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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (48154)	9/30/2002 1:28:03 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Interesting column on the World Bank. washingtonpost.com A Protest Teach-in Spoiled by Facts By Sebastian Mallaby Monday, September 30, 2002; Page A19 During the anti-World Bank demos in April 2000, an independent filmmaker saw an opportunity. He needed a crowd scene for his movie in which Stanko the Bulgarian pastry chef triggers the collapse of capitalism and gets feted in the streets. So he rigged up some Stanko placards and had his actors hold them up in front of the anti-globalization activists. Soon there was a buzz of interest. Before long the nearby protesters had quit denouncing the World Bank, turtle-killing fishing nets and sundry other enemies. "Stanko!" they screamed. Two years on, the anti-globalization people want to put naïve Stankoism behind them. Rather than embracing any trendy cause that comes to hand or falling back on vague anti-corporate rhetoric, they try at least to offer concrete criticisms. That the World Bank promotes ill-considered privatization, for example. Or even that a particular privatization in a particular country has worsened poverty. Last week, for instance, the International Forum on Globalization devoted a series of events to water privatization in the Bolivian town of Cochabamba. There was a seminar, a teach-in and an elaborate enactment of a "living river." The speakers included a labor activist who had come all the way from the Andean plateau, as well as representatives of Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen and other members of the anti-globo home team. By all accounts, Cochabamba's privatization was disastrous. In 1999, a month after a foreign consortium took over the city's water system, tariffs jumped by an average of 35 percent. Some bills doubled, and the rumor was that the consortium would seize control of cooperative wells in the shanties. A protest movement sprang up, and the Bolivian army responded violently; in the attendant mayhem, the consortium's expatriate managers fled the city, and the group's brief control over the town's water came to an abrupt end. For the anti-globalization folks in Washington over the weekend, this story serves as a perfect symbol: of the lunacy of privatization and of the World Bank's instigation of that lunacy. "The World Bank and IMF are turning water from something you take for granted into something that can be taken by force," in the words of Antonia Juhasz of the International Forum. "International financial institutions," according to a Friends of the Earth handout, are "pressing countries to privatize their water service systems as a condition for loans and debt restructuring." This thesis has a few problems, starting with the fact that the World Bank did not promote the Cochabamba privatization. It had been involved in the early planning but had opposed the final version, objecting to the inclusion of a dam project in the deal. The bank argued that the dam's cost would push water tariffs up steeply; Bolivia preferred to listen to local construction magnates who stood to make a fortune. The bank, in other words, had battled crony capitalism on behalf of the little guy -- a subtlety lost on the protesters. If it hadn't been for the dam, the basic idea of water privatization in Cochabamba would not have been so silly. Before privatization, the poor had no access to piped water, forcing them to pay exorbitantly for supplies from private tankers; what's more, the tariff structure for piped water was rigged in favor of the rich. Privatization, for the brief period that it lasted, brought a progressive rate structure; given time, the consortium would have fulfilled the clauses in the contract that required the connection of poor citizens. An academic study of Cochabamba's water published in the Bulletin of Latin American Research concluded that the poorest half of the population stood to gain most from privatization -- another subtlety ignored by the protesters. The study's conclusion is supported by other experiences of privatization -- cases in which the World Bank really did act as handmaiden. In Buenos Aires, privatization increased the share of households with piped water from 70 percent to 83 percent between 1992 and 1997. Water privatization in La Paz, Bolivia's capital, also is succeeding. As well as boosting connection rates, these deals can end the drain on government budgets imposed by the old loss-making utilities. In other words, privatization can free money for the sort of poverty-focused public spending that the anti-globalization people want. Is privatization always the answer? Of course not, but it's absurd to paint the World Bank as a knee-jerk privatizer. Last year the bank lent some $500 million to water and sanitation projects; around $400 million of that went to public utilities. In Santa Cruz, Bolivia, the water system is run by a consumer cooperative; the bank has lent to it happily. The rhetoric about the World Bank pressing indiscriminately for privatization isn't much of an improvement on naïve Stankoism. washingtonpost.com

To: KLP who wrote (48154)	9/30/2002 10:56:06 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Are there other countries than these 3 that have 'exclusive' use of Iraqi oil? Well, I believe the Netherlands (shell) and Italy having pending, or current, concessions in Iraq. Another thing... if folks recall correctly, there were many allegations going around that US oil companies were lobbying the Clinton administration for restraint, as well as they ability to do business with Iraq... So it just to show, no matter what side you're on, you can always get away with blaming the oil companies.. Of course, no one blames themselves for stepping into that automobile every morning... That wouldn't fit the plan.. :0) But yes.. that's why opening up ANWR is so vitally important, and possibly even considering offshore drilling... It's either that or redirect the entire US energy infrastructure to hydrogen.. But the hitch there is that we have to produce hydrogen in large quantities, which requires substantial power in itself. And the only way to provide that much power on an efficient basis would be to create a string of medium size nuclear power plants which would be dedicated to off-peak hydrogen production, with some plants solely dedicated to proving power to hydrogen plants. We would also need desalinization plants in order to provide the supply of fresh water that would be required (or a gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48, where they could use glacier water. Hawk