Sudan Is About To Get Ugly, Again..

I never thought I would say "thank you" to George Clooney for educating me on an issue. He was on C-Span tonight raising awareness of the impending conflict and rallying the US to work with China and others to head off a blood bath.

I did some digging and found some pics of the root cause of Sudan civil war (I don't get putting the words Civil and War in the same sentence).

Back in the 1980s, Egypt pushed for a canal from southern Sudan all the way to Egypt, to ensure water supplies. The project started and the largest "moving" machine in the world was built. I expect by China, with US parts. Some pics of the remnants of the "Excavator" are below. Click them to see full size and soak in the scale of this man made beast.

No wonder a war broke out? The north was stealing the water supplies from the south...

One of the first things the south did, was to disable the "machine".

As detailed here, http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article32062  There is a pic of the whole giant Excavator in the story!

Egypt still wants the canal, and South Sudan wants independence. The vote is in early 2011, and the pre/post vote situation is likely to be very ugly.

You can watch the Clooney discussion here; http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/295955-1