"Jonathan Ball" > wrote in message nk.net...
> Derek wrote:
>
> > "Jonathan Ball" > wrote in message nk.net...
> >
> >>Some people with more time on their hands than sense
> >>(and a guilty conscience) claim, without evidence, that
> >>the cocoa crop in West Africa is harvested using child
> >>slave labor. It isn't.
> >
> >
> > There IS plenty of evidence proving it exists,
>
> None. It doesn't exist.

There IS plenty of evidence proving it exists.

WASHINGTON -- The chocolate industry will
announce Monday that it has accepted responsibility
for labor practices on cocoa farms and will work
with child labor experts, lawmakers, growers and
unions to eliminate child slavery and other forms of
exploitation.
The action plan comes just months after industry
insiders said they did not know that cocoa farmers
were enslaving children in Ivory Coast, a West
African nation that supplies 43 percent of U.S.
cocoa, the raw ingredient of chocolate. A Knight
Ridder investigation published in June found that
some boys as young as 11 were sold or tricked
into slavery to harvest cocoa beans in Ivory Coast.
http://www.vanilla.com/html/aware-1001slavery.html


Knight Ridder News Service
June 28, 2001
By Sumana Chatterjee

Jun. 28--WASHINGTON--After months of saying there
was little or no evidence of child slavery on cocoa farms
in Ivory Coast, chocolate manufacturers and their industry
groups are ratcheting up global efforts to combat the
problem. The U.S. government is investigating whether to
tell its agencies to stop buying cocoa products because
of the Ivory Coast slavery, a Labor Department spokesman
said Wednesday. A joint industry-government survey of
cocoa farms begins next month, and the international cocoa
industry has called a special meeting for July to discuss
ways to end slavery on the farms that supply cocoa beans.
http://tinyurl.com/tbs9

The Ivory Coast grows more than 40 per cent of
the world's cocoa beans. Some experts say 10 per
cent of those beans are picked by child slaves. Labour
organizations say most of the slaves are boys between
10 and 17.

The U.S. State Department's 2000 Human Rights
Report estimates that 15,000 child slaves work on
cocoa, cotton, and coffee farms in Ivory Coast.
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/03/28...slavery_020327

On Oct. 1, the U.S. Chocolate Manufacturers
Association, the World Cocoa Foundation, and
Hershey, M&M Mars, Nestle and World's Finest
Chocolate signed an agreement acknowledging
and taking responsibility for reports of child slavery
and exploitation on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast,
West Africa. That area provides 40 percent of the
cocoa used by U.S. companies, and in 2000 the
State Department reported that 15,000 child slaves
work there on cocoa, coffee and cotton farms.
http://www.thelutheran.org/0112/page10d.html

There is no denying these facts on child slave labour,
and there's no use you denying you support this slavery
every time you buy chocolate. That being so, according
to your logic, those black kids don't have any rights and
aren't even deserving of them because you earlier wrote;

"According to my logic, if you knowingly continue
to buy chocolate - we know YOU do, you fat
lard-ass - then YOU do not respect the rights of
the children. It doesn't prove they don't have any;
it proves YOU don't believe they do."
Jonathan Ball Date: 2003-07-29

and then soon after;

"I don't buy chocolate, and when I did, I wasn't
supporting slavery."
Jonathan Ball 2003-08-06

This proves you're the hypocrite as described in
your opening post to this thread when you wrote;

"People who advocate that everyone adopt a moral
standard that the advocates themselves don't follow
are hypocrites, and bad people."