Posted on 04/26/2002 5:41:06 PM PDT by vannrox
Apathy hinders Arab boycott of US goods
25-04-2002
By ROBIN ALLEN
Financial Times
Arab activists in the Gulf oil monarchies are trying to mount a popular boycott of US goods and services via e-mails and the internet. Their efforts are combined with calls to reactivate the Arab League's Israeli boycott office in Damascus. As targets of popular anger, the US and Israel are synonymous, say Gulf activists.
"This is the start of a mass movement," claims one, but the response appears to be patchy.
Efforts to start a boycott are handicapped by widespread public indifference, as well as by official apathy, or outright hostility.
In Kuwait popular indignation at the US and Israel has been spent in demonstrations: "Empathy for the Palestinians under a brutal Israeli occupation is one thing," said one young Kuwaiti official; "But lashing out at the US, the guarantor of our independence, is another thing entirely."
"Many people," said one Kuwaiti, "are sending e-mails urging their friends to boycott US goods, saying for example, 'don't spend money at McDonalds or Burger King, because the profits will end up in Israel.' But the wider public response has been poor."
Elsewhere in the Gulf, notably in Saudi Arabia, autocratic family governments have resorted to either co-opting activists, as in the UAE where the ruling family is carefully controlling the protests; or, as in Saudi Arabia, warning anti-US activists to desist in public or face arrest - which in Saudi Arabia, according to one, means immediate and arbitrary imprisonment.
In Saudi Arabia, activists are privately frustrated at what one called the government's "pusillanimous" approach to an oil embargo against the US. Saudi and other Gulf government officials have made it clear they will not consider using oil as a political weapon.
"But we are not allowed to discuss these things openly," one Saudi businessman complained.
"Police have arrested people who openly call for demonstrations or a boycott of US goods.
"Nevertheless," he added, "People on the street have never been so angry - you can read calls for a boycott of US goods and fast-food outlets all over the net. Many people have stopped buying goods in supermarkets they know originate in the US."
But these efforts are unco-ordinated. The only statistical evidence the US is being affected is that, according to the US embassy, applications for US visit visas by Saudis have fallen by 75 per cent since last September 11.
In Lebanon, Hizbollah, the radical Shia Muslim group, has been joined by an assortment of socialist, Communist, Palestinian and grassroots groups in calling for a boycott of US products.
Only around 7 per cent of Lebanese imports come from the United States, but defining what is and what isn't a US product is far from easy.
After demonstrations outside his restaurants, Jean Zoghzoghi, the local franchisee for McDonald's has taken newspaper adverts proclaiming that his business is "100 per cent owned, financed and managed by Lebanese" and that "spreading false rumours hurts local business and local people".
It's not indifference, it's cowardly genes!
They can't fight. They can't love women and they have no principals except what affects them in the next five minutes.
Arabs subscribe to a theocracy because they have no b---s!
They are the pond scum of the gene pool.
Strong comment follows!
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Too bad we can't boycott Arab companies - there are none which produce anything (other than oil) that you might want.
Ditto their deodorant and soap boycott.
Not too shabby, but we need to encourage the Saudis to raise that number to 100 percent, and keep it there. But I bet that even with this "boycott", they won't boycott the US dollar!
Ping me on the strong following comment.
"But lashing out at the US, the guarantor of our independence, is another thing entirely."
As with any country, there are always factions. It would be erronous to judge us based on what some PETA activists do, or based on what what Jessie Jackson or Barbara Streisand promotes or says. Do you think the 'Anti-Capitalist Convergence' reflects the views of a large number of Americans? No... not even when all of the wingnut lefties showed up to protest in DC these past years did they in any way reprisent the average American. Don't expect protests in the Middle East to be too reprisentative of their silent majorities, either. Remember the mass protests in Pakistan and the pledges to fight America to the death? Once we were into Afghanistan, only a few hard-heads were true to their words.
The important thing to see in this article is that there is so much apathy towards the boycotters.
"The only statistical evidence the US is being affected is that, according to the US embassy, applications for US visit visas by Saudis have fallen by 75 per cent since last September 11."
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