Public Intelligence Blog

Who? Mini-Me?

Water Industry, World Bank Pilot New Scheme To Drive Public Water Into Private Hands World

DAVOS-KLOSTERS, SWITZERLAND – This January 26th, the water industry will privately review its newest strategy for driving public water resources into private hands at the World Economic Forum. A partnership quietly launched in October with funding from the World Bank, Coca-Cola and Veolia will report on progress towards its stated mission to “transform the water sector” by establishing “new normative approaches to water governance” that put the private sector in the driver’s seat in water management.

Calling itself the Water Resources Group (WRG) and headed by Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathei, the corporation has already targeted the countries of Mexico, Jordan, India and South Africa to “shape and test governance processes” that would make water privatization more feasible and profitable. The fact that the Group has not invited publicity, and the Bank was unwilling to comment upon its launch, underscores how controversial its founders know the endeavor to be.

“The cognitive dissonance could not be clearer,” said Corporate Accountability International Executive Director Kelle Louaillier. “Amid a global water crisis, exacerbated by one failed privatization scheme after another, a development institution is aggressively advancing narrow industry interests to the detriment of poverty alleviation.”

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We are going to move from denial to realization.  Physical world events will drive the process of realization. The primary trend is between stability and instability. We are moving from a multi-class system running from Super Elite to Unperson into a model of have’s and have-nots, the unpersons. Labor has become a problem because less than 500 million are involved in life support activities thereby leaving more than 7 billion people very vulnerable to dependency (and treated as expendable containers). We are watching a redistribution process bound towards divestiture as more people become unpersons. Destruction of paper assets, debt collapse, bank failure, and war are all part of the redistribution process. With more unpeople, it becomes easier to reduce population through death and abuse. Our current economic structure has at least six trajectories of support; the physical world, human capital, transportation, technology, rule of law,and money.

Fukishima, Katrina, Gulf of Mexico oil spill — all examples of entire populations treated as “unpersons.”

See Also:

VIDEO: Fukushima – Total Cost (33)

W. E. Pollock Web Site

Click on Image to Enlarge

China-Mekong River Nations: Chinese press reported that joint security patrols with Thailand, Laos and Burma/ Myanmar will begin along the Mekong River. At a ministerial meeting in Beijing, the four countries agreed to begin the first patrol before 15 December and that the operation’s headquarters be located in China. The patrols will allow shipping to restart and guarantee security with China to help train and equip police in Laos and Myanmar.

Comment: Many younger Readers might not know that the Mekong River originates in southwest China and flows southwards through Southeast Asia to the South China Sea. The omission of Cambodia from the joint agreement indicates the security problems are in the upper reaches of the river. Thus, the security problems are in effect, inland waterways security issues along navigable waterways.

The interesting dynamic is the Chinese success in moving southward, by exploiting lapses of local security along a key waterway, to extend the Chinese sphere of influence. The Chinese have not had Chinese patrol boats or river security advisors on the Mekong along the Laos, Burma and Thai borders in centuries.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota:  Viet-Nam, long a co-equal and counter-weight to China in Southeast Asia, is not mentioned.  As the map illuminates, Cambodia and Viet-Nam control the entry points to the Mekong River.  Viet-Nam’s control of the eastern coast also precludes–absent an agreement–an obvious option for future commerce, a major canal or rail cut from the Mekong east to Vinh, one of four Grade 1 cities in Viet-Nam, a major ground transport hub, and a notable port.

John Steiner

TransCanada Pipeline Foes See U.S. Bias in E-Mails

E-mails released Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the environmental group Friends of the Earth paint a picture of a sometimes warm and collaborative relationship between the lobbyist for the pipeline company, Trans-Canada, and officials in the State Department, the agency responsible for evaluating and approving the billion-dollar project.

Public disservice: Pipeline hearings run by Keystone XL contractor

In a stunning conflict of interest, public hearings on federal approval for a proposed tar-sands pipeline are being run by a contractor for the pipeline company itself. The U.S. Department of State’s public hearings along the proposed route of the TransCanada Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline this week are under the purview of Cardno Entrix, a “professional environmental consulting company” that specializes in “permitting and compliance.”

Terry Stuart of Colorado Comments:

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DefDog

North Dakota is debt free with a surplus of cash that can only be spent with 66% of the legislature approving.  Integrity seems to be plentiful there, but not in Washington, where Obama refuses to free up access to oil in our ground, at the same time that he is blowing taxpayer money on fraudulent green schemes.

How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia

Harold Hamm, discoverer of the Bakken fields of the northern Great Plains, on America’s oil future and why OPEC’s days are numbered.

By STEPHEN MOORE

Wall Street Journal, 1 October 2011

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be “completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century.”

“President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy,” he adds. We can’t come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into “green energy” sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  The difference between North Dakota reserves and the Canadian oil tar scam is that the latter requires vast amounts of aquifer water to flush, a trade-off that no honest person would ever make.  The Governor of North Dakota has every right to nullify federal interference with his state’s natural resources.

John Steiner

Dalai Lama, Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel Peace Laureates: Halt tarsands

Brenda Norrell

The Narcosphere, 8 September 2011

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Nobel Peace Laureates Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala and Archbishop Desmund Tutu of South Africa, joined six other Nobel Peace Laureates urging President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, an environmental disaster in the making.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  We find it fascinating that the activists are ignoring the larger crime, the use of fresh water to flush the tar sands in the first place.

See Also:

Chuck Spinney: Big Oil Screwing US for Peak Profits

Paul Fernhout: Open Letter to the Intelligence Advanced Programs Research Agency (IARPA)

John Steiner: US State Department Clueless on Tar Sands

John Steiner: Save Water from Big Oil, Get Arrested in DC

Chuck Spinney: Richard Falk on USG Learning Disability

Koko

Nuclear Plants have not been designed for being flooded by tsunami nor for earthquakes of the sort anticipated in the near-term.

Levees all across America–and perhaps in other parts of the world–have not been designed for “heavy weather” of the sort that destroyed the largest “conventional” levee protecting the city of New Orleans.

This is a short-coming that will ultimately be fatal for more than one community, and it is not being corrected by anyone.

Quake Motion May Have Exceeded Plant’s Design

Earthquake simulator gives model levee a big shake

John Steiner

Canada-U.S. Oil Pipeline Poses Few Environmental Risks — State Dept.

EXTRACT:

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune slammed the department’s review as “an insult to anyone who expects government to work for the interests of the American people.”

U.S. Offers Key Support to Canadian Pipeline

Phi Beta Iota:  Neither the Department of State, nor any other branch of government nor even the environmentalists themselves, are doing holistic analytics.  At root this project is wrong for two reasons: it uses water we cannot afford to waste to flush the tar, and it creates a third rate oil follow-on ecology–doing the wrong thing writer as Russell Ackoff would say.   The US Government lacks the ability to do holistic analytics, and therefore it is incapable of rendering sound decisions in a complex world.

See Also:

John Steiner: Save Water from Big Oil, Get Arrested in DC

John Steiner

Civil disobedience and water are coming together in the face of Big Oil and Big Government.  Three items below:

1)  Email from Jodie Evans on mass movement to get arrested in front of the White House over Tar Sands waste of water

2) Why Rick Perry Would Put the World on a Fast Track to Total Meltdown

3)  FEEDBACK from Robert Steele

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Cynthia McKinney

From Don DBar on behalf of Cynthia McKinney.

Battle for Tripoli not yet over as Gaddafi loyalists strike back

Washington Post, 22 August 2011

KPFA’s Davey D interviews Don DeBar about the real on-the-ground situation in Tripoli.

This PressTV bit with me was recorded at 2:30 pm New York time yesterday (22 Aug 2011). At that time, I questioned the veracity of the claimed capture of Gadaffi’s sons and of rebel control of the city of Tripoli. It turns out I was right.

No, I don’t have a crystal ball - just good contacts on the ground who don’t lie or hold their tongues when they see horrible wrong being done. NATO – that’s Obama to the apologists - has done everything to keep this information from you, but the truth will out!

. . . . . . .

Libya Coverage Provides a Peek Behind the Curtain

Don DeBar at www.warisacrime.org

. . . . . . .

Interview on Costs of War on Sahar TV

Phi Beta Iota:  US Information Operations (IO) includes Pyschological Operations (PSYOP, now under a new name, same mindset, which is to deceive rather than to promulgate the truth).  It has improved since its signal success in sending Iraqi troops home rather than having to deal with their surrender.  What we are seeing in relation to Libya, apart from the impeachable crimes of pilots, generals, Congress, and the White House, is a major IO/PSYOP campaign that is driven by Wall Street and Big Oil, not by the public interest.  Interestingly, this is also the first time that the truth is being crowd-sourced in a moderately effective manner, suggesting that in the future any IO/PSYOP campaign that is less than truthful will be outed in quick time.

See Also:

Search: libyan tribes map + LIBYA RECAP 22 Aug 11

Phi Beta Iota:  The respective press–those trapped in a hotel in Tripoli and those embedded with the rebels–are seeing only what they are allowed to see.  Apart from Patrick Meier, Arno Reuser and a few others, no one is actually putting together “ground truth” based on widely scatted Twitter and other forms of communication.  The West sees Libya as oil, water, and gold.  The Africa Union has failed to see the urgency of protecting its interest in all three.