Greeks Stand Up to Protect Their Water From Privatization
from OnTheCommons.org:
Greeks Stand Up to Protect Their Water From Privatization
As foreign investors eye their public utilities, water workers scramble to create cooperatives
By Daniel Moss
Greece knows a thing or two about democracy. And as an increasingly arid nation, good water management is fundamental to its future, both political and physical. The recent financial crisis hasn’t only tested Greek democracy, but its water as well.
“You can tell if a society is democratic if its water is available to everyone, if it’s clean, and in public hands.” That’s how Kostas Marioglou sees it. When he’s not distributing water meters and pipes from a warehouse as with his job at EYATH ( Thessaloniki’s State Water Utility) he is a union leader and organizer for Initiative 136, a citizen’s initiative to buy the water utility from the Greek government.
Greece is under enormous pressure to privatize its water system. As the country drowns in debt, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank (often referred to as the “troika”) work with eager Greek political parties to balance the books by selling off public water. Greece wouldn’t be the first place to privatize public water utilities during a fiscal crisis. Conditioning loans based on full or partial water privatization is an increasingly common practice of international lenders – and much criticized.
“Although the people’s message after two elections (6th of May and 17th of June) was clearly that of renegotiating the debt and the measures imposed by the Troika”, said Theodoros Karyotis, a member of Initiative 136, “the new government continues to apply the Troika program.” .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/greeks-stand-protect-their-water-privatization
= new reply since forum marked as read
Has made no noticeable difference. 
...that this was going to be our wars of the future. It's a step in Shock Doctrine. i.e. disaster capitalism. (Naomi Klein, author) We need to put a permanent cap on this corporate privatization drive on everything in sight and unseen (like air). We need to get universal health care, once and for all. It is a crime against humanity, my opinion, to place our lives in the hands of private corporate insurance companies.
It's criminal, I tell you!!! 
That's right mountain grammy. I've never been the same since reading that book. I have two copies of it (paperbacks) and tried to give one away on here one time...no takers. Figure that out...cause I'm not even going to try. I read it once, all the way through and have sworn that I would read it again... you know how you miss something the first time through? But I have so many other books to read! Don't need to read it again, as I got it the the first time. This one book tells the result of Milton Freidman's Chicago big business ideas. Don't get me going... 
...by me on my bookshelf but have never read it. Since you recommend it, will start in on it. I didn't read it yet, as I'm simply sick of that kind of religion. I don't know if there's anything in there that I don't already know. But I promise, for you, mountain grammy, I will start in on it tomorrow. 
...religious beliefs? He says he's a Christian and I believe him. If I thought he would read these books, I might try to find First Ed HB copies for him. But I doubt he would ever lay eyes on them. We need to start calling them "companion" books.