I'm still trying to figure out how this wiki page should and can be used.  I'm not really clear about what I'm supposed to do.  Or is it the other way around, are people suppose to contact me?  If that's so it's fine with me.


Is this a page to help people with water problems, or web problems, or group problems?


I guess I'm really really confused.


I know in my work on water, over the years, I see connections that might be helpful, but what those connections add up to, I'm still trying to figure out.  I do know that an interesting idea is now being floated around... a new way to leverage climate change that might apply to water, water being a big part of the climate change issue.  Here's an excerpt:


"World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER | Monday, May 19, 2007
Vol. 2, No. 20

Climate Industrial Complex

Few people still dismiss global warming. Some climate deniers still mouth off in Congress, like James Inhofe of Oklahoma who called global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Novelist Michael Crichton, with his <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=JaLp9jA%2FBaVw1KAMJ2JwNe1RF6yNaxfq>2004 novel State of Fear and subsequent press briefings, has seemingly <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=mSurkPDsqsFOjpWchfWSsu1RF6yNaxfq>gotten mixed up about where non-fiction ends and fiction begins. Maverick progressive Alexander Cockburn <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=y%2B2egFTRofarKag42%2BpgR6sJ1nJ88Wn8>lobs grenades from the sidelines on the assumption that anything that becomes conventional wisdom must be wrong. Industry-funded organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute still churn out agitprop (though Exxon, for one, <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=P64QhznRmnwUu2K55iyPWO1RF6yNaxfq>severed ties with CEI).

The rest of us, meanwhile, have moved on.

But moved on to where? It's not like the energy crisis of the 1970s when our leaders urged us to turn down the thermostat a few degrees and don a sweater or two. The changes required to turn the clock back on climate change are enormous. We have to fundamentally transform the way the world does business, as FPIF contributor Tom Athanasiou has argued in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=2ZcsikvaPsDfx9vo%2BCLq5%2B1RF6yNaxfq>Toward a Defensible Climate Realism, the first piece in our new climate briefing.

Americans have a can-do attitude, even in the face of long odds. Environmentalist Bill McKibben, who has done as much as anyone to focus attention on the crisis, describes the required response to climate change as a "Hail Mary pass" in a recent <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=HkEJztiT%2FaI97RnDiU8Nxe1RF6yNaxfq>TomDispatch piece. To better the chances that such a pass is caught, some have <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=owrpVi%2BqciM0Zkmya6wgU%2B1RF6yNaxfq>called for a new Manhattan Project. Others have <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=QULIYpaw1X6RrOQmbVFOPu1RF6yNaxfq>urged a new Marshall Plan.

But both the Manhattan Project and Marshall Plan analogies miss the mark. Yes, of course, we need a massive, coordinated effort from the scientific community. Yes, of course, we need a massive, coordinated transfer of resources, particularly to poorer, energy-hungry countries.

Throwing scientists and money at this problem, however, is not enough. The better analogy is the military industrial complex. In response to the Red Scare of the Soviet Union, the United States fundamentally reoriented the United States toward a permanent war economy - to the detriment of America and the world. Now, to deal with the Green Scare, the United States must similarly change the production process and the government's relationship to it. We need to create a permanent climate change economy. And that requires a climate industrial complex.

After all, the threat of climate change is too important to leave to the private sector to figure out how to make a profit from catastrophe. As FPIF contributor Hope Shand points out in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=sLAciNQ%2BWIJmXHMvqw9pZO1RF6yNaxfq>Corporations Grab Climate Genes, agribusiness is already using the threat of global warming to corner the market on new, genetically modified "climate-ready" crops.

Rather, the government must get involved - with regulations, subsidies, targeted investments, R & D funds - in short, everything that made military contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin what they are today. FPIF's peace and security editor Miriam Pemberton spells out what this new economy should look like in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=EjFPdAWOkIvAb5blkHQLqe1RF6yNaxfq>A Climate Change Industrial Policy. Among other things, she calls for a climate change czar in the White House who "would link public investment to job retraining to technical assistance to new sources of finance for enterprise development, and pull together the various state initiatives into a coherent framework." In short, such a czar would oversee the disabling of the old complex and the creation of the new.

With a recession looming, politicians need something they can sell. And this is where "green jobs" enter the picture. These are, as FPIF contributors Jason Walsh and Sarah White point out in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=zi1PBp616sJe%2Fzaxq3nFPu1RF6yNaxfq>Global Green Jobs, "family-supporting, middle-skill jobs, most of them in the primary sectors of a clean energy economy - efficiency, renewables, and alternative transportation and fuels. There are many ways to count them, none perfect. One respected source, using a broad set of parameters, estimates that the renewable and efficiency sectors may account for as many as one in four jobs by 2030."

To avert disaster, of course, we can't leave it to professional recyclers, efficiency experts, and electric car manufacturers. In the new climate industrial complex, saving the world must become everyone's job."

... again I don't know if this  is the right place to bring ideas like this to this wiki page, but maybe it's what the page might become?

Markets are created for the purpose of buying and selling things.  The latest creation is to turn air into a market.  All this carbon credit nonsense is just another example.  Now the interesting thing about this scam, many people who are concerned about the problem of “global warming” are accepting it as one of the solutions.

Privatization really is what is behind it.  Before our very eyes we are seeing the commons of the air being marketized, without even a whimper.

Once you commodify something that was once a commons, what do you do?

There is a glairing example of returning a market back to a commons, which once had been a big market here in this country.  Slavery.  That’s right the commons of human beings, was turned into a market and vasts parts of this country depended on that market based slavery economy.  We normally don’t think in those terms, when discussing slavery, but bottom line, that’s what it was, turning a commons into a market.

I hope that makes it very clear how “market forces” really work.  There are no morals or values or externality considered in “free markets”, none.  It kind of like free markets gone wild always has, my example of slavery is an extreme example, BUT I consider the carbon credit scam right up there with the best of the free market scams.

Here’s the rub, as “traditional markets” get used up or saturated, it becomes dependent upon speculators to create new ones and one of the easy places they can go to create them… the commons.

Yes it is a problem for all countries that use international symbolism like the Olympics to advance their political aims and when confronted with their behavior patterns react in such confrontational ways.  Nothing unusual, but it does open up opportunities to show the underbelly of countries like China.


I find it interesting that the great minds of China would not have considered that this might happen.  But I've learned from the remarks I've received from an animation I did about China, there is a certain arrogance in those remarks and when confronted with questions about that, there was no reply.


Coke in India has been a disaster; their bottling plants have created great concerns in local communities in India, because of the water takings and the reduction of water in aquifers Coke has depleted in their use of the water for their bottling plants.


Warren Buffett owns large stock holdings in Coke, he also is involved in energy companies and other companies that need critical assessment, his investment strategies are totally based on the bottom line with little or no regard to the environment or social consequences of his investment decisions.

Drought is becoming an issue of concern World Wide Water Commons now has a wiki page that concentrates on this one aspect of the larger issue of the water commons.  It's interesting to see how it is playing out in different regions of the world.  You can find the stories at:  Drought

As the story lines widens and deepens, what happens with this information and how it is used by the Market Maniacs will be important to track.  How these concerns will play out in the governments around the world and how multi-nationals will use drought for their advantage in all those seats of government is where effort will be needed to help local citizen, farmers organize to keep water as a commons.

I think this page might be reconsidered, making it a more pro-active portal.  For example if water rights was framed more specifically, my example of drought being one and showing how it is being used as a tool for decision making - and giving example of it, might be more concrete in driving home ideas and solutions that need to be implemented.

Some of those solutions already exist within WE by groups and organizations listed in WE, how to get people to them from this page is the question?

There are many ways to work this, confront China by raising the awareness of Tibet with the corporations that do business with China - WalMart for example. Working with unions like SEIU who stand in opposition of WalMart and do massive business with China might be a place to start.

The Olympics is a massive opportunity to go after all the corporate sponsors, NBC is a good place to start, VISA, General Motors, GE, Adidas, Anheuser Busch Charles Schwab, just to name a few.

It's important to shame these multi-nationals, that's where the power is and that's where we need to be and the Olympics is a fine place to start. The pocket book of China is where we can get results, but cutting a hole in that pocket so the money leaks out, will get their attention.

Would any one be interested in posting informational at the source watch "topic" Educational Commons? Here's the web address: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Education_commons

... presently there is no information. Also if there was a link from that page to our Coming Together site that would help increase traffic to this site.

Good.... I read the book, it's worth the read. Thanks, is there a place where I could read the guidelines?

China is what it is, single party without opportunities for change except by the one party that runs it. It chose to get the Olympic and worked hard to make it happen, opening up the Pandora’s box of so many issues. The change that so many people want from China that it ignores can now be raised and maybe brought to the attention of the world.

Personally I think the corporate sponsors of the Olympics is the place to apply pressure, it's a long list and from that list a strategy could be developed to confront them with pressure on their brand – the example might be Wal-Mart, because it depends so much on China to make the things it sells.

Is there an area where news about water issues can be posted, or does a "group" have to be started to post resource articles?

I don't know if this is the proper place to ask this question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Nx9VxW0IA

... this web address points to a video that is worth watching.