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

ACROSS FIVE Arab states a new and closely co-ordinated campaign to boycott American goods is being launched, with Starbucks coffee shops their primary target, but with Nestle, Coca-Cola, Johnson and Johnson and Burger King outlets also on the list.

In Beirut today, activists will be handing out leaflets outside the city's four Starbucks coffee shops, detailing the pro-Israeli and anti-Arafat sentiments of its chief executive, Howard Shultz, and claiming that he is "an active Zionist." In 1998, Mr Shultz was awarded the "Israeli 50th Anniversary Tribute Award" from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah which is strongly critical of Yassir Arafat and which insists that the occupied Palestinian territories should be described only as "disputed".

In a speech to Jewish Americans in Seattle earlier this year - at the height of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's re-occupation of West Bank Palestinian towns, Starbucks' top man condemned Palestinian "inaction" and announced that "the Palestinians aren't doing their job - they're not stopping terrorism." Gideon Meir, an Israeli foreign ministry public relations official complimented Mr Shultz for helping American students to hear "Israeli presentations on the Middle East crisis."

Starbucks operates in six other Arab countries - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - but the boycott protestors, who include both Palestinians and Islamic groups at Ein Shams University in Egypt and the American University of Cairo, have a much wider list of companies they wish to target for allegedly supporting Israel, not only in the Middle East but in the United States itself. They include AOL Time Warner, Disney, Estee Lauder, Nokia, Revlon, Marks and Spencer, Selfridges and IBM. Students at Dubai University and in Damascus are now also liaising over their boycott plans.

"At first, it was very frustrating getting even the four boycott groups in Lebanon to work together," Amira Solh, one of the Lebanese activists, says. "We had difficulty in defining whether we should target American goods or those companies that have direct relations with Israel. We really only got going the first time the Israelis laid siege to Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Lebanon boycotts all Israeli goods, so we started asking, 'but what about those companies which help Israel directly?' Most Arab countries have fallen into a capitalist world that accepts American companies with close links to Israel. What we are now initiating is an economic war."

Burger King incurred Arab anger more than two years ago when it opened an outlet in an illegal Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank. The company initially decided to close its restaurant and then - after pro-Israeli lobby pressure back in the United States - apparently allowed it to reopen under a different franchise. Nestle has bought a 50.1pc controlling shareholding in the Israeli Osem company, allowing Nestle to sell its products in Israel - they include Nescafe, Perrier, Carnation, Libby's, Smarties and KitKat - a deal which, in the words of one Israeli journalist, "provides Osem with a worldwide distribution and advertising infrastructure." Osem-Nestle made a profit of $7.5m, according to its recent four-monthly report to investors.

In Lebanon, Coca Cola, which runs a plant in the country, has attempted to deflect Arab criticism by pointing out that it does not manufacture Coca Cola in Israel and sells only imported bottles of its products, including Fanta and Sprite, in the Jewish State. Israel has praised the company for refusing to abide by the original Arab League boycott. In what was widely seen as an attempt to soften the mood of protestors here, the Coca Cola company in Lebanon has suddenly embarked on a programme of planting new cedar trees - Lebanon's national emblem - near the Christian town of Jezzine south of Beirut.

In antiquity, Lebanon was carpeted with immense forests of cedar. Starbucks, which has 4,709 retail locations around the world, has been trying to damp down its pro-Israeli image, telling protestors who have written to the company that its chief executive, Howard Shultz, who is himself Jewish, "does not believe the terrorism (sic) is representative of the Palestinian people." When he spoke recently to his local synagogue, Starbucks says, "Howard was speaking as a private citizen and did not interview with the media regarding this subject." Another Starbucks response says that the company "is deeply saddened by the current events in the Middle East" and quotes a statement by Mr Shultz: "I deeply regret that my speech in Seattle was misinterpreted to be anti-Palestinian," he says. "My position has always been pro-peace and for the two nations to co-exist peacefully. I am deeply saddened by the current events in the Middle East."

Arab students believe that the real fears of American executives are focused not on individual losses in the Arab world but on the danger that Arab protests against their products will be picked up by Palestinian sympathisers in Europe and even in America itself, where much more serious economic harm could be inflicted on the companies. Mr Shultz, who is not known to have condemned the building of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied land, spearheaded Starbucks' entry into the Israeli market last year with its first two coffee shops in Tel Aviv. By the end of this year, Starbucks plan to have a total of 20 coffee houses operating throughout Israel. The major shareholder in Starbucks Israel is the Israeli-based Delek company which has headquarters in Nashville, Tenessee.

Mr Shultz is a regular visitor to Israel and was one of many personalities who have been brought to Jerusalem as a guest of the Theodor Herzl mission - co-sponsored by the mayor of Jerusalem - at whose gala dinner is held an award ceremony of the Friends of Zion to honour those "who have played key roles in promoting close alliance between the United States and Israel and in the struggle to free Soviet Jewry."

Others who have travelled on the Theodor Herzl mission include Baroness Thatcher, US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the former - and very right-wing - US Ambassador to the UN Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Jewish Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and former US Governor John Ridge - now the head of America's so-called "Homeland Security." Independent News Service.

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.

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

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.