Free Republic

<p>Fox news ran stories last night based on some of the things we were tracking right here in this post. Here is their on line story.</p> <p>As unfinished as my research is, I feel compelled to release what I've found so far as the story cannot wait any longer.  I am not looking for a scoop on anyone or anything, but at the same time I don't want anyone thinking I made this stuff up after the fact either.</p>

China has secured Baghdad's first post-Saddam Hussein oil deal by reviving a 1997 concession to exploit reserves on the al-Ahdab field south of the capital. The two countries are expected to formally sign an agreement later this month that will earn the state-controlled China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) a fixed price for every barrel it produces in Iraq. While China opposed the Iraq war and stood back from post-war rebuilding, Beijing has quietly outflanked its global rivals to grab a large slice of Iraq's oil industry. The pioneers of its overseas quest for fuel are already exploring vast tracts in...

"One World, One Dream" is China's slogan for its 2008 Olympics. But there is one nightmare that China shouldn't be allowed to sweep under the rug. That nightmare is Darfur, where more than 400,000 people have been killed and more than two-and-a-half million driven from flaming villages by the Chinese-backed government of Sudan. That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away from that atrocity during the games is bad enough. But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg -- who quietly visited China this month as he prepares to help stage the Olympic...

Oil seals friendship for China and 'rogue' Sudan By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent Last Updated: 1:19am GMT 02/02/2007 When President Hu Jintao of China arrives in Sudan today, an isolated regime waging a brutal war in Darfur will offer an effusive welcome. "We are striving to be the best friend of China in the African continent," said Zahawi Ibrahim Malik, Sudan's information minister, as he announced Mr Hu's latest stop on his tour of Africa. Khartoum has much to be grateful for. China has become a key player in Sudan's burgeoning oil industry, which poured some £3.2 billion into the...

Fiction writers documented the fall of Enron as a scandal to be linked to President Bush. Yet the U.S. Commerce Department has just released over 5,000 pages of documents that detail the Enron scandal during the Clinton years. The Commerce materials outline a long-standing and very close relationship between the Clinton administration and Enron. For example, in March 1999 U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley's trade delegation to China produced several sweet business deals, including a special little gem for Enron. Enron International China Pipeline, a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron Corp. of Houston, Texas, signed a memorandum of understanding with...

KHARTOUM: Sudan's oil output was due to rise to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) after a pipeline was opened pumping crude from the southern Upper Nile region to the Red Sea, an oil official said Tuesday. The 1,400-kilometer pipeline - inaugurated Monday - will allow oil wells to start operating in the southern Melut Basin from which the crude will be pumped to Al-Salam port on the Red Sea, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Sudan's production stood at more than 300,000 bpd and is now expected to rise above the 500,000 bpd mark, making Africa's largest country...

India says Goldman Sachs helped China's CNPC bid for PetroKazakhstan - report10.16.2005, 10:08 PM BEIJING (AFX) - India has accused Goldman Sachs of presiding over an auction for the PetroKazakhstan oil group marred by a 'lack of propriety and transparency' and where the rules were changed mid-way through to help a state-controlled Chinese oil group, the Financial Times reported, citing an interview with Mani Shankar Aiyar, India's petroleum minister. 'The Indian bid was easily highest and the matter should have been closed,' Aiyar was quoted as saying. 'I'm sick and tired at the lectures we are given by the west...

<p>Exactly 10 years ago, the world stood by as a genocidal rampage by ethnic Hutus against ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda claimed as many as 800,000 lives. Now something similar may be unfolding in western Sudan, a region even more remote from the world's gaze. Will humanity bestir itself to act, or will history repeat itself?</p>