No one, and most especially Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, should be surprised that two United Nations lawyers came to town to scold city officials for cutting off water to delinquent customers, sanctimoniously describing the water shut-offs as a “human rights” violation.
The United Nations virtually owns cities and towns of North America like Detroit. They’re just not usually that open about it.
The UN ownership of cities and towns is called Agenda 21.
The best definition of Agenda 21 comes right from the UN itself. In 1993, the UN published ‘Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet’: “Agenda 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by every person on earth…it calls for specific changes in the activities of all people…Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all humans, unlike anything the world has ever experienced.
“And if you think they are kidding in this Science Fiction-type definition of ‘The Agenda That Really Wasn’t There’, ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) proves otherwise. (Canada Free Press, Aug. 20, 2012 )
“Nothing in Orwell’s 1984 can match the full horror of Agenda 21. It is serfdom by stealth.”
“In addition, some 178 countries are now pushing Agenda 21 but these are only the countries we know about. “
Meanwhile, you can bet whatever coins you have left in your cookie jar that the two representatives with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose visit to Detroit lasted three days, during a time when the city is desperately working to bail itself out of bankruptcy, did not go without water or any other creature comfort.
“It is contrary to human rights to disconnect water from people who simply do not have the means to pay their bills,” Catarina de Albuquerque, one of the two representatives, said Monday at the conclusion of their visit. (FoxNews, Oct. 21, 2014)
“I heard testimonies from poor, African American residents of Detroit who were forced to make impossible choices—to pay the water bill or to pay their rent.”
Decades of Democrat rule left the once thriving city of Detroit high and dry, and that was before a man called Barack Hussein Obama came along to nationalize the American car industry back in 2008.
Were it not for the human suffering in Democrat-hobbled Detroit, it would be downright comical reading about how Alexis Wiley, Mayor Duggan’s top aide, said the city is “very disappointed” with the “one-sided” UN review of the city’s water problem.
“They weren’t interested in the facts,” she said. “They took a position and never once [before Monday] reached out to the city for data.”
The UN doesn’t need to reach out to your city for data, Ms. Wiley. They already have it, along with the data of some 600 and growing other American cities.
Cities in the know should be “very alarmed” rather than “very disappointed” with a UN that collects cities for its insidious Agenda 21 chokehold on society like some have to collect pogey in declining economies.
Many babies were born in the nine months it took the UN to hit town to weigh in on the 27,000 Detroit water shut-offs from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30.
In a concerted effort to collect on the more than $115 million in delinquent water and sewer department payments, Detroit officials shut off water to both businesses and residents who either are 60 days past due or owe more than $150 on their water bills.
“Most shut-offs were halted for several weeks this summer to give residents an opportunity to enter a payment plan, but they have resumed with 5,100 shut-offs in September alone. ()
“Detroit officials have defended the decision, arguing that customers collectively owed more than $115 million in delinquent water-and-sewer department payments before the city took action and that their efforts are improving the situation.
“The department said it collected about $2.5 million in 2012 and 2013 and about $3.7 million in the first nine months of this year.
“Ordinary residents aren’t the only ones subject to the policy. Service was shut off to one city council member. And an investigation by a local news organization found city officials have collected on the more than $80,000 owed by the Joe Louis Arena, home of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings, and roughly $55,000 past due from Ford Field, where the NFL’s Detroit Lions play home games.
“Wiley also said Detroit is helping residents by improving customer service, getting 33,000 people in the payment plans and cutting residential calls for water assistance by more than 50 percent.
“De Albuquerque and the other representative, Leilani Farha, visited Detroit after activists appealed to the UN for assistance. Among them was the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Michigan director Kary Moss said: “It’s unfortunate that, in the Great Lakes State, we need a visit from an international body to remind us of our most fundamental obligation to our citizens. Water is life.”
“The representatives met with residents and with Duggan and water department officials for about two hours Monday morning.
“De Albuquerque and Farha, also known as UN special rapporteurs, cited such other problems as the city’s drastic population decline, rising unemployment and the utility passing on higher costs associated with an aging system.
“De Albuquerque said she has seen shut-offs in other U.S. cities and developed nations, but nothing like Detroit. “Our conclusion is that you have here in Detroit a man-made perfect storm,” she said. “The scale of the disconnections in the city is unprecedented.”
“De Albuquerque and Farha say the mayor’s plan to help delinquent customers fails to help the chronically poor and those who face shut-offs. Farha also said at least some residents said their past-due bills were the result of city billing or accounting errors.
“However, they called their conversation with Detroit officials “constructive.” They also said they can’t enforce recommendations but want to help the city and residents resolve the situation.”
If the UN ‘special rapporteurs’ really wanted to help Detroit, they’d pay off the $115 million owed in unpaid water bills. The UN’s got the money and some of it came directly from the no-water beleaguered people of Detroit.
But over the years, the cash-rich UN has not even paid its outstanding parking bills to the City of New York.
Perhaps there is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, with the light on the hypocrisy of the largest bureaucracy on earth being shone in by Detroit, some day leading to hundreds of towns and cities kicking themselves free from the toxic tentacles of the UN’s invading Agenda 21 Army.