One thing to add: one big takeaway for me re Egypt is knowing that these protests didn’t happen overnight. Many of the reports I’ve been reading point to numerous precedents, from union strikes to individual acts of courage by bloggers and activists, that laid the path to Tahrir. Often, these actions were met with the same indifference and hopelessness many of us feel here in the US. But the Egyptian example shows me that they do have a cumulative effect.

In fact, it may be better than we think. Just last weekend, 1000 people protested the Koch Brothers summit in Palm Springs. Those are GREAT numbers which put the conservative political investment class on notice. We can build on this, and should. If it happened in Egypt, it can happen anywhere, even here. This is what I am beginning to believe.

“While Alexis Madrigal made a bit of a hasty decision to publish these excerpts from the pamphlet last night, it is unfair to accuse him of helping the Egyptian government carry out violence against protesters. Clearly the government has other methods of gathering information besides the tech blog at the Atlantic.

It would have been helpful if Alexis had included more political and cultural context for the document and/or perspectives of Egyptians on the ground (or in touch with those on the ground). His categorization of it as “ephemera,” while technically correct, comes off as somewhat trivializing. And yes, he should have explained why he found it so important to publish the excerpts when he did, the night before the protests. But the comments here are extreme and in many cases simply unfair.”

“While Alexis Madrigal made a bit of a hasty decision to publish these excerpts from the pamphlet last night, it is unfair to accuse him of helping the Egyptian government carry out violence against protesters. Clearly the government has other methods of gathering information besides the tech blog at the Atlantic.

It would have been helpful if Alexis had included more political and cultural context for the document and/or perspectives of Egyptians on the ground (or in touch with those on the ground). His categorization of it as “ephemera,” while technically correct, comes off as somewhat trivializing. And yes, he should have explained why he found it so important to publish the excerpts when he did, the night before the protests. But the comments here are extreme and in many cases simply unfair.”