Sandmonkey, Ahmed Mohar and Wael Gohnim bring down Mubarak

A Point of View, Egypt, Politics | Sandra | February 10, 2011 at 10:21

The April 6th Movement leader Ahmed Mohar, a tweeter @Sandmonkey (just one name out of hundreds) and a Google exec Wael Gohnim used Facebook, Twitter and TV and old-fashioned legwork to organize and perpetuate a national revolt that started with the youth and spread to the labor unions. Of course they didn’t do it alone, but they have emerged as rock stars – far overshadowing Nobel Prize Winners or leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. They had their fingers on the pulse of a nation.

Google and Twitter got together and came up with a workaround when the Mubarak government shut down the internet. Within 48 hours they had devised a way to use landlines to call phone numbers that would let you leave voicemails to be posted on Twitter. The implications of this speedy adaptation are astounding.

There was plenty of prep to get ready for the demonstrations. Ahmed Mohar traveled to Serbia to study how to make a revolution and brought back videos to small groups that workshopped their strategy.

Then people had to die in order to get international attention. Who knows yet how many?

30 years of oppression brought down by cyber-space, determination, courage and national disgust.