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.

Comments

Tunisia effect?

[Black Parrot]

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

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 of the hijackers was from Egypt (Mohammed Atta). (And yes, your statement is pedantically true; "one" is "a number".)