Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

I wouldn't want to rain on anyone's revolution or anything but Sudan is in for tough times. Everyone, inside and outside the country, is saying they've had enough of one of the world's nastiest governments over the last thirty years (in terms of megadeaths, maybe the worst) but there's a reason why it was. Sudan is a monstrosity of a country and is completely ungovernable except by very nasty governments. As the Sudanese are going to find out over the next thirty years.

As westerners, it's all very well us wagging our fingers but if -- and it may well happen for a while -- Sudan gets a government that is to the liking of westerners, there will be the general bloodbath that comes with ineffectual government as opposed to the selective bloodbaths inflicted by nasty governments. Eventually it will settle down into a fundamentalist Islamic state, not at all to the liking of westerners, but capable of governing without bloodbaths, just killing a lot of individuals who are insufficiently fundamentalist in their choice of Islam. (The Christians and Animists have been hived off into their own nightmare state of South Sudan.)

PS Channel 4 have a real find on their hands with their (I assume, Sudanese stringer) Yousra Elbagir.

[Mick Harper]

But it is Darfur that is going to suffer most. At the height of the genocide there was some amelioration due to the fact that the central Sudan government was simultaneously conducting a civil war/genocide (hard to tell which) in the south against the Christian Sudanese, which is why the Janjaweed were used against the Darfurians. That has now been 'solved' in the sense that the south is now independent and the Sudanese government no longer constrained by that particular problem.

But what is going to be the attitude of the 'new' Sudanese central government towards Darfur? They will find themselves in the same situation as the 'new' government in Myanmar. No matter how liberal and inclusive they may want to be, to please their Western backers, the majority people of the Sudan (Nilotics) are solidly anti-Darfur (black African), so it will be Janjaweed all over again except now it will be regular troops and it will be called peace-keeping or whatever. Most of the Darfurians are, ahem, safe over the border in refugee camps but they won't be returning in a hurry and the rest will soon be joining them. The West of course will be hamstrung because it will be their clients doing it but they will manage somehow. That's the price of interfering in other folks' affairs. The local tail always wags the faraway donkey.

The fact that the Darfurians are Muslim won't help them one little bit even if an Islamic State is established. Wrong kind of Islam.

[Mick Harper]

One thing everybody keeps overlooking in the Brexit debate is there's no going back. Even if 99% of the British population come to the realisation that the referendum was all a ghastly mistake, we cannot return to the status quo ante. Of course technically we can tear up Article 50 and resume our place in the EU, it may very well be that we do just that if the Second Referendum people get their way, but that would not be the world as if nothing had happened.

Our position inside the EU would forever be one of "If you don't like it, you know what you can do" and our position outside the EU would forever be one of "They can't hack it inside, they can't hack it outside." What our internal psyche would be is less predictable but sullen introspection is my best guess.

If so, I rather recommend it.

[Grant]

The crucial issue here is just how spooked will the Tories get when they achieve their lowest ever poll in the local and EU elections. My prediction is that as the most unprincipled party in history they will proceed to a hard Brexit as soon as they can.

[Boreades]

Will the local elections get them as spooked as the EU elections?

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

I say again, they will not change their position one iota because of good, bad or indifferent results in this, that or any other election (or referendum). People always think politicians are some strange breed when in fact they are just ... people. When did any of you change your mind about anything just because of some passing election result? The Tories will do spectacularly badly in the Euros because all mainstreams parties always do; they will do badly but not spectacularly badly in the local elections because governing parties always do. AE teaches you to take no notice of these fads and fancies.

The truth is always boring.

[Mick Harper]

Sorry, I mis-spoke.

[Mick Harper]

In healthy times, you discuss policy. In unhealthy times, you discuss process. I'll deal with Brexit momentarily but first those masters of process, the Americans. They're as obsessed with impeaching Trump as we are with Brexit though, unlike Brexit, there is no chance of impeachment because the Senate has a Trumpian majority. That's not stopping anyone. Tonight, for two hours of flagship CNN, they dealt with one topic: a leaked letter from Muller to the Attorney-General complaining that, in the opinion of Muller, the Attorney-General had mis-characterised his 450-page report with his four-page summary of it.

Now, we have before us both the 450-page report and the four page summary so we can form our own judgement. Everyone agrees the summary was unduly pro-Trump, nobody was surprised because the A-G is pro-Trump. Muller said what everyone else said. Big deal. In any case the four-page summary ceased to be of any significance when it was overtaken by the publication of the report itself. The report itself ceased to be of any great significance when it didn't provide the kind of smoking gun that might disturb the pro-Trump majority preventing impeachment.

This will run and run right up until the moment Trump isn't impeached. Even the divine Andersen Cooper was moved to observe, "We don't have time for the story we were planning to run at this hour."

[Grant]

[Mick Harper]

This is the bit that always makes me smile. People have been doing this kind of thing since the year dot without anyone giving it a second thought. But as soon as something happens that the liberals don't like -- people voting for Trump or for Brexit -- it's cos they've been got at by Mephistophelean forces making them do it. How else to explain it? It could hardly be because they don't like liberals who only have their best interests at heart.

I forgot to mention liberals are impervious to these forces. They make their own minds up. They make their own mind up.

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

Sorry. I mis-spoke.

[Mick Harper]

I was referring to Washingtonian political Americans and comparing them to their within-the-beltway British counterparts. I am satisfied that I understand the British situation and am therefore equally satisfied that I can compare them with their American counterparts despite not having the same range of media exposure.

I might have excited your ire by giving the impression that Americans want Trump's impeachment or are even much interested in it. This is the exact equivalent of the British attitude to Brexit. They mainly just want it over and done with. My point is that the two national news media are currently obsessed with the two things even allowing for the suspicion that both issues also serve as proxies for a wider struggle.

I am sure you will have no difficulty agreeing with that. Or if you don't, to provide a counter-argument based on some kind of connected reasoning that goes beyond your usual curt baboonery.