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youthquake
When hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators poured out onto the streets of Egypt in late January, dictator Hosni Mubarak responded by shutting off internet and cellphone access to keep the activists from organizing. Suddenly, a protest movement that used Facebook pages and Twitter hashtags to coordinate and push its message out was back to the old-fashioned methods of street politicking.
But Mubarak miscalculated. The protesters didn't disperse, giving the lie to the idea that what was happening in Egypt was a flash mob playacting at revolution. Satellite news networks like Al Jazeera kept the eyes of the world focused on dissidents' demands -- a focus that became all the more dramatic when Mubarak began a brutal crackdown, with regime loyalists targeting dissidents and foreign journalists alike. When the internet and cellphone blackout lifted on Wednesday, the world still had viral-ready video footage of the truth of Egypt's precarious uprising. Here are some of the most dramatic images that even a dictator willing to unplug his whole country couldn't suppress.
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