I had been vaguely working on a grumpy post on the shallowness of some recent news coverage on Sudan and how the article that set me off much too neatly positioned Sudan in Cold War II, i. e. the war on "terror." But, via American Dynamics, I discover a blog devoted specifically to the subject of Sudan with links to more information on Sudan than I could possibly assemble: Sudan: The Passion of the Present. Go take a look.

Also, Madeline Drohan has a fine chater on the role of oil in Sudan's political violence in her book Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force to Do Business. (Buy the book from Amazon Canada; it's not out in the US yet.) Talisman, the Canadian oil company she discusses was forces by public pressure to pull out of Sudan and a scandanavian company followed. Their interests were bought up by Chinese and Malaysian state companies, which I suspect continue or expand upon the same lethal practices.