DETROIT — Nearly 50,000 students headed back to school in Detroit, Michigan will be greeted by bottled water this year in lieu of traditional drinking fountains and water faucets, after tests showed elevated levels of lead and copper in the water.
SAADA, YEMEN — Four Saudi warplanes launched airstrikes against the UNICEF-funded al Asayed Water Network, destroying water pumps, an electric generator, a nearby solar energy system, and a guard room. Much of the facility was destroyed in the attack, leaving thousands of residents of the Al Safra district of Yemen’s Saada governorate, including internally displaced families, without clean drinking water.
Mohammed Kamel — an engineer with the National Foundation which operated the Water Network — said in a statement to MintPress:
Your tap water might look crystal-clear, but there are a lot more contaminants floating around in there than you realize. An analysis of 28 million water records from nearly 500,000 American water utilities collected by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reveals most Americans’ tap water contains contaminants at levels acceptable to the government, but may actually pose health risks to the people. [1]
More than 15 million Americans across 27 states may have drinking water contaminated with perfluorochemicals (PFCs) that are used to make non-stick cookware and other products, according to a report published in June 2017. [1]
The emerald-green waters of Lake Bled in the northwestern corner of Slovenia. (AP/Dusan Stojanovic)
State officials and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) have announced the discovery of high levels of arsenic and lead in groundwater beneath the Allen Fossil Plant, located in southwest Memphis. Officials found the toxins in wells where pollution from ponds containing leftover coal ash is monitored. The Allen Fossil Plant, you see, is powered by coal.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the direction of the Trump administration, will revoke a rule that gives the agency broad authority over regulating the pollution of tributaries and wetlands that flow into the country’s largest rivers. [1]
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told Congress on June 27, 2017, that the agency would “provide clarity” by “withdrawing” the rule, and follow standards set in 2008. Pruitt had previously said he would recuse himself from working on litigation to the rule.
Said Pruitt:
What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti. Sooner or later, it comes to places like Michigan’s Benton Harbor and Flint. Our destinies are linked. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish aristocrat who long puppeteered United States presidents from behind the curtains, has written: “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation.” I concur.
The notion of a colonist as cannibal in Haiti is widespread. This idea, called manje moun (eating people), could hardly qualify as superstition, given the experience of colonialism. It is daunting to find a better description for those who grab control of water and food, and then calculate the minimum caloric intake a population needs so that a maximum of labor may be extracted from its emaciated and zombified workers without killing them. The neo-colonists may call themselves humanitarians, but their victims know exactly what they are.
