A friend has forwarded a letter received from a friend of hers in Cairo. I want to share a part of that letter because it explains something that had been puzzling—the relative  ineffectiveness of the government’s shutting down of the internet and of Al Jazeera.

Today, the fourth day of what must now be called an Egyptian revolution, 100,000 people showed up in Tahrir Square, the political center of the people’s protest against President Hosni Mubarak and his government and for democracy and government respect of the people.  Not a bare spot was to be found.

The size of the gathering was unaffected by the government’s shutdown of the internet and cell phone services.  Nor the fact that it shut down Al Jazeera in Arabic, the county’s main source of news.

That fact is, that in spite of the tremendously rapid growth in internet and cell phone use in Egypt, the major pathways for news are mosques – whose messages sound throughout the city each day and which provide public gathering places for the people, and word of mouth.

Neighborhoods are extremely tight-knit; people help each other – lending money, bartering for services, adjudicating quarrels, offering aid and spreading news.  Since very few move house, the ties are long, complex and meaningful.  Neighborhoods tie the country together.  Word travels efficiently.

American-based news services are only now catching up with the coverage of the Egyptian rising provided by Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera America has been trying for some time for inclusion in one of the major cable networks but with almost no success. American audiences who want to view it must look at the Al Jazeera English program on line.

Two articles appearing in Salon give a good overview of what kind of news service Al Jazeera is.

The first, “Why Can’t We All Watch Al Jazeera” was written by Julia Dahl and was first published, at Guernica, in 2008. It gives a good picture of AJ’s rocky road toward acceptance as a legitimate news agency. The piece is long, but well worth the effort. (click)

The second article, “Al Jazeera’s Egypt Coverage Embarrasses U.S. Cable News Coverage” is by Alex Pareene and also appears in Salon.

The piece is a good deal more snarky than Dahl’s…but it does give some idea of the differences in coverage during the onset of the uprising. (click)

Everyone wants the United States free of its Afghanistan involvement. It’s been costly in human sacrifices and deficit-exploding costs. Obama wants to get out but seems to be chasing an ever receding ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’

Here’s what we should have done.