I will tell you this. I felt that both responses were lacking in substance and did not address my questions directly. As a result, Cadbury and Nestle are either no longer going to be appearing in our house, or if they do appear, it will be infrequently. Both will lose business as a result of your post.

Having said that, I would like to find a more comprehensive essay about this situation because I have a feeling it’s complex from these companies’ perspectives as well.

Thank you for contacting us regarding Cadbury in the United States.

Cadbury Canada is only authorized to distribute or sell to registered wholesale
and retail customers in Canada. This is in compliance with our contract with
Cadbury United Kingdom. In the United States, Hershey manufactures Cadbury
products

Described below are some of the key initiatives undertaken by Cadbury Schweppes,
our parent company regarding cocoa farming and harvesting:

¿We are working with all stakeholders involved in the production of chocolate –
from bean to chocolate bar – to boost the economic livelihood of cocoa farmers
and workers and ensure that cocoa is grown in a sustainable and ethical way.
Working with governments and other international organizations, we have programs
underway throughout West Africa to:

– Help farmers collectively market their produce – resulting in 15-20%
increases in producer prices for those involved in the program.

– Help cocoa farmers create a sustainable, biologically diverse agricultural
system to generate better yields, more consistent crops and respect the
environment.

– Implement responsible pest and disease management.

– Invest in social infrastructure, for example building water wells.

– Promote ethical working practices with a time bound program to certify that
cocoa is grown and harvested under internationally acceptable conditions with
regard to the use of labor of all ages.

These are complex issues and it will take time before the real results can be
seen. However, Cadbury Schweppes has a long heritage of supporting cocoa farmers
and a strong ethical foundation that has and continues to guide all aspects of
our business. We continue to be committed to the achievement of these goals. ¿

For full information, we encourage you log on to their website, at
Cadburyschweppes.com.

Best regards,

Consumer Relations

Funny how the charity I have chosen works in Israel, but you know me and my white mans guilt, radical leftist views and “politicized notion of what constitutes tzedakah and chesed,” apparently better than I do.

And remember, the phrase is not “tikkun yisrael” it’s “tikkun olam.” Think about that before you go needlessly bashing someone for simply mentioning our potential responsibilities to any other part of the olam next time.

I am involved in Tikkun Olam here in Israel, which is my primary responsibility. I support organizations I know and trust here, on a variety of issues.

If you think that this local activity is somehow less worthy than puffed-up global tokenism – you have again proven my point: you have a highly politicized notion of what constitutes tzedakah and chesed.

… and I came up with a host of radical left-wing sites. And the more serious of those sites grudgingly agreed that since the passage of laws in Congress and the establishment of the trade group, there has been improvement.

I also checked out the trade group linked to in the Nestle letter. It has UNICEF and a host of major NGOs involved, and detailed exactly the sort of programs I described – giving farmers the technological edge that will let fewer people bring in the same harvest, and supporting migrant worker families with stipends so the kids go to school.

Your broadside dismissal of Nestle because “they have plants in Africa and therefore know what’s going on” reveals your OWN prejudice Laya – maybe they are more effective in implementing the protocols because they are there? The fact is that there has been improvement, and the WCF is clearly not a resource-less industry fig-leaf.

You talk about how I dump people into boxes – yet this is just what the radicals on which you base your own righteous stance do.

Can your worldview handle the actual facts that contradict the It’s-Always-The-West’s-Fault ideology?

Laya:
…what you can do for tikkun olam…
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
Sometimes that means going beyond simple breast-beating self-righteousness.

For example: Welfare reform was Tikkun Olam – even though “progressives” and “humanists” jumped up and down decrying the “human suffering” that would be caused.

We all know what really happened. The tough-love insistence that people who could support themselves *should* support themselves had a salutary effect on most of the ex-welfare recipients. There has been very little relapse into dependancy.

Left-liberal ideology sees everything in terms of the exploited and the exploiters, the oppressors and the oppressed. But there’s an inherent, bitter hook in that world view that often goes unnoticed by good-hearted people: many of the people who present themselves as defenders of the poor and downtrodden really have a strong investment in MAINTAINING the victimized status of the downtrodden, rather than empowering them – it is their way to muster and consolidate political power.

Thus Hillary Clinton tells a black audience that Congress is “a plantation” 20 years after Reagan’s reforms sparked the growth of a solid black middle class, and after blacks have served in the highest levels of the Republican White House for years.

Because those who present themselves as champions of the downtrodden have a vested interest in maintaining the perception that the “oppressed” need them to look out for them.

Besides the obvious soft chauvinism and condescension in that pose, it allows the liberal “champions” to wield political power, and to accrue to themselves economic power (”we must have higher tax rates to redistribute income more *equitably* etc.”).

This is why no Democrats are talking bluntly to blacks about their own contribution to the problems in their communities.

This is also why the Democrats are furiously courting illegal aliens, trying to convince Latino Americans that they are another “oppressed minority group”.

Not to help them. To use them – politically, and emotionally: to make themselves feel righteous and virtuous.

It also explains the ease with which the taps of pity and mercy are shut off when the situation offers no ideological payoff – Darfur, Muslim treatment of women and gays, the Palestinians.

I don’t assume you follow this agenda – my reading of the situation is that you are like many sincere young laypeople raised in the stifling bosom of PC indoctrination, who have not yet learned to parse these inherent contradictions and manipulations.

But a review of the websites hyping the Chocolate Slavery story, the rhetoric used to hype it – and the ease with which a rather impressive deployment of government and NGO resources is dismissed as inadequate – all of these indicate an ideologically motivated filtering of the facts to conform to the We-Are-The-World, It’s-All-Our-Fault scenario.

Sorry Laya – Tikkun Olam is not always the same thing as feeling righteously guilty.

Nor is all virtuous denunciation of the West a blow for “social justice”.

Did you look at the WCF website? Read the interim reports? See the list of agencies that are pitching in?

Or is all that irrelevant because we already have our ideologically motivated “truth” in hand?