On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 4:51 AM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 28 January 2011 12:47, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> > wrote: >> 2011/1/28 David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com>: > >>> The idea of getting samizdat copies of Wikipedia into Egypt appeals. >>> Airlift in current-article dumps of ar:wp and en:wp on SD cards by the >>> thousand? > >> Don't forget arz.wikipedia. It's small, but shouldn't be ignored. > > > The more the better! > > I expect we don't actually have the money on hand to do this, it's > mostly just a pleasant thought :-) Though if someone just happens to > have thousands of SD cards and something to make HTML versions of > article dumps ... > > > - d.
I appreciate the sentiments, but in the week that it would take to do anything significant, this will be over one way or another. Geopolitics is a nasty game; civil insurrection even nastier, as the geneva conventions don't get applied. The guns are out (Egyptian army deployed to back up the overwhelmed police); either they restore order (by simply being there, a bit more teargas, or shooting people in whatever quantities are needed to restore order) or there's going to be a new government in Cairo shortly. Situations don't teeter this close to the edge for long. The worst thing the Foundation can do is attempt to intervene in a way that gets other authoritarian regimes more likely to censor us, IMHO. This is not a value judgement on supporting democracy in Egypt - it's a realpolitik issue with the rest of the world we will continue to have to deal with for the next few decades. That we wouldn't censor coverage or information on an uprising or oppressive behavior doesn't mean we should organizationally take a stand on an uprising or attempt to get involved. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
