Is there a “French Institute in Taiwan” (FIT?) at which we could hold a protest?
It sounds like this is more than just a small “we’re gonna take out your air force” now.
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s … vory_coast
[quote]ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - South African President Thabo Mbeki flew to Ivory Coast on Tuesday to launch an African effort to rein in four days of violence that have killed at least 20 people, [color=red]wounded more than 600 and shut down cocoa exports from the world’s largest producer. [/color]
Some of the 1,300 French and other foreign civilians evacuated from their homes by the French military amid looting and burning stared out at the protesters from a protective ring of barbed wire around the hotel.
“We are not going to leave,” one loyalist outside the French temporary base said, adding that protesters would take shifts to eat. [color=red]“If I get the French, I can eat them,” he said. [/color]
Cocoa traders said Tuesday that the violence has shut down cocoa exports in the Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer, closing ports that ship more than 40 percent of the world’s raw material for chocolate. [/quote]
Hee hee! I love that guy’s sense of humo… he wasn’t joking? Ok, I love that guy’s spirit!
Do you really not know??
Do as you please Fred.
Robi:
Actually I don’t quite understand how France’s actions right now are dissimilar from what the Americans are doing in Fallujah. You have groups of armed gangs that are destabilizing the country in both cases. If the French take out these gangs and innocent civilians are killed, how is that different from Fallujah? Really, I would like to hear how this is different if you really do believe that because I for one cannot see it.
Chirac will be out of office in 2007 and his chosen successor Juppe is already banned from political office because of corruption. Perhaps, one day the French government may wish to target Chirac and look into his personal finances. They may find that he has a similar amount stashed away as Arafat and other Third World dictators. Then, we may find some curious payments from the Oil for Food program that went through Pasqua directly to Chirac and then I wonder what the French will say about their government’s “principled” opposition to the US in the UN Security Council. I wonder. I will be willing to wait. 2007 will come some day and just as Chirac is looking forward to his retirement. Wham! a prison cell. Then, we can have a best-selling novel called “Pimp of the Republic” which will unravel how the French government was coopted at the very highest levels by Third World gangstas like Arafat, Saddam, Assad, Qadaffi and others of that ilk. Would make an interesting read and I for one will read every word of it. Bon Appetit!
Fred
In practical terms ie whats happening on the ground, then agreed very little is different, but the mission in the Ivory Coast is UN backed, which your action in Iraq is not, hence the technical difference.
As far as most of these conflicts in Africa go, then i have to be honest and say that it is almost getting to be time to cast aside that continent and just let them get on with things. Throw a net around it banning all travel, see what is left in 20 years and ignore any screams.
Just means that you and MaPo have to pay more for your choco fixes. 
Given my propensity for excessive consumption of champagne let us hope then that France remains stable! haha
I learnt one thing from this. What the adjective derived from “Ivory Coast” is, it’s not “Ivory Coaster” but “Ivorian”
The man has a point.
By the way, bob_honest, and speaking of fungible commodities, your signature no longer derides rice. Does that mean you’ve learned to like it?
The man has a point.
By the way, bob_honest, and speaking of fungible commodities, your signature no longer derides rice. Does that mean you’ve learned to like it?[/quote]
I liked it before I came to Taiwan. Now every day this boring white rice. And I get fat of it. Well, may be influenced by chocolate also.
At least Taiwan chocolate will not be influenced by the Ivory crisis. Isn’t that made out of candle wax?
bob_honest, I think this cocoa situation may get out of hand. I mean it may wreak more havoc than the Oil Embargo of '73. I’m serious: Imagine a world chocolate shortage.
What really concerns me is that the French may have read all the bad things we Americans posted about them on the Internet, and they may have seen videos of the Jay Leno jokes, etc. I mean, if they get control of the chocolate supply, they may decide to cut the U.S. out. On the upside, though, I’ve heard that the French don’t really give a s*** what the U.S. or anyone else thinks about them.
But to return again to the subject of edible, fungible commodities in general (see, mods, there’s a definite tie-in here), bob_honest, in the southern part of my home state, a lot of women still cook rice first thing in the morning. Now, I’m from north Louisiana originally, but we eat a lot of rice, too.
Good thing Ivory Coast doesn’t supply most of the world’s rice.
I hate to say it but the French were good for the Ivory Coast. When they ran things, the country ran smoothly. The last president died in 1993 and then they stopped hiring the 40,000 French civil servants that ran the country to save money, or more likely that is to spread this patronage to their local friends and family members. By 1998, the last time I returned, things were running on empty. I am surprised that it has taken another 5 years for the country to start falling apart. It was already coming apart at the seams in 1998. The solution cannot however be for the French to recolonize Africa. The only seemingly possible option therefore is a slide by Cote dIvoire to hit the bottom enjoyed by its African neighbors. I see no cause for optimism and it looks like we are going to have yet another failed state on our hands. For this particular conflict, I fully sympathize with the French and the Lebanese traders that they protected. Without the French there can be no order, without order no Lebanese traders, without the Lebanese, no functioning trade, banks, etc. etc. Looks like the country is pooched.
Here is a very large (100MB) high quality video of a massacre of civilians by the French Army in the Ivory Coast. It is extremely graphic. You have been warned.
radioci.embaci.com/englishdownlo … lians2.mpg
Note: After watching this, don’t anyone open your mouth about brutal, trigger-happy, “hillbilly” American troops.
As with the American soliders who have been accused of various “crimes” in Iraq, my sympathy is completely with the French soldiers. Very very very hard to try to maintain crowd control for hours and hours and hours at end while being taunted and maybe even threatened with weapons. I just hope that if the US soldiers are going to constantly be given the heat from the media that the French soldiers will also be grilled. But I doubt this will happen since we all know where the media’s sympathies lie. Again, my sympathy is totally with the soldiers. If there is some sort of crime, then let them be tried but let’s not condemn then for overreacting given the very very very trying circumstances under which they are trying to work. Let’s also hope that given this incident that the never-ending America bashers will realize that this is not some cowboy overreaction but a natural reaction that may have occurred with split-second timing. One incident leads to a bit more which leads to something else which then leads to opening fire. I think that this could happen very very very easily.
French Legionnaires have a taste for blood stretching back to medieval times. An appropriate role model for born-again crusaders.
Hey Spook:
Maybe the French foreign legionnaires are really Jewish. That should just about sew it up and make it all easy for you to digest.
As much as I detest the government of Jacques Chirac, I am in total sympathy with the French, their soldiers and their position in the Cote d’Ivoire and so should everyone else. What will follow will be what? Liberia? Sudan? Somalia? The French did a good job keeping stability in Cote d’Ivoire for long after it had collapsed in the rest of Africa. The French can leave but that will not hurt France. I wonder how Cote d’Ivoire however will handle becoming just another marginalized African nation with a civil war and corrupt worthless government officials. Too bad. The last of the lot has finally fallen. What is left in Africa?
When I posted the link to the video above, I didn’t realise there were 2 parts (DOH!). 
Anyway, here is part 1.
And as above, the video contains [color=red]graphic images [/color]of civilians being massacred by French troops.
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! …
You DO realize that the treacherous French “crusaders” are protecting (and surreptitiously arming, according to the government of Ivory Coast) the Muslim antigovernment rebels against the predominantly Christian government and its predominantly Christian supporters – said Christian supporters also being the ones that the French Legionnaire “crusaders” were massacreing the other day?
Here, from Arab News, a source you will no doubt trust:
arabnews.com/?page=7§ion … =11&y=2004
In other words, Spook, if the Legionnaires are “crusaders”, they’re ON THE WRONG FUCKING SIDE!
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! …
You DO realize that the treacherous French “crusaders” are protecting (and surreptitiously arming, according to the government of Ivory Coast) the Muslim antigovernment rebels against the predominantly Christian government and its predominantly Christian supporters – said Christian supporters also being the ones that the French Legionnaire “crusaders” were massacreing the other day?
Here, from Arab News, a source you will no doubt trust:
arabnews.com/?page=7§ion … =11&y=2004
In other words, Spook, if the Legionnaires are “crusaders”, they’re ON THE WRONG FUCKING SIDE!
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! …
You DO realize that the treacherous French “crusaders” are protecting (and surreptitiously arming, according to the government of Ivory Coast) the Muslim antigovernment rebels against the predominantly Christian government and its predominantly Christian supporters – said Christian supporters also being the ones that the French Legionnaire “crusaders” were massacreing the other day?
Here, from Arab News, a source you will no doubt trust:
arabnews.com/?page=7§ion … =11&y=2004
In other words, Spook, if the Legionnaires are “crusaders”, they’re ON THE WRONG FUCKING SIDE!
Legionnaires aren’t crusaders by any stretch. They’re thugs, miscreants, vagabonds, adventurers – and the odd philosopher – from around the world.
Ask Fred who I was referring to as ‘born-again crusaders.’ He can explain it.