"In many parts of the world if people can't reach the embassy, there's always a McDonald's," says James L. Watson, a Harvard professor of anthropology who studies McDonald's, particularly its function as a "worldwide political target."

Fast-food bombings began after the Cold War, when opposition political groups -- whether it was Chilean splinter group FPMR/D or the Greek Fighting Guerrilla Formation -- started to focus more on the sources of "cultural power," Watson says: "to questions of cultural imperialism as opposed to rather old-fashioned forms of military imperialism."

"During the aftermath of the Korean war, I don't think there were many protests against Spam even though it was very dominant during the 1950s and '60s," Watson says. "Coca-Cola, too, has long history of engagement in the world but didn't become a political target until fairly recently."

So why McDonald's, and why now? "McDonald's represents an entire packaged cultural system," he says. "The fact that it's food makes it even more dangerous and more powerful -- there's nothing more powerful than food in any society as a symbol of identity."

As dissidents have become more sophisticated about the mechanics of globalization -- its effects on local agriculture, health, mealtime rituals, domestic economies and cultural homogeneity -- reasons to hate McDonald's have multiplied, so that right now opposition to the chain is coming from several different, occasionally overlapping, directions.

In Europe, it emanates from the environmentalist and global justice movement, whose hero, French farmer José Bové, became famous in 1999 after leading protesters to tear down a McDonald's that was under construction in Millau, France. For people like Bové, the problem with McDonald's isn't what it symbolizes -- it's what it is. "Attacking McDonald's is not a surrogate for attacking America's foreign policy," says Benjamin Barber, author of the bestselling "Jihad vs. McWorld." "They're attacking McDonald's because it directly stands for things that they oppose."

In Bové's case, that means "malbouffe," or bad food. The activist farmer is a devotee of local, organic agriculture and the leisurely relishing of traditional French eating -- and living. McDonald's, of course, stands for precisely the opposite -- factory farms, standardized production, bad taste in both senses of the phrase.

"What fast food is about is a fuel stop for an individual," says Barber. "It's an alternative to a home family meal or a three-hour restaurant meal. It quick and throwaway. You don't have to bring your family, and it takes less than a half hour. You fuel up for the business day. Fast food is part and parcel of modern efficient capitalism."

But in the Middle East, it's Zionism, not turbocapitalism, that has people enraged. There, McDonald's is part of a much larger boycott of American companies -- including Starbucks and Coca-Cola -- that operate in, or support, Israel. As the British Guardian reported in November, "During the past year business at western fast food and drinks firms has dropped by 40 percent and trade in American branded goods has shrunk by a quarter" in the Islamic world.

As AbuKhalil points out, much of the movement is led by secular leftists as opposed to Islamists -- their hero is Bové, not bin Laden. Unlike Bové, though, these peaceful activists don't want to drive American companies out -- they want them to change. "We're asking companies, especially ones that have invested in Israel after 1993 because they thought it would be a gateway to the Middle East, to reconsider and see it's very unfair for the Palestinians," says boycott activist Kirsten Scheid, a 32-year-old American Princeton graduate student who has lived in Lebanon for 10 years.

The boycott's success can be measured in part by the growing popularity of Muslim-produced goods that are sold as alternatives to boycotted products. As Zeidman recently wrote in Franchise Times, the boycott of U.S. sodas has caused an Iranian company, Zamzam Cola, to grow past its usual base -- Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan -- to Bahrain, and it may soon enter markets in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. "The company has 'discussed orders with about 50 big companies' in those countries as well as in Asian countries like Indonesia," according to the story. Meanwhile, Zeidman notes, "sales of Coke have declined by half in Northern Morocco since the boycott began."

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