Tonight @ 8pm ET: Wael GhonimCairo, Egypt (CNN) - Egyptian Google executive Wael Ghonim is "ready to die" to bring change to Egypt, he said Wednesday. In an exclusive interview with CNN's Ivan Watson (watch it tonight on "Parker Spitzer" at 8 p.m. ET), Ghonim also said it is "no longer the time to negotiate" with the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "There's a lot of blood now" that has been spilled, he said. CLICK HERE to read the full story. Also, here's some additional quotes from Watson's interview with Wael Ghonim: WATSON: Did you plan a revolution? GHONIM: Yeah, we did. WATSON: what was the plan? GHONIM: The plan was to get everyone on the street. The plan was number one we’re going to start from poor areas. Our demands are going to be all about what touches people’s daily life. And by the way we honestly meant it. One of the very famous videos we used all the time to promote this was a guy eating from the trash. We’ve met all online. We put the plan online. There were some offline meetings between these guys. Most of these guys by the way did not know my name. They did not know who I am. I was just a guy running the show anonymously. WATSON: Were you deliberately hiding your identity? GHONIM: Yeah of course, of course. Not just for safety because this is not about me. I don’t want this to be about me. Because in reality this is not about me and because I don’t want to be the face of this. One of the things the regime would do is just burn my face and that’s it. These guys made the plan: where are we meeting? How are we going to surprise them? The plan was really smart I have to say. Those who were experts said we are going to go into rural areas and were going to talk about demands that connect with people’s lives and we truly believe in these demands. Like the minimum wage. Like talking about the end of, the end of unemployment…reducing unemployment or at least giving people some sort of compensation to make living. Muslim Brotherhood was not involved at all in the organization of this. Muslim brotherhood announced that they were not going to participate initially. And if the young guys want to join they’re not going to tell them “no.” I don’t agree with (the) Muslim brotherhood movement. I don’t agree with their ideologies. But whoever these are, they are Egyptians. These are good Egyptians. They participated…would say 10 to 15 percent of the people are there. They are just like Egyptians, they are honest and nice. They are not as bad and evil as they are trying to tell us. If you want to free a society. Just give them internet access. Because people are going to, the young crowds are all going to go out and see and hear the unbiased media. See the truth about other nations and their own nation. And they’re going to be able to communicate and collaborate together. WATSON: Was this an internet revolution? GHONIM: It is definitely. Definitely this is the Internet revolution. I’ll call it revolution 2.0. WATSON: How much did the Tunisian uprising influence you? GHONIM: It gave us a lot of hope. It did not influence because we did it completely different. We planned it 14 days before. And they just gave us hope. They just made it easier for us to convince the people. Hey, if all of us unite, we can do it. This is our country and we deserve a better future. If we unite, we can do it. I just posted it on Twitter yesterday. This is no longer the time to negotiate, unfortunately. We went on the street on (the) 25th, and we wanted to negotiate. We wanted to talk to our government. We were knocking (on) the door. They decided to negotiate with us at night with rubber bullets. With police sticks. With water hoses. With tear gas. Thanks. And with arresting about 500 people of us. thanks. We got the message. Now when we escalated this and it became really big, they started listening to us. |
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شكرا للأخ المصرى بلدي ليرتدي عصابة المعصم الخضراء ودعم الاخوة والأخوات الخاص الإيراني.
Thank you to my Egyption brother by wearing green wrist band and supporting your Iranian brother and sisters.
Hey instead of wondering when the US knew what when, why don't you try finding out why and how the US ended up supporting a fascist dictator. Another question would be when is the US going to stop supporting fascist dictators, in the Middle East specifically. Thought it was about freedom and democracy?
The Peaceful protests in Egypt are an inspiration to us all! I hope the egyptian people will have the strenght needed to keep on protesting peacefully as it is the only way to bring real change than any other forms of protests!