In a deal that has angered Six Nations
but toward which the settler community of Southern Ontario has
remained largely indifferent, Coca-Cola has purchased a vast area of
the Grand River watershed. The move comes amidst revelations that the
Grand River, a source of drinking water to about 500,000 people,
contains record levels of artificial sweeteners.
“We saw this incredible opportunity
and negotiated a deal with the city of Kitchener immediately,” said
Sheridan Winegum, a spokesperson for the multinational soft-drink
company. “The Grand River contains the highest levels of artificial
sweeteners of all rivers in the world. We're not just talking
sucralose either. It's got acesulfame, saccharin, and even cyclamate.
It's a gold-mine.”
The move comes on the heels of a study
concluding upwards of 190,000 cans of diet soda are being consumed
daily in the region. “If you think about all those cans of pop
floating down the river, it's quite an image,” said Sherry Schiff,
a biogeochemist at the University of Waterloo. Because the sweeteners
are neither broken down by the body nor eliminated in waste-treatment
plants where urine and feces are converted into drinkable water, they
enter the watershed intact. That's how they were found at 23 test
sights as well as pouring from household taps.
To local
residents the thought of drinking sweeteners that have been excreted
through their neighbours' urethras might be repulsive, but to
Coca-Cola the circumstance has undeniable appeal. “What you have to
understand is that we use millions of litres of water a day to
produce diet soft-drinks that need to be artificially sweetened,”
Winegum says. “If we source our water from the Grand River we're
basically killing two birds with one stone because the candied
chemicals are already in the water.”
There are fears
amongst Six Nations and environmental groups that the move will bring
an already stressed watershed to its breaking point. “We don't
really see how this is going to benefit anyone but Coca-Cola,” said
a man who stood outside Kitchener city hall yesterday with a protest sign. But Winegum says the move is the best
thing the region could do with its water. “Soon Enbridge is going
to reverse its line 9 pipeline and a rupture is inevitable. Once that
happens the river will be irreversibly contaminated. It's best we
take advantage of it while it's still here and convert as much of it
to diet-soda as possible.”
When asked about the long-term
impacts one of Schiff's colleagues had a similar outlook. “Look,
there is no doubt that this is going to massively deplete the
watershed but we can rest assured that if our taps run dry there will
always be plenty of soda to drink.”
He also had this hopeful insight. “The
Grand River not only contains sweeteners but also very high levels of
excreted birth control. If we all switch over to diet-soda as our
primary beverage, it could potentially reduce the population of the
region, thus minimizing our impact on the watershed and bringing
things back into balance. Nature has a way of harmonizing.”
While
the United States reels in the wake of a treasonous leak of top
secret documents revealing the government's telephone and online
spying methods, there is growing concern that internet posts and
private correspondence obtained through these methods may be taken
out of context and used to vilify individuals who are not terrorists.
Rest assured, those trumpeting such concerns are engaged in nothing
more than fear mongering, clogging media channels with paranoid
delusions as a much more serious story receives zero coverage.
Yesterday
at 4:43AM, heavily armed police moved into a series of homes in New
York City and apprehended the cast of Sesame Street who are now being
held indefinitely at the Guantanamo Detention Centre. The move came after
concern was sparked over statements on the popular children's
program's Facebook page.
Chief
of Police, Raymond Kelly, said a number of his officers were injured
during the arrests, one violently pecked in the eyes by Big Bird
before the behemoth was shot dead. He went on to say he was glad to
have these suspects off the streets.
“The
statements on their page are alarming,” Kelly said. “It seems
pretty clear they are recruiting children to commit acts of
eco-terrorism.”
The
webpage, which has since been taken down, read, “We've teamed up
with the National Park Service to encourage kids to explore nature!”
“Emboldening
children in this way is extremely dangerous,” Kelly said. “The
land needs to be exploited for oil, gas, and lumber and this
nature-worship is really no different than the indoctrination of
overseas terrorists into Islam.”
Kelly
said statements on the page about National Nutrition Month were being
seen as hostile toward the biotechnology industry which is deeply
entwined with the American government. “What you have to
understand,” Kelly said, “is that when you attack agriculture
companies like Monsanto what you are really doing is attacking
America. Sesame Street is a serious threat to public safety.”
A
National Security Agency spokesperson said that what ultimately
sparked the need for action was a series of posts about “putting
down the pacifier.” A link to a particularly alarming video on
youtube showed Elmo talking about how giving up his “binky” made
him feel happy and proud. “When you give up your binky, you'll feel
really good too,” Elmo says. “This rhetoric is clearly a metaphor
for initiating the collapse of the capitalist social structure,
suggesting, against all reason, that it would feel good to destroy
our social progress,” the spokesperson said. “Beneath the cute
and fuzzy costumes lie savage anarchist ideologies ”
President
Obama weighed in in an address to the nation, saying there were also
alarming references to the Boston Marathon bombing. “After the
bombing, Sesame Street said on Facebook that an appropriate response
was, and I quote, “Empowering your child with a sense of control of
his or her life.” There seems to me just a little too much room to
interpret that as meaning our children should find empowerment by
detonating explosives. The most successful country in the world can't
risk a wave of juvenile eco-terrorists rising up and bombing
everything from timber companies to biotech giants. The economy
simply couldn't handle it.”
On
top of all of this, a private Skype conversation between Ernie and
Bert, obtained by the NSA, shows the muppets discussing how unfair it
is that the Cookie Monster can eat box after box of cookies while
their friend Oscar is left living in a garbage can. Ernie suggests to
Bert, “If we can't raise Oscar's standard of living, perhaps we can
get the misshapen cookies from the factory garbage bins to share with
him.”
“I
don't think we should steal, Bert,” Ernie says.
“Well,
let's talk a bit more about it when we meet in person,” Bert says.
Police
Chief Kelley said Bert's reluctance to conclude the conversation on
Skype is indicative of his certainty he will sway Ernie toward
criminality. “It is our duty as police,” he said, “to prevent
would be criminals from committing criminal acts by incarcerating
them.” While no official charges need be laid against Guantanamo
prisoners, it is at least possible they could eventually face trial
for conspiracy to steal cookies and disrupt the social order. The
rest of the cast is not expected to see a courtroom until well after
the war on terror has drawn to a close.
