Politeia: Revolution in Motion

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Update

'The Arab Street' is demanding liberty and democracy, but it needs a civil society first (though this is stemming hopeful). Without it, it will be the second coming of the Gaza Strip, where Hamas was voted into power. The Muslim Brotherhood or AlBaradei holding the reigns in Egypt will make a dangerous neighborhood seem an Islamofascist Gaza on steroids.

This just in! Yeah, remember the darned Neocons? Elliott Abrams: "George W.Bush was right about freedom in the Arab World" -

The Telegraph: "Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising"

The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned. (...) >>>

Who is the young dissident who attended a US-sponsored Alliance of Youth Movements summit for activists in New York? On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011. The secret document in full. He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph. Commentary by DebkaFile.

While we're still trying to figure out if the fascist collective headed by Mubarak will be replaced by an Islamofascist collective of Shiite or Suni making, or a Marxist one, the activist action plan has surfaced.

The Atlantic at this stage has managed to translate a few pages. Keep watching that space, as it's an ongoing project:

The Atlantic: "Egyptian Activists' Action Plan: Translated"

Egyptian activists have been circulating a kind of primer to Friday's planned protest. We were sent the plan by two separate sources and have decided to publish excerpts here, with translations into English. Over Twitter, we connected with a translator, who translated the document with exceptional speed.

What follows are side-by-side translations of nine pages from the 26-page pamphlet. They were translated over the last hour and pasted up in Photoshop to give you an idea of what's in the protest plan. While the plan itself contains specifics about what protesters might do, these excerpts show how one might equip oneself for clashes with riot police. (...) >>>

The British Guardian has a brief synopsis:

The Guardian: "Egypt protest leaflets distributed in Cairo give blueprint for mass action"

Egyptians have been urged to come out after Friday prayers tomorrow and demand the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's government, along with freedom, justice and a democratic regime.

Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices.

Signed "long live Egypt", the slickly produced 26-page document calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks.

The leaflet ask recipients to redistribute it by email and photocopy, but not to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, which are being monitored by the security forces. (...) >>>

The hooligans of Wikileaks fanning the flames (they would, of course):

Forbes: "Amid Digital Blackout, Anonymous Mass-Faxes WikiLeaks Cables To Egypt", by Andy Greenberg

Egypt has dropped a digital iron curtain over its Internet. So WikiLeaks’ fans are using an analog tool to smuggle the secret-spilling site’s latest scandals into the country: fax machines.

On Friday afternoon, the loose hacker group Anonymous began a campaign to fax thousands of copies of WikiLeaks’ latest missives–a series of State Department cables revealing human rights abuses under Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and tacit U.S. backing for his administration–to Egyptian numbers.

Since Thursday night, Egypt has blocked its four largest Internet service providers, Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, and Etisalat Misr. But landlines remain connected–and so, Anonymous believes, do landline-connected fax machines. “We stand up for the little guy as well as fighting the government,” one source within Anonymous writes to me. “We believe the people need to see the truth, which is why we’re faxing locations in Egypt (especially schools) with copies of a relevant WikiLeaks cable; due to the majority of Egyptian Internet being down, the public cannot access this vital information.”

On a crowdsourced document that the group uses for planning, members listed fax numbers of half a dozen Egyptian schools as their first targets. “The idea is to distribute the information to students, who can then share it with others,” says another source within Anonymous. “Right now they need to know that the police cannot be trusted and the wikileaks cables are just more proof of that." (...) >>>

Keep an eye on how the Egyptians are bypassing the Internet black out, reads a caveat emanating from the ever watchful Hillbuzz. I think we can all benefit from that advice. The answer to date seems to be, fax machines!

Our Twitter list for developments in the Middle East. Hashtags: #Egypt #Jan25

! Oh, and while we are watching the Egyptian revolution in motion, let's keep our eye on the ball in Lebanon too. Hezbollah is now running it as an Iranian eparchy and Rami G. Khouri at the Daily Star thinks they should be given a fair chance!