Podcasts about ivoirian

In January, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger officially withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, having already established the Alliance of Sahel States, or AES, as an alternative regional grouping. The move has had a multitude of consequences, including ongoing diplomatic spats between the AES states and those that remain committed to ECOWAS, as well as challenges to trade and freedom of movement across the region. But the security implications of the fracturing of ECOWAS as a regional bloc are also important to consider, as West Africa faces an array of challenges that are increasingly affecting what are usually thought of as the region's more stable coastal countries, such as Senegal, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. All three of the military-run AES states face long-running jihadist and domestic insurgencies, including armed groups with links to the Islamic State and al-Qaida. Most prominent among them are the Islamic State-Sahel Province and Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, which is affiliated with al-Qaida and is also active in northern Cote d'Ivoire, Benin and Togo. These groups have been active throughout the Sahel for over a decade, typically exploiting local grievances and intercommunal tensions, particularly between farmers and pastoralists as well as against the Peuhl community, which is often portrayed as being sympathetic to the jihadists. The jihadists mobilize these tensions to stoke conflict and recruit among marginalized communities in a broader effort to seize territory and create an Islamic caliphate in the Sahel and West Africa. These groups have targeted civilians and government forces alike, and their attacks have often been tactically sophisticated and significant in impact. In August 2024, for instance, an attack by JNIM in Barsalogho, in northern Burkina Faso, killed around 600 people. And in November 2023, an ambush in Niger's Tillaberi region killed at least 200 soldiers and wounded at least 34 others. Jihadist violence has increased at an accelerating rate in recent years, killing 11,643 people across the Sahel in 2023, a 43 percent increase from the previous year and a threefold increase since 2020, according to the African Centre for Strategic Studies. It has also increasingly spilled over into coastal West African states, with Ghana, Togo, Benin and Cote d'Ivoire all now threatened by these groups as well, albeit to a much lesser extent than the Sahelian states. In Togo, an attack on an army barracks last year killed 12 soldiers, for instance, and JNIM is increasingly fortifying its positions near the borders of Togo and Benin. The problems posed by insecurity are exacerbated by the refugee crisis that violence in the Sahel is causing. By early 2025, nearly 87,000 people had fled their homes in the Sahel into coastal countries. This has put a strain on local communities, especially in Cote d'Ivoire, where nearly 58,000 of the refugees have fled. The rampant insecurity has also fueled political instability, with the three AES states having experienced a combined five coups between 2020 and 2023. The ECOWAS split could exacerbate many of these security challenges, not least because it has created or exacerbated tensions between many countries that have remained in ECOWAS and those that have left. In the past 12-18 months, for instance, Cote d'Ivoire, known as a staunch defender of ECOWAS, and neighboring Burkina Faso have engaged in repeated diplomatic spats linked to mutual fears of destabilization as well as Burkina Faso's rejection of the region's and ECOWAS' historical pro-Western leanings. Gun battles and disputes at the border between Burkinabe and Ivoirian troops have become common, with Ivoirian gendarmes having even been detained in Burkina Faso. Earlier this year Burkina Faso withdrew its diplomatic personnel from Cote d'Ivoire. These disputes have increased instability on the two countries' shared border, exacerbating tensions driven by an inflow of Burk...

On this episode of Planet Afropop, Georges Collinet interviews fellow Cameroonian Gino Sitson. Sitson is a maverick maestro who blends unique vocal techniques with sounds from classical instruments—cello, violin, double bass—with African traditional elements. You have to hear it to believe it. You will likely share Georges' amazement. Also, new music from Bamako-based Ivoirian reggae star Tiken Jah Fakoly. His latest album, Acoustic, marks a striking new direction for Fakoly.

In this podcast, Peggie Bates, a PH&F board member, and I visit the three PH&F villages.  In the first, N'Douci, we establish our third chocolate-producing mini-factory.  This includes hooking up and troubleshooting all the machinery.  And we make a batch of about 35 pounds of chocolate and mold and wrap a few dozen bars and disks.We also visit the two other already established cooperatives in Depa and Pezoan and exchange news with them as well as work with them on filling out financial forms that will make our job ensuring accountability easier.We agreed to sign an MOU with TechnoServe, a worldwide non-profit to present "Chocolat des Villages" or Village Chocolates, and we agreed to return in September or October to present our plan to the CCC, the branch of the Ivoirian government that oversees the sales of coffee and cocoa.  The goal is also to partner with a large chocolate company that would help develop the village chocolate brand and solve some of the big problems that a small non-profit cannot solve--cost of transportation and import of finished product. As you listen, I believe you will recognize that we have made remarkable progress and that the donations we have received have gone a long way toward accomplishing our goal or bringing Ivoirian cocoa farmers up the value chain so they can live better lives.   Thanks so much for your past generosity.  To help us make progress, please donate...   1.   Go to www.projecthopeandfairness.org and click on the Donate button.     -OR- 2.  Send a check to: Donations, PH&F, 1298 Warren Road, Cambria, CA 93428. Tom Neuhaus, tom@projecthopeandfairness.orgTO LISTEN TO PODCAST—>

As promised,  this podcast is about my trip to Paris, where I spent 5 days in the Ivoirian CCC (Conseil du Café Cacao) booth with David Logbo Zigro talking about our joint project to establish village-based chocolate making.I begin the project with a lovely Ivoirian song to which people were dancing a sort of napkin dance (waving napkins in the air).  Then I talk about the history of the bean-to-bar movement and then about SOCOPLAN, the cooperative that David and I founded.  I also talk about the French non-profit, Projet Espoir et Equité which I founded in order to sell village-made chocolates.Thursday, December 1 marks our umpteenth fundraiser!  It's going to be more exciting than ever.  Check out the details at:  projecthopeandfairness.org.  To reserve tickets, just go to the website and click on the donate button.  The first donate button is for reserving tickets.  Your name will be recorded and put on a list.  When you arrive at the front door, we will know that you have donated.See you there!  Tom Neuhaus

The title of this podcast is a pun on doors and on the future.  I start by playing "Light My Fire" written by the Doors, and truly one of the greatest pieces in the history of Rock and Roll.  Then I talk about how Project Hope and Fairness represents a door to the future of the chocolate business.  And then I mention two big events:  my being part of the Ivoirian exhibit at the Salon du Chocolat, the world's biggest annual chocolate event, which happens in Paris and the second event is our upcoming fundraiser on Thursday, December 1 at the Monday Club in San Luis Obispo, CA, 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM.And the next pun is on the future because I review the book, "Ministry for the Future," which has to do with our collective future here on planet Earth.  I finish the podcast with another Doors work of genius:  "Riders on the Storm."I mention in the podcast that you can visit YouTube to see videos of cocoa and chocolate production in the mini-factory of SOCOPLAN, an agricultural cooperative in the village of Depa, Côte d'Ivoire.  To watch cocoa videos, ---> https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtOMzkAdojOV_bfgZA-8p87Z5F9oST31BTo watch chocolate videos --->  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtOMzkAdojOXOgrHuYGKlpcKegPtEGzJCAnd as always, please consider helping us help the cocoa farmer!  You can send a check to:DONATIONS, PROJECT HOPE AND FAIRNESS1298 Warren RoadCambria, CA 93428-OR-  go to www.projecthopeandfairness.org, scroll down to Donate and click!  Et Merci!

In this podcast (actually #37--ignore the fact that I said Podcast #36), we compare six preludes in three keys:  C Major, A Minor, and G Major.  I begin the podcast, though, by telling you what's happening in the wonderful world of chocolate.  The exciting news is that David is going to Paris to be part of the Ivoirian booth!  And I'm going to Paris to see him and to talk to others in the Ivoirian booth as well as other chocolate makers from around the world.  The second news is that we need to raise money to buy SOCOPLAN which David is the CEO of a new melangeur, as the old one which we bought 2 years ago needs some new parts.  But we can't be content to sit still.  David is becoming known throughout Côte d'Ivoire for his chocolate.  And the nice thing is I taught him how to make chocolate back in 2013.  So in 9 years, he's become known in his own country and we are making real progress toward making cocoa farmers expert chocolate makers.  This reverses the colonial trend of treating Africans like victims, supplying raw product and depriving them of the knowledge with which they can pull themselves out of the commodity trap.  Please consider donating to help us buy a new machine.  We can either buy another one of similar size, which requires $11,000 or we can quadruple production for $22,000.  So, we quadruple for double the price.  Not a bad deal.You can donate by sending a check to:DONATIONS, PH&F1298 Warren road93428 Cambria, CA United StatesOr go to www.projecthopeandfairness.org, pull down to Donate, and click on the second Donate button (General Funds)Enjoy the music!  Tom Neuhaus, CEO, Project Hope and Fairness

Plus de deux tonnes de cocaïne saisies à Abidjan et San Pedro… Le journal indépendant Soir Info souligne en manchette que cette affaire « continue d'éclabousser… » en Côte d'Ivoire. Au total, ce sont 2057 tonnes de cocaïne qui ont été saisies à Abidjan. Selon Soir Info, le « capo » présumé de cette mafia de la drogue, c'est-à-dire le « cerveau » de ce gang, serait un Espagnol du nom de Miguel Angel Devesa Mera, commerçant en oxygène médical comme en glaces alimentaires, domicilié à San Pedro (ouest de la Côte d'Ivoire), où il disposerait de « trois villas cossues ». C'est en faisant « parler » le téléphone portable du suspect, que les enquêteurs de la Police ivoirienne auraient mis en évidence ses « liens criminels » avec les 22 personnes inculpées dans cette affaire, énonce Soir Info.  Selon ce journal, les enquêtes ont également prouvé que c'est d'Abidjan que des cargaisons (étaient) convoyées dans la ville de San Pedro, « avec la complicité de plusieurs responsables locaux de l'administration et de la sécurité ». Elles étaient ensuite « redistribuées en petits lots avant d'être transportées jusqu'au désert malien ou nigérien, avec le soutien des groupes jihadistes, puis récupérées par voie aérienne », complète Soir Info. Inévitablement, cette affaire de drogue en Côte d'Ivoire alarme la presse au-delà des frontières ivoiriennes. Au Burkina Faso voisin, le quotidien Wakat Sera se penche aussi sur ce trafic « qui enfume la Côte d'Ivoire », formule-t-il. « Avec ses ports qui bouillonnent d'activités (la Côte d'Ivoire est un) point de passage qui prend de l'envergure. Du reste, le pays d'Alassane Ouattara est loin d'être le seul du continent qui est sur la route internationale de la drogue. Et c'est à ce titre que les inquiétudes sont légitimes de voir s'implanter davantage sous les tropiques, cette hydre dont les têtes poussent aussitôt coupées », énonce mythologiquement Wakat Sera, en soulignant que « ce trafic sert également à financer le terrorisme dont les pays africains, et plus spécifiquement ceux du Sahel, cherchent avec toutes les peines du monde, à se débarrasser ». Les mines de la mort au Burkina Au Burkina Faso, justement, la mine industrielle Riverstone Karma, située à Namissiguia, dans la région du Nord, a été visée par une attaque meurtrière hier matin. Des hommes en armes ont lancé un assaut contre la mine aux environs de 4h30 heure locale. Selon des sources sécuritaires, deux personnes, dont un civil et un soldat ont été tués durant l'attaque. Plusieurs personnes blessées et des véhicules incendiés. Et comme cette attaque survient après l'inondation meurtrière dans la mine de zinc de Perkoa, rouvrons Wakat Sera pour constater que ce quotidien local déplore que l'activité minière fasse « grise mine au Burkina ! ». Ce journal ouagalais se demande combien de temps encore le Burkina va « laisser ces poules aux œufs d'or livrées à elles-mêmes et à la furie de prédateurs au dessein bien caché, car n'ayant visiblement rien à voir avec des (…) jihadistes ? Pendant combien de temps encore le Burkina va-t-il assister, impuissant, à la fermeture de ses mines qui n'ont besoin que d'un peu plus de sécurité autour d'elles ? », interroge encore Wakat Sera. L'alerte famine de Macky Sall « Si les céréales locales ne sont pas produites, on sera dans une situation de famine très sérieuse », prévient à la Une du quotidien EnQuête le président du Sénégal. Mais au-delà de cette alerte-famine, ce journal dakarois, Macky Sall « n'est pas allé en Russie pour essayer de convaincre son homologue, Vladimir Poutine, d'arrêter de bombarder l'Ukraine. Il y est allé pour sauver les intérêts des États membres de l'Union ».De son côté, le site Senego relève que, lors de son entretien avec RFI et France 24, Macky Sall s'est défendu de se faire le « complice » d'une agression russe de l'Ukraine. Le président sénégalais « a réfuté un alignement en faveur de la Russie et reconnait que l'Ukraine est agressée par la Vladimir Poutine », pointe ce journal sénégalais en ligne.

My podcast today consists of personal observations regarding scenes in Al Jazeera's very important piece about deforestation and child labor in Ivoirian cocoa growing.  For maximum benefit, play the documentary in one window and the podcast in another.  My comments are keyed to playhead positions, so you'll want to play and pause and rewind the documentary.Podcast URL:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1057903/4827602To watch the video, you have to rent it (or buy it) now.  Just go to Vimeo.com.  Click the magnifying glass to do a. search.  Enter "Chocolate's Heart of Darkness".  Then just rent it or buy it.  It's really powerful.

Finally the world cup is over and the fever is over! I come out of the world cup with serious lessons that I have learnt and I hope that I can share with you. What does the world cup have to do with Nigerian airports? The potential of blacks? Leadership and vision? The potential of black people is not in doubt. African countries have what it takes to win the world cup, why haven’t we ever won? When it is our offspring and scions, actually playing the football and winning the world cup. Potential is something, and we have it. The lessons we learn from the finals of the world cup is that, we as a race, we as Africans, as Nigerians, Ghanaians, Senegalese, Ivoirian’s, possess the raw potential needed to take this continent to the zenith of achievement. We have the people, it’s our people playing the world cup, it’s our people at NASA, at general electric, and it’s our people everywhere making things work in the Diaspora all over the world. Why not here in Africa? - Because we lack the leadership. It is not just raw power strength, the ability to run, pick up or head a ball that puts the team where it should be in the ranking of teams, it is leadership. A coach that develops the skill in you, someone who coordinates everything to make sure each strong player, plays with the others to make a harmonious goal. Leadership, vision, coaching, motivation, that is what we lack.

Within twelve years of its emergence as a musical style at the University of Abidjan residence in Yopougon in 1991, the fame of zouglou music soared across borders and continents. The conditions that made the emergence and spread of zouglou music possible are part of a larger context that has influenced other recent genres of African popular music. Due to copyright piracy, Ivoirian artists have also experienced difficulty in surviving financially from their music. However, recently there has been a new development: many new maquis (open air restaurants) have opened as new affordable performance spaces in which artists perform live, rather than via play-back. Anne Schumann presents and discusses these new performance spaces in the Ivoirian music economy as well as the role of cultural entrepreneurs in reviving Abidjan as an African creative city.

Misan Rewane is the CEO and co-founder of West Africa Vocational Education (WAVE). WAVE is a vocational training platform that seeks to empower millions of West African youth with industry-relevant employability skills that transform their mindsets, and provides access to employment opportunities to enhance their social mobility. WAVE provides self-motivated youths with the skill-sets employers look for, and teaches them how to stand out professionally by reinforcing a mindset of continuous improvement.   Born and raised in Nigeria, Misan is no stranger to the difficulties of education and social mobility in West Africa. When her parents, unable to ignore the education system's breakdown, were compelled to send her to the US for college, Misan resolved to play a role in transforming the region's education and skills development systems. After earning her Economics degree from Stanford University, she worked in management consulting with The Monitor Group on a wide spectrum of projects in both the private and public sector. Post-Monitor, she supported aspiring Ivoirian entrepreneurs through TechnoServe's Business Plan Competition, and developed a scholarship administration model as a consultant with the Center for Public Policy Alternatives in Nigeria. While enrolled at the Harvard Business School in 2012, she sought out and connected with fellow socially-minded Africans to discuss ways to tackle youth unemployment in the region. Those initial discussions were the seeds that eventually grew to become West Africa Vocational Education (WAVE). The Company was launched in 2013 to focus on training and placing unemployed youth in the hospitality and retail industry.

Cote d’Ivoire has the hottest, most diverse musical scene on the continent. Check out the Ivoirian take on Reggae, Mandingue, Coupe Decale, Afro-Zouk, and Zouglou

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin; Global Research, June 15, 2013 In an interview with the French TV station LCP, former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas said: ‘’ I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me.’’ Dumas went on give the audience a quick lesson on the real reason for the war that has now claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. ‘’This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance. Consequently, everything that moves in the region- and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister who told me ‘we’ll try to get on with our neighbours but those who don’t agree with us will be destroyed. It’s a type of politics, a view of history, why not after all. But one should know about it.’’ Dumas is a retired French foreign minister who is obliged to use discretion when revealing secrets which could affect French foreign policy. That is why he made the statement ‘I am French, that doesn’t interest me’.  He could not reveal France’s role in the British plan as he would be exposing himself to prosecution for revealing state secrets. There have been many disinformation agents in the British and French press, many of them well known ‘leftist’ war correspondents and commentators, who have tried to pretend that Israel secretly supports Assad.  Those who make such arguments are either stupid, ignorant or deliberate disinformation agents of NATO and Israel. Israel’s support for Al Qaeda militants in Syria has even been admitted by the mainstream press. For example, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper published a report on June 12th on Israel’s medical treatment of the Al Qaeda fighters. Israel planned this war of annihilation years ago in accordance with the Yinon Plan, which advocates balkanization of all states that pose a threat to Israel. The Zionist entity is using Britain and France to goad the reluctant Obama administration into sending more American troops to their death in Syria on behalf of Tel Aviv. Of all the aggressor states against Syria, Israel has been the quietest from the start. That is because Laurent Fabius, Francois Holland, William Hague and David Cameron are doing their bidding by attempting to drag Israel’s American Leviathan into another ruinous war so that Israel can get control of the Middle East’s energy reserves, eventually replacing the United States as the ruling state in the world. It has also been necessary for Tel Aviv to remain silent so as not to expose their role in the ‘revolutions’, given the fact that the Jihadist fanatics don’t realize they are fighting for Israel. This is the ideology of Zionism which cares no more for Jews than it does for its perceived enemies.   The Jewish colony is determined to become a ruling state in the Middle East in the insane delusion that this will enable it to replace the United States as a global hegemon, once the US collapses fighting Israel’s wars. Israeli Prime Minister once told American talk show host Bill Maher that the reason why Israel always wins short conflicts, while the United States gets bogged down in endless wars. ‘’ The secret is that we have America’’, he said. But Israel is itself slowly collapsing. If one excludes the enslaved Palestinian population, the Jewish state still has the highest level of poverty in the developed world with more and more Jews choosing to leave the ‘promised’ land, a garrison state led by mad men, an anti-Semitic entity threatening to engulf the world in war and destruction. Israel cares no more about its own working class Jews than any other ethnic community. In fact, if the Likudnik crooks running the Israeli colony get their way, working class Israelis will be among the first to pay as they are conscripted to fight terrorists created by their own government. With orthodox Jews protesting in the streets of New York against Israel and Haredi Jewish minority opposing Israel’s rampant militarism, Zionism is coming under increased attack from Jewish religious authorities and non-Zionist Jews both inside and outside of the occupied territories. This is not the first time that Roland Dumas has spoken out against wars of aggression waged by successive French regimes. In 2011 he revealed that he had been asked by the United States when he was foreign minister in the Mitterrand administration to organize the bombing of Libya. On that occasion the French refused to cooperate.  Dumas, a lawyer by profession, offered to defend Colonel Gaddafi, at the International Criminal Court in the event of his arrest by Nato. Dumas was also vocal in condemning France’s brutal neo-colonial bombing of the Ivory Coast earlier in 2011, were death squads and terrorists similar to those later deployed in Libya and Syria were unleashed upon the Ivoirian population in order to install a IMF puppet dictator Alassane Quattara in power. Gbagbo was described as one of the greatest African leaders of the past 20 years by Jean Ziegler, sociologist and former member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council. Gbagbo had plans to nationalize banks and wrest control of the country’s currency from the colonial finance institutions in Paris. He also wanted to roll back many of the worst effects of IMF restructuring by nationalizing industries and creating a functioning, universal free health service. All of this threatened the interests of French corporations in the former French colony. So, the Parisian oligarchy went to work to find a suitable replacement as caretaker of their Ivoirian colony. They sent in armed terrorist gangs, or ‘rebel’s in the doublespeak of imperialism, who murdered all before them while the French media blamed president Gbagbo for the violence that ensued. Gbagbo and Gaddafi had opposed Africom, the Pentagon’s plan to recolonize Africa. That was another reason for the  2011 bombing of their two African countries. The formula is always the same. Imperialism backs ‘rebels’, whenever its interests are threatened by regimes that love their country more than foreign corporations.  One should not forgot that during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, General Franco and his cronies were also ‘rebels’ and they, like their counterparts in Libya in 2011, were bombed to power by foreign powers, replacing a progressive, republican administration with fascism. There are pro-Israeli fanatics in France who have used the analogy of the Spanish Civil War as justification for intervention in Libya and Syria. The pseudo-philosopher Henry Bernard Levy is one of them.  Of course, the ignoramus Levy doesn’t realize that the reason France, England and the USA did not officially intervene in the Spanish Civil War is because they were covertly helping the ‘rebels’ from the start. They enabled arms shipments to the Francoist ‘rebels’ while preventing arms deliveries to the Spanish government, who, like Syria today, were helped by Moscow. Anyone who has studied the Spanish Civil War knows that all the imperialist countries wanted Franco as a bulwark against communism. There is nothing imperialism loves more than a rebel without a cause. What imperialism hates, however, are revolutionaries. That is why the ‘rebels’ which imperialism sends into other countries to colonize them on behalf of foreign banks and corporations, have to be marketed as ‘revolutionaries’ in order to assure the support of the Monty Python brigade of petty-bourgeois, ‘ leftist’ dupes such as Democracy Now! and their ilk. Dumas is not the only top French official to denounce the New World Order.  Former French ambassador to Syria Michel Raimbaud wrote a book in 2012  entitled ‘Le Soudan dans tous les états’, where he revealed how Israel planned and instigated a civil war in South Sudan in order to balkanize a country led by a pro-Palestinian government. He also exposed the pro-Israeli media groups and ‘human rights’ NGOS who created the ‘humanitarian’ narrative calling for military intervention by the United States in the conflict. The subject was covered extensively by African investigative journalist Charles Onana in his 2009 book, Al-Bashir & Darfour LA CONTRE ENQUÊTE. There are many more retired French officials who are speaking out about the ruinous policies of this French government, including the former head of French domestic intelligence Yves Bonnet. There have also been reports of dissent in the French armed forces and intelligence apparatus. After the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011, the former French ambassador to Libya Christian Graeff told French radio station France Culture that it was responsible for the diffusion of lies and war propaganda on behalf of Nato throughout the war.  Graeff also warned the broadcasters that such disinformation could only work on the minds of serfs but not in a country of free minds. The power of the Israeli lobby in France is a subject rarely discussed in polite circles. In France there is a law against questioning or denial of the holocaust. However, denial of the Korean holocaust, Guatemalan holocaust, Palestinian holocaust, Indonesian holocaust and the dozens of other US/Israeli supported genocides is not only perfectly legal but is the respectable norm. The same lobby which introduced the Loi Gayssot in 1990, effectively ending freedom of expression in France, would also like to ban any independent investigations of genocides whose narratives they have written, such as the Rwanda genocide, where Israel played a key role in supporting the ‘rebels’ led by Paul Kagame, who invaded Rwanda from Uganda from 1991 to 1994, leading to the genocide of both Tutus and Tutsis. Many serious scholars have written about the Rwandan genocide, which the Israel lobby repeatedly uses as a case study to justify ‘humanitarian’ intervention by Western powers.  The Zionist thought police would like to see such authors prosecuted for ‘negating’ imperialism’s disgusting lies on African conflicts. Now, the Israeli Lobby is forcing the (their) French government to prosecute twitter messages which the lobby deems ‘anti-Semitic’. This is one further step towards the creation of a totalitarian state where any criticism of imperialism, foreign wars, racism, oppression, perhaps eventually capitalism itself could fall under the rubric of ‘anti-Semitism’. These people are sick, and those who cow down to them are sicker. Perhaps the etymology of sickness, a word cognate with the German Sicherheit (security) according to dictionary.com, is not a coincidence. For what is particularly sick about our society is the cult of security,  endless surveillance, ubiquitous cameras, the cult of the all seeing eye, the prurient gaze as part of the incessant discourse on terrorism by those who specialize in the training of the very terrorists they claim to be protecting us from.  Whether or not the words security and sickness are linguistically related, they are certainly cognate in a philosophical sense. Roland Dumas and others like him should be highly commended for having to guts to say what so many others are too morally corrupt, too weak and cowardly to admit. As the French government and its media agencies drum up hysteria for war on Syria, Roland Dumas, now in the twilight of his years, is warning people of the consequences of not understanding where Israel is leading  the world. Will enough people heed the warning? Thats All every body, thanks for listening. Goodnight and goodbye