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Crossfire's meant to make you think, but keep it simple: LIBERIA


Soup BDC

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This is something I JUST LEARNED at age twenty, and it took running into a Liberian to learn it. It baffles me how an American highschool history book doesnt go over this:

 

From wikipedia

 

Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the west coast of Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d'Ivoire. Liberia, which means "Land of the Free", was founded as an independent nation by free-born and formerly enslaved blacks from the United States. Recently it has witnessed two civil wars, the Liberian Civil War (1989–1996), and the Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003), that have displaced hundreds of thousands and destroyed its economy.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia

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I learned about Liberia before there was a 'Black History Month'... I recall my teacher also talked about several other 'back to africa' movements from back then and the whole history of the idea up through Huey Newton and the Black Panthers. Also, at one point, one of those 60's radical groups, maybe it was Patty Hearst and the SLA, had hostages or were in a stand-off and they demanded a plane to Liberia.

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Sorghum.jpg

 

i took a writing intensive course on the history of africa. really interesting except for the days when my white professor would let his african friend lecture us on the importance of sorghum. nobody could understand one word the guy said. im not joking. not one word. for a 3 hour class thats alot of looking back and forth at each other with blank expressions. i was the only white guy in the class so i just played like i understood.

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i was the only white guy in the class so i just played like i understood.

 

Hahaha, I don't think you meant it quite the same way but, this reminds me of something I read a couple months ago. Alan Quartermain describing a 'lightning fight' between 2 witch doctors.

 

"When we had sat there for a while my curiosity overcame me, and I asked leave of the chief to go down and inspect the arena.He said I might do so at my own risk. I told him that the fire from above would not hurt white men..."

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different country but related to the africa topic

 

i just watched hotel rwanda, kinda reminded me of the killing fields but i thought it was pretty good.

especially showing how useless the un was in doing anything to save the tootsie(sp?)

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as long as were talking about different countries... I did my 11th grade Social Studies term report (stand in front of the class) on Djibouti... yeah, for that reason.

 

One thing I learned is that ALL THEY HAVE for industry is a Coca-Cola plant... and the same rail line that goes directly to the plant AND across the rest of the country ALSO has stations and carries civilian cars. The ONLY tactic (back in the 80's) for the rebels was to blow up the tracks because, otherwise, life went on as usual. Not that many people traveled and lots worked at the Coke plant so... blow the lines and nobody goes nowhere and everyone gets layed-off. Seemed like a cyclical thing where Coke and the Govt. would team up to secure the train for like 3 months a year and then everyone ran out of money and they would blow up the tracks and everyone would start saving to fix the tracks and so on...

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