Recent stories exclusive to (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:
Courier
Mail's national affairs reporter Peter Charlton attacks MAI concerns and
breaches ethics guidelines 28th
March
The US
Government's global "Cablesplice" project, fact or fantasy? 26th
March
Pauline
Hanson endorses 12 state candidates. 22nd March
News
Limited bucket opposition to the MAI. 21st March
The proposed privatisation of
Telstra 16th March 1998
Queensland State Candidates meet the
people 15th March 1998
One Nation, the First Year
12th March 1998
Pauline Hanson tackles the MAI in Parliament while the media
re-writes history 10th March 1998
Current topical links (available to all readers):
[Links to the MAI]
[Queensland
One Nation State Election website]
[Sign the "I'm so sorry Pauline"
book]
Archive of weekly features (available to all readers):
[The
Canberra Column]
[Economic
Rationalism]
Today's
Headlines
an Aussie's viewpoint on Australia's
first daily Internet newspaper.
Since
October 1995
UN agree to make our free fresh water a "chargeable commodity".
Below is a recent press release by Reuters. Unreported by the media or politicians if this international treaty is ratified it places the water that falls as rain and collects in your farm dam, the snow you play on and the fresh water rivers that run through our land in a different category. From last Saturday, the UN decided, fresh water should be treated as a commodity.
Saturday March 21, 12:52 pm Eastern Time
By Frederic Niel
PARIS, March 21 (Reuters) - A United Nations conference on managing the world's limited fresh water supplies agreed on Saturday that water should be paid for as a commodity rather than be treated as an essential staple to be supplied free of cost.
The three-day conference, attended by environment ministers and officials from 84 countries, said costs should remain low and the poor must be assured of access to fresh water.
The conference's cautious appeal for more market forces in managing the world's water supplies prompted a note of caution from France's socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who addressed the meeting on its final day.
The conference's final declaration said the problem of water shortages was so important that governments would have to mobilise private funds for the vast investments needed for networks and treatment plants to assure future supplies.
After hearing that one-quarter of the world's 5.9 billion people have no access to clean drinking water and water shortages threatened world peace, delegates agreed that governments must "mobilise adequate public and private funds...(to) use the available resources in the most efficient way.''
"The gradual introduction of a system to recover the direct and indirect costs of services should be encouraged,'' the conference concluded in cautious diplomatic language bound to put off poorer states that argue water should be free.
In his speech, Jospin urged prudence in dealing with a substance that was not "a product like any other.''
"You have renounced the old belief, which held on for far too long, that water could only be free because it fell from the heavens,'' he told the conference.
But he said the switch to a more market-oriented way of dealing with water "should be prudent.''
"There has to be a balance found according to the capacity of each category of user to pay for it,'' Jospin said.
France's conservative President Jacques Chirac, who invited the conference to meet in Paris, told the delegates on Friday that water prices had to rise.
"No more barren wrangling over the market versus the state,'' he said. "Water has a price and zero price is a forewarning of scarcity.''
Chirac estimated it would cost $400 billion to set up reliable water networks around the world and told the conference that governments alone could not foot the bill.
According to the World Bank, states have only pledged $60-$80 billion over the next 10 years.
"We have to think up ways of attracting domestic and world savings towards this type of collective investment by guaranteeing sufficient returns,'' Chirac said.
The conference also approved the outlines of an action plan for 2000-2010 which should be rubber-stamped at next month's session of the U.N. Committee on Sustainable Development in New York.
The plan aims to improve knowledge, optimise resources and develop regulatory tools at global and regional levels.
Chirac also called for the creation of an "International Academy for Water'' under the aegis of an existing organisation.
France wants the Kenya-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) to take over responsibility for water issues, but the United States opposes giving the issue to a single body.
Senior officials of France's two major water utility companies, Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux SA (LYOE.PA) and Cie Generale des Eaux (EAUG.PA), attended the conference and argued that users should pay more for their water networks.
"The private investment should be repaid by selling the water,'' said Daniel Caille, a senior CGE official.
In his speech, Chirac said: "The risk of hostilities will grow in step with the depletion of resources. Are we going to allow the 21st century to be the century of the water wars?''
Water consumption was doubling every 20 years, 50 percent of water in main cities leaked away and a quarter of the world's population had no access to clean water, Chirac said.
"If we so decide, within a few years we can provide every Third World village, especially those in the drylands of Africa, with lasting access to drinkable water,'' he said.
"If we so decide, within a few years we can provide all city dwellers, including those in poor neighbourhoods, with drinking water and sanitation.''
Since when have the wealthy UN nations really cared for the poor? Look at the malnutrition, disease and sickness that dominates the lives of people in countries like Ethiopia, Somalia and Indonesia.
The track record of the UN and IMF etc is clear, screw whatever you can out of a country for the benefit of the multinational. So there has to be another reason behind the facade why this has been proposed, and there is.
Note agreement has already been reached. Where does Australia sit with this? We would all have to wonder how far the US/transnationals led United Nations will go in their impatience and greed to control the world with money.
"Commodities" are generally the human produced products of the soil, which prices are not controlled by supply and demand, but by the anticipated supply and demand, where nothing changes hands except money. Speculators, gamblers on a huge scale, use the futures market world wide (and predominantly in the USA for nearly two centuries) to predict forward, prices of coffee, cotton, grains, sugar etc.
These speculators control the price of all commodities without probably knowing what most of the commodities even look like.
In 1972, money was included on the commodities list as a medium of speculation, and enormous amounts of paper (fictitious), beyond issued currency levels of many countries, are daily traded forward to the point where national currency values have their value determined by the contract prices of future trading. There is no doubt that this is what has happened with the collapse of the Asian currencies - manipulated downwards by gambling.
Obviously, this news item foreshadows the insertion of fresh water onto the commodities list for the purpose of speculation, and money accumulation by the control of fresh water prices. Once this is accomplished, then the "money movers" will indeed control the world through the price they establish for fresh water. Such speculation could also control the world population by establishing a price for water beyond the reach of most of the world's population whilst they make billion of dollars.
The line must be drawn on God's endowments being included on the commodities list. When will they place the air that we breath into the commodity market?
It is of no surprise, then, that a multinational consortium last week announced a Au$4.5 billion project in the centre of Queensland. The project is based around a massive dam which will displace a large number of farmers and indigenous people.
Until yesterday I wondered why a multinational group would be interested in capturing fresh water in the catchment area of Queensland's major rivers.
Now I wonder no more - when I hear that Queensland does not have the finances to repair out storm battered beaches, beaches that were once enjoyed by the people of the state..
The basic ideas of economic rationalism are
Making the
news" -
An article in today's Sun Herald is, I believe, at odds with the views of moral Australians.
Written by two sisters, Dale and Lynne Spencer the article is headed "Serial Partners, Multiple Careers for the 90s woman"
Here is an extract:
"As the kids reach independence, it's time to keep an eye out for the next partner - someone quite a few years younger."
Whatever happened to a soul mate?
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
Return to Australian National
News of the Day
See GLOBE International for
other world news.