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They support a form of "lumpen development" -- to use the term originally coined by André Gunder Frank -- that imprisons the societies concerned in a spiral of pauperization and exclusion, which in turn reinforces the stranglehold of reactionary political Islam on society.

A strong, upright Egypt would mean the end of the triple hegemony of the Gulf (submission to the discourse of Islamization of society), the United States (a vassalized and pauperized Egypt remains under its direct influence), and Israel (a powerless Egypt does not intervene in Palestine).

The planned failure of the "Egyptian revolution" would thus guarantee the continuation of the system that has been in place since Sadat, founded on the alliance of the army high command and political Islam.  Admittedly, on the strength of its electoral victory the Brotherhood is now able to demand more power than it has thus far been granted by the military.  However, revising the distribution of the benefits of this alliance in favor of the Brotherhood may prove difficult.

Too many of those who participated didn’t see – for generational reasons, largely – that in order to hit home you have to have some form of political movement. It wasn’t surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood, which had taken part in the protests in Egypt at a late stage, took power: it was the only real political party in Egypt. But then the Brotherhood played straight into the hands of the military by behaving like Mubarak – by offering deals to the security services, offering deals to the Israelis – so people began to wonder what the point was of having them in power. The military was thus able to mobilise support and get rid of the Brotherhood. All this has demoralised an entire generation in the Middle East.

At the lunch, he said: ‘Now it’s time for questions – I’ll start off. Tariq Ali, I read the piece you wrote in the Guardian arguing that Tony Blair should be charged for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Do you mind explaining why?’ I spent about ten minutes explaining, to the bemusement of the Syrian guests. At the end the ambassador said: ‘Well, I agree totally with that – I don’t know about the rest of you.’ After the guests had left, I said: ‘That was very courageous of you.’ And the MI6 man who was at the lunch said: ‘Yeah, he can do that, because he’s retiring in December.’ But a similar thing happened at the embassy in Vienna, where I gave a press conference attacking the Iraq war in the British ambassador’s living room. These people aren’t fools – they knew exactly what they were doing. And they acted as they did as a result of the humiliation they felt at having a government which, even though the Americans had said they could manage without the UK, insisted on joining in anyway.

The Greeks are being punished not so much for the debt as for their failure to make the reforms demanded by the EU. The right-wing government Syriza defeated only managed to push through three of the 14 reforms the EU insisted on. They couldn’t do more because what they did push through helped create a situation in Greece which has some similarities with Iraq: demodernisation; totally unnecessary privatisations, linked to political corruption; the immiseration of ordinary people.

Now, almost three years later and after much political tumult — including one year of Muslim Brotherhood rule when they led the opposition — internal divisions and organisational problems have taken a toll on nascent liberal and leftist parties, leading to the resignation of hundreds of their members.

Variance gave the party diversity and strengthened the party’s positions at first, as a result of the synthesis of the opinions of its members, in contrast to “cadre parties” that would have a fixed outlook, like for example the Muslim Brotherhood, who would recruit people who would adopt it, Attia explained.

Believing that differences weakened the party, a bloc was formed of certain members with more organisational experience who started working against the party’s diversity. Attia says this group attempted to prevent those it differed with from being elected to the party’s central committee in the founding conference, but failed. However, the superior organisational skill of this group compared to others eventually enabled it to suppress other voices within the party and take political positions unfavourable to many others in SPAP — for example, aligning with the state following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.