If you want to give free internet society, "said Wael Ganim, the most popular of Egyptian protests that started on Facebook. El Baradei identifies young people in social networks as actors of the revolution. The reality is more complicated. And understanding this complexity is essential to characterize the first great revolution of the century, carries the seeds of change while displaying the perennial roots of the riots: exploitation, humiliation and violence.
Perhaps it all began on 6 April 2008 in El Mahalla el Kubra, working-class city in the north of the country where tens of thousands of textile workers went on strike, demonstrated and occupied the city until they were dissolved shots. Thus arose the youth movement of April 6, active online convenor of the recent demonstrations.
Spurred by the revolution in Tunisia, one of those activists, Asmar Mafhuz, posted a video on YouTube on January 24 and his colleagues distributed thousands of pamphlets in poor neighborhoods in Cairo calling to manifest. Simultaneously, Ganim, a young executive of Google, created a Facebook group called Everyone Said Khalid, the youngest of Alexandria in June 2010 the police killed by blows in an internet cafe uploading a video showing police drug exchange.
He soon had 70,000 friends. Facebook and Twitter were veterans of the struggle against repression and thousands of youths angered by the injustice and inspired by Tunisia. Young people reported their usual media, internet and mobile. But thinking about conquering the streets with slogans borrowed from Tunisia: "Outside the regime," followed by "Tunisia is the solution," opposed to the traditional version of "Islam is the solution." A spontaneous movement, little Islamist leaderless and mostly young.
In a context of social struggles and political opposition until then contained by repression. It was a revolution on the Internet. But without the Internet this particular revolution had not occurred. On the internet pictures and information came from Tunisia. And social networks were the platform for mobilization, coordination, solidarity and popularize the goal of ending Mubarak.
Immediately passed to the urban space of cyberspace. Once in Tahrir Square, and many other spaces that are occupied in Alexandria, Suez and other cities, it generated a dynamic of self-organization, without prior structure, which was formed in solidarity with the danger and daily survival.
Showers and toilets were built, the supply was organized, prepared defenses and set up communication channels between the crowd and the world. This horizontality of the concentrates, which commemorates the barricades of revolutions of the past, allowed circumvent ideological differences, religion, sex, age and class, cast in a cry for freedom and the determination to die for her if she was necessary.
It was essential the participation of women and their children, anchoring the fight in a non-violent resistance failed to break the police charges, and gangster. Moreover, the occupation of a symbolic public space allowed international media news coverage and continuing spectacular, putting the world to witness, and by showing his own revolutionary strength through Arab satellite channels, Al Jazeera in particular .
The media and internet networks are connected between them, both on the information received from the protesters and the dissemination of information and images on Twitter and mobile media. And when the regime tried to break free communication that fed the movement, there was a real battle for the communication that is full of lessons for the future of the relationship between communication and power.
Because Mubarak did not stop at anything. For the first time in history, tried the big disconnect, the total closure of internet and mobile networks and satellite. On the other hand, used violence to intimidate and subdue the journalists. And failed. The big disconnect did not work: it was technologically possible because it used alternative channels such as the Tor network, for fixed telephone lines connected by modem abroad and from there to Egypt, with the help of Google, Twitter and others, using Twitter, fax and shortwave radio, for the economic losses of the isolation were unsustainable, and because the country ceased to function.
For their part, journalists reacted with extraordinary courage and kept the information, including raising the tone of his criticism of the regime. EE was significant. UU. an Anderson Cooper, CNN's head visible, went so incensed at what he saw and the beatings that CNN became a platform for denouncing Mubarak and criticizing Obama's timidity, which was instrumental in changing attitudes U.S.
administration. This change played a key role in military intervention to oust Mubarak and open a democratic transition. The army was the determining factor, but only because the popular revolt, legitimate and peaceful without any trace of Islamists and political leadership, created a situation in which only a massive and bloody repression could contain the change.
Repression that level conflicted directly with the specific request of Obama that no violence was used. Gates repeated it several times a general Hafez Enan, chief of staff and their man in Egypt, aware of the 1,200 million dollars a year they receive. On the other hand, the younger controls had not followed the corrupt military leadership, which has control of the situation even think about handling the transition in their interest.
But the clincher was that citizens, starting with some bold, overcame fear. And this conquest came in multiple communications networks, the Internet and on the street, which built and felt their community. 
Perhaps it all began on 6 April 2008 in El Mahalla el Kubra, working-class city in the north of the country where tens of thousands of textile workers went on strike, demonstrated and occupied the city until they were dissolved shots. Thus arose the youth movement of April 6, active online convenor of the recent demonstrations.
Spurred by the revolution in Tunisia, one of those activists, Asmar Mafhuz, posted a video on YouTube on January 24 and his colleagues distributed thousands of pamphlets in poor neighborhoods in Cairo calling to manifest. Simultaneously, Ganim, a young executive of Google, created a Facebook group called Everyone Said Khalid, the youngest of Alexandria in June 2010 the police killed by blows in an internet cafe uploading a video showing police drug exchange.
He soon had 70,000 friends. Facebook and Twitter were veterans of the struggle against repression and thousands of youths angered by the injustice and inspired by Tunisia. Young people reported their usual media, internet and mobile. But thinking about conquering the streets with slogans borrowed from Tunisia: "Outside the regime," followed by "Tunisia is the solution," opposed to the traditional version of "Islam is the solution." A spontaneous movement, little Islamist leaderless and mostly young.
In a context of social struggles and political opposition until then contained by repression. It was a revolution on the Internet. But without the Internet this particular revolution had not occurred. On the internet pictures and information came from Tunisia. And social networks were the platform for mobilization, coordination, solidarity and popularize the goal of ending Mubarak.
Immediately passed to the urban space of cyberspace. Once in Tahrir Square, and many other spaces that are occupied in Alexandria, Suez and other cities, it generated a dynamic of self-organization, without prior structure, which was formed in solidarity with the danger and daily survival.
Showers and toilets were built, the supply was organized, prepared defenses and set up communication channels between the crowd and the world. This horizontality of the concentrates, which commemorates the barricades of revolutions of the past, allowed circumvent ideological differences, religion, sex, age and class, cast in a cry for freedom and the determination to die for her if she was necessary.
It was essential the participation of women and their children, anchoring the fight in a non-violent resistance failed to break the police charges, and gangster. Moreover, the occupation of a symbolic public space allowed international media news coverage and continuing spectacular, putting the world to witness, and by showing his own revolutionary strength through Arab satellite channels, Al Jazeera in particular .
The media and internet networks are connected between them, both on the information received from the protesters and the dissemination of information and images on Twitter and mobile media. And when the regime tried to break free communication that fed the movement, there was a real battle for the communication that is full of lessons for the future of the relationship between communication and power.
Because Mubarak did not stop at anything. For the first time in history, tried the big disconnect, the total closure of internet and mobile networks and satellite. On the other hand, used violence to intimidate and subdue the journalists. And failed. The big disconnect did not work: it was technologically possible because it used alternative channels such as the Tor network, for fixed telephone lines connected by modem abroad and from there to Egypt, with the help of Google, Twitter and others, using Twitter, fax and shortwave radio, for the economic losses of the isolation were unsustainable, and because the country ceased to function.
For their part, journalists reacted with extraordinary courage and kept the information, including raising the tone of his criticism of the regime. EE was significant. UU. an Anderson Cooper, CNN's head visible, went so incensed at what he saw and the beatings that CNN became a platform for denouncing Mubarak and criticizing Obama's timidity, which was instrumental in changing attitudes U.S.
administration. This change played a key role in military intervention to oust Mubarak and open a democratic transition. The army was the determining factor, but only because the popular revolt, legitimate and peaceful without any trace of Islamists and political leadership, created a situation in which only a massive and bloody repression could contain the change.
Repression that level conflicted directly with the specific request of Obama that no violence was used. Gates repeated it several times a general Hafez Enan, chief of staff and their man in Egypt, aware of the 1,200 million dollars a year they receive. On the other hand, the younger controls had not followed the corrupt military leadership, which has control of the situation even think about handling the transition in their interest.
But the clincher was that citizens, starting with some bold, overcame fear. And this conquest came in multiple communications networks, the Internet and on the street, which built and felt their community.
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