Happy holidays! Photo credit: Alexandre Duret-Lutz

Hello and happy holidays, Periscope readers!

Well, 2011 is almost over and, given the economic turmoil, the earthquakes, the continuing wars and the hefty heapings of bad news, there are probably quite a few of us who are ready to see 2012 already. Here in the news business, it’s easy to get bogged down in the daily barrage of depressing news and even easier to forget all the good that happened in 2011: From the big stories, such as the revolutions in the Arab world and the somewhat easing of the famine in Somalia, to the smaller stories, like Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s remarkable recovery from an assassin’s bullet,  the tens of thousands of people who donated to a charity chosen by 9-year-old Rachel Beckwith, after she died in a car accident, and the recent spate of Secret Santas making some Americans’ Christmases all the brighter.

It’s been quite a year for us here at The Periscope Post, as well: Thanks to you all, our readership in 2011 grew by leaps and bounds. We’ve continued to hone our model, in the hopes of bringing you the most interesting reads from around the world, and we’ve introduced new ways to share your views on the site. And our team has grown – in late August, we welcomed our newest and youngest member, Austin, the first Periscope Baby.

We’re hoping that 2012 will be just as amazing and with your help, it will be – be sure to tell your friends about us!

Thanks for your support and may you have a brilliant holiday and a wonderful new year!

The Periscope Team

The Curiosity. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It’s costing $2.5 billion and will take more than nine months to get there, but the NASA’s rover Curiosity is going to Mars – the Mars Scientific Laboratory, the space agency’s most ambitious planetary exploration project ever, is scheduled to launch at 10:02 a.m. on November 26 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Curiosity’s mission is to determine whether Mars was ever capable of supporting life and, it seems, to prove to the world that NASA is still the leader in space exploration, despite several rounds of budget cuts and the recent shelving of its manned space shuttle flights. The rover, twice as long as two previous Mars rovers and weighing 2,000 pounds, has been outfitted with the most advanced payload of scientific instruments ever used on the surface of the Red Planet; it’s capable of collecting and testing rock and soil samples in its onboard analysis equipment, then relaying its results back to Earth. Curiosity is expected to arrive on Mars in August 2012 and will conduct its mission, powered by a plutonium-253 radioisotope power generator, over the following 23 months, about the length of one Martian year.

That’s provided it actually reaches Mars and lands safely – as Andy Bloxham, science reporter for The Daily Telegraph, noted, “Getting to Mars has never been easy. The United States has launched 18 missions to the red planet, chalking up 13 successes and five failures, including back-to-back disasters in 1999. The Russians have fared worse, launching nearly 20 missions with only two partial successes to date.” No doubt NASA engineers are crossing their fingers: The Curiosity represents eight years of planning, more than $600 million in budget overruns, and a two-year delay, Wired reported.

But NASA’s latest effort isn’t entirely without controversy: The rover’s on-board nuclear power generator is fueling a debate over nuclear versus solar power, as the same time that the launch has put NASA’s anemic budget back in the spotlight.

Visiting Mars: The Washington Post has pulled together a list of the best works on Mars in fiction and non-fiction, from Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles to Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars.

Money, money, money. The rover runs off a nuclear power pack that uses plutonium-283, a radioactive isotope whose heat is converted to electricity; but America stopped making the toxic material back in the 1980s and Russia, its most recent supplier, has stopped providing it to the US after that deal expired in 2009. The US is rapidly going through its stockpile and the American Congress has turned down the Department of Energy’s requests to fund more plutonium-238 production – meaning that the Curiosity rover may be the last of its kind to get off the ground. NASA has said that without the plutonium, its operations are severely curtailed: “It remains to be seen if the US government is listening,” said Brid-Aine Parnell, writing at tech blog The Register.

Want to watch the lift-off? Wired has the best places to see the launch on the ‘net.

Nuclear vs. solar power. The rover is capable of so much more than any previous rover because of its nuclear power generator, nuclear power proponents claim. Blog Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes claimed, “Only the radioisotope power system allows full-time communication with the rover during its atmospheric entry, descent and landing regardless of the landing site. And the nuclear powered rover can go farther, travel to more places, last longer, and power and heat a larger and more capable scientific payload compared to the solar power alternative NASA studied.” But, Matthew Wald at The New York Times’s Green blog pointed out, “both nuclear power and solar power in space have problems.” Solar power, which can only be used under certain conditions, isn’t necessarily as reliable; but the US is also running out of its stockpile of plutonium-238. So the agency needs to either make more or figure out a new way of powering its space program.

More on space exploration, satellites

• China’s coming on strong in space race
• Where and when will satellite hit earth? 
• UARS satellite to hit earth

Poster for Matilda the Musical

Dennis Kelly’s Matilda: The Musical, based on Roald Dahl’s book about an ultra-special telekinetic young girl’s battles with her fearsome teacher, has finally arrived in the West End, at the Cambridge Theatre, after a highly successful run in Stratford.

Matilda, a bookish girl (played by four rotating girls: Eleanor Worthington Cox, Cleo Demetriou, Kerry Ingram and Sophia Kiely) is not happy with her television-addict family (Josie Walker and Paul Kaye), who think that she ought not to read at all. The headmistress of her school, Miss Trunchbull (Bertie Carvel), is one of the most repellant villains in all of children’s literature – right up there with the Child Catcher.

Matilda manages to defeat Trunchbull; along the way there are many marvellous moments of bumptious fun – and a child gets thrown into the stratosphere. Critics, though they may differ over details, are weeping with joy over the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production as a whole, and reaching deep into their historical and filmic knowledge for apt tyrannical comparisons to describe Carvel’s performance. The kids are great, too.

Cherry on the cake. Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph was ecstatic, saying he thought the show would “delight” “for years to come.” There’s something “miraculous’ about it, and – sacrilege! – the show even improves on Dahl’s original. Tim Minchin’s score is “smashing.” Worthington Cox is both solemn and mischievous; Walker and Kaye “memorably vile”, but the real star is Carvel who’s like “Richard III in drag.” She’s the “cherry on the cake of this glorious production.”

Power of protest. Lyn Gardner in The Guardian was equally blissed out. The West End isn’t dumbing down at all. It captures all of Dahl’s “delicious nastiness”, but also “celebrates the solace of books and the transforming powers of the imagination.” Its message – that “rebellion and protest can defeat the bullies” is extremely powerful. When the children rise against Trunchbull, it’s “as glorious a moment” as any you’ve ever seen in the theatre. Rob Howell’s design is great too, and the production never gets too hyperactive. Adding to the praise of Carvel, she chose another tyrant – she’s like “a cross dressing King Herod on steroids.”

Too much showmanship? Dominic Maxwell in The Times called Carvel “somewhere between Deborah Kerr and Ernst Stavro Blofeld.” Though the tunes aren’t necessarily hummable, they are ingenious – which means you do sometimes miss the lyrics “amid all the hoopla” – in fact, sometimes the “showmanship” could step back a little and “allow us to find the story for ourselves.” Mrs Wormwood’s song Loud, for instance, a satire about “the age of oversell”, comes off “a bit rich.” But the play has “invention and energy” by the bucketload. It even manages to rhyme “Ian McEwan” with “feel like spewin’”.

Bring back corporal punishment? Well, said Quentin Letts in The Daily Mail, isn’t there “something to be said for Miss Trunchbull’s belief in discipline?” He thinks her school would be “more successful” than the “spongy-brained loafers” who’ve been “minted by the liberal teaching establishment and its factories of bog-standardism.” Still, at least you end the play not knowing whether to laugh or cry – “You might even do both.”

More reviews

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• My Week With Marilyn
• Streep earns raves for Iron Lady
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Protestors in Exeter, earlier this year. Photocredit: N Hall http://www.flickr.com/photos/24238004@N08/5887537079/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Public sector strikes set to take place next week, on November 30, could bring the country to a halt: Schools across the country are expected to be closed, Heathrow passengers may see 12 hour delays, and medical operations are being cancelled as up to 3 million teachers, immigration officers, nurses, and others are expected to strike in the largest action ever seen in the UK.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Minister in charge of negotiations with the unions, expects the strikes to cost the economy £500 million (1/10th of the royal wedding.) Commentators on left and right seem to be united in their condemnation of the action – it’s about time, they say, that the public sector woke up to reality.

They must be mad. None more so than The Sun, which has come down strongly on the public sector pensions strike, calling it “selfish, reckless and increasingly resented.” Public employees already get a much better pension deal than others; their salaries are also £4,000 higher than the private sector. We’re battling “an appalling financial crisis,” and the unions must be mad if they think the country supports them. “The country is sick of their greed.” This strike will cause untold damage to the economy. It’s also about time we stopped paying strike organisers’ wages.

Stop union subsidies. The latter point was certainly one with which Matthew Elliott, the founder of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, agreed in The Daily Express. The strikes will cause disruption for families, let down by the very services they pay for. Not only that – we’re lining the pockets of the unions organising the strikes, to the tune of over £100 million. All of this is claimed to help workers “engage better with management.” But actually it’s used for anything from “slick adverts to blogs complaining about spending cuts.” This subsidy should be cut entirely. Unions should pay for their own staff – they’re hardly strapped for cash, just look at the bloated salaries of their chief executives. We can’t go on spending with such a “massive deficit” – and cuts mean that those who enjoy generous public sector perks will have to take the blow. Taxpayers want their money given to “frontline services”, not for “fighting political causes.”

How public sector pensions work, from Polly Curtis at The Guardian.

Governmental weakness. Ministers are only now realising that during the strikes, we’ll need the elderly and sick looked after, said The Daily Mail, as well as our borders guarded. The unions are the real problem – they can’t accept that with “an ageing population and the dire state of the national finances” that pension reform is “unavoidable.” Ministers “have played a very bad hand”, revealing weakness. We must pass laws to insist on a “minimum turnout” for the strike ballot to be valid. At the moment, fewer than a third of union members are in control – and this is indeed “a sorry state of affairs.”

Get real. Even The Independent agreed, saying that it certainly wasn’t the time to strike. The proposed reforms aren’t a “back-of-a-napkin policy whim” – they’re based on John Hutton (a former Labour minister)’s analysis. It’s “inescapable” that pensions as they stand are “unsustainable.” State employees are “out of touch.” Even with reforms, public pensions will be more generous than the private sector. It’s “impossible” to justify this strike – the biggest since 1979. Industrial action must be avoided at all costs. It’s not “about an ideological battle”, but about “what the taxpayer can afford.” We need “realism” from the public sector. “It is time that we were all in it together.”

More on unrest

• Occupy Oakland raided
• Five things you need to know about the Occupy Movement

Rep. Don Young

Democracy in action is sometimes pretty amusing to watch and for once, we’re not talking about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the Occupy Wall Street drum circle.

On November 18, historian and Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley headed to Washington to testify before the House National Resources Committee against proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

When Brinkley, who has written a book on the Alaskan wilderness, told the Committee that the arctic regions of Alaska are “a very significant landscape to the psyche of the American people” and ought to be protected, he was interrupted by Alaskan Rep. Don Young, a Republican, calling his testimony “garbage”. Young also made the mistake of referring to Brinkley as “Dr. Rice”; Brinkley fired back, “It’s Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university. I know you went to Yuba College and couldn’t graduate.”

Oh, snaps.

It gets better:

Young: I’ll call you anything I want to call you while you sit in that chair. You just be quiet. You be quiet.

Brinkley: You don’t own me. I pay your salary.

The chairman of the committee steps in, chastising them both, and Young ultimately storms off, “pissed”.

This, American observers seem to agree, doesn’t reflect well on America. Don Shelby, an environmental columnist and reporter writing at MinnPost.com, wrote, “By way of full disclosure, Dr. Brinkley is a friend of mine, but had Dr. Brinkley been a stranger to me, I would still be mortified that a United States congressman would treat a guest of the House in such a fashion. I hope this piece of video is seen by as many Americans as possible. I shouldn’t like people in other countries to see it. We still have an image to uphold in the world. Young makes it look like the most powerful nation on earth is run by the inmates of the asylum.”

Still, Gawker, who called Young a “raving lunatic”, noted that he did indeed graduate from Yuba Junior College, so Brinkley wasn’t entirely accurate; moreover, some commenters responding to mildly viral video of the schoolyard spat noted that it was poor form for Brinkley to make fun of Young for having gone to community college.

More on American politics

• Can Obama overcome the economic crisis to win re-election?
• GOP Presidential debate on foreign policy
• Michelle Obama booed 
• Don’t shoot the President!

Tom Hiddleston and Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, is adapted from a play by another Terence – Terence Rattigan. Set in war-ravaged London in the 1950s, it concerns Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz), who has an affair with a caddish, hard-drinking ex-RAF pilot called Freddie (Tom Hiddleston). Freddie’s looking for thrills; Hester just wants to be loved. The film begins with Hester attempting suicide, and then goes back into the past to examine her marriage with kindly but dull High Court judge William (Simon Russell Beale). Critics are swooning over Weisz, but the general consensus is that though the actors are excellent, the film doesn’t necessarily stand up.

Yay for pub singalongs! Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian was very moved, saying that the film looks at the “painful, intractable mystery” of romantic love. Hester, having experienced both a “comfortable marriage” and a “passionate affair” still comes out feeling that life is “wrong.” Bradshaw loved the pub singalongs, calling them “a vivid madeleine” and a forceful reminder of the “still unrepaired” London streets.

Down with pub singalongs! Tim Robey disagreed in The Daily Telegraph, thinking that Davies was being “indulgent” with “one too many plaintive pub singalongs.” He also has “an over-fondness for Vaseline focus.” But Weisz is brilliant, seeming to get “more beautiful” as her acting gets better. Hiddleston has a perfect combination of “petulance and tenderness”, whilst Beale’s “wounded gentility” hits the spot too. The film may be both “gorgeous and stifling”, but then that’s because it reflects Rattigan’s “aching prison of a play.”

Creaky plot? There’s an air of “seedy melancholy”, said Kate Muir in The Times, but Davies “relies on Samuel Barber’s Concerto for Violin like a crutch”, which isn’t fun; also, the “plot creaks under modern feminist eyes.”

Primal feelings. It is “highly stylised”, said Geoffrey MacNab in The Independent, but it manages to get to “the primal feelings of the characters,” in particular Hester’s “erotic longing” and “suicidal shame.”

“[T]he pair’s mooching feels lugubrious enough to merit its own drinking game: a scotch whenever someone weeps by a window, a shandy if they light up on a settee, a Bovril if they touch on the true meaning of ‘respectability,’” sniffed Catherine Shoard in The Guardian, though Periscope thinks this sounds quite fun.

‘Flat as a duck pond’. Catherine Shoard in The Guardian was pretty much the only dissenting voice, calling the film “as flat as a duck pond.” The story’s lost its sting, and the dialogue sounds like “French and Saunders.” She thought Simon Russell Beale was “stagey”, Hiddleston wasn’t “magnetic”, and Weisz’s performance didn’t “linger in the memory.” Shoard feels bad about dissing the film – but blames it on the play. Ultimately it’s just “too damn wet.”

More on film

• Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is perfect Thanksgiving fare
• My Week With Marilyn
• Streep earns raves for Iron Lady
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Black Friday shoppers: Shop till you drop. Photocredit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAzv0BaaZh0

It’s as traditional as turkey and stuffing this time of year – Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the American calendar. More than 152 million people are expected to shop over Black Friday weekend this year, up 10 percent from last year.  This number might even be less than the actual number – last year, the National Retail Federation in America estimated 138 million; the real number was 212 million. And those eager shoppers are expected to spend around $500 billion, up 3 percent on last year.

Black Friday – “black”, as in retailers starting to turn a profit – is so important, in fact, that some shops opened their doors on Thursday night, Thanksgiving, rather than the traditional early Friday morning. It’s a trend that has picked up in recent years, especially as retailers struggle to attract shoppers in these straitened economic times, but it’s one that not everyone feels comfortable with. Store employees are chief among the naysayers: Target employee Anthony Hardwick, pointing out that Target employees should also be able to celebrate with their families, managed to gather 200,000 signatures in a petition against the super store’s early early opening.

But as usual, big discounts and early opening times are drawing people in, and, as usual, over-zealous bargain hunting has resulted in the traditional Black Friday injury list: So far, 10 people were injured after a shopper used pepper spray to cleave through the crowds at a Walmart in Los Angeles. Boston.com reported that the injuries were down to “rapid crowd movement.”

“A full holiday with family is not just for the elite of this nation — all Americans should be able to break bread with loved ones and get a good night’s rest on Thanksgiving! Join me in calling for Target retail stores to push back their original opening time of 5 a.m. on Black Friday,” wrote Anthony Hardwick in his petition, quoted on Boston.com

The weakened pulse of the American economy. Sure, America is technically in recovery from the recession and sure, numbers are expected to be up from last year, but an an indicator of the US’s overall economic health, Black Friday has some economists worried. Consumers, Anastasia Christman noted at the Christian Science Monitor, are hesitant to part with their money. But though economists put that down to continuing uncertainty in financial areas across the globe, consumer fear, and the famed “crisis of confidence”, Christman has another, “simpler” answer: “[A]t our current wages, our pockets are empty.”

Night of the Living Dead – at the mall? Though the retail frenzy has some in the retail sector grinning, in these times of strident anti-capitalist protest, count on some to take a stand against the carnival of consumerism: Unsurprisingly, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement suggesting that one ought not to shop. That’ll show those corporate giants, they suggest. In Boise, Idaho, the 75-strong camp plans to send out “consumer zombies” in silent protest at what they see as “unnecessary spending”, according to The Daily Mail. Analysts, however, were confident that their stance wouldn’t have much of an effect.

“Black Friday really shows how greedy and materialistic people can be when stores have sales. It’s pathetic, really,” tweeted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who, Periscope would like to point out, is obviously not at all either of those things.

Consuming passions. At Macy’s, Herald Square, New York, 9,000 people were waiting outside. Despite a small protest outside, shoppers were keen, reported Stephanie Clifford on the NY Times. They ranged from regular shoppers to Korean students to visiting ladies from Key West. Joe Delgado, a student from New Jersey, camped outside the Best Buy in Lawrenceville for over 24 hrs: He and his friends had a plan of the shop, and were aiming to splash out on DVDs and video games. “It’s been fun. But now I’m really tired. And I really have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

Do it for the economy. Opinions were mixed regarding the new opening times, reported The Washington Post. Joel Castillo, 19, missed Thanksgiving with his family in order to camp out at Best Buy to score a flat screen TV. Said Castillo, stoically, “Sometimes we have to make sacrifices with the economy being what it is… Hopefully next year they move it back so you get to spend Thanksgiving with your family and then do Black Friday.”

Real meaning. True, said the editorial in The Salisbury Post. It’s about time we treated shopping “less like a race to the finish and more like an exercise in thoughtful giving.” The paper welcomed the move to Thanksgiving openings, as it lessened the pressure on consumers. So let’s shop – but let’s remember what Christmas, the ostensible reason behind this buying frenzy, is actually for. The Sun Sentinel, however, was less impressed.  It called for credit to be given to those employees who stood up against Thanksgiving openings, and “for trying to erect a bulwark protecting the one American holiday that has long resisted the encroachment of commercialism.”

More on shopping

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• Demand for iPhone 5 rockets

Sachin Tendulkar in action. Photo credit: Pulkitsinha http://www.flickr.com/photos/pulkitsinha/

Delightful at the crease. Cricket World insisted that Tendulkar is “poised to score his landmark hundredth international century” because the pitch is “offering next to nothing to the bowlers.” Yesterday “belonged to Tendulkar as he lifted an upper cut into the stands for six and played delightfully all round the wicket, hitting five boundaries”, purred the cricket magazine, which did note he was dropped in his fifties.

If Tendulkar achieves the feat in Mumbai he will be showered with 100 gold coins by the Mumbai Cricket Association, revealed The Times of India.

A billion Indians hold their breath. The Times’ Ed Hawkins said “a country will come to a standstill” when Tendulkar resumes and reported that the stands “are expected to be packed with supporters hoping Tendulkar can complete the script.” “A billion Indians will tomorrow hold their breath hoping their hero does not fluff his lines”, wrote Hawkins, who noted that the player’s “quest to become the first man to record 100 international centuries has almost overshadowed India’s cricket since the batsman notched his 99th in March in a one-day international against South Africa. The wait, and the hyperbole, may be at an end and there could be no more fitting stage than the Wankhede Stadium in the city where he was born and bred.” Hawkins insisted that the flat pitch and fact that the game is dead rubber only help “his cause.”

“It is destiny that he was born and brought up in Mumbai. He is bound to make history at Mumbai”, insisted 70-year-old former Indian international cricketer Ajit Wadekar.

Super-human maestro. The Times of India has been running a special Good Luck Sachin section on their website in anticipation of the landmark innings. The newspaper reported that “the Little Maestro himself is a bit surprised to know how the magic figure of 100 has become an obsession for over a billion people.” But they expressed no surprise: “But then his countless adoring fans have been spoilt by the man himself. The country has sought joy and relief and savoured his super-human accomplishments for over two decades. And the genius of Tendulkar has delivered. Unfailingly and almost always.”

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Look closely at the screen. Has this guy been sleep texting? Photocredit: clurr http://www.flickr.com/photos/clurr/3129333360/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Sleep texting is on the rise, apparently. Many are reporting that they send texts whilst slumbering. Jessica Castilio, a twenty-four year old from Texas, apparently managed to ping off two messages to her boyfriend whilst in the land of nod – a feat requiring no less than 11 different stages, and that’s not excluding the typing, reported The Daily Telegraph. But do we really do it? Unsurprisingly, there have been no studies into the phenomenon, although The Daily Mirror reports that a woman sent 44 emails in her sleep in 2008. Let’s hope that the chap with the smartphone in his arm isn’t afflicted.

Not sure about this one. Dr Ron Kramer, quoted by The Daily Telegraph, non-committally stated that texting had become “ingrained” in the younger generation.

Some sensible advice. Dr David Cunnington, quoted in The Daily Mirror, advised, sensibly, that the best way to avoid it was to leave your phone out of your bedroom at night. He’s from the Melbourne Sleep Disorder Centre in Australia, so you’d better listen to him, is Periscope’s advice.

“[W]hen you send a text to someone while your either sleepy, awoken from sleep, or just plain not paying attention, and it makes absolutly no sense what so ever.
Erik: Hey man, you going to that party this weekend?

Zach: No man, I don’t want a chocolate sunday.

Erik: Wtf?

Zach: Oh sorry man. I fell asleep last night. I must have been sleep texting you XD.” The definition of sleep texting, on UrbanDictionary.

iOCD? Bryony Gordon in The Daily Telegraph suggested that it would be “irresponsible” to suggest that “alcohol” might be a factor in the phenomenon – so she didn’t. It’s a “First World” problem, affecting only “the pampered middle classes.” Other such problems include “THROPH” – “Tesco Has Run Out Of Plain Hummus syndrome”, which results in people looking “green around the gills” at having to resort to “sour cream and chive.” There’s an increase, too, in sufferers of “iOCD”, a “crippling condition” that leads to people behaving “obsessively and irrationally” when it comes to things made by Apple. Don’t approach them if you see them installing a new operating system on their Macs, whatever you do.

Nah, it’s just the weed. It’s more likely “vodka, pot, and excessive pasta” that are to blame, said Chris Matyszczyk on Cnet. Although we should study these messages, to see if they reveal anything about our subconscious selves. Though they might seem incoherent, they might actually be “cries for help.” We should get cracking on decoding them – it could be a revolution in human communication.

More Mobile

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Protests continue in Tahrir Square. Photocredit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4DUVD-erpA

At least 38 people have been killed in Cairo. Hundreds have been hurt, and many arrested. Unrest continues into its sixth day as protesters clash with police. This comes days before the first elections since President Hosni Mubarak was deposed. The protesters are angry that the military are still in charge, and have rejected a promise to speed up transition to civilian rule, with elections brought forward to next summer; but the protesters are planning to continue  until the military steps down. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has (finally) apologised for the deaths.

Commentators see the continued protests either as a force for good; or as a way of getting the Muslim Brotherhood into government faster.

Fight for real democracy. This was not why 100,000 Egyptians risked their lives in Tahrir Square last winter, said a New York Times editorial. The military have been busily suppressing democratic change, instead of helping it, promising an elected president only in 2013. America’s interest in a stable Egypt is obvious, and it must press the military – which, after all, receives aid from the US – much harder. Free, fair voting is not assured, but it should still go ahead; the army must be aware that there’ll be a price to pay for a corrupt or highjacked outcome. The Muslim Brotherhood, by far Egypt’s best organised movement, has tried to cut a deal with the military – which has caused anger. The people of Egypt “want real democracy. They are entitled to nothing less.”

Is that such a good idea? But it’s between “the devil and the deep blue sea”, said Melanie Phillips in The Daily Mail. The Muslim Brotherhood are a terrible alternative – though the military discourages dissent, the Brotherhood discourages freedom. The alternatives, she said somewhat ominously, are “a bad outcome that is disastrous for the west, and a bad outcome that maintains a fragile equilibrium for the west.” The “brutal fact” is that if the army leave, then the Islamists will take control – and that will mean an end to human rights in Egypt, and a “whole new ballgame of threat for the west.”

Still cause for hope. We should be pleased, though, said Seumas Milne in The Guardian, that the “revolutionary wave” has broken out again in Egypt. The generals, protecting their own vast commercial interests, had suppressed the popular movement: but now they’ve been made to give “serious concessions”, and might still be “brought down.” The West, in tandem with autocratic states like Qatar, seems to be doing all it can to stop uprisings. It’s all very murky, but what is clear is that the upheavals are all “connected, and that sectarianism and foreign intervention are enemies” of the revolutions. Authoritarian regimes continue because Western powers support them, desperate to keep “strategic control”, whereas a democratic Middle East would be “more independent.” This is why what’s happening in Egypt should help ignite the rest of the region – and “strike a blow against the hydra-headed attempts to stifle” the Arab Spring’s renaissance.

Bring on the elections. Yes, agreed Adrian Hamilton in The Independent, let’s not be pessimistic about the Arab Spring. It’s almost as if we want to be “reassured in the view that the Arabs are hopeless.” Tunisia’s example – whilst not exactly “rosy” – is still worth remembering. It would suggest “not to delay” in bringing forward elections. If change is wanted, then you need “early elections, however flawed.”

More on the Arab Spring

• Tahrir Square reoccupied
• Tahrir Square all over again
• Will Assad go the same way as Gaddafi?
• Arab Spring: Moderate Islamist An-Nahda party claim victory in Tunisia’s first democratic election
• Gaddafi is dead – who’s next?
• Asma al-Assad’s greatest hits
• Violence erupts in Cairo