MORE BLOOD FOR OIL!

Rick Mercier, an editor at the Free Lance-Star wrote this up about the genocide in Sudan:


But you can bet that a resolution with any teeth to it will meet firm resistance in the council — much of it from veto-wielding permanent members Russia and China. France may also play an obstructionist role.

As this sorry spectacle unfolds in the coming days and weeks, it will be useful to remind ourselves that these three countries not only are blocking meaningful action against the Sudanese government, they’ve actually aided and abetted Khartoum in its cleansing of certain ethnic groups from Darfur.

Here’s how:

—China: The Chinese have been Sudan’s principal arms supplier over the past decade, furnishing Khartoum with copious amounts of tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

China also is heavily invested in Sudan’s oil industry, and depends on the country’s oil fields to supply the Chinese industrial dragon with a sizeable portion of the energy it needs to keep growing. Needless to say, Sudan’s weapons purchases are funded largely by the revenues generated by this oil extraction.

—Russia: According to a report issued in November by Amnesty International, the Sudanese government imported four MiG fighter jets from Russia in December 2003 and January 2004. Khartoum was expected to have imported 12 new Russian MiGs by the end of last year. This purchase coincided with the use of MiGs against civilians in Darfur.

When I met with refugees from Darfur in September, a number of them told me that their villages had been attacked by MiGs in late 2003 and early last year. Human-rights groups also have cited the use of MiGs in raids on Darfur villages.

The Russians also have ties to Sudan’s oil industry. Last summer, as the crisis in Darfur was continuing to worsen, a Russian company inked a deal to build an oil pipeline in Sudan.

—France: The Amnesty report found that the French have sold large quantities of bombs, grenades, ammunition and other military items to Sudan in recent years. The French corporation Total holds the rights to an oil concession in southern Sudan.

The United States must confront these forces of complicity and greed by pushing hard for a tough resolution on Darfur.

Well, smack my mouth and call me Sally! Who would have thought the French would be giving weapons to blood-soaked dictators in exchange for oil? I mean, I never heard of such a thing. Say it ain't so, France! We all look up to you, paragon of moral virtue that you are. I mean, you wouldn't use your influence in the UN to protect some cozy little oil deal with the scum of the earth, right? I mean, your opposition to the war in Iraq, that was pure principle, right? Right?

My bad. Apparently, they're big on "blood for oil".

Whenever anything big in the world happens, look at where the usual suspects show up. Maybe we just need to realize they're not going to be rooting for the good guys.