The industrialization of the U.S. food system is multiplying rates of obesity and preventable illness. Our planet is suffering as well: the massive amounts of oil, coal and natural gas needed to produce, distribute and refrigerate our food is putting further strain on the planet's limited resources. I recently heard that a grocery chain that touts themselves as "green" flies their salmon to Japan to be filleted, then flies it back to the U.S. for sale in their stores! Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, says: "When we eat from the modern industrial food system," Pollan says, "we are eating fossil fuel and spewing greenhouse gas."

Though this situation seems abysmal, Pollan offers real alternatives to our current system; alternatives and solutions for a healthier, safer and more environmentally-friendly food supply. Watch the premiere of Michael Pollan: Deep Agriculture tonight at 9PM Eastern/6PM Pacific: click here for more information.

It's been a busy week for The Yes Men - an arrest on Tuesday hot on the heels of their enviro New York Post hoax on Monday. Ten months after their fake satirical New York Times issue, the faux-Post concerns itself with the current environmental crisis, and the tabloid-style headline is perhaps more accurate than usual for the notorious Post - "WE'RE SCREWED." The issue details, in fluent Murdoch-speak, the tragic and scary events scientists say are about to unfold thanks to our failure to move on climate change and other unchecked environmental damage, and was released to coincide with the U.N. meeting on climate change. Check out the complete issue, available online here. The group says nearly a million copies were distributed.

You can also watch this video of The Yes Men discussing the hoax:

Just the next day, Yes Men co-founder Andy Bichlbaum was arrested in New York while demonstrating their SurvivaBall which, according to their promotional materials, is "a self-contained living system—truly, a gated community for one. If you have a SurvivaBall, even if everyone else is dying, at least you can weather all storms."

Unfamiliar with The Yes Men? Here's the group's mission: "Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else." The Yes Men have released two films of their hijinks, and the first The Yes Men will be airing on Link TV, along with clips from the latest film The Yes Men Fix the World which will be released in theaters on October 7. We'll also be interviewing the recently arrested Andy Bichlbaum. Click here for airdates.

Also, check out these videos of other classic Yes Men moments:

Dow Spokesman Hoax

Trailer for The Yes Men Fix the World

This week several of Link's staff, including myself, attended SOCAP09 in San Francisco, a conference of social innovators and entrepreneurs investing in doing GOOD in the world. At the keynote address of the Embrace Disruption mini-conference on social media, Adam Werbach (former president of the Sierra Club) alerted us to the scourge of "yuppie mouth". This term is apparently used by dentists to describe tooth decay in young people who have avoided fluoridated public tap water in favor of an exclusive liquid diet of bottled waters, sodas and juices.

But cavities aren't the only reason you might think twice about drinking bottled H2O. There are sound ecological and economic reasons to eschew the bottle in favor of the tap -- including the plastic bottle refuse and the vast distances some bottled waters are transported. In the case of Fiji Water, as Werbach pointed out at SOCAP, your pristine thirst quencher is literally shipped from the other side of the world.

Wanting to dive in to the water wars, I found that Democracy Now! (airing on Link TV) was already there, interviewing author Anna Lenzer about her recent exposé in Mother Jones, "Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle." She points out the troubling environmental record of this brand that boasts the slogan "Every Drop is Green," as well as the U.S.-owned company's questionable relations with the island paradise's military junta. You can watch the complete interview at DemocracyNow.org.

Fiji Water has issued a response to the Mother Jones article, arguing that the company has and will continue to invest substantially into the people of Fiji. The company also strongly rejected the premise that their doing "business in Fiji somehow...legitimizes a military dictatorship."

Where do you stand on the water debate? Do you drink from the bottle or the tap -- and why? And do you buy Fiji Water's rebuttal of Lenzer's claims? Link wants to hear from you!

Fiji Water photo courtesy of Verne Equinox under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Check out this great op-ed piece on minorities in the media in the Guardian UK from one of Link TV's board members, actor and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Danny Glover! Written together with U.S. Congressman Mike Honda (D-California), the piece calls out the lack of diversity in America's newsrooms, and the paucity of coverage of minority issues. There's also a nice plug for Link TV and the channel's mission of providing diverse global perspectives, with Glover and Honda pointing out that "the more world-wise we become, the more capable we will be as a nation to understand and be understood." The article has spawned a lively discussion on the Guardian UK's website - let us know what YOU think!

A 2004 report from the CIA's inspector general was released to the public today, revealing details on CIA abuse of prisoners in the "War on Terror," including mock executions that violate federal law on torture. While a considerable amount of the document remains blacked out, the revelations have rekindled long-standing questions on prisoner abuse and torture under the Bush administration. The complete report is available here:

After word of the report leaked out on Friday, speculation rose around the next steps of Attorney General Eric Holder, who has the power to appoint a Justice Department prosecutor to investigate the CIA abuses detailed in the report. The Washington Post reported today that an announcement from Holder was imminent, naming John Durham in the role to conduct the inquiry.

Today's Democracy Now! interview with Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek investigative reporter who together with Mark Hosenball broke this story on Friday, offers an excellent overview on the legal implications of this report:

For a harrowing look at the Bush administration's policies on detention and interrogation, check out Link TV's documentary Torture on Trial. More background on the ongoing call for accountability for torture is available at linktv.org/accountability.