As the mess in Côte d'Ivoire becomes messier, it pays to know what the leaders are saying. Below is a translation of the back of Blé Goudé's book: My Part of the Truth. Blé Goudé reportedly receives a salary from President Gbagbo and has personal bodyguards and a suite at the Hotel Ivoire.
I have translated this because it is important to see events from as many sides as you can. The Gbagbo camp maintain that Ouattara stole the election. Part of their reasoning is that the French and the UN are manipulating the price of cocoa by provoking civil war. I have heard this line over and over since my first visit in 2004. But I still do not understand it.
Nevertheless, Blé Goudé is a smart politician. He knows that the young Bété are frustrated with unemployment. It's easy to blame someone outside the country, especially given France's indubitable colonial history of appropriating resources and encouraging Ivorians to genuflect before the Great White Master.
According to Charles Blé Goudé...
I am neither anti French, anti American, anti Senegalese nor anti-Gabonese.
Having said that, I would appreciate if people would refrain from explaining everything according to France, which is just another country, even if France's behavior is detestable. I have a problem with any country that thinks it can manipulate another, that it can dominate another country. I find it detestable that the UN and France have a monopoly on resolutions about the Ivorian Crisis (that is, the last civil war in 2002-3). Would France like it if the Congo, Chad, or Benin spoke in its name. I'm sure they would not.
This is why we fight: that France respect our sovereignty. I have nothing against the French. I simply disapprove of the neo-colonialist methods and those who use them. I refuse to be a puppet of the French régime. I find the Franco-African summits intolerable; they are a supreme insult against all Africans. How can so many African countries humiliate themselves in such masquerades run by the White Master? Nigeria itself has participated in this charade, and they are not even francophone! The whole continent throws itself onto its knees for the French Masters! It's finished, the colonial times. The leaders of France must learn that tomorrow is neither yesterday nor today. The 21st century must not be based on the past. We refuse today and tomorrow to genuflect before France.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Genocide in Cote d'Ivoire?
Events are pushing toward genocide in Cote d'Ivoire.
Charles Ble Goude is out in full force, stirring up the unemployed young men. His main message is "Foreigners, OUT!". Ble Goude is highly gifted: he speaks good English, he has written a book, and he knows how to work a crowd. He is also Gbagbo's henchman. After the civil war, he and his followers trashed European food production plants. Everything Ble Goude does is following a Gbagbo script.
Approximately 470 Dioula (Burkinabe/Malians) were wrenched from their homes, murdered, and mass-buried this weekend.
Gbagbo and his followers want the foreigners OUT. Probably so they can complete the ultimate mission, which is to rid the country of Dioula. It was Houphouet-Boigny who welcomed millions of Dioula in--a ready workforce to propel Côte d'Ivoire past Ghana as the world's largest producer of cocoa beans.
The question is, will the Europeans/Americans/UN cop out as they did in Rwanda? Will they trump up some pretext for leaving? Will Obama, like Clinton, feign surprise?
Will the world allow Gbagbo to murder Ouattara and then begin the long process of ethnic cleansing?
Each day brings new events and each day, the situation becomes a little more clear.
In my opinion, there is no Cote d'Ivoire, no Ivory Coast. There never was. The line that crosses the country just south of Bouake was real in the 1930s, and it is just as real today. Where the jungle stops, that's where the "other" start.
Where are ADM, Cargill, Barry-Callebaut, Saf-Cacao in this mess? They are feeling a lot of fear right about now. And they are glad that they have invested in South America (Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Indonesida, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia). We looove Hugo!
Charles Ble Goude is out in full force, stirring up the unemployed young men. His main message is "Foreigners, OUT!". Ble Goude is highly gifted: he speaks good English, he has written a book, and he knows how to work a crowd. He is also Gbagbo's henchman. After the civil war, he and his followers trashed European food production plants. Everything Ble Goude does is following a Gbagbo script.
Approximately 470 Dioula (Burkinabe/Malians) were wrenched from their homes, murdered, and mass-buried this weekend.
Gbagbo and his followers want the foreigners OUT. Probably so they can complete the ultimate mission, which is to rid the country of Dioula. It was Houphouet-Boigny who welcomed millions of Dioula in--a ready workforce to propel Côte d'Ivoire past Ghana as the world's largest producer of cocoa beans.
The question is, will the Europeans/Americans/UN cop out as they did in Rwanda? Will they trump up some pretext for leaving? Will Obama, like Clinton, feign surprise?
Will the world allow Gbagbo to murder Ouattara and then begin the long process of ethnic cleansing?
Each day brings new events and each day, the situation becomes a little more clear.
In my opinion, there is no Cote d'Ivoire, no Ivory Coast. There never was. The line that crosses the country just south of Bouake was real in the 1930s, and it is just as real today. Where the jungle stops, that's where the "other" start.
Where are ADM, Cargill, Barry-Callebaut, Saf-Cacao in this mess? They are feeling a lot of fear right about now. And they are glad that they have invested in South America (Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Indonesida, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia). We looove Hugo!
Friday, December 10, 2010
Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara
It is commonly stated that the current Ivorian economic wreck was caused by the 2002-2003 civil war. Having read about and visited Ivory Coast for the past 7 years, I can categorically deny that statement. The economic wreck began much earlier.
Why does it matter? Well, perhaps the truth matters. Most of us would at least claim we’d like to know the truth.
But there’s far more to know about Ivory Coast, which is sadly ignored by Americans. The next time you take a bite out of a Hershey’s, Mars, or Nestle product, you are probably enjoying a piece of Ivory Coast. The next time you go Trick-or-Treating, Easter egg hunting, the next time you make a German chocolate cake, or you enjoy a cup of hot cocoa, you are probably savoring a piece of Ivory Coast.
The fact is, about 75% of all American chocolate products are made with Ivorian beans. And an $18 billion chocolate industry depends on them.
So, Ivory Coast matters. This is reinforced by the fortress that serves as the American embassy in Abidjan and by the fact that ADM and Cargill control most of the Ivorian cocoa industry.
Another fact that Americans ignore: Child slavery and child trafficking are practiced in Ivory Coast.
Since 2000, when a British TV crew first documented these practices, there has been a rising tide of interest in the issues of how our chocolate starts. More recently, filmmaker U. Roberto Romano and Miki Mistrati released The Dark Side of Chocolate, which shows how children are encouraged to travel south from Mali and Burkina Faso where they work on certain plantations, often unpaid.
In response to the first reports of child slavery and trafficking as well as WFCL or “Worst Forms of Child Labor”, the American and European chocolate industries established foundations to combat the problems or the issues, depending on which side of the fence you sit.
NGO’s such as the German UTZ have been working in Ivory Coast to encourage villages to practice good horticultural methods while cutting their use of their own children and terminating the use of other children.
Since 2000, however, everyone who works in Ivory Coast, myself included, has known that the place is a ticking time-bomb. Issues have remained unresolved. And one issue is: how can 60 different ethnicities along with 60 different languages coexist in a country that was manufactured by the French in the late 19th century? The North and the South are very different. Northerners are Sahel peoples and Southerners are forest dwellers.
Contrary to many newspaper reports, the unrest is not Muslim-Christian. The fact is that Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s New York City, is as much Muslim as it is Christian. And the same is true throughout the countryside south of Bouaké.
Whether Ivory Coast survives as a country depends on people of good will. In the late 1980s, President Gbagbo, then a history professor at the University of Cocody, challenged the country’s father, Houphouët-Boigny, to terminate his single party rule. Now, President Gbagbo’s arch-rival, Alassan Ouattara has won the popular vote. President Gbagbo, together with the political cronies who have contributed to the poverty of the Ivorian cocoa farmer, seems to have forgotten his ideals.
Will Ivory Coast descend once more into violence? If so, you can bet that the weapons purchased from the Russian arms dealers will be paid for on the backs of the Ivorian cocoa farmers. And you can bet that your bite of chocolate will not only contain the blood of children but also the taste of gun lubricant.
Why does it matter? Well, perhaps the truth matters. Most of us would at least claim we’d like to know the truth.
But there’s far more to know about Ivory Coast, which is sadly ignored by Americans. The next time you take a bite out of a Hershey’s, Mars, or Nestle product, you are probably enjoying a piece of Ivory Coast. The next time you go Trick-or-Treating, Easter egg hunting, the next time you make a German chocolate cake, or you enjoy a cup of hot cocoa, you are probably savoring a piece of Ivory Coast.
The fact is, about 75% of all American chocolate products are made with Ivorian beans. And an $18 billion chocolate industry depends on them.
So, Ivory Coast matters. This is reinforced by the fortress that serves as the American embassy in Abidjan and by the fact that ADM and Cargill control most of the Ivorian cocoa industry.
Another fact that Americans ignore: Child slavery and child trafficking are practiced in Ivory Coast.
Since 2000, when a British TV crew first documented these practices, there has been a rising tide of interest in the issues of how our chocolate starts. More recently, filmmaker U. Roberto Romano and Miki Mistrati released The Dark Side of Chocolate, which shows how children are encouraged to travel south from Mali and Burkina Faso where they work on certain plantations, often unpaid.
In response to the first reports of child slavery and trafficking as well as WFCL or “Worst Forms of Child Labor”, the American and European chocolate industries established foundations to combat the problems or the issues, depending on which side of the fence you sit.
NGO’s such as the German UTZ have been working in Ivory Coast to encourage villages to practice good horticultural methods while cutting their use of their own children and terminating the use of other children.
Since 2000, however, everyone who works in Ivory Coast, myself included, has known that the place is a ticking time-bomb. Issues have remained unresolved. And one issue is: how can 60 different ethnicities along with 60 different languages coexist in a country that was manufactured by the French in the late 19th century? The North and the South are very different. Northerners are Sahel peoples and Southerners are forest dwellers.
Contrary to many newspaper reports, the unrest is not Muslim-Christian. The fact is that Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s New York City, is as much Muslim as it is Christian. And the same is true throughout the countryside south of Bouaké.
Whether Ivory Coast survives as a country depends on people of good will. In the late 1980s, President Gbagbo, then a history professor at the University of Cocody, challenged the country’s father, Houphouët-Boigny, to terminate his single party rule. Now, President Gbagbo’s arch-rival, Alassan Ouattara has won the popular vote. President Gbagbo, together with the political cronies who have contributed to the poverty of the Ivorian cocoa farmer, seems to have forgotten his ideals.
Will Ivory Coast descend once more into violence? If so, you can bet that the weapons purchased from the Russian arms dealers will be paid for on the backs of the Ivorian cocoa farmers. And you can bet that your bite of chocolate will not only contain the blood of children but also the taste of gun lubricant.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Comprehending the Externalities
John Perkins and others assert that externalities not factored into the economic equations relating to the economy of food production make possible the current system of corporations controlling the food supply. The county I live in had over 100 dairy farms before WWII. It now has zero. This situation is everywhere. In Iowa, numerous farmhouses are empty, downtowns vacant, and WalMarts selling Chinese goods are the foundation of the local economies.
The externalities such as environmental damage and energy cost are merely ignored. Washington, DC just keeps on printing money. But some day the chicken will come home to roost, and the externalities will become manifest.
The same situation with energy. We spend billions propping up the consumption of fossil fuels, claiming illogically that renewables simply aren't practical. Once again, we ignore the externalities. Global warming's bite becomes ever more severe. But we prefer to ignore the externalities.
Without the externalities, so much of life is unreal and artificial. I learned from my piano teacher that rests or the absence of sound are just as important as the sound itself. You don't play Chopin well if you ignore the rests. Subtle changes in the lengths of rests make all the difference in musical interpretation.
With the visual arts, shadow and darkness are as important as light. Ground is just as important as figure.
With biology, junk DNA, still very much misunderstood, is important to the concepts of heredity. You can't predict phenotype based merely on chromosomes.
With astronomy, dark matter rules the universe. We know that. But we still don't know what it is.
Will we humans some day comprehend the significance of the externalities?
The externalities such as environmental damage and energy cost are merely ignored. Washington, DC just keeps on printing money. But some day the chicken will come home to roost, and the externalities will become manifest.
The same situation with energy. We spend billions propping up the consumption of fossil fuels, claiming illogically that renewables simply aren't practical. Once again, we ignore the externalities. Global warming's bite becomes ever more severe. But we prefer to ignore the externalities.
Without the externalities, so much of life is unreal and artificial. I learned from my piano teacher that rests or the absence of sound are just as important as the sound itself. You don't play Chopin well if you ignore the rests. Subtle changes in the lengths of rests make all the difference in musical interpretation.
With the visual arts, shadow and darkness are as important as light. Ground is just as important as figure.
With biology, junk DNA, still very much misunderstood, is important to the concepts of heredity. You can't predict phenotype based merely on chromosomes.
With astronomy, dark matter rules the universe. We know that. But we still don't know what it is.
Will we humans some day comprehend the significance of the externalities?
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