The great privatization grab
Like modern-day pirates, marauding corporations are hijacking our public services - while governments turn a blind eye. Wayne Ellwood debunks the privatization myth.

I shop, therefore I am
A clinical report by psychiatrist Trevor Turner on a worrying new syndrome: malignant self-actualization.

The 'B' word
So if privatization doesn't work, what then? David Hall takes a stab at redesigning the public sector.

PRIVATIZATION - THE FACTS

Bad medicine
Britain's vaunted National Health Service is reeling, hammered by lack of funding and government bumbling. But privatizing the system is not the answer, argues Allyson Pollock.

GATS Attacks!
Evil invaders from another planet blast our precious public services. Illustration by Polyp.

CAMPAIGN FEATURE - PRIVATIZATION FIGHT-BACK!

The new apartheid
Patrick Bond from South Africa's townships on the growing opposition to privatization.

Power splurge
Filipino consumers will pay for the privilege of private power for years. Maitet Diokno-Pascual reports from Manila.

Crime pays
Amanda George from Australia on a successful struggle to close a private women's prison.

No pain, all gain
Export credit agencies do the dirty work, writes Mark Engler from New York.

Bankbusters
Boycotting World Bank bonds. By Mihail Dafydd Evans in Oxford.

Norse crossroads
Asbjørn Wahl from Norway on defending the welfare state.

I DON'T want to hear any more of that dreary, self-serving litany from the business press and from our political masters.

'Sorry, there's no more money. We simply can't afford to fund the education / healthcare / social- welfare system / whatever-public-service-you-want-to-name. We've got the deficit to worry about. And the debt. We're going to have to cut back, allow the private sector to work its magic.'

Uh, uh... and while we're waiting for the market to do its thing? Teachers and nurses are stressed; schools are squeezed; hospitals are forced to their knees; public libraries have to fundraise; parks are festooned with litter; public transport is ignored; public housing shelved; government regulatory agencies are gutted. All this amidst tax cuts for the rich, corporate corruption and obscene salaries for business executives.

The iconoclastic economist John Kenneth Galbraith got it just about right in the 1960s when he documented a postwar world increasingly riven by 'private wealth and public squalor'. Galbraith was no raving Marxist (he was a Kennedy-era liberal) but he understood that in a society where wealth accumulates in the hands of the few the notion of equality before the market is a joke.

Defame it, defund it, privatize it. That's been the formula around the world. Create a new market and sell those services back to who can afford them - and disenfranchise the rest.

It's highway robbery. Time to say loudly and clearly: bullshit.

Wayne Ellwood
for the New Internationalist
Co-operative
waynee@newint.org