to wake up and start talking about the real cause is. coming up on our t.v. in detroit thousands of people are without running water the city has turned off the taps due to overdue accounts r.t. is on the ground in detroit looking at the crisis facing thousands of motor city residents and mid east turmoil is causing a strange twist dealing with attacks from isis militants the nations of iraq syria and others find a common enemy the latest on the middle east shake up coming up. and droning down protesters south africa and the numerous minor protests over the years and now a local company is offering a riot suppression drone armed with pepper spray and paint balls all the details on that later in the show.

it's friday june twenty seventh five pm in washington d.c. i'm in the right david and you're watching r.t. america we begin today with the ongoing battle over water in the motor city in an effort to balance its books the city of detroit has begun shutting off water access to residents behind on their payments and already thousands of detroiters have been affected our t. is one of the very few networks on the ground in detroit and our very own megan lopez has a story. it is one of the most essential elements of life. americans enjoy some of the cleanest and most abundant water in the world but what happens when the pipes are turned off and the tap runs dry how am i supposed to wash my child while my foot the shower myself in the largest american city to ever file for bankruptcy residents are falling behind on their water bills now facing

five billion dollars in bad debt the water department is taking drastic measures to plug holes and that means cutting water we send out forty six thousand lower forty six thousand shuttle motors and their. all of those forty six thousand showed up notices about forty five hundred were actually shut off some of the city's most vulnerable are scrambling to find a way to pay their bills bills that have gone up one hundred twenty percent in the last decade well beyond the national average the city's water department argues that this financial burden has been put on the backburner by many families who didn't believe services would be shut off but for carla walker miller i'm more likely to assume that those are people who decided once there was shut off not to buy their medicine or not to eat that evening you know not to do something that's really really important because again we're talking about a low income population this is one of those houses that has had its water shut off and you can tell that because the detroit water and sewer department went ahead and

painted on the porch that water cut sign now they've been doing this more and more frequently to abandoned houses and they are they say going after abandoned houses first in order to kind of avoid it wasting water for houses that people simply don't live in now up and down this block there's one house after another with those water cut signs these two houses happen to be right next to one another and they're really relying on the residents to report these houses however more often these days the houses facing shut off have residents living inside this is the detroit water brigade headquarters groups like the way fund in the detroit water brigade are working with residents to get them the water they need in the short term and the funding in the long term to sustain themselves with poverty in the city hovering at forty percent and an eight percent unemployment rate that is no easy task we have donations of water that people have say and we also have water

filtration devices as well as what's happening. so that people could you know the access to clean drinking water these groups are now calling for help from the federal government and even the united nations to address what they described. as a humanitarian crisis nikita rally is one detroit resident who is afraid of the consequences of missing even a single payment if you tell someone i don't have water in my home that's the first right you can get your children who you go to the water department as they help you much children back they don't care that fear isn't completely unfounded the michigan welfare rights organizations says that child protective services will come into the homes if water is not running you afraid that if your bill keep going up if they cannot seem to resolve this problem with the payment that your daughter could possibly be removed i and don't just sit there and she isn't alone no you're shutting out all the water on the most vulnerable first was now where the

human rights question the rise of the moral culpability what people do was their waters got out of the sick to medicine if you see a lot of they make the formula for the babies however the water department argues we have the the burden of being having to be realistic a lot of the folks the activists for example don't have that burden they have what they feel are simple solutions. which really don't really hold water if anybody can come up with a way that we can make the detroit drinking water is good as it is right now for pennies on the dollar or when to listen unfortunately this is not the case the city of detroit recently announced an eight hundred thousand dollars plan to help struggling residents. but with water prices set to increase another eight point seven percent in july that money is really just a drop in the bucket people detroit are resilient to strong and they can take a lot but i'm telling you the breaking point is coming leaving some residents salivating for a solution to this water crisis and others just plain thirsty reporting in detroit

michigan meghan lopez r.t. . to discuss this issue from an economic standpoint earlier i spoke to attorney thomas stephens of the organization detroiters resisting emergency management i first asked them how interconnected the city debt is to the water department well there's quite separable although a lot of agreement is in the bankruptcy assuming that the litigious fourth version goes through one hundred percent of the jobs day in the given area in canada or has been flogging a lot of department. in order to insulate the city the water department does as a debt but you know that's that you need to be seen vital infrastructure that is secured by the revenues the water department and guess what people throughout metro detroit will pay for water and sewer circe one someday we'll hear about what's going on they say it makes sense that this would happen to be able to learn the

language on their bill for a very long time but in detroit a unique you need case. the truth is you need jason everything that we hear there's no other city he certainly has the american and it's hard to manage it in. your hands touch and if you're standing out through neighborhoods and shutting. between one thousand five hundred and three thousand residential looking once a week i mean in any other city since our local elected has been decapitated by the. neighbors and for us that they were just the management was there's no accountability so that they're getting you know we get. this right the average monthly water bill is nearly double the national average of forty dollars which is incredible to think about on top of that the detroit city council approved a nine percent hike last week for a city that's already struggling why do we continue to see the water prices increase when people can't afford to pay it. well the suburbs are paying their

share and that's part of it if you look at this it's raining serious downgrade. the water department came in they made it very clear that although the charges are basically reasonable compared to other places. because you know very average bills like that the best way to compare it because it has to do with how much they charge for you to service and so forth but what fitch said was that all local charges are reasonable on the national basis in the city of detroit. when you compare it to an affordability index more than detroiters a lot of drivers going to work today and that's what we're seeing here whereas in the suburbs the suburban regions consumers are getting a tremendous rate way that they can afford even though the average back the average is abu they goes to their local but it's not that kind of support system at the local so the suburban wholesale customers are skinny and making out in the middle

of this. financially are there any alternative ways for the city to resolve that without cutting off the water yes and what saboteurs in terms of. well over a decade ago the same group that filed the human rights complaint with the u.n. michigan welfare rights they found that they played together water plant and food and water watch and people's water board in the ninety's they came forward with. water for to build the plant which was accepted by the church city council and a version of it was in the water this year it's department but with the massive hole that's been blown in the city's budget by the wall street induced foreclosure crisis and the exodus of people from the city and with the takeover by the state and. corporate private profit mindset answer this but all public health services we've got and attempts to force the poorest people the most vocal

bowraville people in the city to pay the costs that were created by the rich and yes there are what you can do is you can accurately fund the system based on ability and treated as a public trust as a public health necessity and make sure that the human right to water recognize unanimously by the united nations is respected and here we are sitting in the middle of the greatest freshwater resource on the planet there are a lot of places in the world that would really love to have the resources we have and yes it is perfectly possible if they choose to do it for the waters to marriage department under emergency manager kevyn orr jones day and night are to provide water but he says that the city to try to they just don't want to because this is part of the abuse and i should say that racist abuse is being inflicted on the people that you're right the whole underlying premise of this is not that they need to fund the water department they're not doing this that they need to fund the water department they're doing it because they want to sell it and or privatized.

some kind of public private partnership and by eliminating these accounts by cutting these poor people off from their human rights and water and sanitation they hope to make it. more attractive asset this is under discussion and mediation with federal judges and the leadership in the bankruptcy court order bankruptcy right now and that's the whole motivation of this is not anything to do with survival or funding the system it has been doing that paper for purposes of taking it over. that was attorney thomas stevens of detroit hers resisting emergency management. and now to the middle east where the turmoil is beginning to show a shift in international relations person syria president obama has asked congress to allocate a half of billion dollars to provide military equipment and training to vetted opposition fighters this would expand the cia training program and be the first direct u.s. military participation in the conflict of ons are intended to help those moderate groups in their struggle to fight against syrian president bashar al assad and the

isis insurgents who are now focusing their efforts on iraq as a civil war begins to bleed over the border into iraq in a rare twist this week syrian military jets bombed isis forces near an iraqi border post an attack not coordinated with the shiite led iraqi government but welcomed all the same meanwhile isis pushes ahead in their efforts to overrun the country stoking a sectarian conflict between the kurds sunnis and shiites in response to the crisis the u.s. is now flying its first armed unmanned drones over baghdad sharing the skies with iranian surveillance drones new york times reports of the armed u.s. predator drones are meant to protect the one hundred eighty u.s. military advisers that are currently there to assess the situation on the ground officials tell the new york times that any strike would have to be approved by president obama first and while the iraqi government has been requesting air

strikes by the u.s. for weeks president obama has so far refused so prime minister nouri al maliki tells the b.b.c. he is taking a different approach if we would how to cope with what we could have prevented what has happened in this country so today i can tell you that we have bought second time jet fighters from russia which will arrive in iraq in two or three days tell you prime minister al maliki is fighting to keep his job as western leaders and the grand ayatollah ali al sistani and. rockey leaders to create a government that is more inclusive of shiites sunnis and kurds by a tuesday deadline secretary of state john kerry is also in the region this week back in that effort. now to the crisis in ukraine today the country signed a landmark trade deal to bind itself to the european union this is the same document keep in mind that was rejected in november by ukraine's then president viktor yushchenko bitch that which sparked protests in the country the greenman

will have consequences for the country's relationship with russia and it's expected to complicate efforts to end the more than two months of separatist violence seen in the eastern part of the country nonetheless a cease fire is currently being observed most recently ukraine's national security council extended ceasefire in the east by twelve hours and in an apparent attempt to jumpstart negotiations and russia said today that it would welcome a three day extension despite the cease fire of violence erupted today in the city of slovyansk in eastern ukraine let's go to our tease roman kosar of for more. battle took place last night and according to reports at least twenty soldiers that's when the fighters of ukraine's national guard so were heard were killed as a result of that the national guard didn't know its very called bad division formed specifically to aid the ukrainian army and its military operation against the defiant east of the country now we also learned that. the government

forces have destroyed zuzu armored personnel carriers belonging to the national guard that was artie's roman poster of. alright well we talk a lot about predator drones here on our t.v. particularly ones that have the capacity to kill but what about unmanned drones that can start enough pepper spray and paint balls to deter protesters that's exactly what's being marketed right now by a south african company called desert will already have some whale customers one of them being an international mining company the unnamed corporation has purchased twenty five pepper spraying paint ball shooting flying drones for the said purpose of riot control the machine has been branded the skunk for its relation of course to a skunk spraying a passerby and has eight electric motors with propellers that can lift and carry four thousand pepper spray balls or other non lethal ammunition the device is

equipped with four barrels firing up to twenty balls per second each which could equate to eighty pepper spray balls per second it's also fitted with strobe lights blinding lasers and onboard speakers to give verbal warnings to crowds needless to say there has been some backlash to this technology earlier i was joined by steven rambam see a lorry and or paraded i first asked him why a mining company would be interested in this kind of technology. private industry governmental agencies and especially law enforcement are trying to find ways to minimize risk to take a lot of humans out of the equation and to take live humans being injured out of the equation. which i think is a good idea the problem arises when these devices drones robots semi autonomous security devices act on their own when the humans are taken out of

the equation that's when i think we start. let's say approach scott and that. well the supplier says it's providing these n. order to prevent another maracana now just so our viewers know maracana was a wild caught cat miners' strike at a south african platinum mine in two thousand and twelve or forty four people were killed in violent protests what are your thoughts on that argument is this a good way to deter people from dying it. if if they're claiming that these are less than lethal alternatives to firing bullets into a crowd i think that's wonderful but but i think that a lot of these devices are going to be used to to somebody autonomously suppress the science of press legitimate labor organizing and suppress legitimate demonstrations if you know that you can send

a fleet of drones with pepper spray or stink spry. or markers into a crowd of legitimate demonstrators and bust up the demonstration you know the to that's a very seductive option you know why why deal with your workers why deal with legitimate political decide when you can just crush it with the press of a boat so one of the tactics involved paintballs so i then or stand at the operator what would have full control over each dive marker so red dye it could be used for protesters who carry dangerous weapons blue could be selected to mark vandalizing protesters if needed the question is in my mind and i'm sure in a lot of other people's mind as what would that do marking people with different colors and how would that really deter them from advancing in their protest well first of all of course what second of all you're really going to arrest somebody based on a paint ball mark without eyewitnesses without genuine evidence i mean that's

pretty outrageous even in africa which is a country that lays pretty loose with with individual civil rights. you know there's a lot of dangers inherent in using these drones first of all is what i call the video game effect if you are not on the scene if you are not personally observing if you are ten or twenty or in the case of u.s. drones five thousand miles or why it almost becomes a video game gee there's this character on a screen let's press a button and i think that's very dangerous and very seductive if this is being used on once you've already had people on the ground who can assess the situation and who have withdrawn for their own safety if only then do you send in drones that will stop a violent situation that's not only a good thing that's a great but i think that you're going to see more and more and more first of all

these drones being sent in in lieu of human interaction and second of all a lot of these drones are going to be semi autonomous you already have cameras that can decide is a citizen taking place is a violent altercation taking place is this an illegal event without humans even being involved. in this part of the why is is for the least worthy of reasons companies and governmental agencies are trying to save money they want seven or eight or ten or twelve drones manned by one human operator and to do that the drones have to be able to interpret and make decisions on their own they're doing this to save a few bucks and i think i think that's a terrible and a scary thing you don't want to draw own that looks at a crowd and decides on its own to fire paypal as a you already have security robots that are making this sort of decision policy

ramban e.-l. apply and cooperate at. german chancellor angela merkel can finally use her phone again a year after discovering the n.s.a. had allegedly hacked her cell phone chancellor merkel has purchased a thirty four hundred dollars blackberry encrypts all voice calls internet communications and text messages via a crypto chip and while chancellor merkel says yes to blackberry the german government is saying no to rise in germany as officially ending its contract with the virus and over fears that the company may be allowing u.s. intelligence agencies to spy on sensitive government communications germany's interior ministry spokesman said quote there are indications that horizon is legally required to provide certain things to the n.s.a. and that's one of the reasons the cooperation with the rise in just won't continue rise and had provided internet services to a number of departments within the german government for years now with the

contract set to expire in twenty fifteen berlin is proposing to build its own secure now works in europe rather than having to rely on u.s. based companies of course all of these changes to communication security would not have been possible without and it's a whistleblower edward snowden which is why the german parliament's harry committee is holding an inquiry into the n.s.a.'s surveillance practices and as a whistle blower's thomas drake and william binney will be giving testimony to the angry which will take a look at the role that the german foreign intelligence agency played in n.s.a. surveillance angry we're also take a look at how the five eyes share and collect intelligence the five eyes include the u.s. the u.k. canada australia and new zealand. all right it's been a busy week here on our t.v. yesterday in particular we took a look at the policies surrounding smart guns new technology and speaking of the gun debate there's a provocative new ad out that's sparking new discussion online take

a look. to kyle behave himself of course he will be so glad if we got to go mommy's down appointment. out. how. will. they find out if they'll play with it. be so always lock up your guns. all right joining me to give his take on what we just witnessed right now is redacted tonight comedian john f. o'donnell john thanks for joining me ok because i would really i am speechless i don't know what to say about this i want to leave it to you to tell me what you thought about it i'm putting it i mean you know. it is a girl it's amazing it's just i think it's such a great way to get a get across a very very important part about gun control we have this weird glorification of

violence in this in our country sex and all sex related things are taboo this is totally a way to kind of bring both of those things out and make a great point about how important gun control is i think it's also and i think the best part is that you would never expected know you were so was that that's why it was such an effective ad and it's funny it's funny i mean just dildoes or does universally funny everything is funny about them it's like some sort of comedy truth of a dildos involved it's going to be a good time and a lot of ways it's like the word dildo i can't even think of a funny your word then dildo is just one does a dildo do you always try to like always have the word set up in your and your comedy sticks with very very very bad in there just so you can get a laugh is that i'm very glad i don't like this very dildo base no no that's not true at all but that being said i mean comedy is a really you know great tool that can be used it's a good way to get across some serious issues that pull new people in i think it is i think what happens is a brings that's a very good point i think it brings in a lot of people who otherwise maybe you know wouldn't be interested in learning

about this stuff or people that would be interested about learning this stuff but find it so boring and not digestible it's like a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down so you can make things funny that are really you know intense heavy loaded things that it really can have the plane come across in a really great way that's what this p.s.a. does and you know i mean the show the show that i'm on redactors and i we really try to do you think that's exactly what you guys do and you have that show coming up tonight tell everyone what they can expect ok well i mean we cover a lot of you know heavy stuff or honestly. lot of stories that mainstream media is not covering and we do it in a really funny way we camps the hosts is opening rant is about to say it's another secret trade agreement s a t i yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a new one there's now there's t t p t z i t and now you know t.i. i say he's a hanger back for him straight exactly exactly and he really goes into how yeah i mean you guys will see orders about but he makes this incredibly potentially draining subject very very funny we also really you know we go behind the scenes of

what's going on with the mcdonald's chicken would not get in a fun way and yeah we talk about aereo it was basically this free cable situation they got rid of that a lot of just really heavy awesome things but we use that we used we use humor to make them really digestible and understandable that was great you know was a great little bit i think everyone's going to watch now i hope all right john over donald can you not redacted tonight thanks so much thank you so much for your and that does it for now for more on the stories we cover go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com slash usa follow me on twitter at amir david and have a great weekend. i'm happy martin the stories we cover here we're not going to hear any other big story that life has a reason they don't want to. know. now let's break the set.

according to the pew research center income inequality is at its highest since one thousand twenty eight think tanks news outlets trusted institutions they all might parse the numbers differently or have very solutions but pretty much everyone agrees a small number of rich people are getting richer while the vast majority of americans are struggling carter than ever and that's presenting a shift in the way our politicians are talking to us they've always put on this act where they pretend to be just like their constituents they hold babies and on hard ads and take photos of themselves pretending to be regular folks that's been going on forever but now that the regular folks are all poor our politicians are now

working very hard to convince us they know what it's like to financially struggle themselves the obama's recently did an interview with parade magazine in which they both related stories about how they both worked for minimum wage jobs they talk about scooping ice cream and working in a binder and they also said that they want their daughters to work for minimum wage jobs because that builds character the president says he wants his daughters to learn that working for a paycheck is not always fun stimulating more fair the first lady's says she thinks every kid needs to get a taste of what it's like to do hard work now i agree that all kids need to learn how to work hard and do stuff they don't like but coming from the man at the head of a government that is working hard to screw the hard working on a daily basis. this is just nothing but insulting is specially when malaya was just

spotted working as a p.t.a. on a t.v.'s that well some of us to hang out on the set of the t.v. show pretty little liars these girls will probably never understand the we'll struggle of millions of americans and right now we've also got hillary clinton going around trying to tell everyone that she's not well off this is a politician who charges about two hundred thousand dollars a speaking fee and owns a five million dollar mansion in washington she's trying to make it seem like she can relate to the financial struggle of most americans right now too and that is a scam not only are politicians continuously in the acting legislation that helps the rich get richer and screw the working class but now they're all going to pretend to relate to being poor so we'll continue to vote for them forget about talking about the minimum wage we should all be talking about the maximum rage we feel toward our fake poor politician.