Defiance

That's scores of people shining their lasers up at a military helicopter. Or, as NBC News might say, "two people."

You see that happen in a lot of videos of the crowd, laser light flashing the lens. But this is a pretty wild example of it.

There are some interesting unconfirmed claims. In Muqattem, Egypt, a Twitterer named @sandmonkey I'm told is generally reliable says that gunmen inside a Muslim Brotherhood HQ are shooting at the crowd outside:

I've seen some more claims that the MB HQ in Cairo is burning (though we heard similar things on Friday, and it just turned out to be bonfires outside the HQ). I also saw a general claim that as night has fallen on Egypt, "all hell is breaking out."

An odd thing about false information is that it can wind up making itself true -- false reports of shootings can lead to actual shootings, false reports of "all hell breaking out" can lead to riots.

So, a nervous night over there.

The BBC has estimated that this is the largest political protest... in world history. Which seems possible. Have 17 million ever protested a government before?

So it's strange to me the media gave the Tahrir Square protests such urgent, breathless play last time, when Obama was thinking about giving a speech, and seem to care so little about the biggest protest in history, when Obama isn't thinking about giving a speech.

posted by Ace at 07:15 PM

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