Untill I read BLUE GOLD, by Clarke & Barlowe I had NO idea how big our problems are about to become. Why, thanks to the WTO, UN, and IMF who have declared that " WATER IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT " - we too - like people in legions of countries through out the world, will either be forced to drink what ever kind of contaminated, disease ridden water we can find, or pay through the nose for safe water.

The IMF and their Corps like Bechtel, Suez, Vivendi, RWE - Thames, now OWN and CONTROL what remains of the world's fresh, safe water supplies. They are setting water rates so high in places like Africa, S America that few but the most wealthy can afford clean safe water.
Children the world over are dying daily. No wonder Joseph Stiglitz- obviously a man of conscience - quit his job at the IMF because of the sickening realization that "their policies are condemning people to death."

They are pumping out OUR lakes, rivers, aquafers like there is no tommorow. Selling our water on the open market to the highest bidders. I want to puke now, every time I see those - Can't live without DASANI (water) ads.

That sucks! I once had to drink water from a creek, and it tasted like dead cow. Then I looked upstream, and there was a dead cow in the water. I wondered if there was a connection... True Story

"WATER IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT"

"AND NEITHER IS OXYGEN!"

"OH, AND FOOD, SHELTER, AND HEAT? HAH! THEY'RE NOT EITHER!"

:rolleyes:

well... I think we should have to fight in gladiatorial pits for all of the above, except instead of doing bat'le with weapons... we should use small fuzzy woodland creatures. Like, ummm, ground squirrels, and weasels... oooo thats a good one, and the champ would fight with thrown porcupines, doused in skunk musk!! Man... you can keep all your life necessities... I'm not fighting a guy that flings stinky porcupines!

I'm so freakin bored

By the way, burgers are made of dead cows.

not stinky, rotting, water-logged ones... errr except McDonald's burgers

There is a study going on where they are going to start using ocean water for drinking water. The planet can only support so many living things maybe we are getting to our limit????

Maddog, BLUE GOLD made mention of that as well, how ever talk is cheap. To date no one has a plant anywhere that has yet produced fresh water from sea water. And if and when they get that exceedingly costly project off the ground, and that is a BIG IF, don't for one second think that, that, water will be any more affordable to the average wage earner.
In the mean time the same transnationals who were responsible for destroying and polluting the hell out of our fresh water sources, AND our oceans, are still continuing to do so on an epic scale that now includes the WHOLE globe, not just the US.

Originally posted by willow
Untill I read BLUE GOLD, by Clarke & Barlowe I had NO idea how big our problems are about to become. Why, thanks to the WTO, UN, and IMF who have declared that " WATER IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT " - we too - like people in legions of countries through out the world, will either be forced to drink what ever kind of contaminated, disease ridden water we can find, or pay through the nose for safe water.

The IMF and their Corps like Bechtel, Suez, Vivendi, RWE - Thames, now OWN and CONTROL what remains of the world's fresh, safe water supplies. They are setting water rates so high in places like Africa, S America that few but the most wealthy can afford clean safe water.
Children the world over are dying daily. No wonder Joseph Stiglitz- obviously a man of conscience - quit his job at the IMF because of the sickening realization that "their policies are condemning people to death."

They are pumping out OUR lakes, rivers, aquafers like there is no tommorow. Selling our water on the open market to the highest bidders. I want to puke now, every time I see those - Can't live without DASANI (water) ads.

OK, I'm a natural born skeptic. Do you have sources for any of these admittedly horrible quotes? I mean they are pretty outrageous, and I'm not going to believe them just because someone who seems to have an agenda tells me I should.

Willow, a simple search will reveal that your facts regarding the manufacture of fresh water from salt water are in error.

Desalination (http://www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html) This is but one example.

Water is a huge issue, to be sure.

Originally posted by willow
Maddog, BLUE GOLD made mention of that as well, how ever talk is cheap. To date no one has a plant anywhere that has yet produced fresh water from sea water.

This is disinformation. Distillation plants are widely known method to produce drinkable water from sea water. The method is very simple and old; you simply evaporate the sea water into water vapor, leaving the salt behind (salt has a much higher boiling point). Then you cool the water vapor and voila, you have fresh water, clean and pure as can be. Of course, this method is much more expensive since it requires evaporating water and pumping it uphill from sea level, but you can find the method employed in areas like the Middle East, where water is scarce.

Originally posted by es347fan
Willow, a simple search will reveal that your facts regarding the manufacture of fresh water from salt water are in error.

Desalination (http://www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html) This is but one example.
Yep. They just opened a desalination plant in Tampa and are planning more for the Tampa Bay area...and they seem to be working just fine, willow. :D

However.... noticed the enviromental dangers of using water that is not meant to be fresh? Humans use a lot of water, pumping that much out of the sea can have a dangerous affect on sea-life. Also, what will they do with all of that salt? The natural evaporation process wont be removing as much water and leaving behind as much salt as pumping it and distilling it would. And that is too much salt to sell, it would either have to small of a market, or destroy the market in the Middle East.

The key point some of you seem to be missing is that when purely profit driven corporations are allowed to out right OWN what remains of our fresh water sources, they are FREE to name their price.
This has already been demonstarted in other parts of the world where these corps have taken over. Under their UN, WTO, WB and IMF policies, any nation that recieves IMF financial aid must automatically forfiet their water rights and delivery systems. We too get our funding from the IMF, who have been bailing us out for decades and who's corps are now selling off our water which we forfieted just the same.
This is a very real, and a very serious issue that affects all plant, animal, and human life on the planet.
There is far more to this than I can go into without writing the book myself. But if any of you care to keep your kids from going blind because of having nothing to drink but unsafe water, or just dying from dehydration period, now is the time to educate yourselves and work to change things.
Those of you who can afford it , should travel and take tours well outside those tourist trap locations and see what is really going on in the real world. Or you can just ask Oscar Oliveros down in S. America. Or better still - Joseph Stiglitz . who quit his CEO job at the IMF because he saw how "their policies are condemning people to death."

Yes, I got your point, it is a sad world when something that we can't live for more than a week without, is a comodity to be bought and sold at outrageous prices. It's cheaper to buy bottle of soda, than it is to buy a bottle of water.

Blib that is very true. This is a serious issue, I'm a member of the American legion and they just had an article about the water. It will be interesting to see what kind of a monopoly will happen with water. Just look at the crazy prices right here in our own country for water. Time will tell what will happen but I think people will and already have gotten rich off the sale of everyday common drinking water.

In what countries do large evil corporations have a monopoly on water? Do they come by people's houses and destroy their water wells?

If you took the time to read BLUE GOLD, you would know that they pump out aquafers, lakes, rivers. And that they have a monoply on the WORLD'S remaining fresh water sources, either because countries were forced into accepting IMF aid which requires they forfiet their water, or because they got suckers like us to send our troops in to just steal their water.
Wait and see what else will be happening in Africa. Any civil unrest that is taking place over there is sure to be due to the fact that people have had their water and power services cut from not being able to pay the exhorbitant rates. Same as what is happeneing all over S. America. As long as they can bleed any one, any where, they will do it. And that includes us. Profit comes before EVERY THING else.

I'm not going to take the time to read Blue Gold. I don't feel like it. Just tell me where this is happening. I'm not trying to be a smartass.

You'd have to be smart to BE a smart ass. And in my estimation any one who doesn't read and take the time to learn things for themselves is just plain dumb.

Does the word "WORLD" mean anything to you ?

Originally posted by willow
And in my estimation any one who doesn't read and take the time to learn things for themselves is just plain dumb.

Does the word "WORLD" mean anything to you ? Ok. So why bring this topic up at all if you did not want to educate the uneducated on this? And the answer, the "WORLD" is hardly narrowing down the field. Where at in the world is this water pilfering taking place? What countries?

Talk about exorbitant prices... they are selling that book on Amazon.com for $11.87... for the paperback! Ehhh, I don't drink that much water anyway...

Originally posted by Blibblob
However.... noticed the enviromental dangers of using water that is not meant to be fresh? Humans use a lot of water, pumping that much out of the sea can have a dangerous affect on sea-life. Also, what will they do with all of that salt? The natural evaporation process wont be removing as much water and leaving behind as much salt as pumping it and distilling it would. And that is too much salt to sell, it would either have to small of a market, or destroy the market in the Middle East.

Are you joking? I can't tell. I hope so.

Originally posted by willow
The key point some of you seem to be missing is that when purely profit driven corporations are allowed to out right OWN what remains of our fresh water sources, they are FREE to name their price.
This has already been demonstarted in other parts of the world where these corps have taken over. Under their UN, WTO, WB and IMF policies, any nation that recieves IMF financial aid must automatically forfiet their water rights and delivery systems. We too get our funding from the IMF, who have been bailing us out for decades and who's corps are now selling off our water which we forfieted just the same.
This is a very real, and a very serious issue that affects all plant, animal, and human life on the planet.
There is far more to this than I can go into without writing the book myself. But if any of you care to keep your kids from going blind because of having nothing to drink but unsafe water, or just dying from dehydration period, now is the time to educate yourselves and work to change things.
Those of you who can afford it , should travel and take tours well outside those tourist trap locations and see what is really going on in the real world. Or you can just ask Oscar Oliveros down in S. America. Or better still - Joseph Stiglitz . who quit his CEO job at the IMF because he saw how "their policies are condemning people to death."

I think you miss the point. When you make obviously false statements, your credibility is lost. Why should I waste my time listening to anything else you say?

It really doesn't matter cause I'm well aware that there is a worldwide water shortage on the horizon, together with a variety of other increasingly grim environmental issues. However, I wish you wouldn't try to act as their spokesperson until you get your facts in order, because until you do, you only pave the way for people like Dubya to say things like "We need to increase logging to prevent catastrophic fires" and actually get away with it as if that's not an absurd statement.

Originally posted by LionelHutz
In what countries do large evil corporations have a monopoly on water? Do they come by people's houses and destroy their water wells?

LionelHutz I'm not going to talk about big evil corps, but I can give an example of the shortage right here in America. My father in law lives in Texas they have been going through a hard time for atleast 10-15 years. They are on city water so they are told when and how to use there water supply. Well about 10-12 years ago he dug a well so that he could water his garden. A couple of years ago the city told him he had to register the well and put a meter on it. This is his well that he dug on his property in the country, he lives around 8-10 miles out of the city. I understand that there is a drought, but what business is it of the city, state, or country. Water will and already does bring big$$$

Originally posted by willow
You'd have to be smart to BE a smart ass. And in my estimation any one who doesn't read and take the time to learn things for themselves is just plain dumb.

Does the word "WORLD" mean anything to you ?

Oh no, the stupid hippy hurt my feelings. Now I'm going to be a smart ass. Smart people ask questions and learn. Stupid people believe everything they hear. No, I'm not going to read that book because I'm quite busy with plenty of other things, thank you. I'm trying to learn something and you don't want to tell me. I'm forced to conclude that you're either an a**hole or you're making all of this up so that you have an excuse to trash whatever city is unfortunate enough to host the next global trade conference.

Originally posted by mad dog
LionelHutz I'm not going to talk about big evil corps, but I can give an example of the shortage right here in America. My father in law lives in Texas they have been going through a hard time for atleast 10-15 years. They are on city water so they are told when and how to use there water supply. Well about 10-12 years ago he dug a well so that he could water his garden. A couple of years ago the city told him he had to register the well and put a meter on it. This is his well that he dug on his property in the country, he lives around 8-10 miles out of the city. I understand that there is a drought, but what business is it of the city, state, or country. Water will and already does bring big$$$

Oh, I'm well aware that there are a lot of thorny water problems, particularly out west. And I don't pretend to know the correct answer to any of them. I'm just questioning Willow's accusations that corporations are hording water and killing people for profit, which, if true, would be incredibly outrageous. So far the only evidence presented is that Evian separates snobby people from their excess cash.

Snobby people don't get seperated from there cash they'll get it back some how :D

OK, OK, fine. Just please give me the name of one, just one, corporation that is doing this.

Bechtel, Suez, Vivendi, RWE - Thames. were at the head of the pack in 2002 when Blue Gold came out . (List could be shorter by now.)
But to avoid all appearances of collusion - monopolization - they avoid using their parent Co names.
IE: In South America where the Bechtel conglomerate took over and where it jacked utility bills sky high and still failed to deliver the dams, energy, clean safe water, and sanitation services the Argentinian? people paid for, they created spanish names (Agua de - whatever) for their water and power division. In the US, Canada and every where these companies operate, they do the same thing...for obvious reasons.
These companies also own countless other diversified and interlocking companies and if they stuck to using their actual parent company name we would soon realize just how few GIANT Transnational Corps belong to a handful of individuals, and just how much of a monopolistic stranglehold these people of enermous wealth and power have on everything - beginning with the privately owned for profit lending institutions they created for their own benefit - namely the FED, the IMF, WB and every other international bank/ lending institution.
If you did some minimal reading and research you would understand that in order to become as big as these corps are, big money has to be lent to get them off the ground. And all that lending came from the central banking monopoly that owns or has major stock in ALL the giant corps we do recognize by name.
I recently read a book on the history of the Bronfmans who created their Seagrams Global Empire with the help of their central banking buddies. The Bronfman's today, own more company's and real estate the world over than we can begin to imagine. Blind trusts are often used to hide true ownerships and so all that can actually be traced directly to them are 500 or so corps. Same with the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, JP Morgans, Chases, Sachs, Goldmans, Kuhns. Loebs, De Beers, Coors, Oppenheimers, Hapsburgs, Harrimans, and a smattering of others within that Bilderberger cabal that meets a couple times a year behind closed doors, and armed guards and NO press allowed any where NEAR their sheduled meeting places. There is a good reason for the expression - "thick as thieves. The more you know, the more interesting it gets, and the more you understand why even our drinking water has been allowed to be privatized.