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February 9, 2006
The People Rise Up
By: Rowan Wolf
The people of the planet are rising up to fight the forces of corporatization that is stripping the resources from under their feet. In India, water has become the rallying point. India's people have launched a campaign against water privatization. While common sense would argue that water is a "commons," the fight to control it is a profitable one for corporations. There has been an ongoing conflict with Coca Cola and Pepsi over their stripping of ground water.
Meanwhile, Evo Morales of Bolivia is taking a page out of Chavez book, and reclaiming Bolivia's natural gas supplies. Morales is sure to raise the ire of the Bush administration as he moves to wrest control of Bolivia's oil and gas back from the hands of foreign energy corporations.
Morales, has in fact turned for help to Venezuela's Chavez in this effort to regain control. The profits from Bolivia's oil and gas resources could go a long way towards reducing poverty in Bolivia. However, Morales will face the hazards that Chavez has - US sponsored coups for example - without many of the protections Chavez has developed.
People are rising up. Across the world, the people are seeing that their very lives are being threatened by the privatization of everything which has been the goal of much of the most recent wave of globalization. Further, that privatization is not in the control of domestic forces, but of foreign companies wanting to pocket critical resources.
Posted by Rowan at February 9, 2006 5:41 AM Category: Environmental Justice