Comment from ohwilleke   (IP: 71.212.183.17)
Time: April 2, 2008, 9:40 am

A large share of the nationalities in Sudan will be receiving a form of independence in the near future. While Sudan has many national groupings, they fall into two big categories. There are a small number of Muslim North African nationalities in the North and there are a great many Christian/animist nationalities South of the Saharah, most of which are within the confines of “South Sudan” which has de facto autonomy to an extent similar to Kosovo right now, and will achieve full independence in a couple of years under a treaty agreed to by the Sudanese government.

Certainly, not all of these nationalities will have their own country, but the majority will be free of the Muslim North African controlled Sudanese government which has engaged in severe abuses of its own people in these region, as a result of the split, and will have further autonomy in the local government institution of South Sudan.

Darfur, which is under some foreign military supervision and is in the midst of a genocidal civil war right now is a more difficult matter as most of the remaining non-North African minority nationalities of Sudan live there, but are a minority, so independence doesn’t address the problems going on there.

Tibet is not the only nationality in China for which independence would be a viable option. Some of the others are based on autonomous regions where they are a majority. They have less of a recent tradition of full self-rule however.

Obviously many are too small or not isolated enough to be viable states.

Comment from Tony Logan   (IP: 75.70.33.168)
Time: April 2, 2008, 1:57 pm

I am glad that you used the word…’obviously’… ,ohwilleke, since I think that obviously, Americans do not have even a clue to national issues. We live in a large rather homogeneous moncultural society, and are probably the least informed citizens in the world to be deciding national issues for other peoples from afar. Obviously.

Obviously, but yet you, and millions of other Americans do try to do just that. And it runs the full gamut of Americans from different political persuasions, too. I have seen even Far Left socialist discussion lists torn apart fighting over the spelling of Kosovo/ Kosova, for just one Gulliverian example. I kid you not. Americans, of all shapes and forms and stripes, seem absolutely addicted at deciding national issues they know less than nothing about, for people they know less than nothing about.

Look at the Darfur issue as another case in point, ohwilleke. I am willing to bet that you know not the least about the Fur people, am I right? (lol… maybe I am wrong here, and Fur blood runs deep in ohwilleke’s family?) Yet, knowing this full well, nothing keeps you from setting yourself up as an authority ‘obviously’, in deciding the ‘obvious’ issues that the Fur deserve a state of their own. Well, sorry ohwilleke, but obviously you are an authority about the various Sudanese and Fur peoples NOT.

I can well imagine citizens in Sudan deciding your fate ‘obviously’, ohwilleke, and deciding that different national minorities in the US need ‘autonomy’ and even ‘independence’ of their own. Wouldn’t that be absurd? Yet that is precisely what Americans try to do, and only are able to do so to a real extent, from the vantage point of being citizens in an imperialist country. We are cheerleaders for imperialism in this country, even as some of us, more awarely, denounce portions of that same imperialism, though most cheer it own.

The actions of our uninformed personal decisions in favor or against national groupings around the globe are taken by our US ruler corporate government and used, and not wisely in the least. We, as a national public, are manipulated like a herd of cattle on these issues. It is a shameful aspect of our national culture.

Actually, in reading carefully ‘the decisions’ made by ohwilleke for Tibet and Darfur, I see that you, ohwllike, think that ‘so independence doesn’t address the problems going on there.’ about Darfur, but do think that independence for Tibet is seemingly the natural solution. The Fur will not be pleased with you for denying ‘their right to self determination’ (to use the phasing so popular amongst little Trotsky types), ohwilleke. On the other hand, the Dalai Lama thanks you, as does George Bush.

Comment from ohwilleke   (IP: 65.102.218.206)
Time: April 2, 2008, 4:11 pm

The United States has immense diplomatic, economic and military power. It has no choice to have a foreign policy. The foreign policy of the United States is determined by the democratically elected leaders of the United States. Those democratically elected leaders, when the system works, responds to those citizens who express an opinion on the issue.

It seems that you favor a deeply isolationist, lassiez faire foreign policy that utterly disregards what anyone else is doing in the world. In my view, that kind of approach is irresponsible. To the extent that we have the power to act, and indeed, no choice but to take some position, we should evaluate the facts as best we can and in accordance with a general foreign policy approach, and do the right thing.

The reason self-determination is an important value is that it prevents a sovereign to who owes allegiance to some faction other than the people who seek self-determination from violating the basic human rights of those individuals in a systematic way. People subject to this kind of capricious power need protection. The only way that they can secure it is from the community of nations. To adopt a head in the sand foreign policy is to consign these peoples to an unsavory fate.

Comment from tony logan   (IP: 75.70.33.168)
Time: April 2, 2008, 6:05 pm

The United States does not have a true democracy at all, ohwilleke. A true democracy allows input from the citizens and advances the interests of the citizens. We have an intra-corporate democracy (dictatorship of the corporations over the common people), where voting is used to camouflage the true dictatorial powers of the corporations that run our society.

An intra-corporate democracy is run by money power, not votes. Essentially, it is a top down sort of rule where those only at the corporate top, where the money lies, is there anything even being a semblance to real democracy. Participation in decision making is by dollar power, not individual people casting votes.

I know that this view lies completely contrary to all that you have ever learned in the American mythology version of our history. The story book history is that once upon a time, some nasty slave owners also had power in the US, but that was all solved when the North won the Civil War, and true democracy ruled then, though with a few flaws, that were all fixed by Martin Luther King and the ruling elites giving women the vote.

BTW, I am not isolationist at all in my views about how imperial power rallies the American rabble (that’s what we commoners are per corporate rulers POV) to intervene elsewhere in the world. You have mis-assessed my positions entirely. Simply put, you think that the US ruling elite, supposedly with US common citizen input, should be allowed to rule the world. That, you consider not to be putting one’s head in the sand. Actually, it is precisely just that.

Comment from Eric   (IP: 76.25.137.121)
Time: April 2, 2008, 6:18 pm

Tony- you know I sometimes worry that you drive readers off with your vociferous rebuttals, but I thought your OBVIOUSLY comment was brilliant!