Fast forward to today, where the government admits it “only” lost 9.3 billion taxpayer dollars to the auto makers – an amount that could transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of Detroit residents.

And despite the rhetoric that Detroit is on the up and up, there’s still an insurmountable amount of suffering and neglect plaguing the city. Much of Detroit is in squalor, with skyrocketing rates of poverty, homelessness, and even cuts to vital resources like water where 40% of the population faces shut-offs.

At the end of the day, it’s a story of priorities. If this country continues to prioritize guns over water, bombs over shelter, and bloodshed over life, then it won’t just be Detroit that needs saving.

Breaking the Set recently traveled to Detroit to delve deeper into the roots of the bankruptcy as well as connect with activists working tirelessly to help bring city residents back on their feet.

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Detroit Part I: Extinguishing the Homeless & Shutting Off Human Rights

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 Detroit Part II: Bankruptcy Dictatorship & Foreclosed Futures

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Donate to the Detroit Water Brigade here. Find out more about The Tricycle Collective here.

Follow me @AbbyMartin and let me know what you think at #BTSDetroit

Surprisingly, the corporation responded with a bizarre, sci-fi video message in which a woman named ‘Stephanie’ responds to the original report.

Breaking the Set reply to Nestlé:

Here is the original report:

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FOLLOW Abby Martin @ http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin

MEDIA ROOTS — Residents in the Carroll Boone Water District (CBWD) of Arkansas might soon have fluoride removed from their water supply.  According to Rene Fonseca, a licensed operator with CBWD, the corrosive additive has been proven to leach lead from aging distribution pipes which is likely causing increased lead contamination in the region’s water supply.

Several other areas in the state of Arkansas have also opposed adding fluoride to their water.  Lobbyists from the fluoridation industry claim that CBWB taxpayers would not be strapped with the $1.23 million cost to install fluoridation equipment.  But the Mockingbird Hill Water Association in Boone County unanimously opposed adding fluoride to its water supply, stating that they don’t want to take any chances amidst the current economic hardship.

Last year, in the Southern District Court of California, a lawsuit was filed asserting the U.S. people have the right to neither ingest nor be exposed to a drug that has never been tested or approved by the Food and Drug Administration.  While the Surgeon General claims that the additive helps reduce tooth decay, only the FDA is chartered by Congress with the authority to approve claims of safety for products intended to treat and prevent disease.

MR

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Carroll County News — Eureka Springs has twice voted against fluoridation. Opponents of fluoridation say many other cities across the country have stopped fluoridating waters after studies have linked it to hypothyroidism, heart disease, learning problems in children and possibly cancer.

There are also concerns the fluoride products added to the water could be contaminated with toxic chemicals. The CBWD, which serves a population of about 25,000, contacted 49 suppliers of fluoride asking for proper American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and NFS60 certification that would list all contaminants by weight, and include information about toxicological studies pertaining to those contaminants.

“These are extremely dangerous substances,” Fonseca said. “The acute lethal toxicity of sodium fluorosilicate for an adult man is 6.2 grams, which is about the weight of an average driver’s license. At a water plant the size of CBWD, you would be dumping 150 pounds a day into the water — enough oral doses to poison 9,600 men a day or 297,000 men a month. This is not pharmaceutical grade fluoride, as you would receive in the dental office.

Read more about the fight for fluoride-free water in Arkansas.

© 2012 Carroll County News

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Photo provided by Flickr user Dottie Mae

TAPPED– The high cost – to both the environment and our health – of bottled water is the subject of this documentary that enlists activists, environmentalists, community leaders and others to expose the dark side of the bottled water industry.

Tapped trailer

Trapped, full film

Photo by flickr user stevendepolo

TRUTH OUT– For the first time, a scientific study has linked natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire.

The peer-reviewed study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stands to shape the contentious debate over whether drilling is safe and begins to fill an information gap that has made it difficult for lawmakers and the public to understand the risks.

The research was conducted by four scientists at Duke University. They found that levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to natural gas wells. They also found that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself.

“Our results show evidence for methane contamination of shallow drinking water systems in at least three areas of the region and suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale gas exploration worldwide,” the article states.

The group tested 68 drinking water wells in the Marcellus and Utica shale drilling areas in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York State. Sixty of those wells were tested for dissolved gas. While most of the wells had some methane, the water samples taken closest to the gas wells had on average 17 times the levels detected in wells further from active drilling. The group defined an active drilling area as within one kilometer, or about six tenths of a mile, from a gas well.

Read more about Scientific Study Links Flammable Drinking Water to Fracking

© 2011 Truth Out

Photo by Flickr user Aunullah

Trailer for Gasland