A Place to Stand

We have been told regularly that we cannot ignore what is alleged to be going on in Dharfur. Of course, for decades we did ignore what the Sudanese government was genuinely doing in the south of the country (not the oil bit). By comparison there is a most distinct lack of acrual evidence of anything other than the refugees expected in any such war. Considering that it was possible for ITN to "accidentally" fake a concentration camp film in Bosnia it is astonishing that they have not yet produced a similarly spectacular "accident".

Strangely enough Sudan is the main country so far to choose to make its oil dealing with China rather than the US. One of the less spectacular but more credible theories is that Bush's decision to attack Iraq, coming shortly after Iraq's decision to price its oil in Euros rather than dollars, thus encouraging the rest of OPEC to do so, thus removing the dollar from its preeminent position, thus making it difficult for the US to sustain its debt mountain, was a least partly caused by that decision.

I have no doubt whatsoever that current disapproval of the Sudanese regime would cease if they just fell into place on this matter. As I have said before whenever our government start talking about human rights it is purely because they are getting us ready to kill somebody.

This from Human Rights Watch (bear in mind that HRW is a overwhelmingly financed by US Trusts & has a long history of blatantly pushing ever possible propaganda lie about Serbs (& censoring the real acts of their Nazi friends) & has, invariably acted in a manner consistent with being a vehicle for racist State Dept propaganda.

CHINA’S INVOLVEMENT IN SUDAN: ARMS AND OIL
China’s need for oil reserves for its growing domestic economy has caused its government to pursue investments in many countries of marginal stability and democracy, but its greatest oil success abroad has been in Sudan.
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Questions about China’s financing of arms sales to Sudan and allegations of Chinese prison labor used in the construction of Sudan’s oil pipeline were never addressed.

Arms Trade between China and Sudan
China was not new to Sudan. By the time it invested in GNPOC in December 1996, it was already a familiar arms dealer to many Sudanese governments. The Nimeiri government (1969-85) bought weapons from China. But these purchases rose in the 1990s due to Sudan’s internal war and the promise of improved finances and enhanced international credit derived from its oil potential.

Weapons deliveries from China to Sudan since 1995 have included ammunition, tanks, helicopters, and fighter aircraft. China also became a major supplier of antipersonnel and antitank mines after 1980, according to a Sudanese government official.1387 The SPLA in 1997 overran government garrison towns in the south, and in one town alone, Yei, a Human Rights Watch researcher saw eight Chinese 122 mm towed howitzers, five Chinese-made T-59 tanks, and one Chinese 37 mm anti-aircraft gun abandoned by the government army.1388

Human Rights Watch concluded that while China’s motivation for this arms trade appeared to be primarily economic, China made available easy financing for some of these arms purchases.1389

China’s Need to Acquire Foreign Oil Reserves
China invested in Sudan’s nascent oil industry because of its need to acquire foreign oil reserves. While China expected its industrial development to make increasing demands for more oil, the Chinese oilfields had, by the late 1990s, already passed their peak production. “China until recently relied on its vast northeastern Daqing oilfield to fuel its energy needs, but output is declining and it has yet to find new large domestic supplies,” according to the Chinese government news agency Xinhua.1390