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It can take just 90 seconds and a rubber band. Curious cooks have begun hacking carbonators, the soda-making machines that are proliferating in American home kitchens. Most buyers are happy to use them for their intended purpose: turning tap water into sparkling water. But off-label, they have been used to make herb-infused sparkling wine, newfangled sangria, heady cocktails and nonalcoholic — but intoxicatingly delicious — sodas. Recently, in a storefront laboratory in Chinatown, Piper Kristensen, a bartender and occasional lab assistant who works for the avant-garde bar Booker and Dax in the East Village, studied a SodaStream Penguin. It had...

Radical Left-wing activists demonstrated in Vancouver, Canada on Sunday in a call to boycott Israeli company SodaStream for operating in “occupied territories” and “mistreating” Palestinian workers. SodaStream manufactures and distributes machines for home use to make carbonated drinks, eliminating the need to buy environmentally harmful plastic bottles. It has been discriminated against by the boycott movement for holding its headquarters in the eastern Jerusalem suburb city of Ma’ale Adumim, located over the 1949 Armistice lines. …

After Actress Scarlett Johansson stepped down as Oxfam’s ambassador over her advertisement with Israeli company SodaStream, a company Oxfam boycotts, Canadian Employment Minister Jason Kenney said their move spurred him to buy from SodaStream. […] Kenney bashed the “anti-Israel obsession” with which leftist groups pursue Israel, even while they ignore countries like Iran which executes political dissidents and homosexuals. …

For a century, the executives of Coca-Cola Co. have done everything possible to put their famed cola "within arm's reach of desire," to the point that one chief executive frequently pondered an extra tap at the kitchen sink—with Coke flowing from it. The company's plan to team up with the maker of the Keurig single-serve coffee brewers to develop a do-it-yourself countertop Coke machine comes pretty close. The new cold drink machine won't look anything like SodaStream, the leading home soda maker, says Coke's new partner, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. It will have a similar design to Green Mountain's...

It keeps getting easier to ditch the soda can. When Coca-Cola said this week that it would let people make its drinks at home using a beverage machine, it became the latest company to take advantage of a growing trend: People turning to flavored drops or at-home carbonation machines that do away with the need to haul home bulky cans and bottles from the supermarket. […] Options that do away with cans and bottles are faring far better. Revenue for the Americas region at SodaStream, which makes at-home carbonation machines, surged 88 percent in 2012 from the previous year, the...

A delegation of 14 leaders from the Presbyterian clergy, a church that in the past supported boycotting Israeli products manufactured in Judea and Samaria (Shomron), arrived last week to visit Israel. The visit was organized by the America-Israel Friendship League (AIFL); the delegates’ goal was to discover Israel personally and to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Representatives from the Presbyterian Church, which has an estimated six million followers, visited the Soda Stream factory, which is located in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem. They spoke to representatives from the management and several employees. While some United States-based religious groups, such as...

Oxfam, the global charity that describes itself as "determined to change that world by mobilizing the power of people against poverty," has decided it prefers Palestinians to be poor, hungry and unemployed. This all involves a Hollywood actress, a Super Bowl ad, an at-home soda maker and some confused liberals who appear to prefer their poor people stay poor. Scarlett Johansson has been an Oxfam global ambassador, helping to raise money and the profile of the charity's work around the world, but after ScarJo, as her fans call her, opted to appear in a Super Bowl ad for SodaStream, things...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kERy_1r2LxQ]   I noticed that Roger Waters, formerly of the iconic rock band Pink Floyd, has been publicly scolding a few fellow celebrities in the field of music and film for not sharing his fanatical anti-Israel political views. Specifically, Scarlett Johansson drew Waters' ire for filming some ads for the Israeli beverage maker SodaStream and classic rocker Neil Young, who ignored Waters' directive to not book concerts in Israel. Waters has chugged the kool aid of the 'Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment', (BDS) movement, which is in reality a political movement whose underlying mission is to portray Palestinians as victims of...

A manual worker at the settlement-based factory that sparked the Scarlett Johansson controversy, Nahida Fares of Ramallah earns triple the pay of her husband, an officer in the PA ISHOR ADUMIM, West Bank — The SodaStream factory, situated just off the highway leading down from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, was abuzz on Sunday with journalists from across the globe trying to get a glimpse of the action. The tour of the carbonated beverage-maker plant was organized especially for curious foreign correspondents on the eve of the Super Bowl, which featured an ad starring its glamorous spokeswoman Scarlett Johansson. The...

SARAH Palin's life reads like an Oscar-worthy script: moose-hunting former beauty queen-cum-hockey mum who could be a heartbeat away from scoring the US presidency. But Hollywood is having none of it. Politics and movies have always mixed - from Joe Kennedy and silent-films siren Gloria Swanson to son John F. Kennedy and bombshell Marilyn Monroe, to the McCarthyism that swept through back lots to blackball artists over real or imagined Communist sympathies. Hollywood is liberal and right now there is no love for the conservative Alaskan Governor who made history last month by becoming the first woman on the Republican...

My male friends all seem to have the same assessment of the Republican nominee for the vice presidency of the United States: She's pretty hot. I guess that depends on what you mean by hot. If GOP leaders had intended to pick on the basis of pulchritude, I would have suggested perhaps a Scarlett Johansson lookalike. Instead they chose a Tina Fey clone. But apparently much of America is willing to vote for her based on her looks. The GOP better hope so. She sure isn't going to win based on her brains. We got a hint of that during...

Johansson: I'm in love with Obama! By ERIN CARLSON, The Associated Press Fri Jan 25, 7:29 PM ET NEW YORK - Scarlett Johansson returned from the Persian Gulf with a whole lot of soldiers' trinkets and a delusion of her own engagement — to Barack Obama. "I am engaged ... to Barack Obama," Johansson joked in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. "My heart belongs to Barack, and that is who I am currently, finally, engaged to. Yes." Johansson, who showed her support for the Democratic presidential candidate at the Iowa caucus earlier this month, was really just...

<p>According to Politico, the actress frequently e-mails the Democratic nominee, campaigns tirelessly on his behalf, hosts lucrative fundraisers and appeared in the “Yes We Can” viral video that got 10 million views its first week online.</p> <p>The actress has been an Obama supporter for years, even before the first Democratic caucus in Iowa, and doesn't even try to hide her affection for the candidate. “I am engaged to Barack Obama,” she said back in January, joking with reporters after a USO tour to the Persian Gulf. “My heart belongs to Barack.”</p>

An overwhelming surge of tens of thousands of illegal alien children crossing our southern border has been happening in the past few months, everyone is looking for a scapegoat. Rather than seeking out a solution to end this surge, most would prefer to just point fingers. The blame game is a lot like sex. It sells. Unfortunately, most are rather biased in how they point fingers. Democrats blame Bush. Republicans blame Obama. Libertarians blame our open border as not being open enough. It’s never really that simple; however, as there are many areas to place blame, so we’re going to...

Since January of last year the European Union has been threatening to boycott any company or entity that does business with the West Bank of Israel. The sanctions, perversely designed by Secretary of State John Kerry, were meant to punish Israel for its settlements in the West Bank and encourage the Jewish nation to adopt Kerry’s peace process framework. The economic boycott threat was entirely one-sided against Israel. Because there were no consequences for the Palestinian Authority should they abandon the peace process, it gave the PA every reason to harden their position and wait for the EU to act...

Believe it or not, it was 10 years ago this month that Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced himself to America with a speech that shook the Fleet Center in Boston. The main theme of that Democratic convention was the litany of George W. Bush's failures — an unpopular and unending war in Iraq, a faltering image abroad, a stagnating middle class. Obama gave eloquent voice to those frustrations, arguing that all of them could be addressed if only we reunited the electorate. Probably Obama himself would not have guessed then that he would ascend to...

n which our host, Andrew Klavan, points out that the leftists behind the current Boycott, Divestment and Sanction, or BDS, efforts against the State of Israel are not at all anti-semitic. They just hate Jews and want to kill them... TRANSCRIPT: RT: WHO PUT THE BS IN BDS? I’m Andrew Klavan and this is the Revolting Truth. Many people have voiced disapproval of the BDS movement. Personally, I feel if some hapless schmuck likes to be chained up while a woman smacks him with a whip that’s nobody’s business but... No, wait, maybe that’s BDSM, the sex thing. BDS is...

At one point during this this week’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the hundreds of delegates, known as commissioners, gleefully bounced scores of red balloons in the air. At another point, they collectively broke into dance, confirming that most Protestants, especially if they’re old, white and Anglo, don’t look so great wiggling around. (Here’s a video, for mature viewers only.) Mainline Protestantism, at least in its official curia, has been liberal for nearly 100 years. But for most of that century it was a thoughtful, dignified liberalism that still roughly adhered to historic Christianity’s moral architecture, even if...

The anti-Israel movement has made academia its breeding ground, and new initiatives to boycott Israeli academics and research are frequently introduced to student and professorial bodies. But the BDS movement was dealt a crippling blow on Wednesday, after one college turned the tables - introducing the first anti-BDS resolution at an American university. The student government at Western Washington University (Associated Students WWU) voted unanimously Wednesday that it will not consider boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) based on national origin, according to Israel advocacy organization StandWithUs. The 7-0 vote represents the first time ever that a North American university’s student...

The Rolling Stones were taking the stage in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, and were extremely excited to perform in Israel for the very first time. Ahead of the milestone show they decided to travel to Jerusalem where they visited the Western Wall. While Keith Richards skipped the outing, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts were all photographed at the holy spot, also known as the Kotel or Wailing Wall. Mick, 70, was paying his respects at the sacred site, and was spotted placing a hand on the Wall after following the lead of two men in kippah. Ronnie, who...