[Source: orientalreview.org]Soon we shall be covered by wheat.
Did you say, wheat?
Wheat, wheat. – from Woody Allen’s ‘Love and Death’[1]
Ten months before Russian troops poured into Ukraine, that country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law authorizing the private sale of farmland, reversing a moratorium that had been in place since 2001.
Now one community in Shropshire is going all the way to the Supreme Court to fight this – and to defend all of our public interest in our beloved green spaces.
16 June 2021 — Socialist Project
In the wake of the global financial crisis, water services have come under renewed neoliberal assault across Europe. At the same time, the struggle against water privatization has continued to pick up pace; from the re-municipalization of water in Grenoble in 2000, to the United Nations declaration of water as a human right in 2010.
15 April 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog
There is much talk among ‘progressive’ economists that the IMF and the World Bank have turned over a new leaf. Gone are the days of supporting fiscal austerity, demanding that national governments get public debt levels down and insisting on conditions for countries borrowing IMF-WB funds that their governments privatise their state assets, deregulate markets and reduce labour rights.
29 March, 2021 — Consortium News – Common Dreams
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson shows proof of getting Oxford–AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine on March 19. (Andrew Parsons, No 10 Downing Street, Flickr)
By Nick Dearden
Common Dreams
On the anniversary of the United Kingdom’s first lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic, as candles were lit in doorways and the country mourned 125,000 deaths, the prime minister was in the mood for gloating.
“The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends,” Boris Johnson reportedly told Conservative MPs, before pleading “forget I said that.”
A Telugu translation is available as a pdf.
The kisan agitation at the gates of Fortress Delhi has forced even the corporate media to take note of the corporate drive to capture control of the remaining non-corporate sectors of the country’s economy, including its agriculture; the phrase “Ambani-Adani” is now a popular term for this process.
10 June 2020 — True Publica
By Rob Woodward – TruePublica: Thatcherism, as it is known, was made of up of principles comprising economic, social and political ideals that described the Conservative Party that undoubtedly shaped Britain for nearly fifty years. The economic policies that came with Thatcherism really amounted to little more than deregulation. It was and still is a total rejection of the ‘post-war consensus’ that drives privatisation, nationalisation and unleashes ‘corporatism’ – the so-called efficiency of the free-market and the fiction sold to everyone as a ‘trickle-down’ effect.
17 March 2020 — Grayzone
23 August 2019 — True Publica
By Robert Woodward – TruePublica: There are some standout failures of the privatisation model in Britain that was sold to the public as some sort panacea to all the failings of state-owned assets. Since 2010, more state-owned assets have been sold since the 1930s – where £1trillion of national wealth has been handed over to private entities often with disastrous results. The latest is just another a poke in the eye for the ever beleaguered taxpayer with those causing chaos laughing all the way to the bank.
14 March 2019 — Bureau of Investigative Journalism
In a major collaboration involving dozens of reporters around the country and a week of stories with Huff Post UK, the Bureau revealed the true scale of the local government funding crisis. It has become so dire that councils are being forced to sell thousands of public spaces, such as libraries, community centres and playgrounds – and many are using the money to fund redundancies. Read the full investigation here.
Continue reading
27 December 2018 — WSWS
Residents in working class housing estates are organising in opposition to the Labour Party mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s proposed social cleansing “regeneration” schemes.
In February, Khan proposed “mandatory balloting schemes where any demolition is planned as a strict condition of his funding.” Residents “would be at the heart” of decision-making, and there “must be no loss of social housing,” claimed the mayor.
22 September 2018 — WSWS
Two months after the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) called an end to strikes against French President Emmanuel Macron’s rail privatization plan, ministers are deserting the government. The cabinet and Macron’s party, The Republic on the March (LRM), are disintegrating and powerful sections of the bourgeoisie are openly debating mechanisms to remove Macron and build an alternative government.
2 February 2018 — InvestigatingImperialism
Have you noticed that it’s no longer PC Dixon of Dock Green who mediates the relationship between the state and its citizens as he goes about his beat in your neighbourhood? Instead, it’s a Kevlar-armoured, video-monitored, taser-equipped, drone-surveilled, spit-masked supplied soldier, straight out of Star Wars, who now staggers along under the weight of an industrialized capitalism, visibly physically disconnected from the citizens they monitor by their bullet-proof uniforms, that more resemble a rack of tools in your local hardware store than the Bobby on the beat.
9 July 2017 — TRNN
London’s Haringey Council voted to approve a £2 billion sell-off of public assets to the notorious private developer Lendlease despite overwhelming opposition from the community
24 June 2017 — Dispossessionfilm.com
For some people, a housing crisis means not getting planning permission for a loft conversion. For others it means, quite simply, losing their home. Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle is a feature documentary directed by Paul Sng (Sleaford Mods – Invisible Britain) and narrated by Maxine Peake, exploring the catastrophic failures that have led to a chronic shortage of social housing in the UK.
28 September 2016
Have a look at this:
http://bit.ly/2dhoBLF
When private company G4S take over a public service, headlines of abuse, failure and mismanagement often follow.
Now, the government wants to privatise a national discrimination helpline – and hand it over to G4S. Anti-discrimination groups have launched a legal challenge to stop them. A judge decides tomorrow on whether that challenge can go ahead.
As you read this email, the judge will be weighing up his decision. A huge petition against G4S will give the judge some powerful extra evidence – that this is a matter of public concern and deserves its day in court.
Please can you sign the urgent petition now?
Thanks
4 September 2016 — FAIR
Bill Gates (photo: Sebastian Derungs/WEF)
The Guardian (8/31/16) published a broadly positive report on Liberian education, which is handing over the reins of 120 primary schools to a consortium of private education companies and NGOs in a pilot program exploring privatization of the West African nation’s schools. One passage in particular was especially glowing:
The deputy minister [of Education], Aagon Tingba, is reading The Bee Eater, a biography of Michele Rhee, a polarizing educational reformist and former chancellor of Washington, DC, public schools. “She changed the lives of children in Washington, but people complained her methods were controversial. But she made a difference. So why can’t we do that here?
22 September, 2015 — Occupy.com
Reversing The Tide: Cities And Countries Are Rebelling Against Water Privatization, And Winning By Tom Lawson
Private companies have been working to make a profit from water since the 1600s, when the first water companies were established in England and Wales. The first wave of water privatization occurred in the 1800s, and by the mid- to late-19th century, privately owned water utilities were common in Europe, the United States and Latin America, and began to appear in Africa and Asia.
27 February 2015 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor
I know a cat named Doctor Yani…
On Tuesday, February 24, 2015, the Syriza government of Greece presented its “first comprehensive list of reform measures” to the president of the Eurogroup. The Eurogroup is what the committee made up of the finance ministers of countries using the euro as currency is called when it actually meets.
7 August 2014
The Tories are scared. Publicly owned East Coast has made over £1bn profit for the taxpayer – showing that public trains can be efficient and effective. They’re now trying to sell it off before more people notice.
Which is why we need to ramp up the pressure for public rail.
The New Dark Age 