Wal-Mart bans snack supplier because he resembles bin Laden (a blast from the past)

Wal-Mart - a symbol of Bushist greed - is considered nothing but a sick joke in most foreign countries where it does business. Internationally, the retail giant is ridiculed for trying to export Michael Jerkoff-like panic to where it isn't welcome.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a Wal-Mart store wouldn't let a local man anywhere in the vicinity - because he looked like Osama bin Laden. The potato chip supplier had a long beard that resembled that of the terrorist leader. One day in 2004, after the 50-year-old had unloaded his crates of snacks at the Wal-Mart, the store manager detained him. After talking to Wal-Mart big shots who had flown in from the U.S., the manager told the man he couldn't supply chips for them anymore. "Orders from upstairs," was the excuse.

The manager told the supplier that the suits from the U.S. "think you look like Osama bin Laden. If you appear on any of the images recorded by the security cameras, I'll lose my job." The following day, security wouldn't let him enter the delivery area.

Folks in Argentina thought this was the most ridiculous bunch of bunk gas they'd ever heard. By 2006, the latest year from which I can find any information about the scandal, the ban of the bearded man had become a legal issue and had attracted the attention of national anti-discrimination groups. But Wal-Mart execs in the U.S. are so arrogant that they wouldn't answer his lawyer's calls. Wal-Mart then issued a press release explaining the store chain's dress code - but he wasn't violating that, because he was an outside supplier, not an in-store employee.

To get around the ban, the man hired a driver and hid under the dashboard of his truck to show him where to deliver.

Leave it to a multinational corporation like Wal-Mart to possess the assholism to come into another country and try to destroy a potato chip deliverer's livelihood all because Wal-Mart has its lips glued to Bush's shit-caked ass. If what Wal-Mart did happened in the United States, it would be prosecutable under RICO. I don't know what the law in Argentina is on racketeering, but if it's like RICO, there's a strong case against Wal-Mart.

(Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,445882,00.html)