Egypt links

[sabotabby]

Try to imagine a situation where two million people gather in your city to protest something. Try to imagine this happening in theoretically a democracy, where the army and police are unlikely to open fire on the demonstrators, and where the government might at least pretend to listen to the demands.

Two million people are in Cairo's Tahrir Square, with around 8 million people protesting across the country. This, despite the fact that 150 people have already been killed. And whatever our government and the U.S. government says, Egypt's no democracy (though the military has said that it won't fire on the demonstrators).


[Photo of the massive amount of people gathered in Cairo. See those tiny things? Each of those tiny things is a person.]

It's amazing to see this happen. Al Jazeera has the most reliable coverage, including a video that shows the sheer scale of the demos.

If you haven't seen it, check out laura.fo by LJ's slit. imagines has an excellent links round-up here and here.

Access Now is helping Egyptians circumvent firewalls, and you can go here to find out how to run a Tor bridge. (Thanks smhwpf and secretsoflife!)

Comments

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

I have to say - without the "support" (or rather, non-hostility) of the Army, I'm afraid this wouldn't have happened. The fact that the army has been so calm and in some cases seemingly on the side of the people, is amazing to me.

I picture America, and I keep wondering if the US Army would say "We won't fire on you"... I feel like that's not what they would do. It's just amazing.

I heard Google is offering outside access by providing a phone number that Egyptians can use or something.

US Media, as usual, is shit. Sigh.

[montreality.livejournal.com]

It's true about Google, check out my post below

[jvmatucha.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you've already seen these links, but I just posted one link and a viddy:

http://jvmatucha.livejournal.com/423227.html

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Set up my bridge, I think.... downloaded the Vidalia bundle, did the thing on the Settings that it said on that page... does this mean that I just need to leave the program running and that's it? Will it work with my computer in hibernation mode?

Sorry, hitting my personal tech stupidity threshold here...

[sabotabby]

You have well exceeded my know-how, I'm afraid.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. I followed the instructions, so there must be a small chance of it working at least...

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

It won't work in hibernation mode, no. But when you plan you shutting down your machine, manually shut down Vidalia. It will ask you if you want to shut down gracefully, redirecting connections from your machine to other Tor machines.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Aha, thanks.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Hi, I don't know you, but if you haven't misspelled your previous account's name, you're exposing yourself to be found out through this entry with a simple google search/alert...

[brianneurysm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Noted. I'll edit my comment.

[brianneurysm.livejournal.com]

Looks like I can't edit without a paid account, so I deleted the whole thing. Better safe than sorry.

[sabotabby]

I'm glad to see you back on LJ!

[brianneurysm.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to see you're still here!

In the long and short of it, I came back to LJ/DW because this is the only place where I know I can safely lock down all my stuff. However, I'm planning on keeping my Cthulhu and Me blog public, but since I deleted my whole Tumblr account, I'm searching for a good service to host it. Maybe back to Blogspot? I don't know.

So, yeah, most of (if not ALL) of my blogging and photography and weird Coast to Coast AM commentary will be done here, in order to make everybody's Flists explode from sheer volume.

[montreality.livejournal.com]

Twitter, SayNow (recently purchased by Google) and Google are offering a service where Egyptians can call several numbers and leave voice messages. You can hear them here: http://egypt.alive.in

Some are messages of support from abroad, others are from Egypt describing the situation and what people are going through.

I transcribed and translated a few. They are still seeking transcribers and translators (English, French, German, Spanish). A lot of the messages are already in English. If you have some time, pitch in! :) Check out the "Get Involved" tab (please spread the word, sabotabby)