From CNN’s Ben Wedeman …
Photo: The anti-Morsi demonstrations are THE biggest I've ever seen in #Egypt. #30June pic.twitter.com/BTA0N18RVq
— benwedeman (@bencnn) June 30, 2013
The scale of these protests, the aim of which is to force the resignation of Islamist President Morsi, is difficult to grasp. I’ve seen numerous references to “millions” who participated in the protests today. I would have great skepticism about that number but both the BBC and Reuters are using it at the core of their news reports.
Reuters actually quotes an unnamed Egyptian military source putting the number at 14 million – which would be roughly a sixth of the country’s population. As Reuters notes that number seems “implausibly high” and it is not at all clear that the military is an impartial judge (an ambiguity which could have great portent in the coming days). But as a national institution monitoring protests around the country via helicopter, the military is perhaps the best or only institution in a position to assay an estimate.
I would not put much stock in that number (though perhaps we’ll learn eventually that something like it was true). What does seem pretty clear, though, is that today’s protests are at a scale larger than the ones that toppled Hosni Mubarak over 2 years ago.
