>> and by contributions to your pbs station by viewers like you. thank you. tavis: in 2010, he decided to set up a blog. apart it has swept through the middle east. his remarkable story is now told in the pages of a new book, called "revolution 2.0, the power of the people is greater than the people in power." good to have you with us. these protests in egypt and around the middle east, whether or not this could have happened despite or absence social media, and i ask that because there have been so many revolutions around the world in history that got off the ground and were successful, having nothing to do with social media, so could this have happened without social media? >> i think you have answered the question, and that is my answer. could this have happened without social media? hundreds of years ago, revolution's still happened. the thing is oppressed nations and people will always find ways to communicate, whether they are mosques, churches, just going to in public and speaking and screaming just for people to get their message out, so we just did the same thing in egypt and in other parts of the arab world. we use the internet as a large number of egyptians, a large number of arabs on line, and they pretty much share the same frustration. the revolution was more on the street, not on line, and the power there was the power of the people, not the power of social media. tavis: when you say that it was more on the street than in the social media, what role do you think social media played? >> so before the revolution, the social media did help a lot, and basically, one, 19 those with a common goal, so if you go through the book, i explain, i talked about how this whole thing started, even before the website page i created. when it comes to egypt, the first strike that took place in egypt, the general strike, was in april 2008, and the young egyptian activists were supporting it online, so first, in united a lot of egyptians, and this has a very strong impact. when people are scared and have this fear, speaking up even online is something that would definitely help, and the second is that it is such a great collaboration tool. to know the feedback of thousands of people, days, not months to get this done. it can be a matter of a few minutes, so that was before the revolution. it started on the 14th online. it was taken by many people. the january 25 protest happened on the streets, and i say that because people kept sharing and commenting about the regime, we still would have had the regime -- if they had not been doing that. a communication tool in the revolution. >> so what happens then? and i am going to jump around. what happens with this uprising when the government shuts down this access to social media? >> they started shutting down the access to social media, and then they ended up shutting down the internet and i think that was one of their mistakes. we were fortunate to have a regime that was basically helping us achieve our goal. that was the very good message that we needed. why? if you are scared, if people took to the street and were still scared and had this fear about the regime, and then they see the regime react by blocking access, that was the best message. it made us feel that we are stronger than we thought we were, and a lot of egyptians, they are thinking, ok, they are going over the limit, and we have to participate. many egyptians, knows some, who went to the street on january 28 because the internet and telephones were cut off. tavis: dr. king always said that the time is always ripe, r-i-p- e, to do what is right, r-i-g-h- t. what made this known ripe? -- this so ripe? >> there was a lot going on. when it comes to politics and the economy, people are very frustrated. because of the tools, the use of security forces spreading fear, using propaganda, corruption, he people were scared to speak, said that moment, which is very personal to me and many other egyptians, the president came on television for my first time in my whole life, i see an arab dictator so they," i am sorry. i am wrong." and he seemed so weak versus his speech a few days before. this is the power of the people. look at what the two nations did. it was a non-violent movement. why do we not have the same thing? it became that this is the thing that we should all do. it was very spontaneous. i read today is the 14th, and in 10 days, if 100,000 of us go to the street, no one is going to stop us. tavis: how does a guy, in this case, mubarak, get that kind of power? how does the fear among the people become so popular? i ask you because there are two or three generations of egyptians who have only known one leader. there are parents, kids, and grand kids who have only known one leader for most of their lives. how does one guy come in this case mr. mubarak, how does he get so much power and have people so afraid? >> shellings mubarak and the american president. mubarak has been there for the egyptian president for six american presidents. it was basically the fear, the use of fear. most egyptians fear something would happen, and and a lack of alternatives. the regime was always teaching us, "there is no hope." we get this message. what is going to happen? what we know is better than what we do not. the evil that we know is better than what we do not know, as americans say. that was part of the culture that started from the military rule in 1952. in the second chapter of the book, i talked about trying to give some perspective of what happens in the country. we did not have an election. it was basically you go and say whether you like the president or not, and it is one president. you do not have the fortune to choose, and it ended up with 99.9% until it reached a market, where he was not as good of a performer, where it was 93%, so the older generations were more risk averse, were more, ok, that is it. we should live our lives. there is a common thing in egypt that is "walk on the sidewalk." that is do not walk on the street and get yourself in trouble. they are more exposed, and second, the younger you are, the more willing you are to take risks, so the younger generation was different, and that was part of a surprise that surprised the regime on the 25th. they did not expect it to be that big. tavis: there are so many parts of your story that are amazing to me. those of us to even have a cursory understanding of you came to know you in part as a google executive. i have been thinking for the last few days, while going through your book, thinking, trying to come up with the comparable example of a united states executives who would put himself or herself on the line for this kind of revolution. i am thinking now of our occupy movement, and i am trying to think of another executive at a high level at a multinational who would do what you have done. in fairness, when you started doing what you were doing, you started anonymously. so you started out doing this anonymously, but the reality is you are and still are, you are a google executive, so what mental process did you go through? what happened inside of wael, where you said that as a googled executive, this is really out of the realm of what i should be doing, but i am going to do it anyway? >> and part of telling the story, i hope people will learn the experience that i went through and use it to do good. i think it just all happened because i hate and justice. i do not think i should get credit for that. every human being should hate that, and every human being should use whatever tools they have to fight that and make sure that the world we are living in is a better place. >> there are a lot of executives where if you asked them, about the referendum, yes or no, you ask an executive, and they are all going to say no if you ask if they liked in justice. >> the second thing is the passion and courage to change the situation. i like changing the status quo. i do love that. it is important for the world to become a better place, that we work for making it a better place. it is not going to happen automatically. i was becoming more and more frustrated for the future of the country. i was very annoyed to see people eating from the trash. knowing that one out of every two egyptians was living under the poverty line, and we have got to have something. we are fortunate by our education and our wealth, and we have got to pay something back for the poor people who need our help, and this is where it came from. tavis: you are married to an american woman with two kids. >> from california. tavis: a woman from california with two kids. you decided to go back. you did not have to go back. you decided to go back. why? >> i only stayed six months with my visit, and it was mainly after 9/11, i wanted to continue my education in the u.s. i was impressed, as many young people coming to year, seeing the level of education, especially in high schools and universities, and the graduate schools. after 9/11, i felt singled out, and so did my wife the tissue is a muslim and is wearing the muslim veil. so i decided to go back. eventually, i was going to go back anyway. i love my country, and i felt for some reason, as i told the interrogators when they asked me why i love it, i love my country. even when i leave it for a few weeks or a few days, i think about back home, and i do love the culture, egyptian culture, and the egyptian people, so that was also very critical when deciding about putting myself at risk for a change that may or may not have happened. tavis: when you say you and your wife felt singled out after 9/11, what do you mean? >> you see the looks of people. right after the events of 9/11, the media focused a lot on islam, arabs, as well as the egyptians, because there was an egyptian in one of the attacks, so i was a perfect case. i 53 conditions. and just the looks of the people and how you feel they treat you. perhaps i was getting oversensitive, but i do not like the fact to be singled out, and i think the media has a role in trying to generalize the bad acts of a minority of people into one nation that is huge, and there is about over 1 billion muslims. so one of the reasons this book is written is to change this perception. we are people who love freedom, democracy, who want to see our country as a better place, who want to live in peace. we are ready to be united, if there is a goal to unite us. which are more than happy to take it. i just hope that sends the right message, because now you're talking about the massive. -- the masses. we are talking about the people. tavis: since you talked about this, the media, the involvement at the start of these uprisings in egypt, and thankfully we have got tonight and tomorrow night's show to get to some of these issues, but since he mentioned the american media, which i am obviously a part of, let me ask your assessment of american media on two issues. i suspect the answer may be different on both, but i am curious. your assessment of the u.s. media after 9/11, and you just started to mention that. give me your sense of the u.s. media after 9/11 vis a vis the muslims, and then how they covered the egyptian uprising, the obama administration, the government, hillary clinton, have you think about them, but just talk about the media, how they handled 9/11 and the uprising. >> at the end of the day, the immediate intentionally or unintentionally, you know the prophecy. you play sort of a role in what happens next, so by framing, after 9/11, by framing that muslims and they are responsible, and i understand there had been some people saying that that is not islam, that is some extremists, but the focus on the original engine of those who did the attacks but did definitely biased a lot of the people, a lot of the people against islam and muslims, which, you know, i hope would not have happened, and during the uprising time, i think the media took a much better sense of the government. in tahrir square, covering the events. unfortunately, we have a regime that does not mind killing people as long as it is off the record and no one will know about it. it does not care about kidnapping people when no one is going to know about it. and part of the reasons why i created that page was to expose the regime. the worst nightmare for any dictator is to expose them, to let people know the bad things they are doing, and i think the american media as well as international media in general have done a good job in tahrir square, and they did help in protecting the lives of people. tavis: i thought there might be two different views on the one issue and the other, and their work, so thank you. you thought the media did a far better job in covering the uprisings that the government did in the handling or the mishandling, and that does not surprise me, being someone in the media, from one day to the next, i did not know where we stood, if we were with mubarak or with the protesters. it seemed that that story was changing from the white house or state depart. that was me. you were inside of egypt, though you were on lockdown, missing for 11 days. let's go to your part about the u.s. what did you make, and you talk about it in the end of the book, about the way we handled or mishandled this uprising? >> well, i think the foreign policy of the u.s. and many other countries in the west are mainly based on the interests, regardless of the values. tavis: what are our strategic interests. >> the values of the people, and if the revolution did one thing, it did show that this was very short-sighted, because for months, years, maybe 20 years, 30 years, but it is not going to be very long term relationship, it is eventually, people are going to win, and this is exactly what happened in egypt, and now, with the change in position as you mentioned, they were trying to take sides. they took the side of mubarak. tavis: they were bouncing this back. >> did not think of it. it was purely egyptian. it was driven by egyptians. egyptians were on the street. they were the ones deciding what should happen, and they sort of one over everything. -- won over everything. the western world wanted mubarak tuesday, for the sake of stability. they wanted to see egypt stable, even to the extent than half of the egyptians are poor or to the extent where we do not have real democracy, like a dictatorship that looks as if it is a democracy, so we did not really care that much about what was going. we appreciate the fact at the end that obama did support the revolution, but was it the reason why mubaraks stepped down? i do not think so, because there had been a lot of people there, ready to sacrifice their lives, and they were not listening to anyone who would tell them something else. >> i take your point, and i think the viewers do, as well, about values versus interest. but to your point about the fact that the u.s. and other countries for that matter wanted mubarak tuesday it only for stability, is there any legitimacy to that argument? this is a very, very volatile region. this is a hotbed of an area, and whenever you think of mubarak, some stability over the course of these six u.s. presidents that you referenced earlier, what about the argument that, hey, the u.s. is imperfect, but we try to support a guy and push a guy where we could, but we wanted stability in the region? >> basically, what they were doing was killing the passion for many generations. people saying, "for the first time in my life, i am proud to be an egyptian. for the first time in my life, this country is mine. tavis: walking on eggshells, we do not know what is going to happen in egypt. we do not know what will happen in egypt, jon cho's the region -- in egypt, much less the region. >> the right way to go, the long-term planner, the way to real stability and not a fake one, because, by the way, if this was stable, it would not have been taken down in 18 days. tavis: there are four decades of this regime. four decades. >> it was because the people were scared. if this regime was a strong regime, they would not have been thrown away in 18 days, and, of course, i am not talking about the whole regime. i am just talking about mubarak and his people, so the question is do you really want the long term strategy on how we can tackle the region's problems, where do we want just short-term strategy that comes at the expense of a living trust between all the different players of the relationship? so, for example, in egypt, if you go and ask much of the egyptians, they will tell you they do not trust the american foreign-policy. the americans will probably tell you the same thing. tavis: hold that thought. i want to pick up on that tomorrow night. with foreign policy, in some ways, we are just getting started. there is so much more we can get to tomorrow night that we did not get to tonight. i want to talk about what the executives had to say about this involvement. we have not gotten to talk about the 11 days on lockdown, most importantly about the future. we will do all of that tomorrow night in part two with our conversation with wael ghonim, author of the new books "revolution 2.0," his memoir. wael, did to have you on the program. >> thanks. >> thanks for tuning in, and keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. conversation with wael ghonim. that is next time. we will see you then. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to pbs stations by viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs. >> be more. pbs.