vanguard blog | January 31, 2011 | 4 comments

Egypt Protest Footage From 2005 Shows Growing Unrest: Vanguard Archive

Adam Yamaguchi is an executive producer and correspondent for Current TV's Vanguard.

Like so much of the world, I've been transfixed by the events rapidly unfolding in Egypt. It had very familiar echoes of a trip I'd taken to Cairo a few years ago — though possibly this time it will have a happier ending.

Back in 2005, on assignment from Current TV (before Vanguard), I traveled to Cairo to examine how people were responding to US influence, particularly George W. Bush's calls for democratic reform in the Middle East.

Very shortly after we landed, we found ourselves surrounded by thousands of young people marching in protest of the government. President Hosni Mubarak had done something stupid (and undemocratic) and as a result pissed off a lot of people — particularly young people who were beginning to find their voice in the blogosphere. (This was also before widespread use of Facebook or Twitter.)

At the time, the young activists thought this could very well be the moment. It certainly felt like change was afoot — for the first time in a couple decades, people were beginning to challenge the rule of Mubarak in a real way.

Shortly after we left Egypt, the movement began to sputter, the government started to crack down, and the movement was once again driven underground.

This time could be different. It certainly feels like a new day. And if this time it's real, we may be staring at the dawn of a new day for the entire region.

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4 comments // Egypt Protest Footage From 2005 Shows Growing Unrest: Vanguard Archive

  • ras_menelik
    • 0
      ras_menelik  

    • Twitter back up! Indirectly

      Egypt protesters use voice tweets

      The service could give protesters a new way of communicating to the outside world
      Continue reading the main story
      Egypt Unrest

      Egypt unrest Live
      Possible scenarios
      Q&A: Egypt protests
      Bowen: What if Mubarak goes?
      Google and Twitter have launched a service which circumvents the ban on net services in Egypt.

      The so-called speak-to-tweet system allows people caught up in the unrest to post messages without any need to use an internet connection.

      The service, which is already live, allows people to dial an international telephone number and leave a voicemail message.

      The message is then sent out as a tweet with the hashtag #egypt.

      People can listen to messages by dialling the same phone numbers (+16504194196 , +390662207294, +97316199855) or going to a special Twitter page.

      Last ISP
      Google said its engineers worked with Twitter and its newly acquired voice technology company SayNow over the weekend to set the service up.

      "Like many people we've been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground," said SayNow co-founder Ujjwal Singh on the official Google blog.

      Net access in Egypt has dropped almost to zero
      "We hope this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time," he added.

      The last of Egypt's main internet service providers, the Noor Group, became unreachable on Monday, according to reports.

      The ISP had managed to stay online after Egypt other big four net providers stopped sending and receiving traffic on Friday.

    • 1 year ago
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