Ed O'Brien salutes the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Britain

Ed O'Brien has written on Dead Air Space, Radiohead's blog, about the uprisings in North Africa and the protests at home, under the title “The Dignity Revolution”. He begins in the manner of Life of Brian, with What have twitter and facebook ever done for us?¹

O'Brien owns up to being very slow out of the blocks¹, but over the past three months the two sites have come to excite him as more than a way of keeping in touch, because protest movements around the world are using them to come together and mobilise.

He has been moved by the peaceful “Jasmine revolution” in Tunisia, where President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country on 14 January, and by the protests against Hosni Mubarak's government centred on Tahrir Square in Cairo since 25 January. In both, he writes, social networking has helped people assemble peacefully and speak freely.

Closer to home, in Britain, O'Brien credits the same tools with helping students and groups such as UK Uncut organise against the government's cuts, which he calls ill thought out. He signs off with Well done those people!¹