WORLD WATER DAY OF MOURNING back in 2001

 This is just a sampling of what happens when water becomes a commodity.  Privatization has been tried in England.  Water rates rose 45% overnight, maintenence was cut to a bare minimum and the quality of water fell to all time lows. 

In Bolivia where water has been privatized, indigenous people who attempted to dig their own wells were murdered.  150 in all. 

The Clean Water Restoration Act will facilitate the privatization of US water supplies and rights. 

 Extract from SAMWU Press Statement, 20 March 2001

The South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) calls for this year’s World Water Day to be declared a day of mourning for the millions of people who are sick and dying as a result of not having access to water. The United Nations chose “Water and Health” as the theme for World Water Day on Thursday 22nd March 2001. Nothing could be more ironic in South Africa and across the African continent. People here are becoming more and more unhealthy and dying prematurely because water is now a commodity that only the rich can afford.

Behind the inevitable glib and cheery public relations turning on of taps for the first time on Thursday, lies the shocking reality that worldwide, more than five million people, most of them children, die every year from illnesses caused from drinking poor quality water.

A shocking new survey has revealed that much of the blame for this must be laid at the feet of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their water privatization and full cost recovery policies have been imposed as conditions for IMF loans in over 12 African countries. Negotiated under the IMF’s new Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), the conditions are leading to people being cut off from water more than ever before.

The Africa Policy and Information Centre has reported that water privatization is making water less accessible and less affordable. People are resorting to unsafe water sources. This is clearly evident in South Africa where the amount of cholera infections is close approaching 70 000!

In Ghana, the result of forcing the poor to pay “market rate tariffs” for water means that most Ghanains can no longer afford water at all. Only 36 percent of the rural population have access to safe water and 11 percent have adequate sanitation within the existing system. Water is also scarce in the capital, Accra. In poor areas of Accra, families are paying almost half the daily wage for 10 buckets of water!

In Angola, there is an agreement that water prices should rise regularly so that the company delivering water can make a “reasonable” profit. In Benin, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Rwanda water privatization must be completed by the end of this year for governments to qualify for loans. In Sao Tome and Principe, there will be no further government subsidy of water in the run up to privatization.

This is clearly ridiculous. In some of the most poverty stricken countries in Africa, unemployed and homeless people who cannot even afford a crust of bread now and then, are expected to fork out one months food money for a few buckets of water! In the last month alone in Cape Town and Johannesburg, thousands of people have been disconnected from water they could not afford to pay for. Even permanently employed workers are being forced to choose between food, electricity or water. This terrible reality makes a mockery of human rights day.

Even in so-called first world countries like New Zealand, people are being forced to take to the streets against the commercialization of water. Water activists in Auckland will be protesting on World Water Day against the City Council. The demands of the activists are that all commercialization be stopped and water be restored to the public service after hundreds of families were disconnected from water they could no longer afford.

Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water

By Alan Snitow & Deborah Kaufman, with Michael Fox
Jossey-Bass/Wiley & Sons, 2007

THIRST investigates eight recent high-profile controversies over the corporate takeover of water in the U.S, and illuminates how citizens are fighting back in heartland communities like Stockton, CA, Lexington, KY, Holyoke, MA, and Mecosta County, MI. Political corruption, high stakes financial takeovers, and behind the scenes maneuvering by some of the richest corporations characterize a David and Goliath battle in which local citizens muster creative and often surprising organizing methods to preserve their right to local, public control of this precious resource.

The PBS documentary Thirst showed how communities around the world are resisting the privatization and commodification of water.  Now THIRST, the book, picks up where the documentary left off, revealing the emergence of controversial new water wars here in the United States.

THIRST exposes the corporate attempts to:

• Take over municipal control of water in communities around the country
• Buy up rights to groundwater in the US
• Create and corner the market on bottled water

It also shows how people in affected communities are fighting back to keep water affordable, accessible, sustainable and public:

• By creating new methods to challenge the corporate juggernaut in an age of globalization
• By challenging tired clichés of Republican and Democratic political alignments

We are at the tipping point in the new, global water wars. The United States is ground zero. What happens in the next few years will determine the fate of water and our basic democratic rights. THIRST is a battlefield account of the conflict.

ww.thirstthemovie.org/book.html

Book Review: Re-inventing Collapse, The Soviet Example And American Prospects, By Dmitry Orlov

Reviewed by Carolyn Baker

The old normal is that life will go on just like before. The new normal is that nothing will ever be the same Rather than attempting to undertake the Herculean task of mitigating the unmitigatable-attempting to stop the world and point it in a different direction-it seems far better to turn inward and work to transform yourself into someone who might stand a chance, given the world’s assumed trajectory. Much of this transformation is psychological and involves letting go of many notions that we have been conditioned to accept unquestioningly. Some if it involves acquiring new skills and a different set of habits. Some of it is even physiological, changing one’s body to prepare it for a life that has far fewer creature comforts and conveniences, while requiring far more physical labor. (Dmitry Orlov)

These words from Pages 125 and 126 of Dmitry Orlov’s Re-Inventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects leapt out at me as perhaps the most definitive in his marvelous new book in which Dmitry illumines the collapse of the American empire, now well underway, with his insights from living through the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Carolyn Baker)

The rest of this article may be accessed at:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/genera_carolyn__080226_book_review_3a_re_inve.htm

UN Millenium Goals/Global Poverty TAx

 Congress Contemplates Giving Cash to Foreigners
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, February 25, 2008

“There is much more to the Millennium Goals than merely extorting more money from U.S. taxpayers. The goals set forth a comprehensive plan to put the United States under U.N. global governance.

These goals include a “standing peace force” (i.e., a U.N. standing army), a “U.N. Arms register” of all small arms and light weapons, “peace education” covering “all levels from preschool through university,” and “political control of the global economy.” The goals call for implementing all U.N. treaties that the United States has never ratified, all of which set up U.N. monitoring committees to compromise U.S. sovereignty.

To achieve this level of control over U.S. domestic law, the plan calls for “strengthening the United Nations for the 21st century” by “eliminating” the veto and permanent membership in the Security Council. The goal is to reduce U.S. influence to one out of 192 nations, so we would have merely the same vote as Cuba.

The Global Poverty Act would be a giant step toward the Millennium Goals of global governance and international taxes on Americans. Tell your senators to kill this un-American bill.”

Read the full article here:

http://www.townhall.com/content/50105bdb-1d6d-4eb6-b16d-2bfb62712cfb