Quantum of Solace Teaser Trailer

So I went out today to see the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace and although I did enjoy the film; I couldn’t help but notice some of the politics in it. In the film there’s the whole matter of intelligence agencies working with unsavory leaders and &c. who then go on to overthrow governments and worse. Sadly, there are accounts of things like that happening throughout history. There was also a very interesting feature to this film which I wasn’t expecting. It appears the writers chose to focus on Bolivia. In particular they brought up the whole issue of water as a scarce resource and a corporation/global criminal outfit called Quantum moving in to privatize water resources. This organization also backed this general, helped him gain control of the country and become President. They then forced him to sign a contract that would provide water to the Bolivian people for a cost of almost twice what they were paying now.

I found it interesting to see this in the film since in reality Bolivia had such a problem. Their water was privatized by Bechtel and it took people like Evo Morales to organize and fight back to get the water back into the public’s hands. I guess Bechtel was the model for Quantam?

People in the UK better get on Gordon Brown and New Labour’s case and tell them stop with this privatization nonsense.