Layer 513 . . . Radical Movements, Global Protests, Visiting Japan, Occupy London and Banning Bonuses

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In yesterday's G2 Paul Mason had a two-page article - very sober and measured, as you'd expect from such a senior and serious journalist - reflecting on the future of the radical movements that came to prominence in 2011.

Global protests: where does the revolution go from here?

2011's anti-capitalist protests and Arab spring made everything seem possible. But will 2012 bring real change? The key is turning rebellion into coherent political vision

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/31/where-revolution-goes-from-here

If 2011 felt, at times, like a rerun of 1848 with stereo headphones, 2012 is already exhibiting some of the features that made 1849 a byword for reaction.

In Greece, the euphoria one could sense among the indignados camped in Syntagma Square last June has given way to an angry silence; to fragmented, anomic acts and the struggle to survive.

And the fundamental economic problems remain unsolved . . . 

As a revolutionary wave breaks, historically, it also breaks up. During the Arab spring and the winter of occupying public spaces, it was impossible to ignore the similarities between the youth across borders: the way they spoke and dressed, the social media they used, the music they listened to.

So what remains of the revolution? As the events recede and solidify it becomes clear that 2011 was, above all, a cultural revolution: a loss of fear in the dictatorships of north Africa; a loss of apathy among educated youth in Europe, Latin America and the US. And the revolution consisted of this: a mass rejection of the values dominant during 20 years of freemarket capitalism.

Freemarket patterns of wealth distribution created the most potent political meme of 2011 – which was not the Egyptian slogan "Bread, freedom, social justice" but "We are the 99%".

Today, among the activists who made 25 January happen in Egypt – and among those who turned Occupy Wall Street or UK Uncut into global brandnames – you find a common reluctance to engage in the dirty business of power; of the actual, the specific, the non-exhilarating work of community organising, of elections.

In short, 2012 may be the year the counter-culture accumulated by young people in the good years, and deployed in what one has called "the senseless beauty of rebellion" in 2011, finally has to concretise into a programme, a coherent vision. If it doesn't – as is obvious from Budapest to Cairo – there are plenty of other forces with coherence. And in times of economic crisis people turn to them.

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Charlie Brooker in Tokyo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/charlie-brooker-tokyo-japan-games?intcmp=122

Another fairly serious and measured piece of journalism. Good one Charlie.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the culture shock Charlie experiences when he gets back to London. Everyone should visit Japan, at least once in their lifetime. Beg and borrow money if necessary in order to do it. It'll change your way of thinking - and in a good way.

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The salaryman's guide to Tokyo

Salaryman Kuzuhara-san leads Chris Michael on a tour of the hidden Tokyo where an army of office workers get to let off steam at the end of the working day

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/salarymans-guide-to-tokyo-city?intcmp=122

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Tokyo: a walk down Memory Lane - video

Omoide Yokochō - Memory Lane - developed as the eating quarter after the second world war. David Levene checks out old school Japanese delicacies such as salamander, loach and viper wine. It's all good for the stamina

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2012/feb/01/tokyo-memory-lane-strange-eats?intcmp=122

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10 of the most unusual hotels in Tokyo

Tokyo has an unusual hotel to suit every taste, whether you want to spend a night in a pod hotel, at an urban onsen, or stay with a Japanese family, says Richard Smart

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/top-10-unusual-hotels-onsen-pods-tokyo

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10 of the best budget hotels in Tokyo

Tokyo has a good spread of hotels at great-value rates, from traditional ryokans to cheap and cheerful business hotels in the heart of Shinjuku, says Richard Smart

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/10-best-budget-hotels-tokyo
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Occupy London's eviction is a failure for the church, not the camp

The protesters about to be removed from the steps of St Paul's could have helped the cathedral find a compelling new narrative

by  Giles Fraser

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/31/occupy-eviction-st-pauls-cathedral

It's time for all good people to decide where they stand - with the bankers and the Establishment, or with the protestors. There's NO middle way in this.

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With a ban on bonuses, Fred Goodwin could even have kept his knighthood

Even bankers want the bonus culture outlawed. It's a conspiracy to extract money from firms that properly belongs to others

By Simon Jenkins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/31/ban-bonuses-fred-goodwin-knighthood

Very well said, Simon. This whole fucked-up bonus culture is a massive scam, and needs to be made illegal - at least for 'bonuses' above, say, £2,000, whether in cash or shares. Better to get rid of the whole of this nasty nonsense.

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Layer 477 . . . Riots, Anarchy, Societal Breakdown, Justice and Beyond

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"Good evening! We're expecting disturbances in many parts of the UK this week."

So said Richard the Met Office weatherman, at 1.00am this morning. Tongue in cheek? Surely not.

Thank you Richard. You're not wrong either.

But as Bob Dylan said, back in the Sixties - you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

All evening and all night long there's been chaos and violence on the streets of London. Yesterday it was Enfield. The night before Tottenham. Last night there was anarchy in Hackney, Camden, Southwark, Lewisham, Clapham, Brixton, Woolwich, Ealing . . . and Croydon. Yes, Croydon. Several shops and other premises ablaze.

Buildings set alight, barricades erected, mobs roaming the streets - looting shops and attacking inadequate deployments of riot police.

Many of us expected this to happen last summer, and when it didn't we began to wonder just what it would take to provoke public anger and riots in this country. MPs stealing public money? Bankers' salaries and bonuses? Unemployment? Falling incomes? Rising prices? Student fees? Deep cuts to public services? Hacking scandals? Police corruption?

Well now we know. A squad of armed police surrounded a suspect and blew his brains out with handguns. The police claimed the guy had shot at them. A police officer apparently claimed that the radio clipped to his chest had saved his life by deflecting a bullet. A day later it turned out that the bullet in question was of a type that's used by the police . . .

On Saturday the family and friends of the dead man organised a peaceful protest and a demonstration outside Tottenham police station. It took four hours for the police to see them. (Were they invisible?) Somehow the demo turned into a riot . . .

On Sunday morning Nick Cohen's column in the Observer had this headline -

No Riots in Britian. Just quiet, ever-deeper anxiety.
Hmmmmmmm

What we are witnessing in this recession is not abrupt catastrophe but the slow erosion of the hopes and aspirations of so many

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/07/nick-cohen-recession-misery

'When will there be riots?" eager journalists ask thinktanks, sociologists and anyone else who monitors Britain's unravelling social fabric. "When are the British going to imitate the Greeks and the Spanish and snap?"

On the face of it, their questions are reasonable. Contrary to the predictions of nearly every expert, inflation roared ahead of wage increases after the crash of 2008, squeezing the living standards of all but the most fortunate harder than at any time since the 1920s. The asinine George Osborne tightened the vice further by raising VAT in the middle of an outbreak of stagflation. Meanwhile his coalition's austerity programme is ensuring that public services will begin a long slow decline into shabby inefficiency, as public-sector workers start to lose their jobs en masse. Working- and middle-class families have already lost tax credits. The poor have already lost benefits.

To cap it all, the distribution of the pain is so monumentally unjust it cries to high heaven for a reaction. The banking crisis and the flooding of the market with easy credit were the City's follies.

But it is not London and the south-east which are suffering but the Britain north and west of the line from Severn to the Wash. [????] While the state bailed out the City so the bars could carry on heaving and the banks could carry on delivering fantastic rewards to their "stars", it has allowed the provinces to sink.

So complete has been the capture of the coalition by the moneyed interest that Osborne says in all seriousness that the one fiscal measure he simply must have at any price is not the relief of poverty or an easing of the burden on middle England, but a tax cut for the wealthiest 1% of earners.

These arrant insults ought to push the most mild-mannered people into revolt. Yet in Britain they provoke only students to riot. The wider public remains resigned rather than enraged; indifferent rather than incandescent.

[Not any more. Oh no, not any more.]

If insecurity continues to grow, our old assumptions will have to change. Imagine that Margaret Thatcher had died before the crash. Even her toughest critics would have had to accept that many of her reforms had succeeded and she had allowed the private sector to flourish. Now the world she left us has fallen apart, and her deregulation of finance in particular seems like a ruinous blunder. . . Now that the financial system Labour relied on to provide the tax revenues for social reform has crashed, the centre-left's old maps are useless as well.

Thatcher's Enterprise Society and Blair's Cool Britannia are lost worlds The promises both parties offered to those who "worked hard and played by the rules" of rising living standards, a secure retirement and a better life for their children sound empty. Millions are living thwarted lives of quiet desperation, and cannot see a way to escape them.

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This morning John McDonnell MP said this -

Reaping what has been sown over 3 decades of creating grotesquely unequal society,with alienated young copying ethos of looting bankers.

Many people will question his rhetoric - since it was all quite legal for the bankers to do what they did. But the point is that morally and ethically the bankers behaved, and are still being allowed to behave, like fucking gangsters. Their so-called financial 'products' were always designed to be toxic - to the poor sods who became victims of mis-selling, and the rest of us who still suffer from the consequences of the derivatives, the mis-selling, the sub-prime mortgages, etc.

Imagine if the law was changed to make it legal to go out and carry out smash and grab raids, loot shops, break into homes and torch businesses. Well that's what happened when banking and finance was "deregulated" by Thatcher. We used to have laws that prevented banks and financiers from doing what they've done to individuals, communities and the economy in general. Those laws were abolished. We live with the consequences - and what's happening on the streets is one of the consequences. Either you believe that or you don't. Make up your minds time. There's no grey area in this argument. No walls to sit on. Not any more.

We await Cameron's next statement, now that he's back from his holiday, now that he's back in charge, with great interest.

It was interesting to see Clegg on TV yesterday - our Acting Prime Minister! Now there's a young man who had completely lost his bottle, as well as the plot. Not that he ever had a plot, or any bottle.

It's worth having a look at John McConnell's Twitter this morning: http://twitter.com/#!/johnmcdonnellMP . He's a proper politician who's been consistent in his approach to political and financial issues. Compare him with the publicity-crazed Dianne Abbot, whose wisdom extends to popping up on Sky and BBC 24 to demand curfews. What next Dianne - call in the army?

What we actually need is people on the streets showing the way with peaceful protests - following the example of people in Cairo - reclaiming their city from the political thugs and their followers, reclaiming it from the rioters, determined to have non-violent change and a better, fairer, more democratic society.

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What's intriguing me is what will happen next - since I'm old enough to remember the Watts riots in Los Angeles, and the fact that everything just went back to 'normal' after the fires had burned out and the politicians simply condemned the whole thing as mere criminality.

The difference this time around is the Internet - citizen journalism, chat rooms, blogging, twittering, discussion forums and so on - none of them under the direct control of the mainstream media, business, politicians, etc. This time there's the opportunity to take things a step further and higher - to reflect online, to analyse, to reason, to exchange opinions with non-establshment thinkers and reporters. This is not a time for bullshit, complacency, or going backwards.

And it's not a time for simply increasing the power of the police state. This is what was established in Cairo. There ARE limits to state power. There ARE limits to people's tolerance, inertia, fear, indifference and unwillingness to protest and demand justice.

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Layer 443 . . . People Power, Peaceful Protest, Civil Disobedience, Democratic Aspirations, Serving the Public, Learning Lessons, Big Banks, and The Big Society Bail-In

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The worldwide interest and indeed the fascination with the events in Egypt reminds me of the situation we had in 1968 when students and workers took to the streets in many countries to protest about human rights, the war in VietNam, inequality, low wages, apartheit, colonialism ,  neo-colonialism, etc.

After all these ensuing years we have learnt, if we didn't know it already, that the world's problems cannot be solved through religious movements, through Marxism, through the fall of communism, through globalisation, through the shock doctrine, through Chicago-school trickle-down economics, through American hegemony, etc.

Nobody in Egypt is talking about Marxist or Islamist solutions. Nobody expects the USA to sort out the impasse.

What we see in Egypt and Tunisia is peaceful, non-violent but assertive people power demanding 'common sense' solutions - human rights, democracy, fairness, social justice, an end to poverty, and so on.

This time around we also have the phenomenon of the Internet, which enables a world-wide dialogue to take place between peoples of all countries, all cultures, all shades of political opinion. It's a phenomenon that was originally developed by academia and the military but which has inadvertently enabled us to scrutinise leaked confidential documents that reveal some of the political, military and financial conspiracies through which the power elites maintain their power.

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Trade unions: the revolutionary social network at play in Egypt and Tunisia

The media have focused on Facebook and Twitter, but the pro-democracy movements have flourished thanks to unions

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/10/trade-unions-egypt-tunisia 

Perhaps the most overlooked factor in the demise of the authoritarian Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and the weakening of Hosni Mubarak's grip on state power in Egypt, has been the trade unions in both countries.

While the media has reported on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook as revolutionary methods of mobilisation, it was the old-fashioned working class that enabled the pro-democracy movements to flourish.

As working men and women in Egypt became increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and a deteriorating quality of life, the only legal trade unions – the ones affiliated to the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) – proved worthless. The result of all of this was an unprecedented wave of strikes across the public and private sectors that began in 2004 and has continued to the present day. During the first four years of the current strike wave, more than 1,900 strikes took place and an estimated 1.7 million workers were involved.

As one worker in a fertiliser company put it, the effect of going on strike was to convince the employer "that they had a company with human beings working in it. In the past, they dealt with us as if we were not human."

The strikes began in the clothing and textile sector, and moved on to building workers, transport workers, food processing workers, even the workers on the Cairo metro. The biggest and most important took place back in 2006 at Misr Spinning and Weaving, a company that employs some 25,000 workers.

The state-controlled ETUF opposed these strikes and supported the government's privatisation plans. A turning point was reached when municipal tax collectors not only went on strike, but staged a three-day, 10,000-strong sit-in in the streets of Cairo, opposite the prime minister's office.

This could not be ignored, and the government was forced to allow the formation last year of the first independent trade union in more than half a century.

Pro-labour NGOs played a critical role in providing support and guidance to these strikes and protests. As a result, they were targeted by the regime, their offices closed and leaders arrested. The best known of these groups is the Centre for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), which has been around since 1990.

Groups such as the CTUWS in turn enlisted the support of trade unions in other countries, and that support was invaluable – particularly in persuading the government to ease up on repression.

Those links with the international trade union movement have proven critical in recent days as well. When the Mubarak regime tried to cut off Egypt from the internet, CTUWS activists were able to phone in their daily communiques to the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Centre in Washington. The messages were transcribed, translated from the Arabic, and passed on to the wider trade union world using websites such as LabourStart.

In sharp contrast to the last seven years of Egyptian labour unrest, the Tunisian trade unions played a kingmaker role during the end phase of the uprising.

After decades of lethargy, docility and state domination of the General Tunisian Workers' Union (UGTT), Tunisia's largest employee organisation –with roughly half a million members – helped not only eradicate Ben Ali's regime, but determined the shape of the post-Ben Ali government.

Working-class Tunisians were animated by the same goals as their Egyptian counterparts; namely, the desire to secure dignity and respect, bring about real political democracy, and improve their standard of living.

Cultivating democracy in Tunisia, and Egypt requires two pre-conditions. First, workers' organisations must remain independent of state control. Second, to blunt the Iranian model, Islamists must be barred from hijacking free trade unions.

This helps to explain the worries of Habib Jerjir, a labour leader from the Regional Workers' Union of Tunis: "That's the danger," he said. "I'm against political Islam. We must block their path."

Economic democracy played a decisive role in Tunisian society before the Jasmine revolution. Ben Ali swiftly suffocated free and democratic trade union activity during his 23-year domination over organised labour (1987-2011). But he could not extinguish democratic aspirations among workers.

There are no exact parallels, but much of this reminds us of what happened in Poland in 1979-80. There, as in Egypt and Tunisia, we saw a mixture of a repressive, single-party state with trade unions that functioned as an arm of the ruling party. But there was also a network of NGOs that quietly worked behind the scenes, in workplaces and communities.

The result was the 1980 strike at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, the formation of Solidarnosc, and the end not only of the Communist regime in Poland but of the entire Soviet empire.

Today's pro-democracy revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia are the culmination of that process, and where it will lead we cannot predict – though Poland does provide an appealing model.

The pressing point is that experts misjudged the tumult in Egypt and Tunisia largely because they ignored and overlooked the democratic aspirations of working-class Tunisians and Egyptians. To understand why so many authoritarian Arab regimes remain fragile, one need to only to look through the window on to the court of labour relations.

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The Big Society Bail-In brings protest to your local bank

Civil disobedience is back in Britain, and UK Uncut want to show that it's our society that is too big to fail – not our banking system

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/10/uk-uncut-big-society-bail-in

by Ruth Griffiths

Look through the newspapers this month and two points will become immediately clear. First, the government is cutting, privatising and changing the very nature of social security and public goods that were won through the 20th century. Every aspect of what was fought for by generations seems under threat – from selling off the forests, privatising health provision, closing the libraries and swimming pools, and scrapping rural bus routes.

Second, the banks are doing just fine. February is bankers' bonus month; Barclays announces their gifts to themselves on the 15th, with its chief executive, Bob Diamond, expecting £9m just for him. While RBS is due to transfer its £900m bonus pool into the pockets of high-earning bankers on the 25th. These bonuses should make the disgrace of the MPs' expenses scandal look like chicken feed and are another demonstration of just how much we really are not all in this together.

The two, of course, are linked. Because it was our broken banking system, with its greed and reckless gambling, that caused the crash. The National Audit Office has reported that at its peak, the amount of support provided to the banks reached nearly £1tn. In 2009 alone, £131bn of public money was spent keeping the banking industry afloat – and taxpayers continue to spend money supporting the banking system. But instead of asking the banks to pay for their crisis, it is the public who were asked to support the banks that are now being made to pay a further price.

The £2.5bn so-called "raid" on the banks is a levy of around 0.075% of their balance sheets. That's pathetic. Since 2007 and the Northern Rock crash, it's been abundantly obvious that the banking system is unjust to the core: from exorbitant bankers' bonuses to gambling on debt, from massive tax loopholes to holding the country to ransom with their threats of moving to Zurich. Before the crisis, after the crisis, it's as if we've learned nothing:

 the banks still serve themselves, not the public.

Over the past four months UK Uncut has grown from a meeting in a pub to hundreds of high-street acts of protest against tax avoiders, highlighting the £25bn dodged in taxes every single year by some of the most wealthy individuals and profitable corporations. Combine this clamping down on tax avoidance with truly tough action on the banks and you've got

a genuine alternative to the cuts agenda.

It is simply a lie to say that the only way to reduce the deficit is to sacrifice essential public services, which support some of the poorest in our society. There is an alternative, but the government doesn't want to talk about it because they have got the same agenda as the banks:

making the poor pay the way for the rich.

This is an outrage and it has to be stopped.

UK Uncut has launched the Big Society Bail-In.

On 19 February we will be targeting Barclays, and on 26 February we will turn to RBS.

Civil disobedience is back in Britain, and it is on your local high streets.

Just like with Vodafone and Topshop, anyone can get involved, because tax-avoiding corporations and banks have put their outlets and branches everywhere. Every time a library is closed, every time a hospital is privatised,

there's somewhere nearby where people can protest – your friendly local high street.

Together, we're going to change those high-street branches into schools, libraries, gyms and forests.

We're going to show that it's our society that is too big to fail, not our broken banking system.

It's going to be fun, but it's also going to be hard work, because this isn't just about Twitter – it never was. It's about on the street, grassroots, getting-in-the-way politics, the same politics that won women suffrage, defeated the poll tax and could stop the cuts.

It's about telling your friends, your co-workers, your children, your mum.

It's about knowing why our welfare state is being attacked and targeting the right people in response.

Everyone should do what they can do to make this happen.

Come on the UK Uncut protests this month, and also make sure you're taking to the streets on 26 March.

Let's make the banks pay for their crisis.

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Layer 442 . . . What Egypt Faces Today

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Egypt: The army's fateful choice

The president's obstinacy puts the military on the spot at a time when the power of the people has spilled across the country's political landscape

Guardian Editorial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/11/egypt-hosni-mubarak

President Mubarak last night laid a powder trail that could explode today in the disastrous confrontation between the army and the people which Egypt has managed to avoid until now. The military now faces an enormous dilemma. President Mubarak's brief and mumbling reference to handing over some powers to his vice-president last night will satisfy nobody. Will the army now attempt, on the back of suppressive action in the streets, to shape a new version of the Nasserist state, or will the demonstrators shouting "We want a civilian government" in Tahrir Square prevail?

The president's obstinacy puts the army on the spot at a time when the power of the people, like the Nile flooding its banks, has spilled across Egypt's political landscape in a torrent hardly imaginable only a few weeks ago. As the waters recede a new Egypt will be revealed, but still nobody knows how much of the old will remain and how much of the new will persist. What is clear is that the army must move swiftly to demonstrate that they are in charge and that Mubarak is now an irrelevance if a violent deterioration of the situation is not to take hold.

In effect the soldiers have to decide whether Egypt is revisiting 1952, to create a supposedly better version of the hybrid military-civilian state that was set up by the Free Officers, or going back to the revolution of 1919, to renew the British-style parliamentary democracy that was created after that upheaval. It is a momentous decision.

Egypt is split between an older generation of leaders, including some in the established opposition, most of whom appear mystified by what has happened, and a younger generation, who have been propelled by events into the political frontline. Many of these newcomers may be as confused as their elders. If the older generation have shown themselves reluctant to cede power, the younger generation is unprepared to exercise it. But that is the way things are when the impulses for change have been dammed up for so long.

The most notable thing about the situation in Egypt is the absence of strong leaders on all sides. The barons of the army and the ruling party are elderly, and compromised by their complicity in the oppressive system they have served. On the opposition side, both the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi, and the secular lawyer Mohamed ElBaradei are also old, and they have been followers of the revolution rather than leaders. Then there are the young men and women in their 20s and 30s whom we barely yet know, except for a couple of figures like Wael Ghonim.

Egypt has not had such a youthful renewal since the original Free Officers' revolution in 1952 brought majors and captains to power. Gamal Abdel Nasser was 34 at that time. The styling of yesterday's military announcement as "Communique No 1" suggests a conscious harking back to the early days. But this is not the army of 1952, when those majors and captains gathered great popular support for their own political project.

This army has a very different duty before it now, indeed one that should be staring it in the face. Confusion on both sides, the gap between the generations, and the mixture of elation, anxiety and now fear which characterise Egypt mean that Omar Suleiman was right to speak of the need for a road map, but the correct one is not the regime-friendly path he was pushing last night as he called for the protesters to leave the streets and return to work.

The military needs to isolate Mubarak and help install a national unity government which has representatives of every group and class, including some military officers, but not dominated by them. In the end the army needs to move out of politics. But before then it has the choice between facilitating change or blocking it, with possibly bloody results. Like the rest of Egypt, the army must break with the past.

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 http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112611181593381.html 

The shaping of a New World Order

If the revolutions of 2011 succeed, they will force the creation of a very different regional and world system.

by Mark LeVine

[This is an abridged version of this article.]

The following description, I believe, sums up what Egypt faces today as well as, if not better, than most:

"It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us - but more specifically on them, these ... workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.

One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say ... All of them are based on the elimination of the [president].

What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguration of this world?"

The thing is, it was offered not by some astute commentator of the current moment, but rather by the legendary French philosopher Michel Foucault, after his return from Iran, where he witnessed firsthand the intensity of the revolution which, in late 1978, before Khomeini's return, really did seem to herald the dawn of a new era.

Foucault was roundly criticised by many people after Khomeini hijacked the revolution for not seeing the writing on the wall. But the reality was that, in those heady days where the shackles of oppression were literally being shattered, the writing was not on the wall.

Foucault understood that it was precisely a form of "insanity" that was necessary to risk everything for freedom, not just against one's government, but against the global system that has nuzzled him in its bosom for so long.

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This is a radically different image of Islam than most people - in the Muslim world as much as in the West - are used to seeing: Islam taking on state violence through militant peaceful protest; peaceful jihad (although it is one that has occurred innumerable times around the Muslim world, just at a smaller scale and without the world's press there to capture it).

Such imagery, and its significance, is a natural extension of the symbolism of Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, an act of jihad that profoundly challenges the extroverted violence of the jihadis and militants who for decades, and especially since 9/11, have dominated the public perception of Islam as a form of political spirituality.

Needless to say, the latest images - of civil war inside Tahrir Square - will immediately displace these other images. Moreover, if the violence continues and some Egyptian protesters lose their discipline and start engaging in their own premeditated violence against the regime and its many tentacles, there is little doubt their doing so will be offered as "proof" that the protests are both violent and organised by the Muslim Brotherhood or other "Islamists".

A greater threat than al-Qa'eda

As this dynamic of nonviolent resistance against entrenched regime violence plays out, it is worth noting that so far, Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have had little - if anything - of substance to say about the revolution in Egypt. What they've failed to ignite with an ideology of a return to a mythical and pure beginning - and a strategy of human bombs, IEDs, and planes turned into missiles - a disciplined, forward-thinking yet amorphous group of young activists and their more experienced comrades, "secular" and "religious" together (to the extent these terms are even relevant anymore), have succeeded in setting a fire with a universal discourse of freedom, democracy and human values - and a strategy of increasingly calibrated chaos aimed at uprooting one of the world's longest serving dictators.

As one chant in Egypt put it succinctly, playing on the longstanding chants of Islamists that "Islam is the solution", with protesters shouting: "Tunisia is the solution."

For those who don't understand why President Obama and his European allies are having such a hard time siding with Egypt's forces of democracy, the reason is that the amalgam of social and political forces behind the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt today - and who knows where tomorrow - actually constitute a far greater threat to the "global system" al-Qa'eda has pledged to destroy than the jihadis roaming the badlands of Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen.

Mad as hell

Whether Islamist or secularist, any government of "of the people" will turn against the neoliberal economic policies that have enriched regional elites while forcing half or more of the population to live below the $2 per day poverty line. They will refuse to follow the US or Europe's lead in the war on terror if it means the continued large scale presence of foreign troops on the region's soil. They will no longer turn a blind eye, or even support, Israel's occupation and siege across the Occupied Palestinian territories. They will most likely shirk from spending a huge percentage of their national income on bloated militaries and weapons systems that serve to enrich western defence companies and prop up autocratic governments, rather than bringing stability and peace to their countries - and the region as a whole.

They will seek, as China, India and other emerging powers have done, to move the centre of global economic gravity towards their region, whose educated and cheap work forces will further challenge the more expensive but equally stressed workforces of Europe and the United States.

In short, if the revolutions of 2011 succeed, they will force the creation of a very different regional and world system than the one that has dominated the global political economy for decades, especially since the fall of communism.

This system could bring the peace and relative equality that has so long been missing globally - but it will do so in good measure by further eroding the position of the United States and other "developed" or "mature" economies. If Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and their colleagues don't figure out a way to live with this scenario, while supporting the political and human rights of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, they will wind up with an adversary far more cunning and powerful than al-Qa'eda could ever hope to be: more than 300 million newly empowered Arabs who are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.

Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).

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http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201126142032991448.html

My revolution betrayed

After revolutions, counter-revolutions may follow. But how can the spirit of an uprising be kept up as the years pass?

by Yuliya Tymoschenko

From snowy Kiev, I have watched the revolutions in Cairo and Tunis with joy and admiration. Egyptians and Tunisians are right to be proud of their desire to peacefully overthrow despotic governments. But, as someone who led a peaceful revolution, I hope that their pride is tempered by pragmatism - because a change of regime is only the first step in establishing a democracy backed by the rule of law. Indeed, as my country, Ukraine, is now demonstrating, after revolutionary euphoria fades and normality returns, democratic revolutions can be betrayed and reversed.

The first of Ukraine’s lessons for Egyptian and Tunisian democrats is that elections do not a democracy make. After all, what if the enemies of freedom use elections to entrench their anti-democratic agendas? What if elements of the old regime, or the cadres of militant minorities, only pretend to embrace democratic norms in order to hijack the new democracy?

In Ukraine today, these are not abstract questions. Six years after our Orange Revolution, not only is my country’s democracy under threat - but the rule of law is being systematically perverted and our national independence bartered away. Indeed, the hybrid presidential/parliamentary system that Ukraine established as part of the settlement which brought a peaceful end to our revolution is being hollowed out in order to concentrate all political power in the hands of a supposedly democratically elected president.

Of course, Ukraine’s plight does not mean that the people of Egypt and Tunisia should spurn the call for free elections. Determining the will of the people does require expression through the ballot box. But elections alone cannot solve the fundamental political problems confronting Egypt and Tunisia. In particular, they cannot create a liberal order and open society.

To be effective, elections must be preceded by an extensive debate, in which political arguments are made, attacked, defended - and, ultimately, embodied in ideologically coherent party organisations. Democratic consent can truly be given only when voters know what they are consenting to. Whoever refuses to make a public case for what he or she intends to do when in power, or lies about it – as Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovich, did during his campaign against me last year – is no supporter of the democracy that citizens risked their lives to establish.

Yuliya Tymoshenko was prime minister of Ukraine and is now leader of the opposition.

This article was first published by Project Syndicate.

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http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201127114827382865.html

Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo

Suleiman, a friend to the US and reported torturer, has long been touted as a presidential successor.

by Lisa Hajjar

On January 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s top spy chief, was anointed vice president by tottering dictator, Hosni Mubarak. By appointing Suleiman, part of a shake-up of the cabinet in an attempt to appease the masses of protesters and retain  his own grip on the presidency, Mubarak has once again shown his knack for devilish shrewdness. Suleiman has long been favoured by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamism, his willingness to talk and act tough on Iran - and he has long been the CIA’s main man in Cairo.

Mubarak knew that Suleiman would command an instant lobby of supporters at Langley and among 'Iran nexters' in Washington - not to mention among other authoritarian mukhabarat-dependent regimes in the region. Suleiman is a favourite of Israel too; he held the Israel dossier and directed Egypt’s efforts to crush Hamas by demolishing the tunnels that have functioned as a smuggling conduit for both weapons and foodstuffs into Gaza.

According to a WikiLeak(ed) US diplomatic cable, titled 'Presidential Succession in Egypt', dated May 14, 2007:

    "Egyptian intelligence chief and Mubarak consigliere, in past years Soliman was often cited as likely to be named to the long-vacant vice-presidential post. In the past two years, Soliman has stepped out of the shadows, and allowed himself to be photographed, and his meetings with foreign leaders reported. Many of our contacts believe that Soliman, because of his military background, would at least have to figure in any succession scenario."

From 1993 until Saturday, Suleiman was chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He remained largely in the shadows until 2001, when he started taking over powerful dossiers in the foreign ministry; he has since become a public figure, as the WikiLeak document attests. In 2009, he was touted by the London Telegraph and Foreign Policy as the most powerful spook in the region, topping even the head of Mossad.

In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer describes how the rendition program began:

    "Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p. 113).

    "Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."

Under the Bush administration, in the context of "the global war on terror", US renditions became "extraordinary", meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial - but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites - and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.

Suleiman the torturer

In October 2001, Habib was seized from a bus by Pakistani security forces. While detained in Pakistan, at the behest of American agents, he was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly. He was then turned over to the CIA, and in the process of transporting him to Egypt he endured the usual treatment: his clothes were cut off, a suppository was stuffed in his anus, he was put into a diaper - and 'wrapped up like a spring roll'.

In Egypt, as Habib recounts in his memoir, My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks, immersed in water up to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his interrogator slapped him so hard that his blindfold was dislodged, revealing the identity of his tormentor: Suleiman.

Lisa Hajjar teaches sociology at the University of California - Santa Barbara and is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.

This article first appeared on Jadaliyya.

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Egypt, Uprisings, Demonstrations, Chaos, Political Change and Legitimate Grievances

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It seemed somehow right that the origins of these North African uprisings should have begun in the area formerly known as Carthage - the ancient civilisation of Tunisia.

It's even more appropriate that the uprisings have moved on to Egypt. The people of Egypt are demanding the restoration of their human rights and the restoration of a civilised society. It's also the country where Barack Obama chose to make his major speech about Middle East peace, justice and civilisation.

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I've been very impressed by the reportage on the AlJazeera website, including its live TV that's been on the air continuously with video feeds from Egypt -

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

"The ruling class of Egypt don't want to see major change because then their privileges would come under attack."

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Snippets from the Guardian's 'Live Blog' yesterday:

Time magazine talks to "a minister in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," and reports that Israel appears to be backing the Mubarak regime:

With a deep investment in the status quo, Israel is watching what a senior official calls "an earthquake in the Middle East" with growing concern. The official says the Jewish state has faith in the security apparatus of its most formidable Arab neighbor, Egypt, to suppress the street demonstrations that threaten the dictatorial rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The harder question is what comes next.

But this was the most eye-catching quote from the unidentified minister:

    "I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process."

So that's confirmation then, as if it were needed, that in the view of Israel, the whole of the 'Arab region' ought to remain undemocratic and run by dictatorial cliques who are supported, propped up and funded by Israel and the USA. Egypt gets 1.3 BILLION dollars a year from the USA in "military aid".

An interesting new word  -  "Tunisianisation"

"A huge population that has been crushed by the Mubarak regimefor many years has said, 'We've had enough!'"

"The legitimate grievances that have festered for quite some time in Egypt have to be addressed by the Egyptian government immediately," says White House spokesman Gibbs.

What can the president do? Gibbs is asked. "First and foremost, this is a situation that will be solved by the people in Egypt," says Gibbs. "We will be reviewing our assistance posture based on events in the coming days" – that's a reference to the US's $1.5bn in aid to Egypt, as mentioned earlier.

"The situation should be addressed through concrete reforms, that is what the people of Egypt demand, that's what they deserve," he says.

Asked if the government had condemned the house arrest of Mohamed ElBaradei, Gibbs will only say: "Obviously, this goes into into our concern about expression, association and assembly."

CAMERON - "I think what we want to see is reform in Egypt. It's in all interests that there's democracy."

He thinks? Reform?

"It's a new era in the Middle East! And Egypt is the key!"

Reuters are reporting that "Egyptian medical sources" estimate there have been 1,030 people wounded today in today's protests.

Live blog: Twitter

9.09pm.  If you're not following CNN's Ben Wedeman @bencnn on Twitter then you should. Here are three tweets he has posted in the last 10 minutes:

Teenager showed me teargas canister "made in USA". Saw the same thing in Tunisia. Time to reconsider US exports?

One man said he graduated from college 4 years ago, hasn't worked a day since. Has been in streets since Tuesday protesting.

Saw boys with massive seal of the republic looted from State TV. If this isn't the end, it certainly looks and smells like it.

Robert Gibbs's White House briefing has wrapped up after an hour.

The most noteworthy points to come out:

• Gibbs pointedly refused to take up an offer to say the administration stood by Mubarak

• Gibbs also repeated that the "people of Egypt" would decide events – suggesting that the White House has cut the Mubarak regime loose, calling their grievances "legitimate"

• The White House confirmed that it was prepared to withhold aid from Egypt's government

But the tone of the administration suggests the White House has been left stranded by the swift pace of events on the ground.

It's possible, of course, that the party headquarters were deliberately set on fire by the party itself - to destroy any incriminating documents.

The rulers of Kuwait have decided to give wads of money to its citizens - to buy off any dissent? A novel solution? But not for a country like Egypt with a population of 80 million.

7.56pm GMT: CNN's Ben Wedeman – who has been doing an excellent job all day – is asked why things have calmed down in Cairo. "Jim, things have calmed down because there is no government here," saying that police and army had disappeared.

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More on Ed Miliband

http://jimjay.blogspot.com/2011/01/ed-miliband-cleverest-man-in-politics.html

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OU on the BBC: Justice Season

http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/whats-on/ou-on-the-bbc-justice-season

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Egypt: Latest Updates

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Things are happening very fast in Egypt, and also Jordan, it seems. Follow developments instantly on the Guardian's live blog -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jan/28/egypt-protests-live-updates

Protests in Egypt - live updates

• Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested after march pledge
• Mohamed ElBaradei plans to join today's march
• Authorities restrict internet access as part of crackdown

A teacher, told [us] that "hunger and poverty" had bought protesters out on to the streets. "We are not looking for an Islamic revolution" he said, "we want a citizen's government."

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Egyptian government on last legs, says ElBaradei

Exclusive: Mohamed ElBaradei says he is sending a message 'to the Guardian and to the world'

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/egyptian-government-last-legs-elbaradei

The Egyptian dissident Mohamed ElBaradei warned President Hosni Mubarak today that his regime is on its last legs, as tens of thousands of people prepared to take to the streets for a fourth day of anti-government protests.

The Nobel peace prize winner's comments to the Guardian represented his strongest intervention against the country's authoritarian government since he announced his intention to return to Egypt to join the protests. "I'm sending a message to the Guardian and to the world that Egypt is being isolated by a regime on its last legs," he said.

His words marked an escalation of the language he used on arrival in Cairo last night, when he merely urged the Mubarak government to "listen to the people" and not to use violence.

In an apparent bid to scupper the protests, the Egyptian authorities have cut off almost all access to the internet from inside and outside the country. ElBaradei said the move was proof the government was in "a state of panic".

"Egypt today is in a pre-information age," he said. "The Egyptians are in solitary confinement – that's how unstable and uncomfortable the regime is. Being able to communicate is the first of our human rights and it's being taken away from us. I haven't seen this in any other country before."

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Egypt cuts off internet access

Most of the major internet service providers in Egypt are offline following week-long protests

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/28/egypt-cuts-off-internet-access

Egypt appears to have cut off almost all access to the internet from inside and outside the country from late on Thursday night, in a move that has concerned observers of the protests that have been building in strength through the week.

"According to our analysis, 88% of the 'Egyptian internet' has fallen off the internet," said Andree Toonk at BGPmon, a monitoring site that checks connectivity of countries and networks.

"What's different in this case as compared to other 'similar' cases is that all of the major ISP's seem to be almost completely offline. Whereas in other cases, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were typically blocked, in this case the government seems to be taking a shotgun approach by ordering ISPs to stop routing all networks."

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Protests signal the end of Egypt's 'Pharaoh complex'

Questioning the authority of President Mubarak – once portrayed as a faultless deity – was for a long time unthinkable

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/28/protests-end-egypt-pharoah-complex

by Riham Ibrahim

The Egyptian people's demonstrations have not only broken the barrier of silence but have also driven the first nail into the coffin of the "Pharaoh complex" deeply rooted within the Egyptian psyche.

We Egyptians have always seen our ruler as a faultless deity – or as the late President Anwar al-Sadat described himself, a Pharaoh. We have long thought it was inevitable that Hosni Mubarak would rule for life. At school, we had to write essays about the achievements of our beloved president and how his was an era of prolific development. It was a recurring question in Arabic composition. There was always only one right answer: there could be no one better than him to be in power and shoulder the responsibility.

For the first time, we see protesters demanding that Mubarak not run for the presidency again. The more daring are demanding that he step down and leave the country right now. Over the past three decades, no one has dared to make these demands. We could never have imagined protests like these.

Young Egyptians have decided that the time for change has arrived. And for that change to be complete it has to be extended to the head of state. So, when they cheer against the president they are doing so out of a great conviction. The time is up for the traditional Egyptian way of thinking. The Pharaoh complex is no more.

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Egypt protests: 'Something has changed in the Egyptian psyche '

The demonstrations this week against the Mubarak regime have gripped Egypt – while the world has looked on. We asked local bloggers and photographers for their frontline reports

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/egypt-protests-frontline-reports-cairo

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Layer 165 Gender Politics, The Chinese Model, Bankrupted Practices, A New Idealism, Transition and an Obama Speech.

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Charlie Brooker's article in G2 this week was very funny, as usual, and contained some thought-provoking ideas about the state of the world and the role of men in messing up the planet. It works well as a polemic, and hopefully challenges readers to think about the differences and similarities between men and women, particularly those who supposedly represent us in Parliament.

Presumably no sane person is going to take his suggestion at face value – that men should now step back from running the affairs of the country and hand everything over to women to see what they can do. One thing we have to thank Thatcher for is clearly establishing that the kind of women who manage to climb to the top of the greasy pole are as likely as men to be raving egomaniacs with no ability to direct the ship of state along a course aimed at social justice, sound economics and excellent public services.

Hazel Blears, who wore her usual stupid fixed grin and an idiotic badge saying “Rocking The Boat” on the day she finally resigned this week, brilliantly reinforced our understanding that both men and women in politics are incredibly lacking in anything resembling social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, lacking in decency and even lacking in plain old intellect.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/01/charlie-brooker-women-men-power

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Madeleine Bunting's article today has the strapline, “It's been a truly disastrous week for women at Westminster. How did things go so badly wrong?”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/05/mps-expenses-women-politicians-westminster

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Three Models of Politics.

Timothy Garten Ash wrote an interesting article this week comparing three models of politics – Chinese communism, American conservatism and European social democracy. For Oxzen, at any rate, the Chinese model is now the interesting one – we're already very familiar with the other two. Leaving aside the issue of how the members of the government are elected under the Chinese system – which is the only issue for nearly 100% of western commentators – the really key issue is whether or not the national wealth is held and used in the name of the people, the majority of the population. This of course was the major concern of Marx and Engels.

In Europe and America the vast majority of the nation's wealth is held by a relatively small number of private individuals, either directly or in shares and other investments. As we know, over time the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, especially when the tax system is as regressive as ours. The rich can avoid paying taxes almost completely, and meanwhile a loaf of bread and indeed a TV set are very expensive for a poor person, whereas they cost quite trifling amounts as far as the rich are concerned. 15% or 17% VAT is a huge amount for a poor person, whereas the rich often manage to pay no VAT because they buy things on “expenses”.

Capitalism claimed that communism and socialism are not only undemocratic (which of course they don't have to be – Britain could elect a communist or socialist government if we had a mind to) but they also promote a very inefficient way of running an economy (i.e. through state intervention and state ownership) or of running an individual business enterprise. Prior to 2008/9 this claim was never queried. We've now woken up to reality.

China now has the fastest growing, or the slowest declining, industries, a vast amount of national wealth held in cash in places like the USA, a thriving mixed economy, and a population that's clearly becoming wealthier and better educated at a tremendous rate. America, meanwhile, is seeing its major corporations, its banking and finance sector and its biggest mortgage companies go completely kaput and therefore in need of state takeover. America is willy nilly starting to emulate the Chinese model.

America is a huge debtor nation. It owes the rest of the world incredible amounts of money. America is also seeing its people declining into poverty at a tremendous rate, and has an education system that's in continuing crisis and offering a poorer quality of education with each passing year. The same applies to Britain, of course, since we've been copying the American model, though not to Germany and France, which, though they have centre-right governments, maintain a commitment to social democracy, fairer taxes, state intervention in the economy, and high quality public services.

Prior to the election of Obama, America couldn't even claim that it has a proper democratic system for electing its political leaders, since we all know that Bush stole the first election and won the second one on the basis of people's ignorance and fear, thereby becoming the most shameful and hated president ever, not just in his own country but around the world.

Which of these political and economic models are the developing nations likely to look to as models for their own development? We can already see that in South America there's a real chance that social democratic and indeed socialist ideologies have taken firm root, since those countries have historically been the biggest victims of the USA's imperialistic Shock Doctrine and neo-conservative ideology, they've taken very careful note of the spectacular implosion of capitalism, and also the fact that capitalist countries are only managing to keep some sort of status quo on the back of vast injections of public wealth into their economic systems.

In other words, the only way the USA and Britain, and others with similar systems, have kept from falling into total chaos is by using ordinary people's wealth, and their future wealth, to prop up a corrupt and spectacularly unfair economic and social order. Meanwhile the fat cats keep their riches, increasingly move them to offshore tax havens, and don't pay a penny to atone for their greed and their catastrophic ruination of an already bad and incredibly under-regulated system. It seems we can't touch these criminals because they worked within “the rules”.

What I find really interesting is the fact that in the USA and Britain there's virtually no chance that our politics and economics will change to the point where we commit to emulating the socialist model, since the power of capital and the power of the current social and political establishment is so strong, and the population so brainwashed. Therefore these countries are locked into a system that can ultimately only lead to their continuing decline. The USA might at present be adopting the practices of the Chinese, but their fat cats will ensure that there will be a return to conservatism and full-on capitalism as soon as practicable. Ditto lapdog Britain. Unless we do something about it, of course.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/03/china-democracy-europe-united-states

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The Transition Movement

Madeleine Bunting wrote an interesting column this week, in which she said,

Beyond Westminster's bankrupted practices, a new idealism is emerging.

Progressive politics will take root from the rubble of a Labour defeat. The Transition movement is giving us a glimpse now.

Something remarkable has happened. Politics has become entirely unpredictable. Suddenly all manner of political reform is back on the table, a new urgency has been infused into tired debates about political disengagement and apathy, and radical reforms are being proposed to reinvigorate the hollowing out of political institutions.

New Labour, which built its fortunes on "there being no alternative", is now being forced into the humiliating circumstances of having to find one.

Let's sketch out how that might develop, and offer . . . a first draft of what a 21st-century utopian politics might look like.

It will be hard to mourn the defeat in 2010 of a political party that lost its moral bearings in its bid to woo middle England, slavishly reflecting back what it believed this narrow constituency wanted to hear. It won ballots by flattering and indulging a mythology of the good life as individualistic aspiration and material enrichment, and never challenged the multiple erroneous assumptions on which this was based. On the two vital progressive issues of its age – inequality and the environment – it wasted a crucial decade and squandered parliamentary majorities on contradictory and inadequate gestures.

What it palpably failed to grasp was how crucial political reform was to regenerate progressive politics. A party that had been professionalised and managerialised in the 80s, not surprisingly, did not understand how to respond to people's appetite to participate, and author their own lives. It only knew how to manipulate and manage public engagement, and earned deep resentment for doing both. Only out of the rubble of defeat in 2010 will a new progressive politics begin painfully to emerge well beyond the bankrupted conventions of Westminster politics.

If you want to catch a glimpse of the kinds of places outside the political mainstream where that new politics might be incubated, take a look at the Transition movement. Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, was one of the first to spot its potential when he described this young and fast-growing movement as "absolutely essential". Other politicians have been similarly intrigued, and last year The Transition Handbook came fifth in MPs' list of summer reading. It isn't hard to see why politicians are so interested. The Transition movement is engaging people in a way that conventional politics is failing to do. It generates emotions that have not been seen in political life for a long time: enthusiasm, idealism and passionate commitment.

Within three years it has gone from an idea to having 170 towns, villages and cities signed up as transition communities, working in 30 countries, and thousands more all over the world using the transition model. It is viral, catching on faster than its founder, Rob Hopkins, can track. Its message is that peak oil and climate change demand dramatic changes in the way people live, and, given that no one has the answer, communities themselves must start working out how that change might come about. It offers no answers, no solutions, only some tips in a handbook for how to get started. Transition lays the challenge squarely at the door of everyone. This is too big and difficult for government alone to tackle, too overwhelming and depressing for individuals to face alone.

Transition is rooted in a new politics of place: geography matters again as people look to the community immediately around them to devise the solutions for sustainability and resilience. At one level it works as a way of regenerating social capital, building up relationships with neighbours, working out how to collaborate again on common interests – community gardens, recycling, waste and strengthening the local economy. At another level it is about educating people about the challenges of peak oil and climate change, but the mobilisation and consciousness-raising is directed towards optimism and hope, not despair: how can this community use its skills and imagination to build its future?

The result is a proliferation of experiments, all of which are charted on their wiki websites: the collaboration is both local and global. Communities in Somerset can swap ideas and get inspiration from Brazil, Australia or the US. It's a world away from the smooth presentation of party politics, and transitioners are quick to point to the disclaimer on their site – they have no idea if the movement will work. They're organising local food festivals now, but tomorrow it could be community renewable energy. The emphasis is always on conviviality and enjoyment; on learning skills that have been lost over the last few decades – how to cook, grow food, repair and make things. Scotland has funded several transition organisers to work across the country. This is an unusual thing: local grassroots environmentalism that is full of hope for the future.

Their meetings don't have agendas or presentations – Miliband came to their annual conference recently as a keynote listener. They use what's called open space technology, in which everyone brings their ideas and everyone participates. Humble, self-organising, the movement owes much to the idealistic thinking of the early 70s. This is a time for revisiting those alternatives, which have been so contemptuously dismissed for a quarter of a century.

Part of its growing success is how it meets several needs simultaneously. It tackles social recession – the sense of disconnection and fragmentation of community – at the same time as it collaborates on the huge behavioural change that will be required for a low-carbon society. The latter is far more likely to come about in the context of personal relationships than as a result of discredited politicians dictating change. It is fulfilling an unexpected appetite for political engagement at a time of widespread disillusionment with the conventional political processes.

Hopkins is emphatic that transition groups refuse all political affiliation; they must build alliances to work across all parts of their community. But it is intriguing to see how the movement is experimenting with the sorts of ideas those in conventional politics are talking about – localism, decentralisation of power to communities, an environmental politics that is utopian and hopeful rather than gloomy. Of course detractors can point out its wholemeal worthiness, but it is stubbornly swimming against the tide of pervasive political pessimism, and given the unpredictability of the times, who knows where it will end up?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/31/reform-transition-a-new-politics

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The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs, was on Thought for Today talking about the Middle East, Obama's speech and destructive emotions – instinctive reactions to fear - flight and fight. Nation States' powers of destruction grow ever greater. Everyone needs to raise their levels of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence.

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Barack Obama made a great speech in Cairo yesterday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/04/obama-muslim-world-new-understanding

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/04/barack-obama-speech-islam-west

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8084352.stm
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