For many of us, including my lovely bride, chocolate is considered to be one of the basic food groups. So over the years I tried to learn her specific signs of chocolate deficiency and, to an appreciable degree, I have succeeded. So to maintain and increase my domestic bliss, I intend to keep on buying chocolate – but not the imported and usually very expensive Belgian and French varieties.
I can hear some of the responses now: “Marzullo, you are just a Francophobic, reactionary, basher, etc., etc. …” What probably won’t make it into that ad-hominem attack list, prompted by acute loss-of-Godiva-fear, was “analytical” or “ethical.”
Say what?
For those who have not read my recent piece on French atrocities, France (aided by the Belgians) has been engaged in another little military adventure in its African jewel, C?te d’Ivorie – also known as the Ivory Coast – where it is busy supporting a regime that on its best day could be called repressive. It might interest you to know that the practical reason France didn’t intervene in 1999 is because Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo seemed to be a Marxist and the French socialists simply wouldn’t hear of it. The Gbagbo regime and its inept French puppeteers are now busy reducing what was once the pillar of African stability into another Rwanda.
You remember Rwanda don’t you? An estimated 800,000 dead from a French-supported genocide, and still counting – ring any bells yet?
But what you probably don’t know about the Ivory Coast is that it is the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans, accounting for 40 percent of the total according to the latest tallies in Forbes. The Ivory Coast also produces coffee beans and palm oil as its other principal export commodities, and commodities are about all it has to export. While we are talking about that county’s cocoa crop we should cover a couple of other aspects as well.
France owns about 60 percent of all businesses in the Ivory Coast and an even higher percentage of the cocoa plantations. France, along with Belgium, regularly account for the highest percentage of bulk purchases of the annual Ivorian cocoa production, with France taking 30 percent all by itself. To this end, these companies hire a very large percentage of workers from neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, who comprise the largest group of cheap, imported laborers that now comprise 40 percent of the total population – and most of the rebels.
It is this same group of immigrants that has been targeted for repression and now random murder by the French-supported Gbagbo government. But, as the French troops “only” provide the perimeter security for the busy government murder squads, perhaps you can rationalize their role as minor. Good for you.
For those who still consider the press to be the best weapons against tyranny, you should know that Ivorian journalists are routinely abducted, beaten and sometimes killed by the Gbagbo government, while its sponsor, France, looks the other way. You don’t like journalists either? OK. Too bad, so sad.
For the environmentally minded, how about France and other European Union members blocking the adoption of International Commodity-Related Environment Agreements (ICREAs) for the past decade? The ICREAs were developed by a Dutch economist to help commodity-exporting countries implement more sustainable production methods by eliminating the competitiveness impacts of environmental policies, providing revenue for improved production methods or providing a price premium for more sustainable commodity production. But perhaps you like free markets, and that’s too “Green” for you? Sigh.
How about the formation of a private European army by France and Belgium in concert with Germany and Luxembourg to challenge NATO? France’s Chirac says that it is of no concern to anybody what they do, but the obstinate and contrarian military analysts persist in seeing this as a move that may destabilize and polarize Europe. Well, that’s the Europeans’ business, not ours, you mumble.
Belgium now holds itself forth as the arbiter of behavior in war through its International War Crimes Tribunal. Right now it is busy considering Iraqi claims that members of the United States military are war criminals under a set of non-specifics that could easily be described as fitting any American they choose to name. But perhaps nobody you know is in the military, so that’s no skin off your nose. Maybe it is unpopular today, but you say you certainly have the right to hold to that opinion. Right on, power to the … uh, Baathists, oops … Belgians.
Well perhaps this one is something that will hit closer to home: The French and their sometime sidekicks, the Belgians, habitually act against the United States (and a great deal of the rest of humanity) in the United Nations.
Take for instance France’s earlier insistence that U.N. sanctions emplaced against the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq be retained – until they got a nice slice of the reconstruction pie, that is. But perhaps its later grudging acquiescence after the political heat got turned way, way up is something you interpret in nobler terms than the grubby veniality it appears as to the rest of us.
Well now, for any who might still be interested after all these facts and issues, the Chocolate business is very big business indeed for both France and Belgium. In Europe alone that amounts to over $3 billion annually in total retail sales, with North American sales in the same ballpark. The other major market is Asia, but that is still the smallest by far of the three. Bet you didn’t know that Europe gets 90 percent of its cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast and that France exports a little better than half of its chocolate products and the Belgians even more. Cutting into that export business will hurt, and more than a little considering the growing economic crisis in France.
As for me, I will save the money that imports like Godiva and Valrhona Couverture overcharge for their products and take my bride out an extra time or two. Hershey’s Symphony? bars will do just fine for us, and so I expect to suffer no secondary chocolate withdrawal symptoms either. I’m not that stupid.
Tom Marzullo is a former Special Forces soldier and a veteran of submarine special operations. He resides in Colorado.
