Monday, February 14, 2011

“Our Youth Makes FEAR History,”

We do not want to be just the Mubarak’sThose noisy kids on facebook’. We believe that Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for it,” the speeches and tweets from Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian activist, Google marketing executive,  after his 12-day disappearance, blindfolding and interrogation, re-energized the Egyptians in their final quest for „the dignity that comes with being actors in a nation’s destiny rather than its pawns“. His extremely human leadership attracted many ordinary Egyptian men and women , who saw in him their own son, ally or companion, crying publicly during a TV interview for the death of people that died during this upheaval. Wael Ghonim inspired many people to remove their fear of personal persecution or even death.  
Ghonim showed his nation that they should not anymore fear the Regime, represented by its dictator Hosni Mubarak: „Because the only barrier to people uprising and revolution is the psychological barrier of fear. All these regimes rely on fear. They want everyone to be scared. If you manage to break the psychological barrier, you're gonna definitely be able to do the revolution.“
Fear has become too much frequent experience for many people nowadays. Not just on the political level. I have observed many people experiencing fear in their ordinary lifes – much more simple than life or death, freedom of speech or prison.
They are in fear for their circumstances and future. They are in fear of failure on personal or professional level. They become paralyzed. Fear can be an internal message giving alert to an actual or probable threat. But most of the time it is simply an anxiety about things or situations that haven't happened yet and may be unlikely to happen at all.
Mastering fear requires bearing thinks as if it is impossible to fail. Imagining that behind every failure there is the potential for success, and if we give up too soon, we may never know what wonderful thing we could have accomplished. Only when we remove the fear from our thoughts, we put our energy full speed into doing meaningful things and we may actually start to change the world.
Fortunately Wael Ghonim understood this.

View: Wael Ghonim CNN Interview from Feb 11: Facebook To Thank For Freedom!
P.S. Snapshop on Wael Whonim usage of social media for organizing an upheaval:
Wael Ghonim, 30 years old Google's regional marketing manager for the Middle East, changed the way revolutions are made. Ghonim among others credits Social Media sites – Facebook and Twitter for enabling the revolution that resulted in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak.
Wael Ghonim had been running since June 2010 a popular Facebook page, speaking against police brutality, with 400,000 Egyptian followers. He has named it after Khaled Said, a businessman who died in police custody in Alexandria last year. This page played a crucial role in organizing the protests. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians started collaborating content. Up to 60,000 people within hours shared on their walls particular video. Internet and namely facebook helped to fight the restricted media world.
In one of his last tweets on Jan. 27, Ghonim expressed his strong passion against the current regime. "Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die," he wrote
After he was released from prison on February 7th, shortly after his TV interview,  at least 130,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled "I delegate Wael Ghonim to speak in the name of Egypt's revolutionaries"
On February 11th, when Mubarak disappeared from the country and all Egyptians celebrated end of his dictatorship regime, Wael Ghonim expressed the credit not to himself, but to the Egyptian nation: I’m not a hero, you are the heroes, you are the ones who stand on this square.“
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