The recent visions of the tsunami rushing, raging, tearing
through the Asian coasts has given us all some interesting insights into the
truly stunning, and indeed awesome power of water, and how nature's fury is
virtually boundless when unleashed.
Yet there is another watery war that is being waged, that may affect the lives
of millions, but it garners neither the concern, nor really the attention of the
world's media. The electronic media, especially, thrives on drama and conflict,
and seeks pictures and stories which reflect these features.
It also affirms the positions of the privileged, as opposed to the plight of the
poor, and powerless. Yet all across the globe, in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America -- and even here -- in North America-- people are living under the very
real threat of the corporatization of water and water systems. The waters of the
earth, which have been, since the dawn of human civilization, for the collective
usage of the community, is fast becoming just another commodity -- something to
sell. If you can afford it, cool. If not, tough.
Michael Stark, a senior executive at US Filter, a subsidiary of the
multinational corporation, Vivendi, put it this way: "Water is a critical
and necessary ingredient to the daily life of every human being, and it is also
an equally powerful ingredient for powerful manufacturing companies."*
Veronica Lake, a Michigan-based environmental activist, has noted that
corporations acquire the world's water by three
major methods: a) by "water mining" the underground aquifers, or deep
sources of many of the world's streams or rivers; b) by leasing state and
government water systems and collecting revenues; and c) by "managing"
city water systems.
In short, there's money in water, and where money is, there too are
corporations, trying to get paid.
That's the dark, unforeseen and treacherous side of the globalization movement
among western governments and corporations.
That's also what privatization really means -- taking the common inheritance of
nature, and making it into someone else's
private property.
In South Africa, this movement has resulted in more misery for the poor. Indeed,
cholera rates are higher now there, than in
the days of apartheid. It's often the result of tough austerity measures imposed
by the World Bank or the International
Monetary Fund, where governments are privatizing essential services, and the
costs of living now means the right to buy
water, to live.
Nor is this merely a story for the distant Third World.
In Detroit, Michigan, today, some 40,000 people on the southwest side have had
their water shut off for non-payment.
In many older buildings, water isn't just the stuff that's supposed to run
through faucets; it also provides steam heat through old radiators. So no water
means, no heat. In Detroit.
Scholars say that the next world wars will be fought, not for oil, but for
water, for it is infinitely more precious.
Thankfully, people, all over the world, in South Africa, in Plachimada, India,
in Bolivia, in Brazil, in France, Ghana, and
Canada, are fighting both their sell-out governments and the corporations for
the human right of free access to water.
Those of you who have read my earlier pieces may remember my piece on the
Bolivian water wars in a place called Cochabamba. There, a popular group calling
itself La Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y la Vida (Defense Committee in
Defense of Water and Life), organized the poor, the homeless, the street
walkers, and everyone they could to oppose the corporatization of their water.
They ran out the Bechtel corporation. It must spread.
Or else water will become as rare as gold; and as expensive.
[Source: *Veronica Lake, "Corporations Corner Market on Life, Offer
Buy-Back: The New World War: Water," *Against
the Current 108* (Jan./Feb. '04), pp. 26-31.]
Copyright 2004 Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Check out Mumia's latest: *WE WANT FREEDOM: A Life in the Black Panther Party*,
from South End Press (www.southendpress.org); Ph. #1-800-533-8478.]
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Abu-Jamal
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