Oaxaca is my favorite part of Mexico. A really laid back place with friendly people. You can also buy raw cocoa beans there.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
coffee, cocoa beans, and palm oil

I think we've found oil.

Economy of Ivory Coast:

The Ivorian economy is largely market based and depends heavily on the agricultural sector. Almost 70% of the Ivorian people are engaged in some form of agricultural activity. Côte d'Ivoire is among the world's largest producers and exporters of coffee, cocoa beans, and palm oil.

This is serious. A chocolate shock could shake our slowly recovering economy, and it makes me shudder to think of how this could impact Starbuck's. *shudder*

Now before someone mentions it: Yes, Ivory Coast produces oil. But they are #59 in oil production volume, producing about 60,000 barrels a day. (Libya produces over 25 times that volume.) Hell, even Italy, Trinidad and Tobago, and East Timor produce more oil than Ivory Coast. So oil is a negligible factor in the equation, thus making Ivory Coast itself a negligible factor.

Ivory Coast has over 20 million people. (Libya, by comparison, has roughly 6.5 million people.) Its civil war has been going off and on for almost 9 years. Thousands and thousands of people have died; millions have become refugees. It was hoped that the 2010 presidential election would bring peace to their country, but obviously it has not. This isn't a new problem; it's been going on for years. Yet silence. Yet no intervention.

But on the first day of NATO operations in Libya, the US fired 118 Tomahawk missiles. (Britain, for its part, fired 6.) You want intervention? You got it, motherfucker.

Fuck this.