If you’ve been dragging your feet on joining the tweeting army of Twitterers, the story of James Buck might just spur you to join.
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James, an American student from University of California Berkeley was in Cairo studying the country’s leftists. While covering an anti-government protest on April 10, he was arrested along with his translator, Mohammed Maree. As he was being taken away, James took his cell phone, and posted a single word message on Twitter: “Arrested”.
The reactions were swift. Within seconds, his friends both in Egypt and in the US were made aware of his situation. One of his friends and a fellow blogger was able to update his blog frequently based on Twitter messages from James, whose cell phone had luckily not yet been confiscated by the police. His college hired a lawyer to get him out, and when he was let out of jail, another one word message let his friends know he was safe: “Free”.
James is currently organizing petitions to get Maree, whose whereabouts have not yet been confirmed, released too.