ACORN

[kandrathe]

Kandrathe "...how utterly powerless we are to stop it." Can you really not understand, or do you refuse to? You are *not* powerless.

I think you are deluded if you think I have any power.

Kandrathe "And, until there are legions of like minded throughout all the nations the world, nothing will stop the exploitation of people or the planet."

There you have it. If you accept your responsibility, that legion will have grown. You can't decide for others, but you can decide for yourself.

You, I, and many of the people here are at the upper end of the IQ scale. We can think outside the box. Ask the average person to try to understand about cocoa. You would find about 1 in 10 people even care.

Kandrathe "My hypothesis therefore is that all products are made by exploiting either people or the environment. All farming, mining, and manufacturing must stop immediately. Humans are suffering and destroying the earth."

You just tumbled down the slippery slope.

It's your sled and your slope. I'm suing! :lol: This is how I feel when people complain about "evil" technology/products in the world, and their only solution is to ban/divest/boycott them. As Pete said, the natural conclusion is the few humans that remain after the global die off will live in primitive huts as we did a few thousand years ago. Point to me a product and I will reveal to you the evils in making and bringing it to market.

P.S. Kandrathe, did you read your own link? The subtitle is "Seven years after the industry agreed to abolish child labor, little progress has been made."

Why has little progress been made? That is my point. The US government, the industry, and Ivory Coast are all involved to stop exploitation, but still little progress is being made.

About halfway, I find this: "...introduced legislation mandating a labeling system for chocolate. The industry fought back..."

Right, the full quote is "The controversy came to a head in 2001, when U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced legislation mandating a labeling system for chocolate. The industry fought back, and a compromise was reached establishing a voluntary protocol by which chocolate companies would wean themselves from child labor, then certify that they had done so. The certification process would not involve labeling of products, but it would call for public reporting by African governments, third-party verification and poverty remediation by 2005." So, "fought back" as in working with Congress to let them try to make a gradual change rather than destroy the cocoa industry with sudden legislation.

And it ends with this: "We have given the industry plenty of time," Engel says. "I am not prepared to give another extension."

Engel also suffers from trying to westernize the people of West Africa.

Angeline Kili, head of the government body tasked with financing and regulating the cocoa sector, blames farmers from Burkino Faso and Mali for whatever child labor violations may be occurring. "They need labor, so they have kids working, sometimes with the bad consequences," she says. "Sometimes they traffic children. Child labor wasn't a big problem, but it became a big problem recently. You have to remember, all cocoa farmers worked as kids. Our president worked on a farm with his parents for no money."

Or, in other words, the people in Africa don't understand why this is a big problem to westerners.

This article explains the situation pretty good, imo, and I advise everyone to read it fully. Glad it wasn't me who came up with it :whistling:

I don't have any problem with having an honest discussion of an issue.