The fountainhead runs dry.

Coca-Cola has agreed to adhere to the UN Global Pact in its operations around the globe. Since not many of us are familiar with what that entails, here's a thumbnail summary from its formation in 2000:

Executives of DaimlerChrysler, Nike and Royal Dutch Shell filled a chamber today where diplomats usually conduct business, as the United Nations recruited many well-known multinational companies to help protect workers and the environment in places where governments do not. [...] Some 50 multinationals joined 12 labor associations and watchdog groups to sign a "global compact" that commits them to support human rights, eliminate child labor, allow free trade unions and refrain from polluting the environment wherever they do business. [...] The effort seems highly unlikely to alter the global economic landscape immediately. The pact, which took 18 months to negotiate, binds the signers to a declaration of principles rather than a legal code of conduct.

All in all, pretty mild stuff (several social and environmental groups, including Greenpeace, refused to sign on, saying that it was too weak), but undeniably a good thing in principle, one you'd think even right-wing free marketeers could support. For example, "a company operating in a country that did not allow free unions should permit its workers to organize and bargain collectively, a position that could put companies at odds with the government of China, where almost all companies that signed the compact have investments." Hey! How 'bout that?

But not if you're "Look at My Boobs" Pamela from Atlas Shrugs. Because, you know, the United Nations is eeeevil.

UN: Coca-Cola Bends Over

Has everyone lost their senses? Coca Cola succumbs to UN bullshit [...] WTF are they up to? What form of blackmail did the international communi-tay resort to, I wonder? [...] These acts of capitulation are setbacks for the biggest minority of all, the individual.

Ummmm, okay. See, when multinational corporations agree in principle that child labor, pollution, and abusing employees is wrong, that's a mighty blow against, uh, individuals. Somewhere. Just goes to show that anybody who cites Ayn Rand unironically past the age of 17 is good for exactly one thing: unintentional humor.