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Should we boycott Starbucks too?

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Should we boycott Starbucks too?
Ruqayyah
07/06/02 at 20:44:43
[slm]

I heard that countries overseas are boycotting Starbucks as part of their efforts to boycott American businesses, but should we boycott them as well? Is there any evidence that they support Israel financially or otherwise?

[wlm]
-A concerned coffee-drinker,
Ruqayyah
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
se7en
07/06/02 at 23:25:55
as salaamu alaykum,

check out the article [url=http://www.globalpeaceandjustice.org/aa5-10-02.htm]here[/url].

(not to mention that Starbucks doesn't even pay its coffee farmers in Guatemala and other third world countries enough to adequately feed their children, that it consistently refuses to promote fair trade coffee, and that their products contain genetically engineered ingredients including a particular hormone that is illegal in every country besides the United States. >:()

wasalaamu alaykum.
07/06/02 at 23:27:35
se7en
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
siddiqui
07/06/02 at 23:29:52
[slm]
Thanx for the info
I sure will miss your coffe starbucks  ;)
[wlm]
please pray for me
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
Dawn
07/07/02 at 06:45:27
[quote author=se7en link=board=madrasa;num=1026002683;start=0#1 date=07/06/02 at 23:25:55]..., and that their products contain genetically engineered ingredients including a particular hormone that is illegal in every country besides the United States. >:()[/quote]

So the coffee they are serving in their non-U.S. coffee shops is not the same as the coffee served in the U.S.? ??? And se7en, can you post the source for this too, or at least a link?  I would like to show my husband the source article.  Thanks!
07/07/02 at 06:47:07
Dawn
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
mwishka
07/07/02 at 11:39:06
ok, this is just my perspective on places like starbucks and all sorts of other businesses, like clothing stores and home "decorating" stores and whatever other kinds of places where things are just way way overpriced:  i'm not sure we need to buy these things at these prices, in general.  and, sis seven, starbucks is not unusual in their unfair and grotesque coffee trading and processing practices - it's much harder to find coffee that IS legitimate to buy than not.  this is a constant dilemma for coffee drinkers, as it is for purchasing lots and lots of other things and foods.  (in albany you can buy coffee from equal exchange and probably still two other farmers' cooperatives at honest weight - but you're not going to get grocery stores to carry these any time soon...)  the problem of equitable trade is not limited to coffee, as i'm sure you know.  but i do think starbucks, now that that schultz guy "came out of the closet" with his vile remarks, deserves special um lack of our attention and money.  as always, it's their regular customers this business most needs to hear from - if you were or are a starbuckee, let them know, by a letter written to their headquarters, that you will no longer be spending your oh whatever it was $1700/year hee heee or so at their business, and give the reason.

and i'm a good one to talk about such letters---hee heeee i just don't buy at any place that is questionable to me personally, and i rarely let them know....    but, i'm the kind of customer who matters less to a business of this type.  any time you change a regular spending habit based on an ethical or moral decision, THAT'S a very important time to let the bad company know why you did it.

mwishka  
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
pakiprncess
07/08/02 at 17:32:54
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !
(can you tell i am passionate about this topic?)

sis ruqayyah, i am a firm believer in the statement "every penny counts." you would not believe how much money i used to spend shopping at these zionist owned businesses (okay, since youre a sis, maybe you would ;) ) but i kept getting these emails, begging for muslims to boycott places like banana republic, express, jcpennys, and gap; brands like ralph lauren, donna karen, clinique, and maybeline....its amazing how almost every store in the mall features these products primarily. even more amazing how many muslims are the consumers of such products. so i decided to at least TRY giving up some of these products. i actually thought twice about what i was buying and what things my money, even if only a small percentage, was helping to fund. and its really not that hard, if youre determined...i mean, i even learned how to sew in the past few weeks, to my moms immense delight :)

so yes, plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz boycott as much as you can. if you can only avoid the starbucks temptation once a week, its all good...thats $2+ youre saving that you normally would spend on them.

good luck!

walaikum asalaam.
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
Ruqayyah
07/08/02 at 18:27:07
[slm]

Thanks for the info! mwishka, you're right, the coffee is really expensive! I looked at my credit card bill for the last month, and i had spent around $20 just on coffee! So now i just get regular old coffee from the store (although those other brands like Folgers, etc have their share of shadiness too?) and i just add hot cocoa to it  :)   So now that I have crossed Starbuckes off my list of places I shop, what about Arabica's?  ;)

Sister pakiprincess, I agree w/ you, somewhere along the way i got an email and it had all the little logos of stores/brands that supported Israel one way or the other, and it was amazing how many of them I would have gladly shopped at. And clinique! it seems like every desi i know uses that stuff!  :o  

[wlm]
Ruqayyah
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
ltcorpest2
07/09/02 at 10:49:50
Hey,  I am all for boycotting starbucks (Or is it 4 bucks).  I hate coffee anyways, and I went into starbucks one time when my wife was 8 months pregnant (one of those cravings i guess).  I felt that I couldn't speak the language.  (why cant they say small medium and large?)  I was standing behind some guy and he told me that if i didn't drink coffee that i should order something something chi, but don't say it the way it is printed on the menu.  I can't fathom why people pay that much money for a glass of water with crushed bean juice.  Well, i got that off my chest thanks.  Oh also, that drink I ordered for myself tasted like crap also.  
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
siddiqui
07/09/02 at 11:15:48
[slm]
Talking about Ralph Lauren and Donna Karen
Any inputs on Davidoff Cool Water, KK(ie kalvin Kline and not Klu KLux.... btw ;D) and Hugo Boss
these are my  current favs on prefumia scene
[wlm]
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
AyeshaZ
07/09/02 at 13:12:10
[quote author=Ruqayyah link=board=madrasa;num=1026002683;start=0#6 date=07/08/02 at 18:27:07] [slm]
  So now that I have crossed Starbuckes off my list of places I shop, what about Arabica's?  ;)

[wlm]
Ruqayyah[/quote]

yeah i wonder if arabica is some how connected w/ starbucks... The arabica at Case, i always get tempted when i drive by it....
what about java city?? maybe its a csu thing..
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
se7en
07/12/02 at 02:20:12
as salaamu alaykum,

Dawn the controversial hormone is called rgBH, that causes some *scary* stuff in animals, including cancer.  You can read some more about it at:

http://www.ucsusa.org/index.html
http://www.healthresearchbooks.com/articles/rgbh3.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/rBGH/gotrBGHmilk.cfm
http://www.all-natural.com/news0498.html#Reporters
07/12/02 at 02:20:47
se7en
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
Dawn
07/12/02 at 05:43:58
[quote author=se7en link=board=madrasa;num=1026002683;start=0#10 date=07/12/02 at 02:20:12]as salaamu alaykum,

Dawn the controversial hormone is called rgBH, that causes some *scary* stuff in animals, including cancer.  You can read some more about it at:

http://www.ucsusa.org/index.html
http://www.healthresearchbooks.com/articles/rgbh3.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/rBGH/gotrBGHmilk.cfm
http://www.all-natural.com/news0498.html#Reporters[/quote]

Just what I was looking for, se7en.  Thanks a lot!!!
07/12/02 at 05:44:35
Dawn
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
mwishka
07/12/02 at 09:18:36
sigh...

ok, the "genetically engineered hormone" -- please don't start thinking this is something specific to starblech's.  and it has nothing to do with coffee.  except for the addition of milk products to coffee.....   it has to do with COWS!!

the phrase "genetically engineered" is neither bad nor good.  (muqaddar, where DID you go??  you could assure them of this, eh?)  it has no evil meaning, and is, yep,one of those catch phrases now so in vogue that you're almost always better off using a real language explanation to say whatever it is you meanto be saying by using these words, so that everyone to whom you're speaking knows exactly what you mean, AND knows that you are not attempting to push buttons by abusing language.  (ayyyyy another language abuse rant......can't ever be enough of them, though, if communication is to be at all times clear, logical, rational, effective, non-manipulative, etc., etc., etc........)

sigh again.  

a lower case "r" (unless you're reading something written by someone who neglects uppercase as a habit -- and so can type LOTS more, eh, dawn?? hee heeee) just means "recombinant".  which just means "we found out how to make it from the original, i.e., what the coding was by discerning the amino acid sequence of the protein, translating that into the possible three letter code -"codon", as in code unit, for DNA which would produce that amino acid, made use of PCR/thermal cycling -"polymerase chain reaction" with temperature steps to cross barriers to reaction, meaning we will this reaction to form DNA strands, which are polymers -  individual units "mers" forced (catalyzed) to or allowed (reaction inherently driven in that direction) to combine together a long molecule - a "poly"-mer - by a "chain reaction", meaning that the product of each individual step in the reaction sets the forming molecule up to receive the next reactant (PCR uses a DNA "template" to force the &qukt;nucleotides", small molecules making up DNA (T,C,G,A ---ok, am too tired to write out everything....) to combine in a second strand made up of the "complements" to the template, as each one joins the new strand, it is then ready for the next one ("chain reaction")...um ok..he he tired...

so, you figure out the DNA sequence, you make your own DNA strands, usually in a "plasmid" form - closed loop/circular easily inserted into "host" cells (e.g., E. coli bacteria - mutated to be safe to use in the lab, let me add), give it to the E. coli as a present, they make your protein for you in large quantities (you kind of trick them into doing this...), you slaughter them, take the protein, and..........in this case.......

take it somewhere and give it to a bunch of dairy cattle (i.e., cows whose lives are lived in a slave labor state similar to the poor little E. coli, but even though the cows don't get slaughtered EVERY time they produce milk - only when their milk production falls, or they get "old", like um 6 or 8 i think - though they would naturally live something like 20 or more years, i think - in order for them to keep up milk production they must be always either pregnant or "nursing", only it's the milking machines which benefit rather than their own offspring, whom are taken from them at birth....   a repeated, lifelong cycle of child-bearing and loss, which i cannot believe doesn't cause great psychological harm to these cows - and one sign of this is that they often develop bonds to each other, i mean like two or three cows who become devoted friends, bonds so strong that they will harm humans or other animals who try to separate them, (and often go into deep depressions when their companions are taken away to be killed for having become low producers or old by dairy producer standards) or who are bad to one or the other of the companions...)  

BUT, back to starbuk's and milk, the role of  RECOMBINANT (made by us) BOVINE (relates to cattle) GROWTH (to increase in size or quantity) HORMONE (signal messenger, a protein) is to make those slave cattle produce milk in much higher quantities than they ever could otherwise.  any mothers out there who've had mastitis (painful swelling of the breast/udder due to high milk production or not being able to empty the breast of this milk by feeding someone or pumping it out soon enough) can only BEGIN to imagine what these cows go through...regularly.  

this hormone is indeed still in use in the US, as are many other illegal compounds...   its use is now limited because of laws and regulation to instances where it isn't detected or checked for.  < negligence combined with deviousness or desperation to stay personally financially solvent, in some cases...

so, read those reports on the unwanted effects of the use of this "super" version of a naturally occurring chemical compound which is essential in all organisms, but don't take any of this out of its general context.   i haven't looked at those links, but watch out for sensationalistic language, and where you see it lower the validity of statements made in that way by a factor of about 100 to 1000.  (i prefer to get my information from scientific journals reporting experimental results or reviews of general research areas, which i have the privilege, as a student, to have easy access to.  that's why i try to be sure to clear up anything i can for anyone else who might be trying to wade through this stuff on occasion, since it's incumbent on anyone working in science to develop the ability to weed out the bad or even the merely questionable from the significant.)

rmwishka  
07/13/02 at 10:45:00
mwishka
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
Dawn
07/12/02 at 16:04:55
[quote author=Dawn link=board=madrasa;num=1026002683;start=0#11 date=07/12/02 at 05:43:58]
Just what I was looking for, se7en.[/quote]

Opps!  Looks like I was a little ahead of the game.  I was saving these to read till my daughter was in bed for the night as I was under the impression that these were about something in Starbuck's coffee.  (My bad!  When I went back and reread your post, se7en, I clearly saw that it said "products", but in my mind that had translated, incorrectly, to "coffee".)  I take it, then, that Starbuck's serves milk or other diary products which come from cows which have been injected with rBGH? ???  If it said this in any of the articles, I missed it.  (Sorry!)

And thanks for the non-scientific scientific detail, mwishka!  It is greatly appreciated!

Peace,
Dawn
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
Traveler
07/12/02 at 16:17:56

   Hmm... let me go over this once more to see if I have it right.
   Recombinant - Hormone- Bovine- slave like conditions - cows in love yes,yes YES... it all makes sense now. It was right in front of me all along.

 Now mwishka, the real challenge would be if you could tell us what Mcdonalds has in their Burgers. A mystery so ancient and so feared that it is said to be the handiwork of the devil himself.  :-/ :-/
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
mwishka
07/13/02 at 11:53:10
he he traveler.......i don't know the current formulation, but i can give you some interesting history.. ;)  MY synthesis of a variety of trends...

as for ancient, yep, a little of that.  feared, only by some people.  the devil, um i don't think so...

let me say right here that i read of this macdonald's innovation in only a few news sources, did not EVER seek out real documentation, and can offer no resources to confirm or refute what i'm going to tell you, only that i know how often news stories are released but then allowed to sink into obscurity when someone has second thoughts about the impact of the information released.  for anyone who wishes, research this to your heart's content....

ok, in let's see what decade should we start in.....mmmm...end of 50s bare beginning of back-to-the-land movement in the US, as an outgrowth of the Beats' philosophy of living within their own sub-culture of anti-dominant culture values, and outside that mainstream culture.  (he he he...yup, we'll be heading on to macdonald's in a few decades, hang tight.  oh, should say that these origins could be traced back further, teens and twenties, even 1870s, but, um i'm going to start somewhere sounding a little more familiar to most people reading here, to americans and to those who have watched or observed the shortening of the time periods between cyclic appearances of american cultural trends.)

ok, those blackclad american boys and girls of the hindu and other eastern philosophies lived frequently in collective households.  in the 60s we saw people like buckminster fuller and helen and john nearing begin to come into the spotlight.  (the nearings "dropped out" in the 40s, their home was long a magnetic center of seeking, questioning people looking for a better way of life outside the corporate materialisic american culture - but those seekers were quite predominantly white children of the most affluent classes, european as well as american.  the lower classes didn't become as involved in these searches until later..)  the common goal to these efforts was a better life, and as anyone who has read or heard of the nearings' most well-known book will remember, it was a struggle aimed at "living the good life".  and what was bucky fuller's comment, in the title of his most well-known book?  "small is beautiful".

um...creeping into the 70s, we saw huge numbers of collective households all over the US.  and an emergent tactically manipulative american media network.  we had the YIPpies become a focus of our anti-establishment young people, as the press saw it, and soon hippie was a rhyming term chosen to mock the young who chose to question the values of their elders, who themselves found a tightrope walk between the aggressive, selfish corporate mentality they should assume to be good americans and the older long-time american settlers or immigrant family values of a more supportive and caring social system.

(macdonald's??  where is macdonald's in this??  patience....)

we got further into the 70s, heading into the 80s (ah, approaching imaginable times, eh?) and found all sorts of bits of all sorts of value systems slipping into american culture in an amazing assortment of ways.  we had values form both (all) back-to-the-land movements finding a place in the lives of all sorts of people, from the dignified orchid gardeners of the uppermost classes having their servants carry every last bit of vegetable scrap and newspaper out to the distant compost pile, to the daughters and sons of recently lost immigrant parents who realized that the food they bought just never tasted as good as what they had eaten straight from the family garden - that garden that had been an embarrassment to them to come home with their spanking clean friends in their starched and pressed clothes to find their mother in the kitchen, garden dirt to her elbows, an old-country kerchief covering her head, and sweat dripping down her face as she prepared to chop and dice and can every single precious one of those lucious red-orange tomatoes from her tiny backyard garden.  clashes of ways of life always play a part in the values our children eventually adopt as their own, and sometiies they have to fight really hard before they can get back to the most basic human, loving, caring ones that will protect them and their families forever.  (um no doubt a true muslim would word this differently than in the words i choose...)

ah yeah we're getting to macdonald's soon...

so, um to try very hard to cut this as short as i can, (after failing to be succinct, so far  :( ), let me shorten this down to a couple of phrases and ideas:  do-it-yourself, cottage-industries, working-from home.

what happened?  hmmmm...old knowledge met new thinking.  "cottage industries" became a term, much like "peasant chic" is now, of something so american it didn't fit the definition of that term, but it sure sounded "sweet" didn't it?  another example of those nice little "exoticisms" from vacations to tourist "destinations" in third world countries.  hmmm.....if you want to "farm", but live in an apartmant, or even a suburban negihborhood, what can you raise that won't exhibit any of the "distasteful" or "unpleasant" smells, sounds, and realities of farming - which oh i'm sure even those poor farmers working in all that muck and dirt would be happy to find a solution to, no?  well, one of the most popular crops for "basement farming", and quite lucrative "farming" at that, if you focused on unusual varieties to sell to the novelty-addicted class of restaurant entrepreneurs, was....mushrooms.  (hee heee..no, that isn't the secret ingredient, but i'll bet that there will be a few people who read this and know EXACTLY where the story goes that leads to macdonald's....)

so, mushroom "farming" was soooo  easy.  of course it was expensive, since these people weren't out to grow them to feed themselves and to beautify and ehance flavorfully their own cooking - they weren't using common mushroom stocks.  however, he he he another "crop" also became popular as the ease of these projects became more known.....   :D  how many people are going to hate reading this, reacting before even thinking about it reasonably?  the new crop turned basement farming into basement and under-the-sink "ranching", and was for undertaken by only the "hearty" farmer-types.  the new livestock were "herds" of earthworms, a per-cm[sup]2[/sup] very high-yielding protein source with NONE of the drawbacks of cattle and other livestock ranching, PLUS bonuses.  these herds not only had reproductive rates that would boggle the mind of any cow or bull, took up very little space, produced no by-products needing re-processing, AND produced some of the finest garden humus the rancher would ever have the pleasure of crumbling in their hands.

yup, you've heard of all the soy-protein additions to ground meat to enhance its profitability and allow claims of better nutritive value, and well, earthworms are better than that, except for lacking the soy bioflavonoid protective molecules.  supposedly macdonald's added earthworm meat to its other ground meat for a period of time when earthworm "ranching" was trying to take hold, then ended the practice after, um some opposition was heard from among its own marketers.  my own feeling, especially as a vegetarian who knew the only thing i could eat there if i was with burger-eating friends was their french fries - which i always asked on the spot if they were meat free both in preparation and frying (even made people go read the containers of they said they didn't know - was ALWAYS guaranteed they were meat-free, and well, we all know how that played out last year - is that the macdonald's corporation has a huge staff of clever lwayers who find tricky ways for them to put anything they want in their "food" products without ever having to reveal what it is.  i don't know what all earthworm meat might contain, though my guess is that it's a pretty good food source, probably with hidden bonuses - which researchers may have chosen to not investigate due simply to the reaction of "unpalatable! uggh!" that most macdonald's customer humans would have.

mwishka (who also feels drawn to go out into the rain.....he heeee)  
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
Traveler
07/14/02 at 01:15:05


 earthworm meat?! Rrriiiiiiight. whatever you say doc  :D

  Honestly, you can't  cease to amaze me. I try to make a smart alec statement and I get the history of Man in return. LOL  :D
  I guess I deserved it.

 Now seriously, you broght something up which I find quite interesting. what was the whole hippee thing about. What I mean is, how did the whole thing start. Whose brain child was it.
 
   Traveler

PS:     If any of the mods think this is not an appropriate topic of discussion just blame mwishka for bringing it up.  :-/

 
Re: Should we boycott Starbucks too?
mwishka
07/14/02 at 09:21:34
traveler,

give me a few days - or a week maybe - and i'll send you a message telling you that WHOLE story......... :) and then they (the hippies) won't get mixed in with the earthworms which have gotten mixed in with the cows which have gotten mixed in with the coffee which was already mixed in with one of the various forms of evil in the world...... ;)

(very busy now, can't do it very soon....)

mwishka


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