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$tarBuck$
A little note on the death of the pope
This whole pope-mania is crazy. All this fuss because some old man died. Nothing else seems to be important anymore. His death dominates the headlines. That people are being slaughtered in Sudan at this very moment, like they were once in Rwanda, hardly anybody seems to find worth mentioning.
Sure, people were shocked when they watched "Hotel Rwanda", how horrible it was and the world seemed to ignore it. But did that cinematic experience change anything?
Anyway, this is not suppose to be today´s topic. Today it will be about Starbucks.
$tarbuck$
A few notes on the STARBUCKS empire:
… The first Starbucks was opened in Seattle in 1971 and the company has now grown to over 6,500 retail locations in 18 countries, raking in $3.3 billion in revenue for 2002.
… Starbucks, which owns 20% of all cafés in the USA, currently serves coffee to 10 million people each week.
… Starbucks also sells ice cream, whole coffee beans, and bottled Frappuccino drinks in supermarkets, airports, hospitals, hotels, casinos, and on 400 college campuses nationwide (US).
… Starbucks also has partnerships with Pepsi-Cola, Marriott, Kraft, (a subsidiary of tobacco giant, Philip Morris, who also own Maxwell House and Sanka) and the second largest supermarket chain in the US, Albertson's.
Starbucks is trying rather hard to improve its image. Even spreading the word that they are selling fair trade coffee in some of their "kopi shops". If anybody came across such, please let me know.
Here is a little list explaining why I would avoid that coffee empire:
THEY’RE SCREWING THE PLANET
It´s environmentally devastating.
In 1997 they released a vague, nice-sounding PR campaign stating, that “hazardous materials such as chemicals and pesticides should be used safely and responsibly, if at all.” Great, but what does that really mean?
Not much. Starbucks gets their coffee from countries like Guatemala and Indonesia, where the local authorities hardly enforce environmental or labor regulations (and even if they did, the WTO would put a stop to it).
Those cans of Maxwell House and Folgers you pick up at your local supermarket, well, the beans that fill them are bought from corporate farms that use environmentally poisonous pesticides and clear-cut forests to produce the highest possible yields.
THEY’RE SCREWING THE FARMERS
Starbucks gets its coffee from rural farmers and forces them to sell their beans below the market rates for coffee. In 1997 their PR campaign announced their vague “commitment to human rights”. They haven’t followed through (not that they could have to begin with). They recently announced an appeasement deal with Global Exchange (a San Francisco-based human rights organization) after a fight to produce a “Fair Trade” blend of humane coffee, but that’s just more PR maneuvering: it still has to compete with their cheaper, better-marketed inhumane coffee.
"Fair trade gets the benefit back to the family farmer," said Starbucks vice president David Olsen shortly after the decision was made. "It is consistent with our values." Starbucks' decision to sell fair trade coffee, however, does not mean the company will brew it in their stores. This will depend on "consumer demand," say Starbucks corporate heads. So, once again, this will mean that Global Exchange and other fair trade coffee advocates will have to prove -- through a combination of grassroots organizing, educational outreach and threat of protest -- that a demand exists.
Fair trade coffee sells for a minimum of $1.29 per pound -- which goes directly to coffee farmers, not to "coyotes", the middlemen who pay farmers usually no more than 35 cents a pound. It is grown on small farms, which tend to cultivate in the traditional way: under the rainforest canopy and without pesticides. And because fair trade coffee has doubled farmers' annual incomes, more than 500,000 people in 20 developing nations are now living above the poverty line.
The only problem is that a nationwide advertising campaign is needed to get the word out, and large coffee retailers -- the ideal candidates for such an effort -- will not do it, since buying coffee at fair trade prices would cut into their profits.
THEY ARE SCREWING THE UNIONS
Just ask them! Only 12 of the 2,200 (and counting) Starbucks in the USA are unionized, and the ones that are have experienced steadfast corporate greed every time they tried to pursue things like fair wages, earned sick leave, and stable work schedules.
THEY’RE SCREWING OUR NEIGHBORHOODS
...and drowning us in a sea of identical details! Using their own version of the Microsoft strategy,they’re pouring money into opening as many stores as possible, cutting off the oxygen supply of their competition. Their monopoly destroys the small traditional coffee bars that make our neighborhoods unique.
THEY’RE SCREWING YOU
Four bucks for a cup of coffee that costs them between seven and twelve cents? And them with $424 million (plus) in net revenues (in the US alone!)? Come on!
THEY’RE SCREWING THAT MERMAID LOGO THING
She had nipples once, until the corporate types decided that nipples were unseemly and airbrushed them off. Don’t they have nipples? 
To read more about the Fair Trade Coffee, check out this contribution by OrganicConsumers.Org
Will enough cusumers care about labor conditions in the Third World and the environmental problems created there by coffee corporations to force real change in the industry?
~ p e a c e ~