From a counterterrorism point of view, a more serious danger is that the civil war will continue without end. Bin Laden has proved adept at exploiting civil wars and strife. In Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq, among other countries, al-Qaida and like-minded groups initially worked with local fighters motivated primarily to throw out outsiders or redress other local grievances. Slowly but surely they made the struggle more global, casting it as a fight against the United States and making the jihadist component of the resistance larger. Given the strong Libyan representation in al-Qaida and the historic role jihadists played in the anti-Qaddafi struggle, al-Qaida might try to bend this conflict to its will. So Qaddafi’s swift end is all the more necessary.

Here’s what we learned during the Great Depression, when our view of economics was revolutionized by John Maynard Keynes. In a recession, private individuals like you and me, perfectly sensibly, cut back our spending. We go out less, we buy less, we save more. This causes a huge fall in private demand, and with it a huge fall in economic activity. If, at the very same time, the government cuts back, then overall demand collapses, and a recession becomes a depression. That’s why the government has to do something counter-intuitive. It has to borrow and spend more, to apply jump-leads to the economy. This prevents economic collapse. Instead of spending a fortune on dealing with mass unemployment and economic break-down, with all the misery that causes, it spends the money on restoring growth. Keynes called it “the paradox of thrift”: when the people spend less, the government has to spend more.

“A riot,” said Martin Luther King Jr, “is the language of the unheard.” There are an awful lot of unheard voices in this country. What differentiates the rioters in Piccadilly and Oxford Circus from the rally attendees in Hyde Park is not the fact that the latter are “real” protestors and the former merely “anarchists” (still an unthinking synonym for “hooligans” in the language of the press). The difference is that many unions and affiliated citizens still hold out hope that if they behave civilly, this government will do likewise.

The younger generation in particular, who reached puberty just in time to see a huge, peaceful march in 2003 change absolutely nothing, can’t be expected to have any such confidence. We can hardly blame a cohort that has been roundly sold out, priced out, ignored, and now shoved onto the dole as the Chancellor announces yet another tax break for bankers, for such skepticism. If they do not believe the government cares one jot about what young or working-class people really think, it may be because any evidence of such concern is sorely lacking.

A large number of young people in Britain have become radicalised in a hurry, and not all of their energies are properly directed, explaining in part the confusion on the streets yesterday. Among their number, however, are many principled, determined and peaceful groups working to affect change and build resistance in any way they can.

One of these groups is UK Uncut. I return to Fortnum’s in time to see dozens of key members of the group herded in front of the store and let out one by one, to be photographed, handcuffed and arrested. With the handful of real, random agitators easy to identify as they tear through the streets of Mayfair, the met has chosen instead to concentrate its energies on UK Uncut – the most successful, high-profile and democratic anti-cuts group in Britain.

UK Uncut has embarrassed both the government and the police with its gentle, inclusive, imaginative direct action days over the past six months. As its members are manhandled onto police coaches, waiting patiently to be taken to jail whilst career troublemakers run free and unarrested in the streets outside, one has to ask oneself why.

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‘’These young people are right to be angry. I don’t think people are angry enough, actually, given that the NHS is being destroyed before our eyes,“ says Barry, 61, a retired social worker. "The rally was alright, but a huge march didn’t make Tony Blair change his mind about Iraq, and another huge march isn’t going to make David Cameron change his mind now. So what are people supposed to do?”

That’s a tough question in a country where almost every form of political dissent apart from shuffling in an orderly queue from one march point to the other is now a crime.

“I don’t have a problem with people smashing up banks, I think that’s fine, given that the banks have done so much damage to the country,” says Barry, getting into his stride. “Violence against real people – that’s wrong.”

The benefit of the Libyan mission, as GCOIN boosters from John McCain to David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy were quick to see, is that here the “Allies” can play Afghanistan Light. A “failed state” subject to the dominion of militia groups organized via personal obligations and hierarchies can, it is hoped, be quickly subjected to domination from the air, using digitized machines. The aspiration is a re-run of Gulf War 1991, an easy techno-triumph to restore the luster, not of the New World Order touted by Bush 41, but of the “Global Counterinsurgency.”

I think that’s what happens when you get old. You try to squeeze every drop out of life instead of remembering that as human beings, we do bold, fearless things to push the race forward, and that’s not a sport for old men. Like I said earlier, I think we’re just kind of at a place where, not to be agist or anything like that, but I think a generation is coming to an end of their usefulness, and we’re at a place where it’s time for something new. We don’t need people who are afraid of tomorrow running things. It’s dangerous, and it’s not good.

In the zones around the Fukushima power plant, some are stuck in their homes, fearful of radiation, heeding government warnings to stay indoors, cut off without electricity or phone service. Others want to leave but have no petrol. Still more, whose homes were ruined, wait for evacuation at crowded shelters. All face dwindling supplies of heating fuel, food and water.

“Those who can leave have already left,” says Nanae Takeshima, 40, a resident of Minamisoma, a city of 70,000 about 24 kilometres from the nuclear plant.

Many of those left behind are elderly people whose houses survived the earthquake but who feel abandoned as other residents flee the nuclear crisis. They say city officials and the police are unsighted, stores and offices are closed and streets are empty.

Hatsuko Arakawa, 78, says that although her city, Iwaki, is outside the area covered by the government order to stay indoors, delivery trucks refuse to enter. She is marooned in her home, with no propane for her heater and dwindling supplies of rice and water. She endures the winter cold by spending the entire day wrapped in a futon.

“Unlike those in the refugee centres, I have no contact with the outside,” she said. “My supplies are reaching their limits.”

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The frustration is that Ichinomaki does have at least one working supermarket, opposite the town’s police station, but shoppers must queue for two or three hours, can buy only 10 items at most and must pay cash, which is not possible if your house has been washed away.

“They say on the television that aid is being delivered, that food is coming, but you can see for yourself it is not,” says a man filching petrol, who declines to be named. “I thought we were a wealthy country, but now I don’t know what to think,” he adds, explaining that he is surviving on food from his home freezer.

Near Fukushima, government orders to evacuate a 20-kilometre radius and for those who live 20-to-30 kilometres away to stay indoors, have turned communities such as Minamisoma into virtual ghost towns. Only the unwilling or unlucky remain.

Fisherman Misao Saito, 59, says he stayed in Soma, a small port city 43 kilometres north of the plant, because of his parents, who are too old and infirm to flee.

“It’s scary, but when it comes to the nuclear accident, I have no choice but to die here. I think this is the government’s fault. The Prime Minister should have had a better grip on what was happening at that nuclear plant.”

But some who remained say they did so by choice. Misako W seems proudly defiant in her desire to remain in Minamisoma, but she is also angry about her community’s fate. “Minamisoma is defunct,” she says.

In order to distinguish their synthetic DNA from that naturally present in the bacterium, Venter’s team coded several famous quotes into their DNA, including one from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man: “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.”

After announcing their work, Venter explained, his team received a cease and desist letter from Joyce’s estate, saying that he’d used the Irish writer’s work without permission. ”We thought it fell under fair use,” said Venter.

The synthetic DNA also included a quote from physicist Richard Feynman, “What I cannot build, I cannot understand.”

That prompted a note from Caltech, the school where Feyman taught for decades. They sent Venter a photo of the blackboard on which Feynman composed the quote –and it showed that he actually wrote, “What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

“We agreed what was on the Internet was wrong,” said Venter. “So we’re going back to change the genetic code to correct it.”