Red Pepper » Nadia Idle

Tweets from Tahrir

admin — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:34:23 +0000

The ‘tweets’ of the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution represent some of the most remarkable real-time reporting ever seen. Twitter was a kind of alternative press, a way of getting the word out to other Egyptians and the outside world, and a means of undermining the state controlled media.
The uprising was not, as some have called it, a ‘Twitter revolution’. Twitter was a tool, not a cause. The revolution had much deeper roots stretching back years: it was a reaction to neoliberal economic policies, the lack of opportunities and the brutality of the regime. But the way it was seen in Egypt and around the world was heavily influenced by social media.
On 21 April OR Books, an independent progressive publisher, will release a collection of tweets from the uprising. Tweets from Tahrir, edited by Red Pepper’s very own Nadia Idle and Alex Nunns, is available exclusively to order online at www.orbooks.com. The following are edited extracts from three of the crucial days of the revolution.

the day of revolt Tuesday 25 January

Inspired by the example of the Tunisians, Egyptians took to the streets in unprecedented numbers, overcoming police brutality to briefly occupy Tahrir Square

3arabawy Hossam 11:02:28 Jan 25

@shadihamid I’m not expecting a revolution today. I’m expecting protests. So let’s not shoot high so as not to disappoint people later.

monasosh monasosh 13:56:06 Jan 25

This is great, we r in nahya street, ppl r walking by our side #jan25

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 15:30:06 Jan 25

We are taking all the tight streets of shubra with us to Ramsesees we are heading #jan25 http://yfrog.com/h56kshgj

ashrafkhalil ashraf khalil 15:57:42 Jan 25

#Jan25 amazing! Huge crowd just rushed in from abdeen to join thousands controlling half of tahrir square

norashalaby Nora Shalaby 15:58:37 Jan 25

Tear gas!!

monasosh monasosh 16:00:04 Jan 25

Eyes burning fuck #jan25 http://yfrog.com/gy70kgj

norashalaby Nora Shalaby 16:04:42 Jan 25

Tear gas is fucking deadly. Cant see!

monasosh monasosh 16:21:43 Jan 25

Police is throwing rocks at us #jan25 http://yfrog.com/h06ipbj

TravellerW Mo-ha-med 16:27:33 Jan 25

Police throws rocks @ demonstrtrs while we raised our arms. We’re unarmed, they’re in full gear. We are strong, they’re weak. #25jan #Egypt

3arabawy Hossam 18:34:52 Jan 25

Ya shabab, Tahrir is a war zone now. Tens of thousands r protesting the same chants as the Tunisians. #Jan25

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 21:58:59 Jan 25

OMG Twitter is back!! Thank god ! The situation in Tahrir is beyond amazing eveeryone should head there #jan25

3arabawy Hossam 00:47:41 Jan 26

Police has started attacking the downtown Cairo occupation. Reports of tear gas fired and arrests. Protesters chased to side roads. #Jan25

NevineZaki Nevine 01:40:49 Jan 26

I CAN NOT BELIEVE WHAT IT HAS REACHED TO, THIS IS INSANE! #JAN25

Bloody Wednesday Wednesday 2 February
The day that pro-Mubarak thugs were mobilised to attack the protesters in the square with extreme violence

3arabawy Hossam 12:20:04 Feb 2

Here r the latest updates: The govt is countermobilizing against us now. There r several pro-Mubarak protests taking place in Cairo now.

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 13:39:10 Feb 2

Pro-Mubarak march now coming into Tahrir in ‘a big number’ and it will get ugly http://yfrog.com/h3zsgekj

TravellerW Mo-ha-med 13:40:49 Feb 2

INCREDIBLE standoff between pro-change and pro-Mubarak demos at Tahrir NOW #Egypt #jan25 http://twitpic.com/3vqkcp

TravellerW Mo-ha-med 13:46:50 Feb 2

Real panic in tahrir. Square overun by Mubarak drmonstrstion #Egypt #jan25

norashalaby Nora Shalaby 14:40:06 Feb 2

Is this mubaraks answer to us?? Sending thugs to throw stones at us! #Jan25

3arabawy Hossam 15:01:23 Feb 2

Plainclothes thugs (police) are on horses now, trying to storm Tahrir Square, with whips! #Jan25

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 16:10:08 Feb 2

They r coming in with horses and thugs, we need more revolution people in Tahrir square now!

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 16:15:28 Feb 2

Everyone in Cairo who wants Mubarak out and stands for justice come to Tahrir NOW!

ashrafkhalil ashraf khalil 16:43:07 Feb 2

#jan25 I saw at least a dozen guys coming back badly bloodied from front line. Incredibly violent scene and the soldiers are just watching

monasosh monasosh 16:53:25 Feb 2

Many are injured on the Egyptian Museum side #Jan25 They need help

monasosh monasosh 17:20:10 Feb 2

Cut wounds, fractures, rupture eyes. Weapons used glass, coke bottles, knives, swords #Jan25

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 17:56:49 Feb 2

The Tahrir liberators are way less in numbers than the Mubarak thugs if this continues more ppl will die! MUBARAK OUT NOW!

TravellerW Mo-ha-med 18:01:53 Feb 2

Pro-Mubarak thugs are police. This is POLICE MASSACRING CIVILIANS, make no mistake. #Egypt #Jan25

tarekshalaby Tarek Shalaby 18:10:08 Feb 2

I’m fine but we’re under serious attack and there’s no way out. I’m staying to the very end. Hasta la victoria, siempre.(@FraCicardi)

TravellerW Mo-ha-med 18:58:48 Feb 2

I am seeing – not reporting, seeing – Mubarak ppl throwing ,molotov cocktails on demonstrators, and on shops. #Egypt #jan25

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 19:28:39 Feb 2

Gun fire from talaat harb st. We are in a battle field

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 19:39:22 Feb 2

I WILL NOT LEAVE TAHRIR TONIGHT so stop telling me to do so! We need more people in TAHRIR NOW!! Get here for our freedom!!! #Egypt

monasosh monasosh 22:57:36 Feb 2

This is a damn war zone, and the world is watching us! #Jan25

monasosh monasosh 04:06:34 Feb 3

Some1 among the thugs on bridge had a riffle, took his time & aimed, 3 wounded, 1 dead, army to intervening #Jan25

monasosh monasosh 09:54:52 Feb 3

Charging my mobile,on a balacony overlooking Tahrir square, absorbing the horror of last night & the bravery of our ppl #Jan25

Friday of the martyrs Friday 11 February. After 18 days of protest, Mubarak fell

3arabawy Hossam 18:02:49 حسام

Mubarak has stepped down, says Omar Suleiman. #Jan25

monasosh monasosh 18:12:41 Feb 11

Shit! Ppl are going crazy, screaming and running, Mubarak jas stepped down #Jan25

TravellerW Mo-ha-med 18:15:14 Feb 11

Egypt, the Middle East, the World will never be the same. From #Tahrir square – CONGRATULATIONS, FREE #EGYPT! #jan25

NevineZaki Nevine 18:18:58 Feb 11

Its crazy!! The streets are craaaaaaaaaaaaaaazyyyyyyy!!!!

ashrafkhalil ashraf khalil 18:19:25 Feb 11

Amazing, just amazing! Part of me never truly believed, even yesterday, that this could happen #egypt #jan25

monasosh monasosh 18:44:23 Feb 11

Today we fulfilled our promise to those who died #Jan25 #KhaledSaid

Gsquare86 Gigi Ibrahim 20:10:39 Feb 11

I can’t stop crying. I’ve never been more proud in my life

3arabawy Hossam 20:14:39 Feb 11 حسام

I can’t recall how many times we thought we ‘re about to b massacred & our revolution ‘d be squashed. Still the will of the people prevailed

monasosh monasosh 00:31:48 Feb 12

I’m in Tahrir square.This is where it all started on #Jan25 when we declared our demands ppl thought we were mad. Look where madness got us

TravellerW Mo-ha-med 05:08:31 Feb 12

Now Ahmed, whose son Eslam was killed by the police & who vowed not to leave #Tahrir until Mub. left, can go home. #Egypt #Jan25 #Justice

Buy Tweets from Tahrir online from OR Books.

Stop the Wall

admin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:05:00 +0000

As the occupation forces build a five-kilometre sectarian wall in Baghdad, the notion of divide and rule becomes ever more real. Yet one wall in the Middle East dwarfs this latest Baghdad adventure. This is the 730- kilometre separation wall being built by the Israeli government to isolate the Palestinian people.

Eight metres high in most places, when it reaches completion it will de facto annex 47 per cent of the West Bank, cutting deep into Palestinian land, creating ghettos, and isolating people from their land and work. Diverging dramatically from the 1967 ‘green line’, when it is complete the wall will cut off some 12 per cent of the Palestinian population, including 200,000 in east Jerusalem, from the rest of the West Bank.

This colonial project, however, is not progressing without ardent local resistance. The key movement coordinating opposition within Palestine is the Grassroots Palestinian Anti- Apartheid Wall Campaign, or Stop the Wall for short. Founded in October 2002 as the first bulldozers started work, the campaign has been central to mobilising resistance to the wall both in and outside Palestine.

The campaign was initially started by Palestinian NGOs out of an urgent need to act, but then developed popular committees, which work on the ground to organise protests and collect information. This grassroots mobilisation has meant that despite the fact that the coalition included some quite conservative NGOs from the Palestinian Environmental NGOs network (Pengon), it has developed a radical tone and outlook. The stress on the word apartheid to describe the wall, for instance, now widely accepted in international Palestinian solidarity movements, was pioneered by Stop the Wall following research it conducted into similarities with the South African apartheid system.

It also recognises that although its formal aims are limited to stopping the wall, dismantling parts of it already built, returning confiscated Palestinian land and winning compensation for those affected by it, these goals are an integral part of the Palestinian liberation struggle against the occupation as a whole.

The campaign’s focus on a unified national framework for resistance has allowed it to tap into the networks of its member groups and mobilise successfully in a short period of time while rejecting sectarian party politics. This has led to a situation where large numbers of activists respond to its mobilisations without exclusively identifying themselves as part of the Stop the War campaign.

This sort of fluidity, which so characterises the international anti-globalisation movement, is a fundamental character of the way in which Stop the Wall operates, but it is not just on a practical level that the identification works. ‘We see ourselves as sharing the same visions and goals as the global justice movement,’ says one campaign worker at the campaign’s small office in Ramallah. Indeed, Stop the Wall sits on the international council of the World Social Forum, and seeks to bring Palestinian issues into the mainstream of the global movement at events like the WSF, linking it to discussions on trade, aid and conflict. Its work on the World Bank’s role in helping to construct the Israeli apartheid system is just one example of the connections it seeks to make.

The fact that Stop the Wall situates the Palestinian struggle in the context of the wider struggle against neoliberalism and empire sets it apart from other Palestinian organisations, which look at the occupation through a more myopic lens. It has also meant that the campaign has sought to prioritise certain tactics that work well for international solidarity, such as the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

In Palestine itself, mass mobilisations have not been limited to those along the wall’s path. They have also involved events such as the mass lobby of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2003 to persuade him to start raising the issue of the wall in the international arena.

At the same time the Palestinian Authority regularly consults the campaign for statistics about the wall, and a clear picture of the damage done to Palestinians’ livelihoods and lands. The reputation that Stop the Wall has gained as a reliable source of information and research on the wall has buffered it somewhat from criticism of its more radical politics.

The campaign aspires to fully democratic and non-hierarchical organisation, though it is well aware of the need to involve more women and younger people, especially at the grassroots level.

Yet this self-reflectiveness and lack of bombast, together with its grassroots approach and determination not to let Northern organisations dictate its tactics and terminology, make it one of the most inspiring things to come out of the desperate situation in occupied Palestine today.

Stop the Wall\’s English language website is full of useful information for activists. There is an international day of action against the occupation on 9 June 2007: see www.enoughoccupation.org