Public Utility, Private Profit: Privatization of Water Is as Benign as Lucifer

I’ve also been ignorant about nearly everything else in the world. I don’t think I really got how deeply evil some corporations were. I didn’t understand how money worked, nor what the World Bank was about, nor the International Monetary Fund. They sounded benign. They are about as benign as Lucifer.

I certainly didn’t understand how the World Bank and some huge corporations were, in concert, working to kill millions of people by depriving them of access to water. I do now.

Of course, their public relations departments would go berzerko at such a charge. For my opinion on public relations departments, see Bill Hicks on YouTube.

 

We’re helping all of those people, the World Bank would say. We’re sponsoring important developments and laying pipe all over the place. Without us, hell, that water would just lay there underground not doing anybody any good. That’s not only what they would say, it’s what they do say.

 

If you were naive, like I was, you might think that water, being the one single necessity of life without which you’re flat-out dead, and being a substance which comprises 70% of the surface of the planet, and which falls from the sky and runs in rivers above and below ground, you might think that water is a common property, owned by the human race. That’s pretty much been true for a couple of thousand years.

 

It has long been accepted throughout the world that, according to Indian author Vandana Shiva, “water must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature’s gift and denies the poor of their human rights,” and “water is a commons... it cannot be owned as private property and sold as a commodity.” Water is the basis of all life. It is preposterous that it might be owned and that some may be thereby deprived of it.

 

Thanks, however, to the World Bank, which is actually just the operative arm of the largest U.S. banks and whose policies can bring down governments -- c.f. Italy and Greece in the past few months alone -- the commons argument is quickly dying. Most Americans, being inhabitants of a nation which does not generally have these worries, are unaware of this.

http://www.truth-out.org/benign-lucifer-privatization-water/1329057581

 

 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/flow-for-love-of-water/

Here is a link to a great documentary called "Flow". It explores the tactics of how corporations capture public water rights both here and abroad.

Water wars are indeed looming. The National Intelligence Chief even mentioned water resources as a chief area of concern in the coming year(s).

Cadillac Desert is a great book on the background of the water wars in the American West.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

I need to work on the moisture absorber,
you can get water right out of the air,
and if things ever get bad enough,
it is a solution that will keep you living

spacecase- I would just love to come and visit you!  You remind me of Michael Reynolds- "The  Garbage Warrior."

I just re-watched that last night.  What an inspirational person he is.  Like you, space.  ;)

I watched a documentary a few years ago about a country in South America - I think it was either Brazil or Bolivia, where they had actually made it illegal to collect water in a bucket from their roofs. The people rioted, big time. And the corporate-owned govt. had to back down in the end and give them back their right to collect water. We can overcome - it just takes getting mad and desperate enough.

Our city's water was already owned by a company in California.  But two months ago, The Carlyle Group bought it.

Great.

We're probably going to be used as an experiment.  Or not have any water unless we take it out of the river in buckets.