And Breathe.

After yesterday's (11/4/11) hectic events I should clear up a couple of points.

In her speech acknowledging the arrest of Ivorian ex-President Laurent Gbagbo the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said that it showed that dictators across the world can be brought to justice for their crimes or words to that effect. This was clearly an attempt to get the Libyan rebels to agree to the African Union's ceasefire proposal by suggesting that despite any ceasefire western special forces could still go and capture Qaddafi. The fact that the rebels still rejected the ceasefire and America is forced to communicate with them in this way shows just how little influence America has over the rebels.

By contrast the French have been coming under a lot of pressure due to the comparison between the situations in Cote D'Ivorie and Libya. Also after five months of meddling in Cote D'Ivorie they have really started getting on people's nerves. So they acted against Gbagbo simply to bring the situation to as swift an end as possible and possibly inflame the situation in the country as much as possible in order to make it difficult for Alassane Ouattara to take over the Presidency.

As for the situation in Cote D'Ivorie itself following Gbagbo's arrest it's actually been quite peaceful. There has been some sporadic gunfire across the Abidjan and some young Gbagbo supporters did stage a violent protest outside a French military base but by Ivorian standards kids throwing stones doesn't really count as violence. However I should point out that on the very same day that the French moved in to arrest Gbagbo in Cote D'Ivorie they made it illegal for Muslim women in France to wear the veil. So I can't explain how unlikely it is that the French overthrew the mildly Christian Gbagbo to be replace him with the mildly Islamic Ouattara. In fact Ouattara taking over is probably going to reduce the amount of meddling that France does in Cote D'Ivorie in the future.