{"id":222720,"date":"2016-02-08T19:51:43","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T19:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=222720"},"modified":"2016-02-08T19:57:08","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T19:57:08","slug":"flints-crisis-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/flints-crisis-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Flint\u2019s Crisis Is About More Than Water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What is in the mind of someone who knowingly poisons children and impairs their lives? Why did the politicians, regulators and bureaucrats who knew <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mlive.com\/news\/flint\/index.ssf\/2016\/02\/months_mount_on_flint_water_cr.html\"> the water in Flint, Mich.,<\/a> was toxic lie about the danger for months? What does it say about a society that is ruled by, and refuses to punish, those who willfully destroy the lives of children?<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The crisis in Flint is far more ominous than lead-contaminated water. It is symptomatic of the collapse of our democracy. Corporate power is not held accountable for its crimes. Everything is up for sale, including children. Our regulatory agencies\u2014including the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Michigan\u2019s Department of Environmental Quality\u2014have been defunded, emasculated and handed over to corporate-friendly stooges. Our corrupt courts are part of a mirage of justice. The role of these government agencies and courts, and of the legislatures, is to sanction abuse rather than halt it.<\/p>\n<p>The primacy of profit throughout the society takes precedence over life itself, including the life of the most vulnerable. This corporate system of power knows no limits. It has no internal restraints. It will sacrifice all of us, including our children, on the altar of corporate greed. In a functioning judicial system, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Flint\u2019s former emergency manager, Darnell Earley, along with all the regulatory officials who lied as a city was being sickened, <a href=\"http:\/\/michaelmoore.com\/ArrestGovSnyder\/\">would be in jail facing trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hannah Arendt in \u201cThe Origins of Totalitarianism,\u201d Gitta Sereny in \u201cInto That Darkness,\u201d Omer Bartov in \u201cMurder in Our Midst,\u201d Alexander Solzhenitsyn in \u201cThe Gulag Archipelago,\u201d Primo Levi in \u201cThe Drowned and the Saved\u201d and Ella Lingens-Reiner in \u201cPrisoners of Fear\u201d argue that the modern instrument of evil is the technocrat, the man or woman whose sole concern is technological and financial efficiency, whose primary measurement of success is self-advancement, even if it means piling up corpses or destroying the lives of children.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/flints_crisis_is_about_more_than_water_20160207\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is in the mind of someone who knowingly poisons children and impairs their lives? Why did the politicians, regulators and bureaucrats who knew the water in Flint, Mich., was toxic lie about the danger for months? What does it say about a society that is ruled by, and refuses to punish, those who willfully [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-222720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}