Free Thought Project – by Matt Agorist
In late August, Jackson, Mississippi experienced a high level of rainfall causing a key pump at the already-failing O.B. Curtis water treatment plant to fail. That plant provided more than 180,000 people with drinking water and since its failure, all of those people have been without water.
Last week, the pressure in the lines was restored but the “water” running through the lines is not drinkable and more closely resembles toxic sludge or motor oil than it does water.
Over the weekend, Mississippi Today reporter Molly Minta took a video of what flows from her sink at home — and it’s disgusting.
My water just now in Jackson, MS pic.twitter.com/LFfat03dCv
— Molly Minta (@mintamolly) September 9, 2022
Minta posted the video above with the following description, “I live in Belhaven, and some of my neighbors have been speculating the water is safer here because we’re close to a water plant but pretty far from the reservoir. Well…”
Well, indeed. Her water is so dirty and contaminated that she can’t so much as wash her hands, much less take a shower or drink it. To see exactly what’s in the sludge, Minta is sending off a sample of the water to be tested.
I have collected a sample of the water to get it tested pic.twitter.com/jms8eqrlvY
— Molly Minta (@mintamolly) September 9, 2022
It is important to point out that she is doing all this without the help from government — who caused the crisis in the first place.
According to Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, although the water treatment plant finally failed in August, the system “has been failing for decades” and nothing is being done.
“I have said on multiple occasions that it’s not a matter of if our system would fail, but a matter of when our system would fail,” Lumumba said.
Even before it failed, the city had been on a months-long boil notice because of a warning over disease carrying bacteria in the water supply. Since 2016, officials knew about the corrosion of the system and inadequate treatment — yet nothing was done — and now sludge pours from Jackson residents’ water taps.
Lumumba estimates that it would take roughly $1 billion to get the systems back up and running in a safe capacity but they don’t have it. This is particularly perplexing to many folks who have watched a record amount of US taxpayer dollars in recent months flow outside of the United States and into Ukraine.
Since the war in Ukraine began in February, Biden authorized $1.3 billion followed by an additional $13.6 billion. This original $15 billion of your tax dollars that got dumped into Ukraine to arm literal Nazis in the region was offensive enough but it was just the tip of the iceberg. In May, the House passed yet another massive spending bill, authorizing another $40 billion in your tax dollars to arm Nazis and keep the country at war. And they show no signs of slowing down.
Since then, various packages of cash and weapons of mass destruction, ranging from just a few hundred million to a billion, have flowed into the arms of welcoming Ukrainian politicians and military leaders.
In late August, the Pentagon announced that yet another $775 million would be sent to Ukraine. As Antiwar.com reported, this was the eighteenth weapons package to Ukraine in six months. But that wasn’t enough, apparently.
U.S. officials then told The Associated Press that yet another windfall of cash was set to be handed over to Ukraine. This time, it is in the form of roughly $3 billion in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come, according to U.S. officials — signaling to Americans that the US wants this war to go on as long as it can.
Now, the Biden admin is requesting another $13.7 billion for weapons, intelligence support and other budgetary support. To illustrate just how much money has been stolen from American taxpayers for Ukraine we can look at 2020. According to a recent report from the Intercept, “the U.S. government has pumped more money and weapons into supporting the Ukrainian military than it sent in 2020 to Afghanistan, Israel, and Egypt combined — surpassing in a matter of months three of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in history.”
Sludge is literally pouring from the taps of American citizens and the federal government is sending a record amount of money out of the country to fight a proxy war with Russia.
This water problem is not just isolated to Jackson, Mississippi either. In 2016, Flint, Michigan exposed a massive problem in the United States, with thousands of aging water treatment facilities when high levels of lead were discovered in their water. But Flint was just the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, Reuters published neighborhood-level blood lead testing results from 34 states, as well as Washington DC, which were collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The results showed that 3,810 neighborhood areas have levels of lead that are at least double those seen in Flint. Close to half of these sites had levels that were actually four times as high as those in Flint.
The current state of the country involves, undrinkable water, looming food shortages, millions slipping into poverty, major cities slipping into complete dismay, 1984 becoming reality, and the United States government’s answer to it all is to provoke world war with Russia at your expense. A travesty indeed.
You will drink the sludge and you will be happy.