“We needed Firestone to give us international legitimacy,” said John Toussaint “J.T.” Richardson, a U.S.-trained architect who became one of Taylor’s top advisers. It helped provide him with the political capital and recognition he needed as he sought to establish his credentials as Liberia’s future leader. Taylor’s rebel government offered lower export taxes that gave the company a financial break on rubber shipments.įor Taylor, the relationship with Firestone was about more than money. In return, Taylor’s forces provided security to the plantation that allowed Firestone to produce rubber and safeguard its assets. Between 19, the company invested $35.3 million in the plantation. Over the next year, the company doled out more than $2.3 million in cash, checks and food to Taylor, according to an accounting in court files. The company signed a deal in 1992 to pay taxes to Taylor’s rebel government. In the first detailed examination of the relationship between Firestone and Taylor, an investigation by ProPublica and FRONTLINE lays bare the role of a global corporation in a brutal African conflict.įirestone served as a source of food, fuel, trucks and cash used by Taylor’s ragtag rebel army, according to interviews, internal corporate documents and declassified diplomatic cables. At a pivotal meeting in Liberia’s jungles in July 1991, the company agreed to do business with the warlord. Taylor wanted Firestone to help his rise to power. In operation since 1926, the rubber plantation was considered to be the largest of its kind in the world, a contiguous swath of trees, mud-brown rivers, low hills and verdant bush that at the time splayed across 220 square miles – roughly the size of Chicago.įirestone wanted Liberia for its rubber.
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For the attack that October morning, he had built his army of butchers and believers in part with the resources of one of America’s most iconic businesses: Firestone.įirestone ran the plantation that Taylor used to direct the October 1992 assault on Monrovia. Orchestrating the anarchy was Charles Taylor, a suave egomaniac obsessed with taking over Liberia, America’s most faithful ally in Africa. Five American nuns would be slaughtered, becoming international symbols of the conflict’s depravity. Half the country’s population would become refugees. More than 200,000 people would die or suffer terrible injuries, most of them civilians - limbs hacked off, eyes gouged out. It would whip savagely out of control over the next decade. Embassy, hunkered on a high spot overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.Ī new phase of Liberia’s civil war had begun.
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As they pressed in, the killers forced men, women and children from their homes. Boy soldiers canoed across mangrove swamps. Mortars arced through thick, humid air that smelled of rot. They loosed their attack on the sleeping city. In the pre-dawn darkness, they surrounded Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. They clutched talismans of feather and bone to protect them from bullets. Grotesque masks made them look like demons. The killers wore ripped jeans and T-shirts, women’s wigs and cheap rubber sandals. Thin teenagers lugged rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Men in camouflage mounted rusted artillery cannon in battered pickup trucks. More and more joined their ranks until thousands of men in long, ragged columns moved toward the distant capital.
![wild west gang leader that initially killed doc in back to the future part iii (1990)? wild west gang leader that initially killed doc in back to the future part iii (1990)?](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/9cf3ff9/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2524x1420+0+179/resize/1200x675!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd7%2Feb%2Ff798a7f7411b9d849f5cae007c3e%2Fkane.jpg)
They surged past tin-roofed villages and jungle hideouts, down macadam roads and red-clay bush trails. This film is a waste of time, and an awful action film from a not so good director.HARBEL, Liberia - The killers launched from the plantation under a waning moon one night in October 1992.
WILD WEST GANG LEADER THAT INITIALLY KILLED DOC IN BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990)? TV
This could have been a top notch action film with a different director and of course script, but scriptwriters to capture what was fun about the original Westerns of the 60's, and above all the TV show it was based on. It's like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, no one thought that it would be good, but guess what? It was. Maybe with a better script this film could've worked. This film insults the Western films of old, and makes a mockery of the genre.
![wild west gang leader that initially killed doc in back to the future part iii (1990)? wild west gang leader that initially killed doc in back to the future part iii (1990)?](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/bttf/images/d/dc/Bttf_marty_doc_remote.jpg)
I wonder why these established and talented actors decided to star in this awful mess. What's surprising is the amount of good actors in this film, Ted Levine, Kenneth Branagh for one have impressive resumes. I remember watching this film and it was very boring. The only problem is, is that this film bores the viewer to death. Wild Wild West is a strained film that tries too hard at delivering something to the audience. Sonnenfeld really isn't a good director, and he's made more bad films than good one. This film is so poorly crafted, that you wonder how this ever got the go ahead. Barry Sonnenfeld only has one good film under his belt (Men in Black) and the rest are garbage, but Wild Wild West takes the cake as his worst yet. Wild Wild West is a very poorly executed action film.