What Are You Drinking?

by Dollars and Sense

There's a new brand of bottled water, and unlike the others, it's 100% politically correct. But you wouldn't want to drink it. "B'eau-Pal Bottled Water" was launched yesterday in London. In beautifully designed bottles, it is authentic water from Bhopal, India.

B'eau-Pal is the inspired concoction of The Yes Men, a group of culture-jammers who define their work as "Identity Correction -- Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else."

Here's how The Yes Men describe their new brew: "The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world's largest industrial accident. To this day, Dow Chemical (who bought Union Carbide) has refused to clean up, and whole new generations have been poisoned."

The Yes Men brought their new product to Dow's UK headquarters yesterday -- but no one was home. It seems Dow's corporate honchos got (toxic) wind of The Yes Men's impending visit, according to their press release:

Twenty Bhopal activists, including Sathyu Sarangi of the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal, showed up at Dow headquarters near London to find that the entire building had been vacated.

Guess they all went out for drinks?

Almost 25 years after the Bhopal catastrophe, a new report by the Sambhavna Trust shows that local groundwater, vegetables, and breast milk are contaminated by toxic quantities of nickel, chromium, mercury, lead, and volatile organic compounds. Read more facts about Bhopal's poisoned water from the Bhopal Medical Appeal, or get some quick facts from B'eau-Pal's label.

And check out The Yes Men's new movie, for more confrontations with scary corporate criminals.

Labels: B'eau-Pal, Bhopal, Dow Chemical, The Yes Men, Union Carbide

 

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7/14/2009 03:43:00 PM