LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: 12/17/05

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Clever Canadians

I love this country. Canadians have a great sense of humour, we not only tell it like it is but we often do so with our tongues firmly in our cheeks. Especially when pollsters ask us leading questions like this one;

In terms of style, English-speaking Canadians say Martin (45 per cent) acted and sounded the most like a Prime Minister.

See what I mean, very dry wit. Now the follow up question should have been; Who is the Prime Minister of Canada

a tip o the blog to political staples for this

A Word from the Wobblies

The newest issue of our branch newsletter The Wobbly Dispatch
is available for download now.

If you want to see how the class struggle is doing in Alberta

feel free to download it from our web site at:

http://edmonton.iww.ca/Wob-Dispatch-Iss3.pdf

IWW Edmonton GMB.

Told Ya So

Yep the MSM and the Liberals can try and go after Harper on Same Sex Marriage but its all moot now. As I said here after the French Debate Harper admitted that its over. He WILL NOT use the Not Withstanding clause.And as I said the gnashing of teeth, renting of clothes and howling of the homophobic rightwhing will begin and it has. Damn I love it when I am right.

Duceppe Gaffe

Apparently Gilles Duceppes comment last night;"We shouldn't have a free vote every six months on a question that's already been decided." has gotten the blogoshpere left and right and centre all in a tizzy.Of course he was talking about SSM and the Tory plan to revisit the issue if they become government. And of course as predictable the response from the above folks has been to remind Duceppe about all those Quebec referendums.

A couple of points the last referendum was a decade ago and fifteen years after the first one. And they were REFERENDUM's not Legislature or Parlimentary votes. They were the voice of the people. This is comparing, for the sake of cliche, apples and oranges.......

Liberals Torys Same Old Story

Election 2006 Stop the Privatization of Health Care

The Council of Canadians has launched their Election campaign around the privatization of health care. They have an online PDF file for a window poster you can down load and print.

Tags
privatization
medicare
Federal Election 2006
Canada
health care

Blogging the WTO

This is the first time Canadians who are attending the WTO have blogged about it.

Paul Moist President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, CUPE, is blogging from the WTO Ministerial meetings in Hong Kong. Remember them, of course you do despite the current case of the National Media and Blogosphere navel gazing over the coming election (yes I plead guilty). Moists blog gives daily impressions of protests and actions outside the WTO meetings as well as about the Labour delegations inside the meetings.

The Council of Canadians is also in attendance as an NGO group and their Trade Council Member Jean-Yves LeFort, is blogging from the Ministerial meetings.

Tags
WTO
blogs
unions
Canada
globalization

WTO: Privatization of Water

This round of WTO Ministerial talks is not just about agriclutural subsidies, but also about international agreements to create the Market State, specifically around the privatization of public services.

WTO releases the first draft on services

Saturday, 17 December , 2005, 12:37

Hong Kong: The WTO on Saturday released the first version of the draft text on services negotiations, scaling down expectations and reflecting little movement in the sector, on the penultimate day of the Ministerial in Hong Kong.

The first version of services draft meets the demands of G-90 group of developing countries and completely rules out the launch of plurilateral negotiations, which could have helped countries like India having offensive interest in the sector to secure greater market access.

The draft leaves the date for finalisation of agreement undecided. It has also left out any proposal for a possible framework agreement on government procurement of services, another key demand of G-90 countries. This provision was important for countries like India, who face a threat of legislation in the US on outsourcing.

So its not just opening the market up to more outsourcing of Telework or IT but also opening the markets up for essential services such as water and utilities privatization. And as former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed warned Canada yesterday we must be prepared for the push to sell our water to the U.S. And while our current Premier agreed with Lougheed that Canada should oppose selling our water south of the border, he left himself an out.

But Klein also says water exports shouldn't be decided by the federal government because it's an environmental issue over which provinces have authority.

This services agreement means a further expansion of corporate governance of the emerging Market State over the soveriegnty of people and their ability to govern themselves. In other words the Nation State. And as limited as self governance is under the Nation State, it would and will be even less in the privatized Market State. Corporate governance would dominate.

The current development of the Market State is a convergence of Civil Society (TM), that is the NGO community, National Governments and the Transnational Corporations. The NGO community which claims to speak for you an me in opposition to both the National State and the TNC's. But does it? As we have seen from numerous disasters in the past year, the NGO's are bound hand and foot to the UN, and the national governements. Now European based NGO's are becoming a third party in the delivery of privatized services, through disaster relief.

The issue of privatization of water shows them as being agents of the Market State, promoting the private delivery of water services first during disasters and then allowing for its expansion as an alternative to the so called failure of National governments to provide for their citizens.

And the companies that are benefiting are the same old rogues gallery Halliburton, Bechtel, Nestles, Coca Cola etc! These are the privateers of water. And they are not just focusing on the Third World, as Lougheed says expect them to come knocking at our door soon. This is not just about America wanting Canada's water, as the nationalists like Maude Barlow have proclaimed, its about the creation of the Market State, where corporations rule by dominating how services are delivered. And the so called organizations of Civil Society, the NGO's are now its partners. Its newset form of P3, Public Private Partnerships. Its the new Trilateralism neccasary for the Market State.

The Canadian state has been outsourcing and privatizing services for the past twelve years, it has promoted more P3's as the new model of the State both in policy decisions and through the recent pronouncements of the Bank of Canada President David Dodge. This is the devlolution of the National State as the Market State comes into being.

An execellent article on this which I feel obliged to quote a lengthy excerpt from is below. The whole article is very detailed and much longer and worth saving in your files.

Global Wars for Water, Facts on World Hunger and Poverty

Belgium (HAN) December 17, 2005 -

In Manila, the capital of the Philippines, with a population of 12 million, cholera broke out in November 2003 as a result of E coli bacteria being transmitted by the drinking water-supply. Two transnational companies, Suez (France) and Bechtel (USA), have been responsible for the public water system in the huge metropolis since 1997. Bechtel had already hit the headlines in the year 2000 on account of another affair: after the giant company took over the public water system in Cochabamba/Bolivia and increased water-rates by an exorbitant amount, public protests and revolts broke out. Many people were left wounded and one person dead, after the government declared a state of martial law and protestors were fired on with live ammunition. Bechtel employees “fled” and the water privatisation deal had to be called off. Less well-known is the fact that a $25 million legal action, which Bechtel subsequently filed against Bolivia in a WTO secretive trade court operated by the World Bank, is still pending at this moment in time.

The largest water companies have their headquarters in Europe:

• Suez Lyonnaise; Véolia; Danone; SAUR in France
• RWE/ Thames Water/ American Water Works; Aqua Mundo; Berlinwasser; Gelsenwasser in Germany
• Biwater; Severn Trend and United Utilities in Great Britain and
• Nestle in Switzerland
• Add to this list the two US heavyweights: Bechtel and Coca Cola.

Alongside France and Great Britain, those pioneers of water privatisation, Germany plays a unique role in all of this because two government departments, the BMZ (Department of Agricultural Cooperation and Development) and the BMWA (Department of Finance and Employment) have meanwhile become two of the most aggressive architects of water privatisation not only at EU level but also at the WTO level: hundreds of millions of euros are being invested via “development aid funds” in order to make it easier for German companies to gain access to public water systems in the Third World as well as in EU countries. The BMZ offers companies a veritable “conjuring set” of assistance in the form of: loans, “insurance facilities”, Hermes sureties, offices in foreign countries which can be used as bases, German embassies acting as contact partners, profit guarantees and useful advice on how to gain the trust of decision-makers in foreign countries. Under the guise of providing “aid”, a “powerful German water industry” (Dr Uschi Eid, permanent secretary at the BMZ) is to be set up, which will be able to defy and even outstrip the two largest water companies in the world (Suez and Véolia, France). Well-known organisations such as the GTZ (German Association for Technical Cooperation), the KFW (Credit Institution for Reconstruction), the DEG (German Investments and Development Limited), the European Central Bank and others are all helpers faithful to the cause.

One of the most recent campaigns is the “Multi-Stakeholder Review”, a worldwide “study” intended to clarify whether or not and in which areas water privatisation “makes sense”. Large numbers of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) are being dragged in and integrated into the process. The day-to -day running of this business lies with the “relief organisation” Water Aid (Great Britain) and is funded mainly by the German companies GTZ and RWE/Thames Water, the third largest water company in the world. The slogan “Water is a human right” is being linked in this campaign to the “Millenium Target 2015” which is to halve the number of people in the world who have no access to drinking water by the year 2015 (United Nations Conference on the Environment 2000). The World Bank, the BMZ and the companies involved have named the sum necessary in order to achieve this goal: 180 billion US dollars per annum. Since governments are not (any longer) able to raise this money, people will now have to rely on the readiness of companies to invest.

This financial “assistance” would, however, have consequences: with regard to the public water systems, the right of disposal would pass into the hands of the companies, who would then proceed to make millions of dollars in profit by exploiting the predicament of those dependent on the water for their survival.

Tags
WTO
Water
privatization
Africa
globalization

News Flash From Iraq

Syria/Iraq border 4,500 BCE.

Cradle of Civilization Rocked by War .

"The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone,

" Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Tags
Iraq
archaeology
Syria
War
Ancient Civilizations