Egyptians ignore Facebook strike call

CAIRO, Egypt : Egyptians largely ignored a call by online activists for a general strike Sunday to protest against the government on President Hosni Mubarak's 80th birthday. via International Herald Tribune

[ZinbadAlive]

I have never been to Facebook
However, a couple of days before that Sunday,
I was reading a government-owned newspaper which had an entire page quoting common citizens's reaction towards that call for a Strike!
I said to myself: Ghee, that newspaper unintentionally made known to everyone that call for the Strike
they interviewed a Girl in her thirties, a spinister, consedering her as the leader of the movement, and made me understand that may her being spinister in her late thirties could be a reason why she is that rebellion against the State!

[ZinbadAlive]

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CAIRO, Egypt: Egyptians largely ignored a call by online activists for a general strike Sunday to protest against the government on President Hosni Mubarak's 80th birthday.

Analysts said the failure showed the limited influence of activists organizing on social networking site Facebook after their successful strike last month generated enthusiasm that a new form of political protest was emerging in the Arab world's largest nation.

Veteran political analyst Mohammed Sayyed Said sees the networking sites as excellent tools for political discussion. But he said the "total failure" of this strike showed their inability to connect with the common people here.

Only 8 percent of Egyptians use the Internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

Egypt's so-called "Facebook party" burst onto the political scene in March when a group set up on the site called for a nationwide strike April 6 in solidarity with nation's dissatisfied workers. It quickly garnered 60,000 members.

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But the response may have had more to do with the fact that workers at the country's largest textile factory in Mahalla el-Kobra had already decided to strike that day and they had popular sympathy.