There were people hurt. There were people killed. But the victims were not the losers in a fight, because…they didn’t fight. They protested. Peacefully. Martin Luther King would have been proud. The successful Egyptian revolution was one of peaceful protest.

I know you’ve seen pictures of bloodied faces and bodies being carried, and tear gas wafting through the scene. But please keep in mind there were millions of people protesting. The “death toll” is around 400 and a significantly large proportion of these were actually outside Cairo where (a) there are far fewer educated people and (b) any kind of meaningful protest means anything at all.

Americans have a difficult time analyzing and gauging political change, because our own system is so befuddled by confusion. Take the health care issue, for example. To me and I hope the vast majority of sane onlookers, this is a baby step towards a society that guarantees the health of all its citizens. But I don’t have to remind you of how many think radically differently.

So we tend to listen to change that is evident and obvious and immediate, and I think we also sort of fear it. We are worried that change will take away or at least restrict the rights we currently enjoy, which are wonderfully substantial. So for the vast millions of Americans who still don’t know who Mubarak is much less Elbaradei or Wael Ghonim, they pay attention only when something of ultimate drama happens: death. That’s what TV is made of.

But the fact is that there were very, very few deaths compared to the demonstrations that took place. This is remarkable. Imagine the hundreds of thousands of unarmed and determined individuals who so believed in human rights that they stood upright against heavily armed security forces. Who were ready to sacrifice their safety for an idea. Fortunately, a ridiculously small proportion had to. In fact, it’s something of a testament to the restraint of the security forces and particularly the army that so few were hurt.

I remember my own days as a youthful protester in the 1960s, unarmed as the Egyptians were, charged by police as the Egyptians were, tear-gassed as the Egyptians were, shot at as the Egyptians were. And our few friends who were hurt and died were unarmed, as the few Egyptians who were hurt and unarmed.

There are literally hundreds of videos like the one above, showing hundreds and thousands of protesters, unarmed, demonstrating against highly armed government forces. But by their sheer numbers and naked sacrifice, they won. They’ve won round one.

In America especially we tend to focus on the violence of any event, for two main reasons: it’s wrong, and it makes good TV. But what every person must take so far from the Egyptian revolution is that given the hundreds of thousands of people involved, the millions ultimately, the amount of violence was unimaginably small.

It’s hard for Americans to imagine a dictator falling with so little violence. We are told our wars are waged against dictators, and the level of violence that follows our policy is legend. The number of our own soldiers killed much less locals in Afghanistan and Iraq to topple that regime numbers in the tens if not hundreds of thousands.

We can’t believe Egypt has changed regimes with fewer deaths in a month than America sustained monthly in Afghanistan and Iraq for years.

But it’s true. Grasp it and embrace it. Only good will come out of this. There will be many skeptics and cynics out there now saying, “Yes, but what will come next?” I’m not so naive as to suggest this revolution is over, completed. But I’m idealistic enough and optimistically hopeful enough to command the axiom that only good can come out of the power of peace.

So what’s more important: water or security? Egypt is as critically important to East Africa as to America, but it is America that is consumed with watching real-time developments there.

The infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration, which is arguably one of the diplomatic starting points for the current drama in Egypt, was not a singular British act. A series of British treaties about the use of the Nile River was thrust on East African countries about the same time as well.

The notorious 1929 treaty, and the brazen 1959 treaty (I say “brazen” because by 1959 Britain had already decided to give independence to most of East Africa) ceded the use of Nile waters, which arise in East Africa and flow through it, to Egypt.

Water use may be the most critical development tool left in the world. Yet as it stands now, Egypt has successfully enforced its treaties with East Africa, effectively denying Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the Sudan, sovereign use of the river.

Everyone in East Africa knows that a new Egyptian regime, particularly a democratic one, will be more disposed to reconsidering these one-way, counter-intuitive agreements.

So what happens in Egypt could have a much greater impact on the lives of East Africans than the lives of Americans.

Americans don’t have to worry about water. So we have found other things to worry about, the principal being terrorism. What happens in Egypt now is an intriguing chess came the outcome of which we fear will effect our security.

Yes, probably, but not as much as how it will effect the use of water in East Africa.

So why are Americans so much more consumed with what’s happening in Egypt than East Africans?

Because like so much in American life, we have turned the event into one of entertainment, and that it seems is our paramount endeavor.

And because the rest of the world struggles more. They know on a daily basis how to deal with true threats and denials of basic needs.

In America, today, nothing gets learned except as entertainment. Everything from new cancer drugs to space discoveries is presented as a movie. Incidental perhaps to what are truly our daily needs like a meal and a few breaths of fresh air, we have become so well off that to get our attention about anything we need good graphics and Dolby surround sound.

And this is also why we’re so obsessed with “security.” Because security guarantees uninterrupted entertainment.

I confess. I’ve got Aljazeera streaming in the office right now, and I flip between CNN and MSNBC waiting for the figurative pyramids to fall. And then?

As Egypt’s struggles continue anti-American sentiment grows in places as far away and dear to me as Kenya. Some of this is envy of the powerful but some of it legitimately derides an unfair world order.

Yesterday a widely read blogger in Nairobi associated with one of its main talk radios warned Kenyans of “the rude awakening that has visited the people of Egypt” that their leaders have been “serving a foreign master’s agenda.”

And that master was, among a few others, America.

With bitterness that verged on vitriol, Solomon Gichira writes, “We all know one or two reasons as to why the world came running to our rescue after the 2007/8 election crisis… because they feared losing supplies from our flower or dairy industries among others. However, they will never package their interests that plainly.”

Gichira is referring to the massive intervention by mainly the U.S. and Britain following Kenya’s fraudulent 2007 elections. Led by Kofi Annan the international rescue of Kenya included more than $10 billion and supported first a power sharing deal between the two rival candidates for president and a range of incentives that led to Kenya’s new, excellent August 2010 constitution.

Gichira is dead wrong when he gets specific yet important because he represents a huge swath of public opinion in the educated developing world. Moreover, his general contention is right: world powers don’t do anything altruistically; it must be in self-interest.

U.K. and U.S. interests could care less if Manchester flower markets don’t have enough roses. A more important reason, “strategic interest” in polispeak, is Kenya’s geopolitical position in the war on terror. Kenya’s often superficially irritating actions in this regard, like allowing Omar al-Bashir into the country, detaining radical mullahs without trial, and letting military equipment sneak overland into the South Sudan, are all applauded silently in the halls of Westminster and Washington.

And Kenya’s overt actions with regards to the South Sudan and its constant border squabbles with whatever is left of Somali receive constant praise from the west.

These are the west’s true interests. But Gichira is right: it is an agenda dictated from abroad, one that is not necessarily wholly in Kenya’s interests.

Gichira’s account of the modern history of Egypt and its neighbors leaves something to be desired, but he basically underscores the botched handling of the “Jewish question” and the poor way that both Israel and subsequently Palestine were created by world powers. He rightly conveys in my opinion how Britain deftly relieved itself of Jewish prejudice by exporting it to the Middle East where it ferments worse today.

And he’s right on when berating Britain and France’s manipulation with the U.S. in the security council of the nascent Arab revolutions to overthrow potentates like Farouk, how this led to anti-American sentiment and Cold War support by Russia. That led, by the way, to those “revolutionary” regimes being subverted still again … just by the east, instead of the west.

So basically while I think like so many revolutionary enthusiasts Gichira misuses facts at his peril, his conclusions reflect the feelings of many of us progressives in the west: Developing world peoples have been mistreated mostly by being ignored, and when not ignored, by being used for “self-interest.”

The problem is that I don’t know how this could ever have been different. Big guys bully small guys. That’s our world order. And try as we do to elevate this morality, we just haven’t been able to yet.

“What is not told to the ordinary reader is that the Camp David agreement” Gichira writes “brought with it huge American goodies to the Egyptian leadership” including “financial and military support” and “America’s blind eye to oppression and suppression of any conscious or dissenting voices” in Egypt.

And so now for “the US and Tel Aviv administrations, the chicken have finally come to roost.”

Gichira now tells us that we will “painfully watch as you lose your Mubarak. Not to your well equipped American-Anglo-French-Jewish military muscle, but to the unarmed power of a dissenting population that has had enough of your meddling. At that point, you will remember that the silence Egyptians over these years of your misdeeds and myopic interest was not anything like an acceptance but a big lie.”

Powerful stuff.

I don’t like feeling the whipping boy in a geopolitical contest of David vs Goliath, but I am the American and Gichira is the Kenyan. In the global context of world history, I am the villain simply because I’ve been the privileged, and Gichira is the victim, simply because he’s been the less privileged.

I could apologize for my ancestors’ misdeeds, but I don’t know what would have been better, so I can’t apologize. I don’t know that there would have been a better way.

But what I do know now, thanks to the transparency and intellectual stimulation that gives rise to voices like Solomon Gichira, is that we can begin to act responsibly in a global way, right now. We can stop any overt or tacit support of the Mubarak regime. We can let the streets play out, because now, those Egyptians, like Gichira, are totally capable of handling their own affairs.

Let them come to power, and then let them deal with us. We, too, were once revolutionaries.

As this blog goes to press millions are at Tahrir Square just ending prayers. This mostly and remarkably peaceful revolution is a new kind. No longer revolution, but Twevolution!

Click here! This is a live twitter feed of the Revolution!

Peaceful attempts to topple governments in my lifetime have been mostly failures. The one possible exception was the toppling of Peru’s President Fujimora in 2000 although it was not just the people in the streets but Peru’s other arms of government including its military that wanted him gone.

But in all the other cases, government change only came after tremendous violence often involving foreign governments.

This appears to be different. Really different.

Woe to Boeing and Lockheed, but it seems that fighter bombers might have been replaced by….

Twitter. Facebook. YouTube and so much more!

The amateur video which follows was picked up by AlJazeera and probably did more than any other video to really fuel the revolution. It shows the first street confrontation on January 28 between protesters and police, finally won by the protesters.

The video below was created a week earlier by a single, courageous woman pleading with everyone to join her in protest. She challenges watchers with the memory of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian who self-immolated himself.

Peaceful protest in the past seemed to be destined for failure. How many bodies must fall in front of a tank before the phlanx of bodies succeeds? Buddhism and nonviolence has thus had a checkered history.

But until now, Buddhism and nonviolence lacked a winning tool.

There is an answer to “how many bodies” and Tahrir Square may just have them at this very minute. There is a calculus where not even a nuclear bomb can suppress a united protest.

When NBC reporter Richard Engel was asked on a live internet feed Wednesday night what strategy the anti-government protesters could possibly employ to counter the armed and carefully organized thugs fighting them, he hesitated, but then answered enthusiastically, “Information!”

That’s it! America is discombobulated by competing media pretending to report social will but actually governed by a need to produce entertainment. So even while we are in possession of the greatest technology skills and assets in the world, and while those were used to elect our first black president, I see them mostly coopted by our commercial priorities.

But not a place like Egypt. Desperation is very subjective. It’s completely fair to say that many in the U.S. feel as desperate trapped by the socio-economic system as Mohammed Bouazizi felt within his Tunisian society before he set himself on fire. But as that first video by that courageous young woman explains, there are alternatives in this highly connected world to removing yourself from society.

Mohammed’s action galvanized the desperation in his society. But not with steel and bullets, just with … Nielson Ratings!

Finally enough voices fell in line that their universal message could not be defeated even by overwhelming force.

Alive in Egypt is a consolidation site of videos, audio and tweets.

More skilled videos being created from around the world about the revolution can be found at Mibazaar.

“We Are All Khalid” is among Facebook’s most influential pages.

There are hundreds of sites like this one, and this one.

Was it Richard Engel who said it? This is the Information Revolution?

So far, so good for tourists stranded in Egypt. There are 30-50,000 tourists currently trying to leave Egypt, and their itinerary isn’t exactly what they thought.

They shouldn’t try to leave. They should hunker down like the majority of tourists, there, now.

In near lockstep with the delicate balance of the American government, tourists had initially decided to wait-and-see. Large American tour operators like Isram Travel and Abercrombie & Kent sent out bulletins assuring the world that their tourists were doing just fine.

But when the conflict stretched over last weekend, curiosity turned to ennui and finally real concern. And when the tourists tried to leave and couldn’t, the panic button was hit. That happened to thousands yesterday and may have been a mistake.

I’ve been in a number of conflicts as a tourist during my life time of travel. Most of the time the thing to do is … hunker down and wait it out. (Not always, but it is the thing to do this time in Egypt.) Patience, not a tourist attribute, has to be summoned up then cultivated for as long as it might take.

This is not another Rwandan genocide or Balkan War. This is a popular uprising that looks surprisingly disciplined. Until that “look” changes, stay put tourists!

Egypt gets between 15 and 16 million tourists every year, and right now is the highest of the high seasons. It is likely there are several hundred thousand tourists in the country right now. The U.S. State Department believes there are at least 5000 Americans currently touring Egypt, and possibly twice that number.

Desperate tourists don’t make good decisions. Those panicking and trying to leave are mostly being disappointed. Their chances of leaving aren’t good, and it will be extremely expensive. Much more expensive than “hunkering down.”

Television reports, of course, laud those who made it out. Because a lot of television can’t make it in to tell those stories. And of course there will be headlines about the odd act of violence at a tourist hotel … something that likely might have happened with a revolution or not.

The majority of tourists in Egypt right now are doing the right thing: stay there and wait it out.

At any given time, there are as many as 50,000 American in the country, including teachers, engineers and technicians working on the Suez Canal and many involved in the oil and gas industries.

Regina Fraser who hosts the PBS show “Grannies on Safari” may have enjoyed being interviewed by CNN but by yesterday she wanted out.

Regina was on a cruise ship on the Nile, and remains there unable to get to Cairo. At any given time there can be as many as 150 cruise ships sailing between Luxor and Aswan carrying as many as 15-20,000 tourists.

Egypt’s tourism contributes enormously to its economy. (Estimates vary from 5% according to the World Tourist Organization, the as much as 10% according to the Egyptian Tourist Board.) It is one of the last value markets for tourism of any kind to Africa, where a ten-day trip is available for under $2,000. This is half to a third the average elsewhere on the continent.

And most importantly, so far, no tourists have been harmed. In fact the opposite seems to be true. When I was a young kid traveling the world the last place to find a young single woman was Egypt. But Emma Vielbig, 19, was traveling alone in Egypt last week when the trouble started.

Like any kid, she ventured into the streets and tear gas. She got caught in mayhem but was rescued by some anonymous fellow on a motorcycle who grabbed her shouting “You’ve got to get out here” and motored her back to her hostel.

Few would plan a vacation into a revolution. A vacation is supposed to be at least a good measure of R&R. But a revolution is what’s happening in Egypt, and so far, tourists are not being redefined. They remain tolerated onlookers, cash heavy foreigners, but so far, safe.

There is an important lesson for all of us who travel. The situation in Egypt was mostly a surprise. It has much to unfold yet. But so far, tourists are safe. All they have to worry about is their own impatience.

As I listened to President Obama last night, I thought of the State of Africa, and I realized that real hope for future justice in the world is squarely with Africa, today, not America.

Many will consider me foolish: yesterday was a day of tear gas, rioting and general upheaval in much of north Africa. But what I see are people uprising, renewed and respirited. And what I heard last night was Obama snuffing out new spirits in America.

Africa has been in the throes of radical change ever since apartheid in South Africa fell almost 20 years ago. Economic catastrophe today is the motivation that carries the spirit of liberty from South Africa to Tunisia. There’s nothing odd about that.

Economic catastrophe has always been a reason for political change throughout the history of civilized society, and so it should be, since it is often caused by the older society unable to adjust to newer social realities.

In Africa this has led to radical changes in the political organizations in South Africa, Kenya, Liberia, Senegal, Madagascar, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire and the Comoros. I’m not suggesting that the direction of this change is yet fully understood or right now universally good. But it is all fueled by people power. And that all by itself, is good.

Respirited mass movements lead to real recalibration of society. Former winners become losers and former losers become winners. The cocktail party phrase that social change can be a win-win situation is premature. There is too much injustice and prejudice in the world still for that to yet be fully possible.

But it doesn’t mean that the new losers are relegated to the same misery that the former losers might have suffered. In Africa, in fact, it means that the powerful just become a little less powerful. Kenya’s former dictator, Daniel arap Moi, enjoys a wonderful retirement, safe and comfy and in fact respected by a wide section of Kenyan society.

But his ouster by the people of Kenya led to a series of events that has heralded in a new populist who is likely to radically alter the Kenyan economy currently defined by legions of poor. No single movement or leader is capable of changing the science of economics. But Raila Odinga is likely to elevate the condition of Kenya’s poor in the next decade far beyond what I could have imagined, and no doubt at the expense of the rich and powerful.

Who will by all standards, still be rich and powerful. Just not as rich and powerful as before.

This is precisely what happened and continues to happen in South Africa. It began a generation ago, as the richest and most powerful emigrated to the tune of 1800 per month starting in the 1980s, as they realized their lofty positions could not be sustained in a modern African society.

Throughout Africa, populist movements are ushering in more just and equitable societies.

In America, Obama was that symbol as well in 2008. But he failed. He is far behind his times.

Obama’s message is one of unity, and in all fairness, this is no surprise. He has been extremely true to his theories. But that was not what brought him to power. What brought him to power was a massive belief that real change would occur in America.

That may be our fault, not his, but he was complicit. He accepted the mantle of change. He now revels in the temerity of those who condescend to answer a robo phone poll. But he seems too steeped in the past to be pried from his 19th century politics, constrained by dead heroes like Abraham Lincoln, so great for their times but as outdated today as a buggy wagon.

I look at Africa, and my heart beats fast and hopefully. I listen to Obama and grow depressed.