But why aren't you talking about Darfur?

Of massive interest to our readers I think, the Making Sense of Darfur blog is having a book event on Mahmood Mamdani's book "Saviors and Survivors", which is a pretty excoriating attack on the "Save Darfur" movement in the USA, for possessing all the characteristics that we have identified over here as constitutive of Decency. I am particularly taken with this essay by Alex de Waal. The MSOD contributors can't really be credibly written off as Douglas Hurd types or crypto-fascists, and it is quite startling to see what they really think of the liberal interventionists who have attempted to hijack someone else's tragedy for the benefit of their own politics.

Also found on the web: the "Save Darfur Accountability Project. I am in two minds about this - sneering at people for going to protests seems to me to be more or less intrinsically twattish, and there's quite a lot of it on the site. But on the other hand, it does at least appear to be aiming to get the message across that there are things going on in Darfur other than a generalised March of Evil which must be rebuffed by non-specific Action on the part of the USA. I'd rather have it than this piece of "diplomacy is appeasement" bollo from Nick Kristof, for example.