Bittersweet chocolate

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 22:53:00 +0000

Of the $1.1 billion in boxed chocolates that Americans are expected to buy on Valentine's Day, very little will be untainted by the scourge of child labor. Although some who buy those bonbons will do so without knowing the sinister history of their purchases, others, like the chocolate makers, will have known for at least two years, if not longer, that cocoa beans imported from the Ivory Coast -- used to make nearly half the chocolate consumed in this country -- are harvested in large part by children, some as young as 9, and many of whom are considered slaves, trafficked from desperately poor countries like Mali and Burkina Faso.

The most recent survey of conditions on West African cocoa farms, completed by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture for the U.S. Agency for International Development, estimated that nearly 300,000 children work in dangerous conditions on cocoa farms in the four countries surveyed -- Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon -- the vast majority of them in the Ivory Coast. The report, released in July 2002, says that of the 300,000 children, more than half (64 percent) are under 14 years old. Twelve thousand had no connection to the family on whose cocoa farm they toiled, but only 5,100 of them were paid for their work. Almost 6,000 were described as "unpaid workers with no family ties," provoking advocates to refer to them as "slaves." The rest work on their families' farms, kept home from school to do punishing work during the all-important harvest seasons. The latter category are, in the definition of the International Labor Organization, child laborers.

The Father, the Son and the Holy JumboTron

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 19:32:00 +0000

"What did Jesus do?" asks Michael Slaughter, pastor of Ginghamsburg Church in Tipp City, Ohio. "Jesus spoke in parables, which was storytelling -- it wasn't abstract ideas. It was passing on wisdom through the telling of stories."

And telling stories, says Slaughter, is what he is doing every Sunday, albeit with an arguably unholy twist. Where Jesus might have relied on little more than his voice and a nice turn of phrase, Slaughter employs a huge screen and Sony 3-chip studio cameras, an SVHS-format video system, Media 100 nonlinear digital video editing equipment and a Hughes/JVC 320 projection system -- all of it operated by something called "the worship team."

He also operates a Web site, complete with discussion boards. "We are doing a series on marriage and home," reads one posting. "I'm looking for a video clip that shows a wife supporting her husband and vice versa. Any ideas?" A response: "In Father of the Bride Part 2 (my wife made me watch it) there are a coupla scenes when the husband totally pampers his pregnant wife." Other discussion threads: subwoofer placement; which mini-DV camcorder to buy; and which image, converted into a slide and presented via PowerPoint during a service, will best communicate "sanctification."

Salon.com > Caroline Tiger

Bittersweet chocolate

The Father, the Son and the Holy JumboTron