13 October 2019

Brexit: What is Boris Doing?

Boris had a simple plan.

(I will call him Boris from now on as this is the persona he created, his family apparently calls him Al, short for Alexander).

He wanted to be the PM one day all his life and after Theresa May was pushed out, he knew he would get the job because Tory members loved him for his quirky personality and funny haircut.

And the fact that he was massively underqualified. That's a plus in England if you come from the right class background. Eton and Oxbridge.

Notice I said England.

But to make the position permanent he needed to win elections. So his plan was simple. Pretend like you are prone to do something destructive and let others to stop you from doing a Cleavon Little.

His first move was to announce that he would rather be dead in a ditch than to ask for an extension.

Then he double dared Jeremy Corbyn to agree to a pre-Brexit election with the goal of winning it by out-Faraging Nigel Farage and targeting Corbyn as a closeted Remainer.

The proper response to this ploy was to pass the Benn Act and let Boris go through the humiliation to ask for an extension. That didn't sit well with him.

When he leaked his intention to crash out of the EU regardless of Benn Act things unraveled a bit. People started talking about the need for a caretaker government again. Because he couldn't be trusted.

That was stupid because Boris would never go for no-deal Brexit for two reasons.

One that's complicated and he has an even smaller brain than Trump (OK no one has a smaller brain than Trump but you get the point) and he wouldn't want to deal with that.

And two, his legacy would be terrible if that happened. Can you imagine Al, sorry Boris, being known forever be the guy who destroyed the British economy.

Farage isn't posh enough to care about any of that, especially after a couple, well, make that five pints.

Al would. So would his alter-ego Boris.

But he had no other plan.

He kept sending smoke signals about his intention to burn the place down using Uncle Duke as his main conduit. With court rulings and stuff, it got to a point where people started thinking about a unity government to avert a disaster.

All of this predicated on the assumption that the EU would like a deal with the UK and would give in just enough for Boris to claim victory.

Well, they called on his bluff and Macron made it clear he no longer wanted the UK in EU. Nor did Merkel.

Humiliatingly (something no UK media outlet picked up on) he was given a deadline until the end of this week to show that he was serious about a deal or he would be given no extension.

Tellingly, Boris complied. He did a U-turn on his biggest redline which was the backstop. Well, we are not sure about the actual content but the leaks made it sound like he was ready to agree to let the entire Ireland island to stay within the customs union.

I don't understand why media outlets are so gullible. Let's think about it rationally.

The man wants to be a PM. That's a given.

If he signs on a deal that is way worse that Theresa May's doomed agreements he stands no chance to win any elections as Nigel will grab most of the Leave votes.

On the Remain side there is no room. So all he can do is to pretend that he is negotiating and giving up a lot only to reveal at the end that the EU was so amazingly unreasonable and unyielding no deal was possible before the next European Council.

Once the blame game completed, he would ask for an extension as per the Benn Act. He will do so with a pained expression while posing for Murdoch tabloids with "Surrender Act" banners in the background.

And he will call elections and campaign as the hardest Brexiteers that ever was.

If it works, he will come back as a very reasonable man and he might opt for Remain arguing that he might get a better deal from inside.

Remember, he wants to be the PM.

If it doesn't, well that's too bad for the UK, isn't it?

03 September 2019

Boris Johnson's Real Game of Chicken

After my last contrarian post where I maintained that the UK will stay in the European Union because it faces a binary choice between no-deal Brexit and Remain, I received a lot of pushback from friends.

Boris Johnson is a hardcore Brexiteer, they said. Plus his entire cabinet is made up of people who prefer a no-deal Brexit, they suggested. They diligently directed me to articles that suggested that faced with a determined no-deal Brexiteer, Europe was having second thoughts.

Color me unimpressed.

I get that Boris Johnson is telling his supporters that if he could convince Brussels that he is serious about a no-deal Brexit they would give in to his demands.

What I don't understand is how he could succeed.

As the Irish Times put it succinctly "in game of Brexit chicken, Boris Johnson driving a Mini, Brussels is driving a bus."

I would have gone with a scooter and a Humvee respectively, but you get the point.

Boris' Game of Chicken

The first thing Johnson did upon moving to 10 Downing Street was to ask the EU to unilaterally take the backstop off the table if they want to talk to him.


Similarly, announcing new measures and more money everyday for the preparation of a no-deal Brexit was supposed to telegraph to the European leaders his determination to take Britain out of the EU no matter what.

This week, Dominic Cummings, who has a more than a passing resemblance to Doonesbury's Uncle Duke, will launch a £100 million campaign called "Get Ready."

So I understand that Johnson's message is "we are ready to crash out if you do not give us what we want."

But the strategy makes as much sense as the Cleavon Little gun play in Blazing Saddles.

Your interlocutors are baffled as your are threatening to shoot yourself.

There is no way the EU will get rid of backstop or give in to his other demands.

Michel Barnier just said so, again.

British exceptionalism notwithstanding, everyone is aware that in the event of a no-deal Brexit Britain will be the losing party.

Make that the massively losing party.

British imports from the EU constitutes 8 percent of European exports. Almost half of Britain's exports are destined for the EU. While both sides will be affected, which side do you think will suffer the most?

How do you replace such a market?

As I mentioned in my previous Brexit post, the UK imports almost 40,percent of its food and most of it comes from Europe. How do you find a new source overnight? Even if you could, you will end up buying lower quality food like chlorine-washed chicken.

Then there is the issue of negotiating a trade deal after the divorce. Every single member state has the veto power over tariffs and trade arrangements. What do you think Ireland would do if the backstop was not there and a hard border was being installed?

Perhaps most importantly, it is not that Britain has a lot to lose, it is also that some European countries have a lot to gain from a British exit without a deal.

Take the financial sector.

With £132 billion contribution it represents about 7 percent of the UK's GDP.

As soon as it became clear that Britain was going to leave the EU one way or another, these companies began to move to Europe. Since 49 percent of these activities are centered in London, one immediate effect was the worst real-estate price plunge in ten years

And it will get worse as the exodus have picked up momentum.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS are among the firms collectively moving $280 billion worth in assets to Frankfurt from London. Credit Suisse is moving $200 million from its market division from London to Frankfurt. And that’s just the start. These banks are among 25 financial institutions moving to the German city, according to a survey by commercial bank Helaba.
Others are choosing Paris or Amsterdam.
Bank of America is persuading staff to move to Paris, while French firms BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale are together moving around 500 employees back to Paris from London. In all, Helaba’s survey indicates nine firms are set to move to the French capital.
Dublin is also in the running.
Over in Dublin, more than 100 Britain-based asset managers and funds have applied to the Irish central bank to authorize their move there. Barclays is moving $280 billion worth of assets to Dublin.
Europe may lose a large export market but it will gain a huge new financial services sector.

Moreover, Macron really might prefer a nice clean Brexit.

As I mentioned before, that would make France the only European country with the nuclear bomb and a large military industry. With Trump flirting with the idea of leaving Nato and Putin being frisky, that would make France the most important European country overnight.

In short, how do you play chicken when it is painfully obvious to everyone watching that, in case of a collision, you are the one who will be mortally wounded.

And the guy driving the Humvee has enough incentives to turn you into a roadkill.

Which made me think that maybe there was more to that silly game of chicken.

Boris might be trying to break the binary choice between Remain and No-deal Brexit.

Boris' Blame Game and Electoral Strategy

Let me state one basic fact: Boris Johnson is not a hard Brexiteer.

The man has no principles or convictions. He is in it for Boris Johnson and his playbook is based on his plans to keep himself at 10 Downing Street.

Nothing else matters.

In a binary choice between Remain, where the geriatric Brexiteers would throw him out and No-deal Brexit where the food and medical shortages and economic contraction would become his problems, Boris cannot stay prime minister for long.

To break that equation, Johnson has been constructing a complex blame narrative in order to find a sweet spot for an eventual electoral victory.

At home, his media partners have been placing the responsibility of a no-deal exit on Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, is being demonised by the Brexit-supporting section of the British press. His determination to stick by the backstop provision in the EU withdrawal agreement has particularly outraged the Daily Telegraph and the Sun. (...)

Varadkar is being groomed as the Brexit bogeyman. (...)  A Sun editorial claimed that Varadkar would be responsible for “the potential chaos of a no-deal Brexit”.
The same loudest voices have also been accusing Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel of intransigence while Boris simply refused to even call them for weeks after moving to 10 Downing Street.

He was letting them know that if the UK were to crash out of the EU, the ensuing food shortages and recession would be placed at their doorstep.

One advantage of this tactic is that it is likely to harden Leave supporters' dislike of anything European. After long decades of anti-EU media campaign, this reported hostility and perceived intransigence will solidify the existing polarization and ensure a positive electoral outcome for Johnson.

Proroguing the Parliament was part of the same strategy.

On the one hand, it was intended to let the EU realize that, they should not count on the anti-no-deal majority in Parliament, as Boris was willing to tie their hands and force a no-deal Brexit.

On the other hand, it dared the opposition and rebel Tories to pass legislation to stop a no-deal Brexit.

That's the real game of chicken.
So cranking up the pressure on Tory rebels at the start of this crucial week could create a convenient group of bogeymen who could be chucked out of the party, and take the blame. 
Boris and his sidekick after Commons vote defeat
If they do that, he will call snap elections and campaign for leaving Europe on his term.

He might ask for an extension from Europe or better yet, the EU might, without being asked, give him an extension until after the elections.

Such a move would neutralize Nigel Farage and hurt Jeremy Corbyn who has never expressed a clear position on Brexit.

Johnson would tell the British public that Liberal Democrats and Labour never respected the results of the referendum and they allied themselves to those pesky Eurocrats.

That message would resonate well with half the electorate and it might get Johnson a solid mandate.

So if Boris Johnson calls new elections, you will know that this is the real game of chicken.

But if this scenario materializes, I actually don't know what Boris might do.

He might try to negotiate with Europe and get some form of flexibility on the Irish border issue.

If successful that would break the binary equation between a no-deal Brexit and Remain.

But if Europe stands firm, I wouldn't be surprised if Boris made a U-turn and declare himself a hero for having averted the dire predictions of Operation Yellowhammer.

You might have noticed that there are a lot of ifs down the line.

--------------
UPDATE:

Well, there you go.

17 August 2019

Why Trump is Reluctant to Sanction Turkey for S-400?

Unless you are a news junkie or live in Turkey, you are unlikely to have heard of the S-400 saga.

By itself it's not a remarkable story, a row between two Nato allies over defense procurement. But if you scratch the surface, I believe there is a highly intriguing plot about Trump monetizing the Presidency.

Here is a quick rundown.

A while ago, Turkey approached the Obama administration to buy Patriot air defense missiles. The US turned them down. Not because they are reluctant arms sellers but because Turks asked for a lot more:
Ankara wanted to manufacture parts of the system and acquire the sensitive technology to eventually build their own. Building up the sophistication and capacity of the Turkish defense industry has been an important goal of successive Justice and Development Party governments and various predecessors. In the case of this particular weapons system, there were understandably those in the U.S. government who were eager to protect sensitive U.S. defense technology, even from a NATO ally.
S-400
So Turkey's president Tayyip Erdogan went to his pal Putin to ask for a substitute system, namely the S-400. 

Unsurprisingly, Putin, relishing the idea of selling Russian technology to a Nato member and cognizant of the opportunities it could provide, said yes.

When the deal was made, Pentagon got worried.

S-400 are designed to shoot down Nato aircraft, including their beloved F-35 and Turkey being a Nato member and owner of a substantial fleet of these planes, they were concerned that Russians might get some tactical information about them.

No kidding, you say.

They warned Erdogan that, for starters, Turkey would be cut out of the F-35 manufacturing process. Some 937 pieces are made in Turkey of which 400 are manufactured exclusively there.

The US rapidly moved to source these parts from elsewhere and expelled Turkey from the  program. Pentagon also stopped the training of Turkish pilots for F-35 and asked Trump and the Congress to impose significant sanctions to dissuade Erdogan from completing the transaction.

Erdogan ruled that out and the S-400 have since been delivered. Pentagon and the Congressional leaders were united in their support for sanctions and pundits in Turkey were really concerned that they could push the economy into a deeper recession.

The Khashoggi Gift

Then something very strange happened.

At the height of the crisis Erdogan said calmly that no sanctions would be imposed because he was going to talk to Donald Trump and he was sure the president would side with him.

Really you say. Well, this was déjà vu all over again, bless Yogi Berra's soul.

"I love this guy"
As I noted at the time, last December, going against Congressional Republicans, his own Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon and close allies like Israel, Trump abruptly announced that the US was pulling out of Syria, leaving the whole region to Russia and Iran.

Amazingly, he did so after a phone conversation with Erdogan, where the Turkish leader bluntly asked him "why are you even there?"

You would assume that a notoriously thin-skinned bully like Trump would take umbrage at this and  would have answered with a version of "who the hell do you think you are." Instead he turned to his mustachioed national security advisor and asked why indeed the US was there.

Then, he ordered the troop withdrawal, prompting the resignation of James "Mad Dog" Mattis, his Defense Secretary.

This was so out of character that, at the time, I suggested that it was a case of blackmail with Erdogan using the Khashoggi evidence he held and Trump's desire to protect the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) gave Erdogan a say in the US foreign policy.

Intriguingly, former Nato commander retired general Wesley Clark agreed with my hypothesis.
During a CNN appearance on December 24, Clark stressed that “there doesn’t seem to be any strategic rational for the decision. And if there is no strategic rational, then you have to ask, ‘Why was the decision made? I can tell you that people around the world are asking this. And some of our friends and our allies in the Middle East are asking, ‘Well, did Erdogan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff or something? Why would a guy make a decision like this?’” [my emphasis]
But why is MBS so important for Trump?

Besides pulling out of Syria to save him, Trump also vetoed a bipartisan bill to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia that could prolong the carnage in Yemen.

Good question.

In the Wes Clark quote, the first sentence is about blackmail, the second concerns some payoff.

The Art of the Deal or How to Monetize the Presidency

One of the reasons Donald Trump is so keen to keep MBS as the Crown Prince is an extraordinary deal his good friend Tom Barrack has been trying to put together.

Barrack, a billionaire real estate developed whose parents are Lebanese immigrants, was Trump's inaugural committee chairman. According to Michael Wolff's Fear and Fury, he is also the guy Trump calls every night while devouring Big Macs and hollering at CNN.

Barrack has been lobbying the White House to get them to allow Saudi Arabia to buy up to 40 nuclear reactors from Westinghouse, the only American firm that builds large reactors, without the nuclear safeguards which are mandatory for dual use technologies.

According to a Congressional report that came out at the end of July, Barrack insisted that Trump bypassed Congress in providing nuclear safeguard waivers, even though it is a legislative prerogative.
The 1954 US atomic energy act also insists prior congressional approval must be obtained for export of potential dual-use technology – in keeping with International Atomic Energy Agency rules. Yet, according to the report, private commercial interests “have been pressing aggressively” to bypass these controls, in concert with Trump associates. “These commercial entities stand to reap billions of dollars.”
Since the Trump Administration never worried about acting illegally (with a timid and toothless Democratic majority in the House), chances are Trump would have signed those nuclear technology waivers. 

Retired generals like Trump's first National Security Advisor Mike Flynn formed a company called IP3 with Saudi and Emirati participation and they were given unfettered access to the Administration.
According to the report, IP3 officials were granted such “unprecedented access” to Trumpworld that they considered the administration an “extended team member,” and officials met directly with “President [Donald] TrumpJared KushnerGary CohnK.T. McFarland, and Cabinet Secretaries Rick PerrySteven MnuchinMike PompeoRex TillersonJames Mattis, and Wilbur Ross.” This access, the report explains, “yielded promises from high-level government officials to support IP3’s efforts with Saudi officials.”
You may ask why Saudi Arabia with its limitless and cheap oil and wind and solar energy options would need nuclear power. The answer does not require guesswork. In 2018 MBS declared that “without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.

MBS has been quite open about his intentions:
Barack Obama’s attempt to negotiate a nuclear cooperation deal foundered over the Saudis’ refusal to sign a legally binding pledge eschewing uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing – established pathways to the bomb.
As usual, the Trump Administration took the opposite track:
Now the Trump administration has reopened those talks and might not insist on the same precautions. At a Senate hearing on Nov. 28, Christopher Ford, the National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation, disclosed that the U.S. is discussing the issue with the Saudi government. He called the safeguards a “desired outcome” but didn’t commit to them. [my emphasis]
To push the deal to the finish line, Tom Barrack tried to buy Westinghouse out of bankruptcy.
Barrack approached private equity giants Apollo and Blackstone about joining their bid to buy Westinghouse, according to the report. In a September 2017 memo from Barrack, he said the firms would combine their funds with money from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Sadly for him, a competing bid put forward by Brookfield, a Canadian investment firm won the process and acquired Westinghouse.

Incidentally, does the name Brookfield ring a bell? If you have been reading this humble soapbox for a while, it might.

It is the Canadian company that leased the 666 Fifth Avenue that belongs to the Kushner family for 99 years and paid for the entire lease on Day One, enabling them to pay their mortgage in February 2019 and saving them from a financial disaster.

Do you know who is behind the innocuous sounding Brookfield?
The Qatar Investment Authority is the second-largest shareholder in Brookfield Properties, ranking only behind Brookfield’s former parent company.
To keep the dream alive, Barrack contacted Brookfield and asked to be involved.
Barrack contacted Brookfield’s CEO asking to get involved, and Brookfield invited Barrack’s firm to make a $50 million investment, according to a February 2018 slide presentation quoted in the report.
To sum up, Trump confidant Tom Barrack has been trying to sell the most volatile and ruthless ruler in the world, dangerous nuclear technology fully knowing that he intends to enrich uranium and build nuclear bombs.

Keeping MBS in place is important for that purpose. Another Crown Prince might not be interested.

This, in turn, gives the Turkish president enormous leverage and allows him to dictate his terms to Donald Trump.

Besides the Syria pullout, the US Treasury never sanctioned Halkbank, even though its managers were convicted of helping Iran bust sanctions to sell its oil and gas. The expected fine 0f $30-100 billion never materialized.

Clearly, Erdogan has something over Trump's head and my guess is that's connected to Trump's desire to protect MBS.

In case you are wondering how much money is involved, in 2017, South Carolina started to build two Westinghouse nuclear reactors. The original estimate of $14 billion soon ballooned to $23 billion.

That's almost $12 billion a pop. We are talking about 40 of these beauties.

Imagine Trump's cut.

The irony in all this we have Qatar to thank for in preventing this from happening. But even they know that they cannot say no to Trump when he comes asking.

And he is doing this in plain sight.

28 July 2019

Brexit: Will The UK Leave The EU?

As the resident contrarian my short answer is no, Britain is highly unlikely to leave the EU.

I resisted the urge to write about Brexit because the debate surrounding British withdrawal was so biased and the reporting was so shallow that I knew it would be a long piece as I would have to explain everything.

For instance, for two years people debated the so-called Norway Plus arrangement with a straight face even though no such option exists or could exist. It requires membership to the European Free Trade Association and its dominant member Norway ruled out any such membership from day one.

It also calls for a strict adherence to EU rules and regulations (as Norway does) which is anathema to prominent Brexiteers.

Such ignorance is typical of the Brexit process and I believe at the root of the idea that Britain would be better off outside Europe lies a deep misinformation about European institutions.

I know you are scratching your head. Ok, we know this guy is supposed to be a contrarian but this is stupid, you say. With a month-old political party Nigel Farage got 34 percent of the vote in the recent European elections.

More importantly, there is the new PM Boris Johnson who affirmed that deal or no deal the UK will leave the Union at the end of October.

Allow me to explain my reasoning.

Removing the Social Safety Net and Deregulation

There are several misconceptions about Brexit. The first one is the widely shared view that the Tories were caught unawares by the results of the referendum.

I don't believe that for a second.

To me the referendum and Brexit make sense in the context of a long process that began with Margaret Thatcher.

You see, following the 1960s, which was a decade of prosperity and full employment, British businesses began to resent the power of the trade unions. A parallel movement on both sides of the Atlantic was put in motion to implement the same blueprint. Thatcherism on one side and Reaganomics on the other.

First step was to crush the unions which was easier to do in the US and much harder in the UK. Still, Thatcher managed that nicely, as we all know.

The next step was rolling back the welfare state and chipping away at the social safety network. Again successive governments and administrations patiently reduced unemployment benefits, healthcare and education spending.

The US was much more successful in turning their working classes into impoverished and helpless people. They employed a variety of wedge issues like culture wars, gays, abortion and lately immigration as misdirection while they took away their money and gave it to the one percenters.

As a result, the US is now "a country where an estimated 40% of adults don't have funds to cover an unexpected $400 expense."

While subduing its workers and reducing their wages, the Republicans opened up new horizons for the corporate elite by deregulating every possible constraint they were facing.

They could pollute, resell junk mortgages as AAA bonds, disregard food safety or charge exorbitant prices for incredibly cheap drugs like insulin.

Sky was the limits.

In the UK, Tories also started a massive upward income redistribution by introducing austerity policies at a time of contracting economy.

They also cut social services available to low income families to make them more vulnerable in the labor market. They defunded NHS, reduced unemployment benefits and made hiring and firing very easy.

This phenomenon is called economic insecurity.

And on both sides, they blamed this new state of affairs on the immigrants.

As a result, the UK has the highest Gini coefficient (showing income inequality) in Europe.


According to a Nobel winning economist, it will get worse.

Which was by design, as I suggested above.

But there was one glaring difference between the US and the UK: The EU prevented British companies from lowering food standards, ripping off consumers, polluting at will, drastically reducing labor compensation and removing regulations they don't like.

The Common Market is a huge and affluent market but it is also highly regulated. You cannot do anything you want.

And that bothered the British companies.

That's why you had a sustained media effort to frame the EU institutions and their activities in a negative way. Brussels has always been presented as a money-wasting, over-regulating, intrusive and completely out of control institution.

Stephen Clarke, a British humorist, has a long list of phony Brussels crimes. These are actual headlines from British press.
  • Brussels to force farmers to give toys to pigs
  • EU to ban singing in pubs
  • According to the EU’s animal waste directive, it is illegal to bury dead pets unless you have pressure-cooked them at 130°C for half an hour
  • EU to ban Scottish bagpipes
  • Brussels will give in to French pressure and force Britain to rename Waterloo Station and Trafalgar Square
  • Smoky-bacon crisps to be banned by Brussels
  • Brussels rules that oysters must be given rest breaks during transport to market
  • Kilts to be re-defined as women’s wear
  • Brussels will force lorry drivers to eat muesli
  • According to a new EU law, the Queen will have to fetch her own cup of tea
  • Brussels wants to ban British barmaids’ cleavage
  • EU to force British fish-and-chip shops to use Latin names for fish
  • God Save the Queen must be sung in all immigrant languages
  • No alcohol sales during the week, says Brussels
  • EU will force cows to wear nappies
  • English Channel to be renamed "Anglo-French Pond"
  • Great British banger to be outlawed by Brussels
  • British toilets to be replaced by “euro-loos”
  • EU wants to measure how badly workers smell
  • New Brussels law: worn-out sex toys must be given back to retailers
  • EU wants all condoms to be of uniform size – small
  • EU bureaucrats decree that Britain is not an island
You may laugh but a large portion of the British public actually believed these lies and made up stories. Because no one has ever contested them.

You chuckle, roll your eyes and wink, wink, nudge, nudge, "them continentals" discourse.

By the way, as an aside, do you know who instigated this campaign?

Boris Johnson.

He landed a job in 1989 as the Brussels correspondent of Daily Telegraph.
The son of a former Eurocrat and member of the European parliament, he made a lasting impression as the inventor of the “Euromyth”, a journalistic genre now termed fake news. With the backing of his editors it seems, he eagerly misrepresented events or even completely made up stories to portray the European commission as a bureaucratic monster making absurd proposals. As he once explained to me, aged 28 and dressed as ever in a rumpled jacket, his shirt spilling out in typically English manner: “You mustn’t let facts get in the way of a good story.” Among other yarns, he claimed there were plans to establish a “banana police force” to check the fruit was the right shape, that coffins would be standardised and prawn cocktail crisps would be outlawed.
By all accounts, he was simply shameless.

But it was not just a conservative media campaign.

You also had decades of politicians claiming that the UK was putting too much in and and getting not much in return. Which is total rubbish even when you look at budget numbers. But if you look beyond, the EU was an amazing bonus for the UK.

But without that constant whining, fewer people would have believed the Leave whopper about the UK sending £350 million every week to Brussels.

They did because of the echo chamber that was created by the conservative media and politicians.

What these business wanted was to have access to the EU market without abiding by its regulations. When they launched the referendum, they assumed that the Europeans, eager to sell Prosecco to the UK market, would find a way.
“He [Boris Johnson] basically said: ‘I don’t want free movement of people but I want the single market,’” he told Bloomberg. “I said: ‘No way.’ He said: ‘You’ll sell less prosecco.’ I said: ‘OK, you’ll sell less fish and chips, but I’ll sell less prosecco to one country and you’ll sell less to 27 countries.’ 
This was simply not possible given the current rules of the EU. The so-called four freedoms are a package.

Yet, to my knowledge no one has seriously explained this to the British public. Everyone, including Labour politicians, assumed that the UK was too important for the Union for them not to give in to its demands.

This is, of course, ludicrous but many people genuinely believed this. And the conservative British media did nothing to dispel this.

So now the British companies are faced with a situation where they will lose access to their biggest export market. They are beginning to realize that their assumptions were incorrect and their knowledge of the EU institutions was deficient.

Moreover, losing access to the EU market is not the only problem. There are others and they are simply insurmountable. They couldn't have been solved in two years and it is simply impossible to solve them in three months.

The Irish Border and the Backstop

To begin with, there is no way a solution can be found to the Irish border issue. I am genuinely surprised why this was not brought up in a massive way during the campaign.

If there is no hard border between the South and the North, how could Brexiteers claim that they have taken back the control of their country? All you need to do to get into the UK is to fly to Dublin or catch a ferry to Rosslare.

But if you establish a hard border between the Republic and the North, you would be inviting a return to the good old days of the "Troubles."

You know the IRA and hunger strikes and young British soldiers dying.

It is already starting.

Yet, charismatically-challenged Brexiteers like Jacob-Rees Mogg simply shrugged it off.

His position is that establishing a hard border between the North and the South to inspect people would be fine and would lead to no new problems.

Sure, and Lebensraum just meant "living spaces" for blond people.

Let me repeat it, there is no workable solution for the Irish border issue.
If there were, you’d have heard of them by now. The details of this technological masterpiece would already be a double-page spread in the Daily Mail with Rees-Mogg mocked up as Alan Turing under the headline “Enigma cracks Enigma – spirit of Bletchley takes back control”. If an alternative arrangement that worked actually existed (or was likely to exist in the next couple of years) Brexiteers would have already accepted the backstop, knowing they could easily replace it with their idea during the transition. The fact that they won’t bet on themselves tells you all you need to know about what they have in the locker.
Curiously, during the referendum, the Leave campaign had no idea about the Irish border issue.
Oliver Norgrove, who was a staffer on the official Leave campaign, recently recalled in the Irish Times an awkward moment about a month before the referendum of June 2016. A request came in from the BBC’s Newsnight. Would the Leave campaign send a representative to debate the effects of Brexit on the Irish border? “Nobody in the office,” recalled Norgrove, “was keen to take up the request, with even our more polished and experienced media performers rejecting the opportunity on the grounds that they simply lacked real knowledge of the issue. I remember quite vividly the feeling of unease and discomfort about the prospect of us talking about something we just didn’t feel needed addressing.”
They simply ignored it and no one confronted them.

Ironically, one of the consequences of a no deal Brexit could be a united Ireland.

And possibly the end of United Kingdom if Scotland decides to go independent.

Disastrous Consequences for British  Economy

A no deal Brexit, which was previously known as hard Brexit, would be a disaster for British industry and trade.

Besides the need to negotiate everything, including the right to land planes on European cities or reviewing drug patents and certification norms, we know that in a no deal Brexit, the current Just In Time system of manufacturing would collapse spectacularly.

A while ago, Ian Dunt explained what it would be like just for the food industry.

The UK produces 60 percent of its food, the rest comes from (mainly) Europe. Everyday there are 10,000 containers bringing in food items to the UK. You know, burger meat from Poland, France, Roumania or Hungary.

Currently, inspections and certification processes are done at the source and nothing is done at the border.

With Brexit that will take place at the border.

A study estimated that if clearance of paperwork in Dover moved up from 2 minutes to just 4, within 24 hours there would be a 20 miles tailback. And it would continue to get longer as days go by.

Food inspection takes 36 hours on average, which means that the UK will have two options. Continue as before and let any food shipment coming from the EU in with no inspections.

But as Ian Dunt points out, that would open the door to anyone sending substandard or even contaminated items as they would know that there will be no inspection. Also it would not solve the issue of British food exports to the EU as member states are under no obligation to reciprocate the British move.

Another solution is to import food from the US.

There are two difficulties with this.

One is the distance, food goes bad quickly and transportation is expensive.

The other is the difference between sanitary and phytosanitary standards.
Years ago Nasa developed something called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP). It was an extremely systematic approach to guaranteeing quality control on foods, primarily for the reason that it is very, very problematic if an astronaut gets diarrhoea. The EU adopted this very high standard in 2006. 
The US, on the other hand, has much lower standards. The EU rejects US standards on the levels of pesticides residue in fruit, for instance, hormone injections in beef and chlorine wash for poultry. It has strict and very welcome requirements on the excess and routine use of antimicrobials in agriculture.
Which means to get out of Europe, Britain will have the accept to import more expensive and lower quality food stuff.

Then there is the issue of tariffs.

In a no deal scenario, agricultural products will face an average of 22 percent tariff. This would be disastrous for the British producers who sell mainly to the European market.

OK, you might say, the UK could unilaterally lower these tariffs to zero hoping that the Europeans might reciprocate. Well, they are under no such obligation and if you know about their signature Common Agriculture Policy you know that such gestures would be unlikely as it was designed to protect the domestic producers.

Even if they did, under WTO rules, the UK would be obligated to apply the same zero tariff to every country. This could open the floodgates of cheap third country food exports.

You know, the dreaded Turkish exports from Boris Johnson's original homeland.

Either way British agricultural producers would be very negatively impacted.

There is one more problem.

There are not enough veterinarians in the UK to handle food certification to continue to deal with the EU. 95 percent of these vets working in the British food processing centers are from Europe and apparently, they are leaving fast at a pace of 20 vets per month.

And, in an added irony for anti-immigration Brexiteers. there are no British vets to take their place.

Please note that this is just one sector.

Even in non-disruptive cases like aviation, the UK will be the losing side.

Brussels offered to maintain the current bilateral system in a no deal scenario but the UK would lose the right for intra-EU flights and will not be able to open new routes or add new flights to existing routes.

What Will Boris Do?

In short, since it is impossible for Boris Johnson to negotiate a deal that would satisfy hardline Brexiteers and that would also be acceptable for 27 European member states, come 31 October, he will have to choose between a no deal exit and Remain.

Boris Johnson

British businesses would never allow the former and they would put a lot of pressure on Johnson. There is also a majority in Parliament against a no deal exit. Even DUP would vote against it as they are aware of the severe economic consequences for Northern Ireland.

There is also the possibility of a legal challenge.
The EU Withdrawal Act, passed at Westminster in 2018, states that nothing in it may “diminish any form of north-south co-operation provided for by the Belfast agreement”. This is UK law – and an official mapping exercise identifies 142 policy areas of north-south co-operation, 51 relating to the operation of the north-south ministerial council established under the agreement. A no-deal exit or a ditching of the backstop would break that law.
But you might say, Boris Johnson was categorical about leaving on 31 October deal or no deal.

Well, Boris is an inveterate liar and like Trump he has no qualms about making a U-turn when he feels like it.

We will see in due course, but my money is on Remain.
______________

UPDATE

In case you were wondering:
Boris Johnson’s ruthless reshuffle makes one thing very clear: Brexit is about giving the right wing of the Tory party “the chance to finish the Thatcher revolution”. Johnson filled his government with ultra-free market ideologues such as Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, who in 2012 vowed to give a good kick to the great British public, who they described as “among the worst idlers in the world”. Their plan to “unchain Britannia” by declaring war on the “bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation” is actually a plan to unchain big business, which they believe, astonishingly, has suffered from masses of overregulation on the part of successive governments from Tony Blair to David Cameron.
 Right at the ideological heart of this group is Liz Truss, founder of the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs. Truss is a turbo-charged Thatcherite who has now replaced Liam Fox as international trade secretary. She has repeatedly spoken of her desire to drive down taxes, cut back public spending and strip away regulations on everything from housing, to education, to the workplace. In Truss’s mind, it would be a “complete contradiction of the Brexit vote” if it isn’t used to impose “fiscal discipline and economic liberalisation … [to] give people power over their own money and their own lives”.
It was about regulations and the Thatcher revolution.

Good luck with that, as they as in the US.

18 June 2019

Is War With Iran Imminent?

It is beginning to feel like a recurring nightmare.

You know it is not real. You know it will end badly. Yet you are unable to stop it.

The four "sabotaged" tankers in the Gulf of Oman were the beginning of a very familiar narrative.

The smoking gun appearing as a mushroom cloud.

In this iteration, Saudi Arabia recently claimed that four of its tankers (actually one belonging to a Norwegian company) were seriously damaged and implied that Iran was behind the attack.

Despite an initial lack of pictures or other evidence, it subsequently became clear that the damage in question consisted of small holes in the hulls and no explosions were reported.

By the way, this is still the only damage picture I could find, the Saudi tankers, initially photographed from a distance, seem to have vanished.


Still, both the Saudis and the UAE maintained that it was obviously Iran's work. And an American investigative team concurred after a very cursory examination, which lasted less than a day.

Then John Bolton and his moustache argued that the damage was "almost certainly" caused by Iranian mines. However, neither Bolton nor his moustache offered any proof or an explanation for the lack of accompanying explosions.

A few days later, UAE diplomats made a presentation to the UN Security Council and blamed "a state actor" for the incident.

But the whole thing looked, well, hokey.

No explosion, no sinking of ships, no wounded personnel and no real leakage (even though they tried to make it appear as one did).

So during that presentation, UAE, Norway and Saudi Arabia went technical and claimed that the damage was caused by "limpet mines."

That made the whole thing sound real and ominous. I could hear people saying OMG, limpet mines.

Remember Colin Powell's presentation on "high-grade (7075-T6)" aluminum tubes.

UAE and Saudi Arabia copied but sadly they could only do limpet mines.

Limpet Mines Are As Effective As Loose Lips in Sinking Ships

Do you know what limpet mines are?

They were introduced just before WWII and they are different from traditional mines in that they are attached to the hull of a ship with magnets.  Typically, they have timers to get them to explode at a specific time.

Here is the interesting part. Because their payload is small they are always placed below water level to ensure that the explosion opens up a hole in the hull to sink or seriously damage the ship.

In accordance with that common practice, Norway, UAE and Saudi Arabia claimed that limpet mines were placed by divers. Or frogmen as they were known when the limpet mines were in vogue.

Curiously, as you can see from the picture of Andrea Victory, these archaic mines were placed above the water line to make small holes that could be photographed and not below where they might sink them.

In any event, when it became clear that the world was not impressed with this alleged Iranian attack which callously aimed to open tiny holes in Saudi tankers, a new one was staged.

A few days ago, two tankers with "Japan related cargo" were attacked In the Strait of Hormuz.
The timing of Thursday’s attacks was especially sensitive because it came as the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, held talks with the Iranian leadership in Tehran in an effort to find a basis for discussions between the US and Iran.
Such an unlucky coincidence.

This time they went for a more spectacular explosion as you can see in this clip.

And this a screenshot.


You can see the difference from the earlier "attacks." 

Notice also the smoke coming from the stern from inside the tanker which couldn't be caused by limpet mines. And the flames emerging from below the water line which didn't jive with the rest of the reported incidents.

I was curious. So, I looked around a bit. The tanker in the clip is Front Altair owned by Frontline Ltd. This is what they said:
Frontline was able to deploy emergency responders in a timely manner, who extinguished fire on the vessel within hours of the incident and ensured no pollution resulted. Contrary to media reports, the vessel remains afloat and is being attended to by a salvage vessel. 
It is clear that the picture was worse than what the damage was.

More importantly,
No close-up images of the damage to the vessel's hull have been released, but the crew of a tug that helped put out the fire was heard saying on the radio that there was a large hole just above the waterline
Above the waterline.

As breathless speculations ensued about the terrorist regime in Tehran, the US Navy released a footage that showed some folks on a boat removing limpet mines from one of the tankers. They claimed that these were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

That is the video.



Now look at the still from the video. This is the "Japan related cargo" ship, named Kokuka Courageous.

It is annotated by the US Navy.

You have to grant me that this is a curious image.

The hole on the side of the tanker is relatively tiny compared to the flames in the picture and clip I posted above. It barely looks bigger than the unexploded "limpet mine" shown to the right.

Moreover, both mines are way above the water line and the one that exploded seems to have caused very little damage.

There is a clear cognitive dissonance between this picture and the tanker in flames.

My guess is that Iran realized that they were being set up, sent out patrol boats to see if there were more limpet mines. Their job was easy as none of them seemed to have been placed below water line.

The divers who placed the limpet mines were in fact climbers.

Today we were shown a new image from Kokuka Courageous.

The limpet mine damage is unbelievable.

Literally.


What About A War With Iran?

Remember my earlier concern about the three amigos trying to ignite the region to save their own skins?

Well, there are more signs.

To begin with, Israeli media claimed that the intelligence about Iran's involvement came from Mossad.

Then I found out that,
the National Security Advisors of Russia, the US, and Israel, Nikolay Patrushev, John Bolton and Meir Ben-Shabbat, respectively, are expected to meet in Jerusalem to talk about Iran and Syria and what Israel considers the “threat to its security” in the Levant.
You have to admit that this is strange.

Why would Russia, ostensibly an Iranian ally, would meet with John Bolton and his moustache and of all places in Jerusalem to discuss Iran.

Then, yesterday, Iran announced that it will breach the enriched uranium limit set by the 2015 agreement on 27 June, just nine day from now.

The following day we had this:
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said his country did not seek to wage war with any nation and had remained "loyal" to its international obligations.
Which tells me that the hardliners were egging on the Orange Man.

Who responded by sending an additional 1,000 troops to the region. They will join the 1,500 sent last month.

Can you see the trend?

Color me concerned.

Very concerned.

__________________

UPDATE

I stand corrected. There were pictures of the other three tankers involved in the original incident. They were released by the UAE.

The damage was so extensive (!) that they did not need to evacuate the crew.


There were other pictures provided by the UAE. But I will not bore you with them as they were close ups of nondescript hull damages.

Any serious damage that does not require the evacuation of the crew cannot be serious by definition.

04 June 2019

Hemedti Crackdown: "People Power Takes a Big Hit"

In my recent post on Sudan, I expressed my dismay with the disinformation element in the "People Power" or the Arab Spring II narratives.

The removal of Omar al-Bashir was a basic coup d'etat orchestrated by Saudi Arabia. The goal was to bring malleable generals to power who will do anything to support Mohammed bin Salman's (MBS) adventures, including providing troops in a Saudi war with Iran.

In fact, the more I think about it and the more it looks like MBS is putting together an Arab military alliance comprised of Egypt and Sudan in order to challenge Iran.

I can see that al-Bashir was too old, too cynical and too vacillating for the bellicose young prince.

Yesterday, Khartoum witnessed the limits of the People Power. In fact, the quote in the title is from the BBC's coverage.

The leader of the Janjaweed militia and the architect of its crimes against humanity Hemedti ordered his Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to open fire on peaceful sit-in protesters in Khartoum.

The result? 
The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, which is close to the protesters, said 30 people - including an eight-year-old child - had been killed, and that the toll was likely to rise as not all casualties had been accounted for. 
Hundreds of people had been injured, it added.
As I noted in my previous post, the real power figure is Hemedti, because he has the complete backing of MBS.  And I am not the only one who suspects that he is the one pulling the strings in Sudan.

Once the carnage was completed and terror message was sent, the head of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the one everyone praised for his moderate views as the ombudsman of the army, made a declaration:
(T)he TMC's head, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a statement broadcast on state television that they had decided to "stop negotiating with the Alliance for Freedom and Change and cancel what had been agreed on". 
An election in nine months' time would take place under "regional and international supervision", he added.
Now, I have an issue with this, a question no one seems to want to ask.

Why the sudden change in the timeline?

TMC wanted two years to organize itself into an Algerian or Burmese or insert-country-name-here style election where they would retain levers of power. It takes time to terrorise your opponents, disrupt the formation of a cohesive opposition, write a bogus constitution and build a power block that can control media outlets, state institutions, the judiciary and everything else.

In nine months all you can do is to go with the previous people in those institutions, as the former British ambassador Rosalind Marsden argued.

It seems like the deadline was ordered from outside. Someone used Tim Gunn's immortal words and said "make it work" we have a war planned and we need someone in power to back us up

If I were a Middle East analyst trying to figure out if there is going to be a Sunni/Shia war, I would pay really close attention to Sudan.

Hemedti and MBS are your guys.

__________________
UPDATE

BBC goes cynical but after the Hemedti massacre.
The plan is more than likely a fiction, not designed to produce civilian rule or anything like it. 
There is ample precedent in Africa and elsewhere these days for elections which go through the motions of democracy but deliver none of its substance.
Don't be surprised to see senior figures from the TMC "retiring" from the military and standing as civilian candidates. 

What will not change is military control of Sudanese life. 
This was written half a day after the "People power takes a big hit" piece.
_________________
UPDATE 2

The death toll in now over 60.
A woman, identified only as Sulaima, told the BBC that troops from the Rapid Support Forces were "all over Khartoum".
"They're surrounding neighbourhoods, they're threatening people. They're also using live ammunition. They're everywhere. We're not feeling safe and we don't have trust in the security forces. It's complete chaos."
_________________
UPDATE 3
They are now pulling bodies out of Nile, with the death toll having reached 100 people.

Interestingly the State Department asked Saudi Arabia to intervene, leaving no doubt who is behind the coup.
The US state department voiced concerns on Tuesday over the violence to Saudi Arabia - a key ally of Sudan's military rulers. A department official telephoned the Saudi deputy defence minister Khalid Bin Salman to stress the importance of a transition to a civilian-led government.
Khalid is MBS' brother, the guy who reassured Adnan Khashoggi to go to Turkey.

02 June 2019

Why Was There a Coup in Sudan After 30 Years?

My oldest readers might remember that I started this blog because of my massive frustration with mainstream media platitudes about the Arab Spring. A self-immolating Tunisian street vendor forcing strongman Ben Ali to flee the country. Or Tahrir Square students overthrowing Hosni Mubarak.

None of these symbolic acts explained what really happened but you wouldn't know that by simply reading to headline.

I had a similar reaction when I first found about the ousting of Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power. The mainstream narrative was that popular unrest and daily protests increased the pressure on the man and he was finally toppled by his own military.

Once more, we were shown pictures of happy crowds, singing and dancing and marching with signs.
Sudanese protesters at the sit-in in Khartoum last week. Photograph: Amel Pain/EPA
And the narrative was that this was sufficient to get rid of an indicted war criminal who killed, tortured, raped literally millions of people in Darfur and elsewhere. A ruthless autocrat who suppressed every protest violently during his blood-soaked reign.
Omar al-Bashir

If it was that easy, why didn't they do it 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago?

Is it possible that this time the street chanting and sit-in protests was too much for his generals who told him that it was time to go.

I decided to take look.

Now, I admit that my knowledge of Sudan was fairly rudimentary.

I knew that Bashir came to power in 1989 with a coup against an elected president.

I knew that he oversaw the Islamization of the country by using the ideological guidelines of Hassan Turabi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure.

I knew of the Nile conflict with Egypt and Ethiopia.

And I knew about his horrifying crimes in Darfur to grab their oil and to further subjugate black Africans (vs Arabs of the North).

So it took me some digging. In the end, I uncovered a remarkable story which involved a complex regional power play by Turkey, Qatar on the one side and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE on the other.

Suakin Island

Omar al-Bashir was probably one of the most cynical rulers in the world. For instance, despite being a Sunni fundamentalist, when it suited him, he established close relationships with Iran, a rare Sunni/Shia alliance, which lasted until 2016.

Then when he needed Saudi Arabia's money more, he cut-off Sudan's ties to Iran and offered Sudanese troops for the war in Yemen.

Two years ago, he did something remarkable. He leased the Suakin island to Turkey for 99 years. It didn't hurt that Erdogan was and is a staunch supporter of the Brotherhood. Nor Qatar's $4 billion dollar deal to develop the port city was a hindrance.

But the deal was a subtle reminder to Egypt that Sudan had powerful friends and border disputes and conflict over Nile could be addressed in a different manner.

If you never heard of the island, you are in good company. The island is strategically placed as a historical port for Muslim pilgrims to reach Mecca.

Now, Turkey claimed that it was going to renovate the island and return it to its former glory. But it soon became clear that it had more value as a military base. More importantly, a base that would connect the Turkish base in Qatar and the third one in Somalia.




When the deal was signed, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, taken by surprise, expressed their deep concerns.
At the time, Turkey's deal caused concern on the international scene, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, over allegations that Turkey was seeking to expand its military foothold in Africa, in the Gulf and the Red Sea.
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who overthrew Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's former President affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood, was especially upset. Following the ousting of Morsi, Egypt's relations with Turkey became rather frosty and a war or words ensued between Erdogan and al-Sisi.

Equally concerned was Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler of the Kingdom. He is suspicious of Turkish motives because of Erdogan's support for Muslim Brotherhood and his alliance with Qatar.

A Sudanese analyst warned at the time that the Suakin deal was very dangerous.
"Turkey and Egypt, as well as Ethiopia and Eritrea, all have ambitions along Sudan's Red Sea coast, and the situation needs to be handled with great sensitivity," he said. (...)
"Egypt already has a presence in the Halaib disputed area in the northern part of the Red Sea state, and now Turkey has a presence in Port Sudan and Suakin. That's really playing with fire," the analyst said.
With hindsight, prophetic warning to al-Bashir.

The Squeeze Between Qatar And Saudi Arabia

While the Suakin island deal was unfolding Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Bahrain tried to bring Sudan into their Anti-Terror Quartet (ATQ) but Sudan refused.

Even though these were important donors for Sudan, Qatar was a big supporter of Muslim Brotherhood and that was a line al-Bashir would not cross.

However, to appease MBS, he distanced himself from Iran and joined the Yemeni coalition.

Omar al-Bashir was playing a high-risk balancing game trying to contain incompatible options. What brought it to a head was Sudan's precarious economy. In 2017 IMF asked the government to gradually remove subsidies on food and fuel.

Unsurprisingly, protests erupted but he violently suppressed them killing scores of civilians.

Despite the presence of Sudanese troops in Yemen, Saudi Arabia did not help him financially. Riyadh waited until his ousting to pledge $3 billion to the new military government.
Within days of the removal of Bashir, Saudi’s purse strings loosened. Along with the UAE, it pledged a $3bn aid package to prop up Sudan’s economy and thus the transitional military government.
Curiously, Qatar refused to help as well.
The Sudanese president, who was ousted by the military on April 11, visited Doha in late January in hopes of getting financial support to ease economic conditions that had triggered more than a month of protests. He received only an offer of political asylum, according to sources.
The Emir must have sensed that the jig was up and there was no way to prop up al-Bashir's government.

As for the dictator himself, my guess is that, strapped for cash, he was contemplating a partial pull out of Yemen.
L’Arabie saoudite (...) vise effectivement à bénéficier de l’absence d’Omar el-Béchir, qui s’opposait à l’engagement militaire « trop vaste » de son pays dans les conflits au Yémen.
Even though he denied such plans, he seems to have failed to convince UAE and the Kingdom.
According to some analysts, al-Bashir’s recent visit to Damascus suggests that Khartoum is distancing itself from the Saudi/UAE axis.
According to Al-Binna, a Lebanese journal, the coup instructions came from MBS himself. who hosted the vice president and the first coup leader, Awad Ibn Auf after al-Bashir's removal.
Le coup d’État au Soudan a eu lieu très probablement suite à une série de coordinations entre le prince saoudien Mohammed ben Salmane et le ministre soudanais de la Défense Aouad Ibn Aouf qui s’était rendu, quelques jours auparavant avant le coup de force, à Riyad pour prendre part à une réunion de “l’OTAN arabe”.
The protesters clamored because of Ibn Auf's closeness to al-Bashir. Shockingly, within 24 hours he resigned. Even more shockingly, his replacement, Salah Abdallah Mohamed Saleh (Salah Gosh) also lasted 24 hours. The third guy was Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Do you know who he is?
As chief of Sudan’s ground forces he oversaw Sudanese troops fighting in the Saudi-led Yemen war and has close ties to senior Gulf military officials.
Moreover,
A Sudanese source close to Sudan’s military leadership said the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt had a role in planning “the removal of Bashir and General Ibn Auf and Salah Gosh” as part of a strategy of “weakening the power of the Islamists in power in Sudan”.
By Islamists, they mean Muslim Brotherhood.

Given this background, the first thing the new generals did was to reassure Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries that Sudan would continue to provide troops to the war in Yemen.

Then Burhan tweeted that Suakin was an "inseparable part of Sudan."
"Its value cannot be measured with a material price, its history cannot be sold. We emphasize that we care about the sovereignty of our territories. We will not accept the presence of a foreign military existence in Sudan," Burhan added.
Turkey tried to downplay the statement but the implication was clear.

Burhan
 A week ago, Burhan's deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, affirmed that Sudan would back Saudi Arabia against Iranian threats.
General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy chief of Sudan's transitional military council, met with Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, the official Saudi Press Agency reported earlier in the day.

"Sudan is standing with the kingdom against all threats and attacks from Iran and Huthi militias," Dagalo, widely known as Himeidti, told the crown prince during their meeting, the council said in a statement.
Incidentally, Hemedti is a dark figure who heads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The RSF is a paramilitary grouping that grew out of the Janjaweed militias that fought in Darfur and has provided troops to fight in Yemen.
Besides its role in killing and raping in Darfur and Yemen, RSF is the main paramilitary group that al-Bashir used to suppress uprisings.

And now he has MBS' total support and approval.

When you look at the whole picture, what took place in Sudan was not Arab Spring 2 as some media outlets claimed.

MBS moved to have the last regime that had Muslim Brotherhood as its base overthrown and replaced its president with more malleable generals who will continue to help him in his murderous Yemeni campaign. And Egypt got rid of a ruler who could have posed too many problems.

They won.
The influence of their regional rivals Qatar and Turkey, which both had ties to Bashir, will be limited, said the Sudanese military officer. “It was a tug of war, and right now UAE and Saudi won,” he said.
Ostensibly, the losing side is Turkey and Qatar.

But I wouldn't count them out yet. The battle in Sudan might be lost but the wider war is still in play. And I don't even mean this metaphorically.

MBS' war in Yemen is unwinnable and it will ruin the Kingdom financially. He is also less and less able to inject cash into client states like Egypt and soon they will feel the squeeze.

On the Turkish side, the economic picture is not any better. But it has other options like teaming up with Iran and Russia, changing its regional priorities and adopting a softer approach towards Kurds and Syria.

Time will tell.

We live in interesting but scary dangerous times.