12 October 2020 — The Grayzone
76 of the 91 loans the IMF has negotiated since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic come attached with demands for deep cuts to public services and policies that benefit corporations over people.
Tag: privatization
Forced Privatization of The Greek Port of Piraeus, One Year Later
12 December 2017 — TRNN
Dimitri Lascaris in Greece, speaks with Giogros Gogos, general Secretary of the Dockworkers Union at the Port of Piraeus. The Troika forced the privatization of 67% of Port of Piraeus, this means that the most secure and lucrative asset in Greece, that could have generated money to pay the debt, is now the hands of Chinese shipping company Cosco Continue reading
Ukraine Labor Dares Operation Vulture by Michael Hudson
28 May 2015 — michael-hudson.com
Ukraine’s collapse since the February 2014 coup has become an umbrella for grabitization. Collateral damage in this free-for-all has been labor. Many workers are simply not getting paid, and what they actually is being paid is often illegally low. Employers are taking whatever money is in their business accounts and squirreling it away – preferably abroad, or at least in foreign currency.
Video: UK’s Royal Mail Privatized and Sold to Investors
4 November 2013 — The Real News Network
John Weeks: The privatization of the Royal Mail will enrich investors but leave workers worse off Continue reading
Video: UK's Royal Mail Privatized and Sold to Investors
4 November 2013 — The Real News Network
John Weeks: The privatization of the Royal Mail will enrich investors but leave workers worse off Continue reading
People’s Inquiry – a grassroots vision for our NHS? By John Lister
14 October 2013 — Our NHS
As the NHS groans under cuts and chaotic reorganisation, government bodies are calling for yet more ‘radical change‘ and ‘difficult decisions’. Will their answers be hospital closures and privatisations? The new People’s Inquiry is calling for evidence to support a different way forward.
Asleep on the job – England’s young doctors and the NHS reforms By Guddi Singh
4 September 2013 — OurNHS
Great tides of people press against me, hands outstretched, faces questioning. They wait for something – a doctor? Anguish ripples through the crowd. Those without the right colour passport are turned away. Countless others shake out their pockets: desperate for pennies; desperate for treatment. Their eyes fill with reproach once they recognize I am a doctor. Their searing gaze brands my guilt.
NHS is not safe with UK coalition government: Poll
7 July 2013 — PressTV
Ninety percent of NHS staff think Britain’s health service is not safe in the hands of the coalition government, a poll has found.
Video: Privatizing Europe
24 April 2013 — The Real News Network
Nick Buxton: A massive European fire sale is one way finance is using the crisis to entrench neo-liberalism (inc. transcript)
Video: Michael Hudson – Thatcher Gave More Power to Finance
9 April 2013 — The Real News Network
Michael Hudson: Thatcher deregulated banking and made London the center of speculation and financialization – April 9, 2013
European Trade Unions and the Struggle for Public Services By Christoph Hermann
4 April 2013 — The Bullet • Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 797
The public sector is a key battleground for a progressive trade union strategy and for an alternative to neoliberalism in Europe. On the one hand the existence of a public sector is a continuing example that a not for profit driven production of goods and services is not only possible in the 21st century – it is also preferable. Continue reading
The EyeOpener- Stratfor and the Privatization of Intelligence
13 March 2012 — www.boilingfrogspost.com
Late last year, hackers with the anonymous hacking group LulzSec raided the servers of Strategic Forecasting, Inc., or Stratfor, a private intelligence company in Austin, Texas, coming away with some 5 million emails. Last month, Wikileaks began publishing the emails as “The Global Intelligence Files” to much fanfare. All of the claims that continue to emerge on a daily basis from this email archive are just that: claims. Regardless of the truth of this or that particular claim, perhaps the most significant thing to emerge from the emails is the fact that companies like Stratfor exist at all. That private companies are in possession of vast intelligence networks and vast sums of data on private individuals is a trend that few are comfortable with, but few are aware of until situations like the Stratfor leak bring it to the public’s attention.
This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting the disturbing trend of outsourcing intelligence work to private companies, the unhealthy relationship between intelligence agencies and the private sector, the culpability for misconduct and shielding the government from being held accountable for crimes committed on its behalf, and the creation of a revolving door that allows the private companies enormous leeway in bending and breaking laws by offering incentives to the agencies that are supposedly keeping an eye on them.
Watch the Video Report Here @ Boiling Frogs Post: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/03/13/the-eyeopener-stratfor-and-the-privatization-of-intelligence/
Video: Austerity Policy Destroying Greek Society
16 February 2012 — The Real News Network
Dimitri Lascaris: Heart wrenching personal stories show that Greece should reject austerity deal and pull out of Eurozone
The following is a letter from Dimitri’s sister in Greece:
“Friends of ours have died of heart attacks, stressed to the limit by debt, or worse, the loss of their cars and homes”
Video: Blue Gold World Water Wars (2008)
14 November 2011 — www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com
This award winning documentary directed by Sam Bozzo is based on the book BLUE GOLD: THE FIGHT TO STOP THE CORPORATE THEFT OF THE WORLD’S WATER by Maude Barlow and Tony Clark. The film examines the problems created by the privatization and commoditization of water. Contains 30 minutes of bonus material, including deleted scenes and an interview with the filmmaker.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience. Continue reading
Britain: The Health and Social Care Bill and the Negation of Democracy By Colin Leys
15 September 2011 — The Bullet • Socialist Project – E-Bulletin No. 544
In voting, in the British House of Commons, for the third reading of Andrew Lansley‘s Health and Social Care Bill last week MPs voted to replace the National Health Service (NHS) as a public service with a system of competing businesses – foundation trusts, social enterprises and for-profit corporations. The government’s claim that the Bill does not mean privatization is plainly specious: the truth of the matter is to be found in what Lansley’s health minister, Lord Howe, told a meeting of private health businessmen on the day the Bill was approved. He said it presented ‘huge opportunities’ for the private sector, and noted that commissioners of health care would be barred from favouring NHS providers. The truth is also to be found in the government’s leaked plans to hand over the management of NHS hospitals to private companies, and in the current and promised large-scale opening up of NHS work to ‘any qualified provider.’
Black Agenda Radio 14 September 2011: Fauntroy's Libya Massacres Story: No Time for Teasing
14 September 2011 — Black Agenda Report
Due to technical problems, this week’s BAR is a limited edition
Fauntroy’s Libya Massacres Story: No Time for Teasing
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Rev. Walter Fauntroy has so far failed to follow up on his abbreviated tale of witnessing European special forces troops on an orgy of massacres and beheadings in Libya. The former DC congressional delegate’s story loses credibility with each day that he withholds further information. “It is mind-boggling to imagine why the French and the Danes would need to commit on-the-ground atrocities of their own, when they have at their disposal thousands of bloodthirsty Arab jihadis who have no problem doing their own massacres.”
Audio
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20110914_gf_FauntroyLibyaStory.mp3
Text
http://blackagendareport.libsyn.com/fauntroy-s-libya-massacres-story-no-time-for-teasing
Video: The Shape of Things to Come in Libya: Interview with Michael Parenti By Sean Thomas
7 September 2011 — MRZine
Michael Parenti: Expect the same thing as you saw happened in Yugoslavia and in Eastern Europe. There will be a massive privatization taking place. The public economy that the Gaddafi government had built over 40 years, which included public subsidies for housing, for education, for healthcare — all those things will be privatized. The oil fields will be handed over to private companies for private profit. Death squads will come in to clean up those who might still have a commitment to a social wage or a communal wage. This is what we have to look forward to, and that was the real intention. It was to overthrow the government, it wasn’t any humanitarian concern, it wasn’t any concern for democracy.
Michael Parenti is the author of 23 books. His latest book is The Face of Imperialism. This video was released by Russia Today on 21 August 2011. Cf. David D. Kirkpatrick, “Libyans Turn Wrath on Dark-Skinned Migrants” (New York Times, 4 September 2011).
Michael Hudson: Greece a Dress Rehearsal for United States
11 July, 2011 — The Real News Network
Michael Hudson: Cuts to Social Security and Medicare and privatization at the state level mirror strategy imposed on Greece
Bio
Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971). ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate, and the economic history of the ancient Near East. Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law.
Greeks outraged by government’s sellout for quick cash — RT
1 July 2011 — RT
Greece is now set to receive 12 billion euro in additional rescue cash from the EU, after parliament passed a vote on how to implement tough new austerity measures. However, the move sent thousands of angry protestors on to the streets of Athens.
Greeks face 28 billion euros in cuts, to be implemented over the next five years. EU officials have welcomed the plan, saying it will help the country get back onto a path of recovery.
France: Not Victorious, But Not Defeated By Murray Smith
17 December, 2010 — The Bullet: Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 441
It is now possible to begin to draw a tentative balance sheet of the vast movement against the reform (or more exactly, counter-reform) of the pension system in France over the last few months. We need to look at the depth and breadth of the movement, the forms that it took and the positions adopted by its various components. And finally at what might be the repercussions and consequences.
The immediate aim of the reform proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy and his government seemed quite clear. It was to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 and the age for retiring with a full pension from 65 to 67, with corresponding increases in the number of years of contribution required. But behind this immediate aim lies the ongoing objective of slowly undermining the public pension system, with the aim of pushing workers toward subscribing to private pension plans, to the greater profit of the pension funds.
The New Dark Age 
