Estimating the number of protesters in a given area is a difficult thing to do. Estimating how many people are protesting over an entire country of eighty million is impossible.

  
Wired, meanwhile, offers a way to guesstimate a big crowd. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/how-many-people-are-in-tahrir-square-heres-how-to-tell/   

The first thing that is required is an aerial photograph of the entire area, I have not yet seen one such photo.  

   

University of Illinois crowd-guru Clark McPhail's method would give us a crowd of about 200,000 people. However, estimates of protest over the entire country put those estimates as high as 2 million.

   

Here are some estimations, that were for estimates inside  Cairo's Tahrir Square. These estimations have now seemed to be tagged to protest over the entire country.

   

Washington Post: "Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands."

   

New York Times: "Hundreds of thousands."

   

Wall Street Journal: "Hundreds of thousands."

   

Associated Press: "more than a quarter of a million people."

   

Reuters: "At least one million people."

   

Al-Jazeera: "Up to two million."

   

BBC: "More than 100,000."

   

Guardian (U.K.): "An estimated one million people."

   

Telegraph (U.K.): "Estimated crowd of more than 1 million."

   

I'm sure if I counted how many people in Canada, with a population half the size of Egypt, were protesting against the Harper government on talk radio and living rooms of the nation, I could easily count two million. Not the same thing I know, but we must ask ourselves if the majority of Egyptians want Mubarak out based on a  protest of between tens of thousands and 2 million people over an entire nation of 80 million people?

   

We must look at why the people are protesting. Some news agencies and politicians say it is because Mubarak has been in power for over thirty years and there is wide spread corruption. But, hasn't that region always been run that way? The real reason, I believe, is that it has been hard to earn a living for many people there. This has been done by market manipulations for the price of wheat in foreign stock markets. Since, Egypt is reliant on foreign wheat and a diminishing US dollar the people are going hungry.

   

The eyes of Egypt are on Mubarak as they try to fill their bellies. If he falls, their eyes will look westward for the cause and their vengeance will fall on the doorstep of Israel.