U.S. publication The Atlantic has published parts of a US English translation of the advice that was being emailed amongst protesters prior to the Egyptian demonstrations beginning. The pages translated and published outline the protests' demands, their strategic aims, the tactics to achieve those aims and finally, advice on how to counteract the non-lethal weapons of the police forces (sadly, the news reports currently state that live ammunition has been used and people killed).
Although the advice pamphlet asks specifically that the document not be transmitted by "Twitter or Facebook", because the Ministry of the Interior routinely monitors those channels of communication, The Atlantic writes, "We're publishing this piece of ephemera because we think it's a fascinating part of the historical record of what may end up becoming a very historic day for Egypt." I am writing about it here because I think that I have seen similar documents in the past, produced by anarchist or environmentalist protesters in this country; the chief difference between those documents and this one is that this one wants protesters to be positive and to seek to win the police and army as allies. UK anarchists tend to view them as unalterably the enemy. I am also writing about it because I think it is very important given the state of protest in this country to have the very useful advice presented here to be widely available. Given the recent reports about how the police spied on activist organisations in this country, it seems likely that the police in the UK would know about this sort of thing already. The Atlantic say that they have avoided any of the specific information so as to protect the protesters while the action is still taking place, so what remains is fairly well-known. It still makes one of the most concise and comprehensive outlines for protesters.
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