Invest in the coming global water shortage

[GoBlue]

The profit-motive knows no shame.

Fresh water’s getting scarce, and it has no substitutes. For investors in companies that can supply our increasingly thirsty planet, that spells opportunity.

By Jon D. Markman

Ten years ago next Monday, a massive earthquake rolled under the Japanese city of Kobe at dawn, toppling 140,000 buildings, causing 300 major fires, killing more than 5,000 people and leaving 300,000 homeless.

To help cover the story for the L.A. Times, I left my wife to care for our 10-day-old daughter and flew into the city with a small team of Los Angeles-based trauma doctors and nurses. We found a surreal, smoking ruin of a city with roads twisted like coils of rope, high-rises tilted at Dr. Seuss angles and thousands of middle-class families jammed into dingy, ice-cold rooms in the few public buildings left standing.

Just as in the tsunami zone of South Asia this month, the immediate health danger, besides a possible outbreak of disease, was a lack of fresh water. More than 75% of the city’s water supply was destroyed when underground pipes fractured. As much as they desired pallets of drugs, food, blankets and tents sent from throughout Japan and abroad, the Kobe survivors coveted -- and needed -- clean, bottled water for cooking, drinking and bathing.
<snip> http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P102152.asp

It gets much worse.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Here is what happens when somone tries to "own" someone else's water

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&nointro=1&type=111


Argentina Water Privatization Scheme Runs Dry
by Sebastian Hacher, Special to CorpWatch
February 26, 2004
Rio de la Plata is one of the few rivers of the world whose pollution can be seen from space. Making matters worse is the privatized water company Aguas Argentinas, which dumps sewage into the river a few kilometers from where it treats water for drinking.

[FloridaPat]

2. Enron was one of the companies doing this in S. America. And

guess who the main salesman was - Bush jr which Bush sr was Vp and Pres.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Mmmmmm, what is their stated goal in this world... cuz I kinda get the

feeling that they may be trying to sell air conditioning in the next....

[coda]

5. You reminded me of a Robert Ingersoll quote.

Don't you know that if people could bottle the air they would?
Don't you know there would be an American Air-bottling Association?
And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions
to die for want of breath if they could not pay for air?

- R. G. Ingersoll

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Interesting name... since one of the largest producers of air compressors

is Ingersoll Rand.... strange coincidence?

[BlueEyedSon]

4. When were either of the Bushes employed by Enron? nt

[FloridaPat]

8. Our current inept idiot work for Enron to talk governments into selling

their utilities in South America. Not sure if he was on the payroll or not, but that came out after Enron went under, Bush 1 was either VP or Pres at the time. That the the big deal with sending the son to help out.

Enron was here in Florida trying to buy utilities before they went under. They buy the utilites and raise the prices to high, no one can pay. The economy collapses. They make a fortune and countries are destroyed - Argentina and a few others. They were working in Britian and the US when they collapsed. If anyone in your area tried to tell you how good privitazation of utilites is - check for an Enron ID and drive them out of town. Everywhere these creeps have gone, the economy of those countries crashes.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. You lost me.... sure you don't mean MWI International?? eom

[jdj]

14. It's worth reading Power Failure to learn about Azurix and Rebecca

Marks. She headed Enron's water division, but somehow got wind of the coming crash and cashed out her stocks, to the tune of $80 freaking million dollars, right before the whistle blowers like Sherron Watkins who wrote this book, started getting a conscience.

[Tinoire]

9. King: 'Why do people have to pay water bills in a world that is 2/3 water?

"And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ... You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' ... Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problems of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together."

(snip)

If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit -- One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn't get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn't do. Jesus didn't say, Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery. He didn't say, Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively. He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic -- that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, Nicodemus, you must be born again.

He said, in other words, Your whole structure must be changed. A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will thingify them -- make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.

What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, America, you must be born again!

(snip)

From "Where do we go from here?" King's last, and most radical Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Presidential Address
16 August 1967

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/062.html

And we wonder why he was murdered. James Earl Ray my ass.

the Army's 111th Military Intelligence Group kept Martin Luther King under 24-hour-a-day surveillance. Its agents were in Memphis April 4. As Valentine wrote in The Phoenix Program, they "reportedly watched and took photos while King's assassin moved into position, took aim, fired, and walked away."
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKconExp.html

[FloridaPat]

10. Because most of that water is salt water or contaminated. Right now

it costs too much money to clean it or get it to people who need it. Just look at any drought we have. Not way to get water there.

[bobbieinok]

13. extremely interesting....thanks

[Codeblue]

11. No Reason

There is no reason that I cans see why we should have to pay for any basic necessities of life. All humans require, air to breathe, water to drink, shelter, and food. We must pay for all of these in current societies however.

I've always had a problem with that. I always thought we should just be entitled to pay for things above and beyond what we need.

[Solon]

12. That is becoming a problem...

and that problem is the shrinking of the "Commons" as it is called. This is the area that is traditionally considered sancrosanct and outside of commercial exploitation for the simple fact that it is too much for the COMMON good of us all that it remains under control of the public. This is changing, most dramatically in Central and South America but even here in this country. Water has, for millenia, been considered part of the commons, but now it is becoming another resource to exploit. I will say however, that to pay the Water bill, in an area where it is still a public utility, isn't really paying for the water itself, but for the processing and transport of it, this I can understand. It is also either straight out owned by your local government, or they have a majority share in owning it. The problem is becoming apparent with Globalization, Deregulation, and Privatization. This is turning rivers, lakes, and streams from public use to corporate control, with almost no regulation on it. This is becoming dangerous.