Reply #42: Absolutely right. It's something you'd NEVER expect to hear. [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

You just wouldn't think people could get that greedy, but leave it to a company connected to the elder _Bush to try to pull it off:

World Bank’s ICSID to Hear Case on Bolivia Water Privatization
Bechtel Corp Suing for $25 million in Lost Profits After People Revolt
by Malcolm Seymour
50 Years Is Enough Network legal intern
More and more people are learning, through experience or through burgeoning campaigns, about the inhumanity of water privatization campaigns in the Global South. The story, re-enacted across the world, never loses its sting: the IMF and World Bank pressure governments to sell off publicly-run water systems; for-profit corporations from the North step in; within weeks, water bills skyrocket to unaffordable levels.

A new phenomenon has started pushing across the horizon, bringing hope to those who feared that water commodification had become the bleak, inevitable future of the developing world. Civic demonstrations in countries like Bolivia, Argentina, South Africa and Ecuador have succeeded in chasing corporations away from public water.

But these protests have come at significant costs. In Bolivia, the government responded to protests against an agreement which went so far as to privatize rainwater in the province of Cochabamba with brute force and a martial lockdown. In the ensuing bedlam, a 17-year-old boy was killed when police catapulted a tear gas canister into his head. Bechtel, the company which had secured the contract for the privatization, finally chose to withdraw in the face of such strong opposition.

To add insult to injury, Bechtel, which had hiked water rates an average of 50% virtually overnight, sued the Bolivian government for $25 million -- a figure far greater than what they invested. Following a principle becoming more common in the age of “free-trade” treaties, they sued for the projected profits they would now not realize.
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http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/85

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