Arab anti-US storm stirred in a coffee cup (Arabs boycotting Starbucks, Nestle, more)

Perhaps it's time that some dedicated Freeper with more time and expertise

To unravel all the Arab hooks into American society and business is too much for a single freeper, I'm afraid. But what about a thread where one can post good solid facts about Arab activity and ownership?

Works for me.

If anyone knows of "American" businesses with majority Arab ownership, please post it here with substantiating source.

Who will start it off?

Leni

I posted this on my Ramblings' Journal site yesterday (Thursday) - they want to play that game? No problem. It sounds like it might be time to ratchet this up -- I'm sure that many of the national talk show hosts would be interested in this bit of information....

I love good, strong coffee.

I'm one of those folks who will fix a pot in the morning and drink two good strong cups before 9AM. I'll leave my coffee pot on all day as well. My poison dujour alternates between Starbucks, Caribou and (when I'm a little low on coin) Chock Full O'Nuts.

Well, it looks like it's time to strike Caribou from that list of my preferred brews. This decision pains me - the people that work there are friendly; the coffee is good and strong (two of my qualifiers), albeit different in taste than Starbucks. Plus they have great holiday drinks.

What led me to this decision is a note I got the other day -- one that appears to be circulating on the internet apparently -- and found that my beloved Caribou Coffee is 87.8% owned by an entity called the First Islamic Investment Bank. Now, considering my wariness of things Islamic -- having Islamic terrorists wipe out a couple of skyscrapers will do that to you -- I checked it out.

First place I looked was the venerable Snopes.com. Snopes is the definitive research source regarding urban legends and other such things in the way of rumors on the web. Snopes pointed me directly to First Islamic, and sure enough, there it was in black and white. Well, investigating further, I found that the list of principles of First Islamic included a statement that said, "Above all, ensuring that all activities conform to Islamic Shari'ah."

OK, what does that mean? Looking up the definition, I found:

The Arabic word shari`ah refers to the laws and way of life prescribed by Allah (SWT) for his servants. The shari`ah deals with the ideology and faith; behavior and manners; and practical daily matters.

What that says to me is that they follow the Qur'an implicitly. On the surface that sounds OK, except that also implies that they would then support the more radical elements. Those are the ones that want to see all of us dead. While I certainly don't see any of those sorts of elements within Caribou Coffee, I would rather err on the side of caution. I don't know about you, but I definitely don't want to see any of my hard-earned dollars going to the support of radical Islam, and potentially supporting the murder of innocents in the United States or anywhere else for that matter.

Until Caribou can provide me with some satisfactory assurances that this isn't happening with the money that I spend with them, I'll have to take my dollars elsewhere for my coffee.

Take a good look at Sabtech. While this isn't a company that the average American can boycott, it's still interesting. You'll see that they deliver products that are hooked straight into the datastream of American warships. Their president/owner seems to be into various Islamic activism (I've included an example - look at the bottom of the Muhammed film project page).

Sabtech

Fundraising Ceremony for Film on Prophet’s Life
The Southern California Fundraising Committee of Unity Productions Foundation (a non-profit organization) is raising funds for the production of a documentary series titled ‘Muhammad the Prophet: His Life and Times’ (peace and blessing be on him). It would be a four-hour documentary for mainstream American television to be filmed in Mecca, Medina and the Hijaz. It will focus on the events in the life of our Prophet (pbuh) as Muslims have preserved and told the story for fourteen hundred years. The program will include interviews with scholars and practitioners of Islam. The documentary will not employ actors to impersonate major figures or characters.
The project is intended to appear on the non-profit Public Broadcasting System in the United States and the British Broadcasting System in the Great Britain. The Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington D.C. has granted permission to film in Mecca, Medina, and the Hijaz in the locations where these events originally occurred. Production begins in the year 2000 .
The fundraising ceremony will take place on Sunday, October 8, 2000 at 5:00 p.m. at the LAX Hilton, 577 Century Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90045. (310) 410-4000.The organizers feel the community’s support is vital for the success of this historical event. “This is an unprecedented opportunity to present Islam to mainstream audiences in the West and around the World. The project is intended to appear nationwide on non-profit public television in the United States and Britain, with subsequent broadcast in world markets. The documentary will be written by two respected Muslim journalists whom you will have an opportunity to meet on this occasion: Michael Abd AI-Majid Wolfe, writer and narrator of the Emmy-nominated ABC Nightline Special Report on The Hajj in 1997; and Alexander Kronemer, American Muslim CNN commentator of the week long coverage of The Hajj in 1997,” says an announcement.
The cost of producing a documentary film of this quality is in excess of $3 million. Significant progress has been made toward the realization of this goal but there is “still a distance to go.”
The Fundraising Committee includes Mariam Rashid, Safi Qureshey, Abu Bakr Vakil, Rauf Gajiani, Nasreen Haroon, Maher Hathout, Rahim Sabadia, Ahmed Ali, Shakeela Hassan, Tanveer Hussain, and Haseena Lakhani.
For information in having your name in the Film credits, sponsorship and tickets, please call:Mariam Rashid (310) 377-1824, Safi Qureshey (949)789-1111, or Ahmed Ali (714) 998-0430.

They still swear by camel piss. They say it has a unique taste that is missing in coffee. Even more so if you decide to have a hot camel shit cake with your cup of camel piss.

If they were really serious, they'd boycott that American invention, Air Conditioning. Until they do that, they ain't serious.

Unfortunately, the best we can do is to be informed and to spend our dollars where they will do more good. Buying coffee at Starbucks (who is being boycotted BY the Arab world) as opposed to Caribou (who is owned by an Arab investment firm) is a no-brainer. Some of the other examples you cite are a bit more difficult to quantify.

Stop the attacks by the wacko, extreme left-wing, muslim-nazis terrorist's on our Freedoms !!

Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!

Molon Labe !!

Hehe. More Arab links: Digitek International.

Washington February 6, 2002 - Sakhr Software Co., the pioneer of the Arabic software industry, has officially launched the released version of "Johaina" on Monday, December 24th, 2001,after the witnessed success of the beta version and appeal from Arab and foreign countries' Media, Researchers and Academicians.

Cairo was chosen to announce Johaina International marketing commencement in the framework of a great celebration held at Sakhr Software premises in Nasr City, under the custody of his Excellency Dr. Ahmed Nazif, the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology. An assemblage of editors in chief, editors, correspondents, press and TV reporters have attended it, in addition to men of letters, businessmen, Governmental and private bodies' representatives.

Johaina is considered the premiere service of its kind in the region as enables monitoring, collecting, categorizing and archiving rapid changing news published online in Arabic and English languages. Johaina presents website browsing of over 100 journal, magazine, press agency and satellite channels. It shall be upgraded to 200 sources by March 2002 and 350 by next June. Searching in information being updated every 15 minutes is available within 12 months as the user can search among 200 general or selected topics. It only costs USD 1000 as an annual subscription to this service.

Moreover, Johaina offers VIP service for those who seek search on certain topic, company, person, country or author to be daily briefed with, without checking all Internet news. Johaina saves the retrieved articles in a personal archive for a whole year. This VIP service costs another annual USD 1000 subscription fees.

Johaina released version and its International Marketing commencement comes after Ajeeb.com's huge campaign, which included seminars and workshops and attended by the Media, Press in Dubai Press Club, VIPs from Dubai e-Government, in addition to Emirates University academicians, lecturers and Mass Communication students.

Mr. Al Sharekh, Ajeeb.com CEO said “Johaina integrates with Sakhr Press Solutions, which are developed by Arabic exerted efforts, pure Arabic investments and absolute Arabic technologies to serve Arabic enterprises and organizations plus all Internet users who seek news from Arab sources or About the region”.

Johaina is based on Sakhr's latest technologies in Natural Language Processing of Arabic, which enables the media get the best of the Internet. It is based on Sakhr's technical heritage and leading solutions: Automatic Categorizer and Idrisi the search engine.

Sakhr is the world's leading developer and publisher of Arabic and bilingual speech, translation, and document handling software. It's product line includes a wide range of customized solutions as well as retail products for language learning, language resources, children's entertainment, and family software. Digitek International represents Sakhr Software in North America.

For more information, contact:
Mark Meinke, Digitek International, (703) 8830134
or email: info@sakhrus.com

Nestlé is a SWISS company, not a US company.

Fisk is stupid.

Looks like we need to INCREASE our spending dollars at Starbucks (man, now THERE's a real sacrifice!)...are they on the stock market? What is the symbol for Starbucks, if so?