We did a similar thing in Bristol a few weeks ago, had a very positive effect too!

 http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire/display/16291/index.php

Here's the flyer that was distributed (the logos were also included in the flyer):

Zapatista Coffee

This coffee is completely organic, and all money raised by buying this coffee will go directly into the autonomous communities that produced it. It is direct solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Mexico.

Coffee is, after oil, the second largest export on the world market; it has a turnover of about 10 billion dollars. Its production employs 25 million people in the southern hemisphere. These people, whose livelihood is based on coffee production, are dependent on the price trends fixed by the north hemisphere financial commodities markets.

In Mexico more than 3 million people depend on the production of coffee and on its exportation. 91.7% are small producers with less than five hectares of land, and more than 60% of these are indigenous peoples. The other 8.3% own a number of enormously extended estates that are the fruits of occupations of indigenous lands; these occupations have been promoted and supported by the Mexican government.

http://www.wombles.org.uk/zap/zap.php

No Starbucks!

• 
  
• While Starbucks is enjoying record profits, its Third World coffee farmers can't even afford to adequately feed their children.
• Starbucks currently buys 32 million gallons of milk each year that is laced in rBGH (hormones that are illegal in every industrialized nation in the world).
• If $tarbucks finds a successful coffee establishment they build one or more locations to take their business. They also lease buildings to keep out competition.

http://www.obgo.org/starbucks.htm

• Howard Shultz, the chairman of Starbucks is an active zionist.
• His work as a propagandist for Israel has been praised by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as being key to Israels long-term PR success.
• Recently whilst the Israeli army was slaughtering Palestinians in Jenin, Nabulus and Bethlehem he made a provocative speech asking people to unite behind Israel.

http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-starbucks.html

Two more pictures, the logos used for the flyers and the html version of both sides of the flyer. Well done everyone! :-)

Did an anarchist group do this?

Anarchist?
Well I suppose so, seen as I didn't know I was doing it on behalf of the Oxford student activists it must have been anarchist.

The information was not from boycott USA either it was boycott Israel (even though they may have the same government).

The original web-site which was copied by Usa boycott is Muslim and the target was Israel, this is why I chose it.

 http://www.inminds.co.uk/

Why has it been changed?

To use term ultra-zionist seems to say that there is a scale where being zionist is less bad than being ultra-zionist. This distinction does not exist- those who support zionism are zionists, there is nothing more.

www.inminds.co.uk has a lot more useful info on this and other things (indeed a lot of there work is copied by others except with the original motives extracted)

But remember these are just comments, unfortunatly you cant convey the way you really feel on a computer. I don`t mean to upset anyone except zionists.

In response to your comments, rBGH is banned in every industrialised nation except the USA.

It is used by Starbucks in the USA.

rBGH was banned in Europe but I believe the WTO has forced Europe to lift this ban. Governments and their laws take time to do these things so maybe it isn`t being used here yet. If you remember I said I think its EU ban is being lifted.

Apparently the ban has stayed in defiance of the WTO ruling

 http://www.foodsafetynow.org/page290.cfm

The original web-site refered to on the flyer was unavailiable just now but this site has the same info

 http://www.organicconsumers.org/starbucks/sbuxrbgh.htm .

www.organicconsumers.org/rbghlink.html

If you are interested please find out more and tell us.

Oxford Student Action Network > Oxford Student Activist Network
(pretty equivalent meaning though :)

BTW the way things tend to work in Oxford is there are lots of loose informal networks of activists, and like-minded people from lots of groups come together for actions and one particular group can't really take credit, even if we wanted to :) Which we don't!

Having said that, OSAN is a useful tool for meeting like-minded people and then doing stuff together, so if you're interested, come along to a meeting... see osan.org.uk for
details.

Greetings from Florida, a US state which produces a large amount of beef and dairy. rBGH, also known as "Posilac" remains a very hot issue here: it still hasn't gone away, though Bush's pals in the agri-corporate world would dearly like it to.

The recent publicity over the true extent of Mad Cow Disease in the US has brought rBGH and other genetically modified livestock growth hormones back out of the closet.
 http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18578

It might be true now to say that rBGH "has been banned" in every industrialised country in the world apart from the USA, and that only recent heavy pressure from the USA has forced the EU to begin going through the motions of lifting the ban. But since Monsanto (the only producer) have recently announced that they are cutting production of Posilac/rBGH by 50% following production problems and a skirmish with the regulators, it's doubtful that they'll have any stocks to sell to dairy farmers outside the US. Milk prices are shooting up in the US right now, since the artificially high production that the growth hormones gave has now suddenly dropped, shrinking the supply with little warning to the farmers. Hence Monsanto will be selling Posilac almost exclusively in the US, and practically none in Europe, for the forseeable future; the EU realized it was safe to concede that point in the WTO bargaining, face was saved on both sides, etc.

But Starbucks worldwide imports its milk from the US, and 3/4 of it is sourced from herds where Posilac is used to stimulate production. So just about the only way British consumers are likely to get a sip of Posilac is in their Starbucks cappucino.

Now the hard question is this: how do you folks propose to get all that complex hormonal politics into a little leaflet that you give out on the street? :)

You could change the wording of that second bullet to "Starbucks currently buys 32 million gallons of milk each year that is laced in rBGH, an artifical growth hormone banned in many countries on safety grounds, and which remains controversial in the USA where it's produced."

Great action though, and the free Zapatista coffee was a particularly good touch. Keep it up!

Just to clarify: this action wasn't done in the name or organised by OSAN (Oxford Student Activist Network), although many people involved in OSAN participated. In fact it had mainly been organised through informal discussions and meetings at OCSET, the social centre, and then "publicised" through networks of activism throughout Oxford. So there was no "group" (whether anarchist or not) behind this action, only people willing to do something for the Zapatistas and against Starbucks. :-)

But if you think these kinds of actions are great and want to get involved, it's probably a good idea to come to OCSET (as long as it's still there), or to come to an OSAN meeting ( http://osan.org.uk/), or an Oxford Indymedia meeting...

If Starbucks STILL aren't prepared to sell all, or at least the vast majority, of their coffee as fairly traded, they shouldn't complain when Zapatista Coffee overtakes them! :)

Please don't feed the trolls.

cheers