The New Alchemy of The Global Elite
Turning WATER into GOLD...
BLUE GOLD!
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
From If the God’s Had Meant Us to Vote ...
They Would Have Given Us Candidates
by Jim Hightower
“BLUE GOLD”
Canadians have something we need, and I don’t mean hockey players.
“Blue Gold,” it’s been dubbed by a Canadian newspaper, but it’s far more valuable than that implies, since the world can actually do without gold.
Water. That’s what Canada has that parts of our country and much of the world might literally kill for.
Hell, you say, water’s everywhere. 70 percent of the earth is covered in the stuff.
Yes, but as Canada’s Maude Barlow points out to anyone who’ll listen, less than one-half of 1 percent of all the water on the globe is fresh water available to drink.
An author and agitator for common sense, Ms. Barlow heads the Council of Canadians and is founding chair for progressive politics and policies. “Worldwide, the consumption of water is doubling every 20 years,” she writes in a stunning report entitled “Blue Gold: The Global Water Crisis.”
Barlow calculates that in a very short while, MOST of the world’s people will face shortages or absolute scarcity....
Canada, on the other hand, has a blessing of agua fresca....
Some 20% of the world’s entire supply of fresh water is in the winding rivers and countless lakes splashed all across the vast land...
This is not a reality that has dawned on Canadians alone. Others are casting their eyes northward, thinking, “There’s gold in them thar hills.”
But it’s not countries making invasion plans — it’s corporations.
To get their hands on the gold, the corporate grubbers first have to change the way the world’s supply of drinking water is managed. Instead of letting countries treat it as a resource to be held in common and allocated by the public for the general good, they want it to be considered as just another commodity to be held and traded by private investors strictly for their own profit.
Like oil or pork bellies . . . only this is your drinking water they want to privatize and commodify.
Will it surprise you to learn that those bratty globalization twins, NAFTA and the WTO, contain provisions that advance the commodity concept? Thought not. Both incorporate the bald assertion that “water, including ... ordinary natural water of all kinds (other than sea water)” are “goods” that are subject to the new rules of global trade.
We’re talking here about much more than bottled water— Perrier, Evian, Yellow Snow #5, and your other favorite boutique brands. We’re talking about bulk sales, including whole lakes and aquifers being bought and mined, the flow of rivers being siphoned off, the Great Lakes themselves being put on the market.
Maude Barlow and others report that corporations worldwide are already organized to do the deed, using super-tankers, pipelines, canals, the rerouting of rivers, and every other mammoth scheme known to humankind to shift the product from water-rich nations to those markets willing to pay top dollar for it:
>> Nordic Water Company now totes H2-0 from Norway to thirsty European countries by tugging it across the sea in giant, floating plastic bags.
>> Global Water Corp, a Canadian firm, has cut a deal with the town of Sitka, Alaska, to take 18 billion gallons of water per year from nearby Blue Lake and haul it to China, and it is joining with a Houston maritime outfit to ship more Alaskan water aboard bulk tankers to Singapore. “Water has moved from being an endless commodity that may be taken for granted to a rationed necessity that may be taken by force,” GWC says in a chilling statement.
>> The GRAND Canal (Great Recycling And Northern Development Canal) is an engineer’s wet dream, involving the building of a dike across the huge James Bay ... to capture the water of the twenty rivers that flow into it ... then building a network of canals, dams, and locks to move the water four hundred miles south to Georgian Bay, where it would be “flushed through” the Great Lakes into pipelines that would take it to America’s Sunbelt.
>> McCurdy Enterprises of Gander, Newfoundland, plans to “harvest” some 13 billion gallons of water a year from one of that province’s lakes, pipe it to the coast, pump it into old oil tankers ... and ship it to the Middle East for a hefty profit.
>> Monsanto sees a multibillion-dollar business opportunity in the emerging water crisis, with one executive saying bluntly: “Since water is as central to food productions as seed is, and without water life is not possible, Monsanto is now trying to establish its control over water. ... Monsanto (has launched) a new water business, starting with India and Mexico, since both these countries are facing water shortages.”
“Canada,” barked editor Terrence Corcoran of the Financial Post in a 1999 editorial, “is a future OPEC of water,” urging that the country begin trading in this rich commodity pronto.
Likewise, Dennis Mills, a member of Canada’s parliament ... is pushing for assorted water projects and trading schemes, declaring with gusto, “Fortunes are made by those who control the flow of water.”
Thanks to citizen groups like the two Maude Barlow heads, however, the Great Canadian Water Sale-a-Thon has yet to surge forth, for they have alerted the citizenry and generated a national debate on the wisdom of shouting “y’all come” to every global greedhead with a big bucket. Their vigilance has produced a temporary moratorium across the country on bulk sales.
This might be a good place for me to add that Maud, and Canadians generally, certainly are not saying, “It’s our water and the rest of the world can go suck eggs” ... To the contrary, they are the ones pushing for a public policy of sharing their bounty to meet the global water crisis, allocating water particularly to help those people in need. But the pressure is intense to simply turn the water loose and let “the market” decide who needs it.
And that little, nasty Chapter 11 is being wielded to break the dam and turn the water loose.
Sun Belt Water Inc., based in Santa Monica, California, has filed the first NAFTA water case. It had an agreement with a British Columbia company to take water from this far western province and ship it in huge tankers down the west coast to southern California. But such a public outcry ensued when the scheme became public that the provincial government stepped in to protect its water, nixing the shipment by enacting a moratorium on all water exports. Imagine if Sun Belt had quietly worked a deal to sink a siphon into Lake Tahoe and drain it into Los Angeles, and you’ll get a sense of how the people of British Columbia felt about Sun Belt’s raid.
“Screw the people” was the reaction of the California corporation. It sued Canada in 1998, claiming that its future profits were “expropriated” by British Columbia’s export moratorium and that, under the infamous Chapter 11, the nice people of Canada owed it $468 million. . . .
Dealing with NAFTA is trickier than playing hockey in hell, and, for the Canadians, there is another nasty trick in the trade agreement that makes them vulnerable to an all-out corporate raid. Sun Belt and the other water hustlers only need one export deal in any one province to break the dam for all of Canada’s water.
This is because the devils who set up the NAFTA game rigged it with a provision called “proportionality,” which means that if one company gets a deal, the country has to treat every other company the same. So when one company exports even a trickle of water out of Canada, that opens the tap for all other export deals, and the tap cannot be turned off— even if it is later proven that the massive outflow is doing horrible damage to the environment, to other businesses (fishing, tourism, etc.) or to the country as a whole....
This is why Sun Belt Water Inc. is squeezing so hard in British Columbia. Canada’s national government, rather than imposing its own ban on water exports, took the kind of half-assed approach our national politicians would take— they asked each of the ten provinces of Canada to implement their own voluntary moratoriums....
If (or when) one province allows a export deal, all the other provincial moratoriums are immediately null and void — and the “Blue Gold Rush” is on....
August 23, 2007
Think Outside the Bottle Victory!
Pepsi agrees to label Aquafina bottles
After being pressured by months of intensive campaign activity through Think Outside the Bottle, Pepsi has agreed to provide consumers with more information about the source of the water used for Aquafina. In response to our ongoing campaign, including our recent national day of action, Pepsi is leading the industry by agreeing to spell out "Public Water Source" on the Aquafina label.
Pepsi's current Aquafina label includes an image of snow-capped mountains and states "pure water, perfect taste." Though the image implies that the source of Aquafina is mountain spring water, it actually uses tap water as its source. In fact, up to 40% of bottled water uses tap water as its source, including Coke’s Dasani and Nestlé’s Pure Life.
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/index.cfm?group_id=1000
April 30, 2007
A piece of a larger plot
Submitted by Alan8 on Mon, 2007-04-30
The silencing of our national media is just one small piece of a larger conspiracy for a worldwide dictatorship by the wealthy, who own the multinational corporations.
I know this statement sounds like rhetorical exaggeration, but here's a link to some articles that fill in some of the details: http://web.archive.org/web/20060515143119/http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BlueGold.htm
I found this link on AlterNet in the discussion on the worldwide corporate theft of water resources through privatization: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/50994/
Apparently (as explained in the AlterNet discussion) this collection of articles was originally posted at "The Catbird's Forum", BUT WAS CLOSED DOWN BY THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, ALBERTO GONZALES, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES TRUSTEE, JAMES B. NICHOLSON, TRUSTEE, by Order of JUDGE DAVID ALAN EZRA.
I mention this here because cutting off peoples' knowledge of what's happening by eliminating a free press is essential to their operations of shocking economies and stealing nations' national resources in the chaos that follows. They are now attempting to do this in the US, with the enthusiastic support of the Bush Administration.
Look at that first link; it's fascinating reading!
For more, GO TO > > > Blue Gold in Blue Hawaii
April 25, 2007
Fighting the Corporate Theft
of Our Water
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet.
The Bush administration is helping multinationals buy U.S. municipal water systems, putting our most important resource in the hands of corporations with no public accountability.
All across the United States, municipal water systems are being bought up by multinational corporations, turning one of our last remaining public commons and our most vital resource into a commodity.
The road to privatization is being paved by our own government. The Bush administration is actively working to loosen the hold that cities and towns have over public water, enabling corporations to own the very thing we depend on for survival.
The effects of the federal government's actions are being felt all the way down to Conference of Mayors, which has become a "feeding frenzy" for corporations looking to make sure that nothing is left in the public's hands, including clean, affordable water.
Documentary filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman recently teamed up with author Michael Fox to write "Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water" (Wiley, 2007). The three followed water privatization battles across the United States -- from California to Massachusetts and from Georgia to Wisconsin, documenting the rise of public opposition to corporate control of water resources.
They found that the issue of privatization ran deep.
"We came to see that the conflicts over water are really about fundamental questions of democracy itself: Who will make the decisions that affect our future, and who will be excluded?" they wrote in the book's preface. "And if citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?"
As the effects of climate change are being felt around the world, including decreasing snowpacks and rainfall, water is quickly becoming the market's new holy grail.
Mayor Gary Podesto, in his State of the City address to his constituents in 2003, sang the praises of privatization to his community, located in California's Central Valley. "It's time that Stockton enter the 21st century in its delivery of services and think of our citizens as customers," he said.
And there is the crux of the issue -- privatization means transforming citizens into customers. Or, in other words, making people engaged in a democratic process into consumers looking to get the best deal.
It is also means taking our most important resource and putting it at the whims of the market.
Currently, water systems are controlled publicly in 90 percent of communities across the world and 85 percent in the United States, but that number is changing rapidly, the authors report in "Thirst." In 1990, 50 million people worldwide got their water services from private companies, but by 2002 it was 300 million and growing.
There are a number of reasons to be concerned.
"Globally, corporations are promoting water privatization under the guise of efficiency, but the fact is that they are not paying the full cost of public infrastructure, environmental damage, or healthcare for those they hurt," said Ashley Schaeffer of Corporate Accountability International. "Water is a human right and not a privilege."
There are also significant environmental considerations -- with private corporations, sustainability can be tossed out the window. "Climate change is a warning that uncontrolled abuse of the earth's natural resources is leading toward planetary catastrophe," the authors write in "Thirst." "Who is to set the necessary limits to the abuse of the environment? Private companies fighting for market share are incapable of doing so."
Privatization has been pushed aggressively at the federal level for decades, but especially so in the last six years. "There is a kind of fire sale of everything in the public sector right now," said Alan Snitow. "Water, we think, is the line in the sand -- when your water is actually a profit mechanism, people really react negatively to that."
"Thirst" beautifully documents the coalitions that are forming in communities that are fighting back. But the battles are not easy: They must confront massive political muscle and unlimited financial resources of multinational corporations, not to mention our society's religious belief in the power of the marketplace.
Privatizing municipal water systems is globalization come home, said Deborah Kaufman. In 2000 Bechtel privatized water in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with such miserable consequences that it was shortly driven out of the country in an incredible feat of cross-class organizing. But just a few years later, it was awarded a $680 million contract to "fix" Iraq's ruined water systems.
"What's happened in Iraq is really emblematic of what the Bush administration is doing," said Kaufman. "We view the privatization of water in the United States as the World Bank come home -- the third-worldization of America and American communities."
It turns out the United States is an attractive place for multinationals looking to make inroads in the water business. The three main players are the French companies Suez and Veolia (formerly Vivendi), and the German group RWE.
The companies first pushed water privatization in developing nations. "But in many instances, those attempts didn't pan out as planned, it being difficult to gouge governments and customers that don't have a lot of money," Public Citizen reports. "The U.S., by contrast, presented the promise of a steady, reliable revenue stream from customers willing and able to pay water bills."
The companies that already controlled the small percentage of U.S. water held privately were bought by the big three: Veolia picked up U.S Filter, Suez got United Water and RWE took over American Water Works.
The results have been disastrous, as "Thirst" shows -- rates are increasing, quality is suffering, customer service is declining, profits are leaving communities and accountability has fallen by the wayside.
In Felton, Calif., a small regional utility ran the water system until it was purchased in 2001 by California American Water, a subsidiary of American Water, which is a subsidiary of Thames Water in London, which has also become a subsidiary of German giant RWE. Residents in Felton saw their rates skyrocket, "Thirst" reports. A woman who runs a facility for people in need saw her water bill increase from $250 to $1,275 a month.
RWE also bought the company controlling the water system in Urbana, Ill., and locals have been unhappy with the service it provides. "A few months ago, I got a notice on my door saying the water was turned off, and that when it came back on, I needed to boil it before I used it," said the city's mayor, Laurel Prussing. But when she called the number, the company didn't know what was going on -- and it was no wonder, because the call center was located in Florida.
The list of abuses in "Thirst," which represent only a handful of communities, are plentiful:
In 2006, two top managers at a Suez/United Water plant in New Jersey were indicted for covering up high radium levels in drinking water ... In Milwaukee, Suez subsidiary United Water discharged more than a million gallons of untreated sewage into Lake Michigan because it had shut down pumps to reduce electricity bills ... In Stockton, Calif., a citizen's watchdog group reported that water leakage doubled in the first year that OMI/Thames took over system operations. In Indianapolis, customer complaints nearly tripled the first year of Veolia's contract, and inadequate maintenance resulted in hundreds of fire hydrants freezing in the winter ...
Overall, it has proved to be a recipe for disaster.
"Seeking to consolidate market share, private water companies are merging or buying other companies, creating a volatile and unpredictable market," they conclude, "hardly the kind of stability required for a life-and-death resource like water."
The water crisis comes home
Corporate interest in water systems in the United States exists for very good reason -- we have a water crisis. Our drinking and wastewater systems were largely designed a hundred years ago and in many places, little improvements have been made.
Aging systems combined with the pressures of increasing population, development, and pollution have left many communities close to disaster.
As a result, corporations have swooped in to offer public officials an easy out -- not only will they run these aging plants, but they'll save the city millions of dollars in the process. At least that's the promise. So far, it hasn't panned out.
In 2005,"Thirst" reports, 200 mayors of large and small cities said they would consider privatization if it would save money. In addition to lobbyists, publicists and ad campaigns, the corporations have also directly gone after public officials to sell their wares.
"The U.S. Conference of Mayors has become an engine of water privatization through its Urban Water Council," they write in "Thirst." "One mayor described a Conference of Mayors session he attended as a kind of feeding frenzy, with companies bidding to take over everything from his city's school-lunch program to its traffic lights and water services. Financed by the private water industry, staffed by former industry officials, the UWC works hard to give its corporate sponsors 'face time' with mayors."
And the federal government is not doing anything to help -- in fact, it's doing the opposite. "The administration has backed language in legislation to reauthorize existing federal water funding assistance programs that would require cities to consider water privatization before they could receive federal funding," reports Public Citizen. "And in lockstep with private industry's goals, the EPA is increasingly playing down the role of federal financial assistance while actively encouraging communities to pay for system upgrades by raising rates to consumers -- exactly the strategy the industry hopes will drive cash-strapped and embattled local politicians to opt for the false promise of privatization."
The EPA has projected a needed $446 billion for drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years, but the money that is needed and that is actually allocated in the budget falls billions short.
Snitow calls the under funding of public water systems and public infrastructure as a whole, "systematic" under the Bush administration. "On water, President Bush says he wants to fund private companies to do it. He does not want to give money, even loan money, to government agencies at the local level to improve their own water systems."
This mindset goes against public opinion and environmental law. The Safe Drinking Water Act passed in 1974 says, "The federal government needs to provide assistance to communities to help the communities meet federal drinking water requirements." And a national poll showed that 86 percent of Americans supported creating a water infrastructure trust fund.
But this issue is not a partisan problem. As reported in "Thirst," in 1997 the Clinton administration changed the law to the benefit of private companies. Previously municipal utility contracts were limited to five years, but Clinton changed it to allow contracts to be extended up to 20 years. "The rule change unleashed a wave of industry euphoria with predictions that private companies would soon be running much of what is now a public service," they wrote. In the following five years, municipal water contracts with private companies tripled.
"Privatization comes from both Democrats and Republicans. Particularly the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton advanced this in a number of areas -- Bush has taken it to the extreme," said Snitow.
And across the country, Democrats are guilty as well as Republicans. "In Lee [Mass.], one of the key people supporting the Veolia privatization is a liberal Democrat. He has a great record with unions, on gay rights. He is a social liberal, but he wants to privatize key public services," said Snitow.
"There is an ideology that is bipartisan and is part of the old Washington consensus which is that the market can do everything better, it can be more efficient," he continued. "I think that we are seeing the chickens come home to roost on this with Iraq. You are seeing the ultimate apotheosis of the kind of vision that they had in mind -- where they would turn over the entire government and the resources to private multinationals. And, if that is efficiency, I think that most people in the world would want themselves counted out."
Not for sale
"Thirst" documents not just the consolidation of power through corporations but the public resistance that is often, despite seemingly impossible odds, successful.
Time and time again throughout the book, citizens responded to local threats but realized they were part of much bigger effort against water privatization around the world and the wholesale auction of the commons.
Even if you don't live somewhere under threat at the moment, there is something for everyone to do. We can work to create a trust for drinking water and wastewater; to drop conditions in federal funding that favor privatizing water resources; to block water corporations from obtaining access to public funding through tax-exempt private activity bonds; and to promote strong public management of water resources. Or you can work to support organizations like Corporate Accountability International, Food and Water Watch, Sierra Club and others who are organizing around the issue.
"There has to be preemption -- companies come in secretly and people don't know there are negotiations going on, and communities that are organizing are coming from behind," said Snitow. "If there is more consciousness about this and more mayors know that their political lives are going to be spent fighting this issue, then I think fewer and fewer of them are going to say this not the way for me to leave my mark on the city. They'll choose something else. I think there is a lot of potential for victories, for changing the water policy in this country and it won't be a minute too soon, given what's going to be happening with global warming."
Taking a stand against corporate control of water means believing that some things, like the lifeblood of our communities, should not be for sale.
"Whether clean and safe water will remain accessible to all, affordable and sustainable into the future, depends on us," write Snitow, Kaufman and Fox. "The stakes could not be higher. The outcome will surely be a measure of democracy in the 21st century."
http://www.alternet.org/story/50994/?page=1
COMMENTS:
RE: Blue Gold
The Catbird
Posted by: Catbird on Apr 25, 2007 7:15 AM
A well-written, very important article regarding the corporate theft of our
water. I urge every reader to pass this along to as many persons and
organizations as possible - especially to your state and local legislators!
I would normally have included this article in THE CATBIRD SEAT website at http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BlueGold.htm ... HOWEVER, this site has been CLOSED DOWN by the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, ALBERTO GONZALES, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES TRUSTEE, JAMES B. NICHOLSON, TRUSTEE, by Order of JUDGE DAVID ALAN EZRA.
Consequently, I have now posted this important article in "The Catbird's Forum" located at: http://www.voy.com/129276/522.html . (I advise you to view it NOW - before it, too, is TERMINATED by THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE!)
~ ~ ~
Posted by: callistocat on Apr 25, 2007 8:56 AM
RE: The Catbird
Couldn't find the articles where you had them, but found a copy at the internet archive when I googled it.
http://www.alternet.org/story/50994/?page=1
Sierra's May/June 2004 - Let's Talk film selection:
Thirst
a film by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman
What it’s about
We can no longer take water for granted. In this engaging film, people spill blood over water in Bolivia, figure out ingenious ways to conserve it in India, and try to protect it from profiteers in the United States. All over the world, communities need help in securing safe drinking water; one out of six people lacks a decent supply. The question of who the providers will be–private firms seeking a profit or public entities focused on the common good–is becoming one of the big battles of the 21st century. Filled with compelling scenes and voices, this is the kind of documentary that will move you off the sofa and into action.
Where to get it
Bullfrog Films is selling home-use copies of Thirst for $29.95; call (800) 543-3764.
Information on how to get a copy of Thirst: A Guide to the Film for Teachers and Discussion Leaders is available at www.thirstthemovie.org/study.html.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/letstalk/may_2004/film.asp
From : "Sam Anderson" <ebontek@earthlink.net>
To : African_Caucus@yahoo.com blackliberationlist@topica.com brc-discuss@lists.tao.ca
CC : soa@yahoogroups.com
Subject : Help Stop the Privatizing "The Stuff of Life:" Ghana's Water Commodified By Imperialism
Date : Thu, 21 Mar 2002
THIS IS AN EMAIL ACTION CHAIN. PLEASE FORWARD TO FRIENDS & COPY US at: http://capofwater@netscape.net
= = = = = = =
"Sometimes I will go without food so my
grandchildren have water," says Amadu.
"Water comes before food."
= = = = = = =
Dear Friends,
At the instigation of the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and World Bank, the Government of Ghana has embarked on a hasty privatisation programme of the country's public urban water system without proper public consultation. Already, the prospect of privatisation has resulted in a 95 percent hike in water fees and it is feared that the takeover by the exclusively foreign multinational bidders will severely reduce access for the poor and marginalized communities.
Privatisation will hit poor families hard, says Christian Aid's report (see below), a view supported by a diverse array of international non-governmental organizations, including Public Citizen (US), the International Water Working Group, Africa Action (USA), and Water Aid (UK).
The IMF, World Bank and DFID disagree. They insist that every citizen should pay the full 'market price' for water but 70% of Ghanaians earns less than a dollar a day and cannot afford it. Moreover, over 30% do not even have access to safe drinking water. With privatisation, it is feared that this percentage will increase. More poor families will be forced to travel farther and work harder to collect water possibly from polluted streams and rivers. And they will be forced to make daily trade-offs between water, food, schooling and health care. Worse still their children will fall sick and die from the many illnesses caused by drinking unsafe water.
Poor people are resisting. The National Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water, popularly called CAP of WATER has been formed by a broad range of civil society groups and organizations to stop the arm twisting by the IMF, the World Bank and DFID and the multinational water companies. The CAP of WATER campaign is demanding;
a) proper consultation with civil society, and
b) a serious examination of the reform options. CAP of WATER has called for an international fact finding mission, which is due to visit Ghana next month.
~ ~ ~
Please join the campaign by:
1. Sending this message to friends.
2. Please copy us at: <capofwater@netscape.net>. Every message is great news to the campaign.
3. Observing the UN day for Water (Friday 22 March) with a local CAP of Water event of your own.
4. URGENTLY sending a fax or e-mail to the following people, urging them to stop the hasty privatisation of Ghana's water in order to prevent more people falling into deeper poverty and disease. Please copy your message to us at: <capofwater@netscape.net>
His Excellency Mr. J.A. Kufuor, President of Ghana
Tel: 233-21-676923/4 ext. 110
Fax: 233-21-676934 or 233-21-666528
Peter Harold, World Bank Representative,
Ghana P. O. Box M27 - Ministries
Accra, Ghana
Tel: 233-724/22037
Fax: 233-72-227887
Email: pharrold@worldbank.org
~ ~ ~
'The right to water is a fundamental, God-given right
to all people that dwell on this earth.'
- Christian Council of Ghana.
~ ~ ~
SUPPORT the CAP of WATER campaign
Southern Links
Email : kowusu@southernlinks.org
* * * * *
From : "Catherine Austin Fitts" <catherine@solari.com>
To : "Solari Action Network" <catherine@solari.com>
Date : Thu, 7 Mar 2002 18:57:25 -0500
Subject: Transcript of Interview of Greg Palast, Journalist for BBC and Observer, London, by Alex Jones.
(Courtesy of A Great Listener) Alex Jones Radio Show, Monday (PM), March 4, 2002
AJ: This is earth shattering. Can you break it down for us and tell us what the economists have done?
GP: Well, I'll tell you two things. One, I spoke to the former chief economist, Joe Stiglitz who was fired by the (World) Bank. So I, on BBC and with Guardian, basically spent some time debriefing him. It was like one of the scenes out of Mission Impossible, you know where the guy comes over from the other side and you spend hours debriefing him. So I got the insight of what was happening at the World Bank. In addition, he did not brief me but I got some other sources. He would not give me inside documents but other people handed me a giant stash of secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. . . .
AJ: Just like you got W199I, from the same folks we got it from.
GP: And so one of the things that is happening is that, in fact, I was supposed to be on CNN with the head of the World Bank Jim Wolfensen and he said he would not appear on CNN ever if they put me on. And so CNN did the craziest thing and pulled me off.
AJ: So now they are threatening total boycott.
GP: Yea right. So what we found was this. We found inside these documents that basically they required nations to sign secret agreements, in which they agreed to sell off their key assets, in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved and if they didn't agree to these steps, there was an average for each nation that signed one-hundred and eleven items that they are required to sign on to. If they didn't follow those steps they would be cut-off from all international borrowing. You can't borrow any money in the international marketplace. No one can survive without borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries - without borrowing some money and having some credit and...
AJ: Because of the debt inflation pit they've created.
GP: Yea, well, see one of the things that happened is that - we've got examples from, I've got inside documents recently from Argentina, the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know, they are really upset with me that I've got the documents, but they have not challenged the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them on television. And cite some on the web, I actually have copies of some...
AJ: Greg Palast dot com?
GP: Yea, http://www.gregpalast.com . So then they backed off and said yea those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed.
AJ: Isn't it six now?
GP: Yea, it's like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation together. And this happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets, public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think of doing in the US, like selling off their water system.
AJ: So they tax the people. They create big government and big government hands it off to the private IMF/World Bank. And when we get back, I want to get to the four-parts that you elegantly lay out here where they actually pay off the politicians billions to their Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer.
GP: That's right.
AJ: This is like one of the biggest stories ever, Sir. I'm sorry, please continue.
GP: So what's happening is - this is just one of them. And by the way, it's not just anyone who gets a piece of the action. The water system of Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron. A pipeline was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile, was sold off to a company called Enron.
AJ: And then the globalists blow out the Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation and then they just roll the theft items off.
GP: You've got it. And by the way, you know why they moved the pipeline to Enron is that they got a call from somebody named George W. Bush in 1988.
AJ: Unbelievable, Sir. Stay right there. We are talking to Greg Palast.
< BREAK >
AJ: We are talking to Greg Palast. He is an award-winning journalist, an American who has worked for the BBC, London Guardian, you name it, who has dropped just a massive bomb-shell on the Globalists and their criminal activity. There is no other word for it. You link through at inforwars.com, you can link to his web site - gregpalast.com, or any of the other great reports he has been putting out. He now has the secret documents. We have seen the activity of the IMF/World Bank for years.
They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations - they then hand it over to them for nothing.
The Globalists pay them off individually, billions a piece in Swiss bank accounts. And the plan is total slavery for the entire population.
Of course, Enron, as we told you was a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, you name it, from the other reporters we have had on. It's just incredibly massive and hard to believe. But it is actually happening. Greg Palast has now broken the story world-wide. He has actually interviewed the former top World Bank economist. Continuing Sir with all these points.
I mean for the average person out there, in a nutshell, what is the system you are exposing?
GP: We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out of places to bleed. And the problem is, this is the chief economist, this is not some minor guy. By the way, a couple of months ago, after he was fired, he was given the Nobel Prize in Economics. So he is no fool.
He told me, he went into countries where they were talking about privatizing and selling off these assets.
And basically, they knew, they literally knew and turned the other way when it was understood that leaders of these countries and the chief ministers would salt away hundreds of millions of dollars.
AJ: But it's not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank.
GP: They hand it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank was very big and grabbed half the Argentine banks. You've got British Petroleum grabbing pipelines in Ecuador.
I mentioned Enron grabbing water systems all over the place. And the problem is that they are dest