have to be destituted from ruling, because they are terrorising their own people and in doing so are the real terrorists and dictators, even when “freely elected” with the help of the big media conspirator and the money of the corporate industries. The wars they are leading are big crimes against humanity because they are not in our name!