Yes Men Strike Again, Launch New Coke Brand Bottled Water Called 'Deception' [with Video]
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 18, 2009 at 3:07 PM.

The notorious and hilarious pranksters, The Yes Men have done it again. This time their target was Coca-Cola. The company bottles Dasani water, which is basically just tap water that you pay a whole lot more for. The only difference really is that then you have a plastic bottle, which 80 percent of people toss in the garbage instead of a recycling bin.

While Pepsi, which uses tap water for its Aquafina bottled water, has now caved to pressure and labeled their water as "public water source" -- Coke still refuses. So, the Yes Men teamed up with pressure group Corporate Accountability International and launched a faux Coke campaign for a new bottled water called Deception. Genius!

You can watch the video below (or here). My favorite part is when they actually run into a real employee from Coke. And click here to read more about Coke's bad track record when it comes to bottled water.

PETA Teams Up With Glenn Beck to Bash Al Gore
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 5:39 PM.

I know it's easy to get jealous when someone's got an Oscar, a Nobel, and some pretty big job titles on their resume, but really, the Gore bashing has got to end.

The New York Times took a swipe at Al Gore and his new book this week and now Glenn Beck and PETA's Ingrid Newkirk are teaming up. In some ways it is a perfect match between two people who seem to thrive on generating controversy.

Beck chastised Gore for not giving up meat eating altogether (even though he's admitted to cutting back a lot) and told him it was time for soy milk and tofurkey. Then he invited Newkirk on the show to tag team even though Beck admitted that he doesn't agree with a thing PETA says. Although he did give PETA and the NRA a shout out for not catering to special interests (huh?), so I guess Newkirk should feel good about that.

I know that PETA's main task seems to be to get people really pissed off, but I still think it's a shame to see Newkirk sinking so low as to cozy up to Glenn Beck. The truth is though, what they're talking about is actually a tough issue. There's a lot of really good evidence that eating meat -- at least the way we mostly do it in factory farms -- is bad for the planet. If you've ever seen a factory farm (or smelled one) that would probably seem like a no-brainer.

But there's also some good evidence pointing out that growing soy -- at least the way we do it but slashing rainforests and piling on the pesticides -- is actually bad for ecosystems, water, climate and the whole shebang. And some of that soy we area eating (actually in the US 87 percent of it is genetically modified), some of it is being used for biofuel and some of it is being fed to livestock. But mostly all of it is an environmental disaster.

Umbra Fisk from Grist breaks down a lot of the research and writes:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »