| BRAZIL: Vivendi Moves to Keep Water Company by Raymond Colitt, Financial Times February 18th, 2003 Vivendi Environnement will today launch last-ditch negotiations to recover control of a Brazilian water company after a state government said it would take over management from the French utility. |
| US: Water Industry's Cash to Political Campaigns Helps Fuel Effort to Privatize Hoovers February 12th, 2003 Most of that came from a core group of seven of the nation's largest water companies and the industry association that represents them, said the article. |
| US: Privatized Water Deal Collapses in Atlanta by Douglas Jehl, New York Times February 10th, 2003 Privatization has hit the water sector, which has remained mostly the bastion of public utilities. Over the last five years, hundreds of American communities, including Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Gary, Ind., have hired private companies to manage their waterworks, serving about one in 20 Americans. |
| INDONESIA: Protesters Challenge Price Increases BBC News January 15th, 2003 Hundreds of protesters in Palu, Central Sulawesi, threw rocks at the provincial headquarters of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's political party. Police fired off at least two rounds of warning shots. There have been daily protests since the government increased fuel prices by 22% a fortnight ago as part of a package of economic reforms approved by the International Monetary Fund. |
| BOLIVIA: Time to Open Up Secret Trade Courts by Jim Shultz, Pacific News Service November 8th, 2002 Two years ago, rioters protesting increased water rates forced a Bechtel, U.S. company, in Bolivia to pack its bags and leave. Now, in a harbinger of the loss of local control through globalization, the corporation is striking back in secret proceedings. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: Thousands Strike Over Privatization Plans by Delia Robertson, VoaNews.com October 1st, 2002 Thousands of South African workers have embarked on a two day strike to protest government plans to privatize state-owned enterprises. |
| Burkina Faso: Thousands March Against Privatisation and for Higher Wages UN Integrated Regional Information Networks July 18th, 2002 Thousands of workers went on strike on Thursday and marched through the main streets of Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, to protest against privatisations and to press demands for salary increases. The procession and strike were organised by the country's trade unions. |
| USA: Trouble for School Inc. by Rebecca Winters, Time.com May 27th, 2002 Wendy Walsh's seventh-graders at Gillespie Middle School in North Philadelphia have something in common with investors in the for-profit education company Edison Schools. Both fear that Edison, the nation's largest private operator of public schools, may be failing them. ''The children ask me what's going on,'' Walsh says, ''and I don't know what to tell them. We're all facing the great unknown.'' |
| US: Prisoners Go to Work for Dell by Drew Cullen, The Register (UK) May 19th, 2002 Dell rose to the top by cutting more corners than its rivals. The PC giant is cutting another corner by employing prisoners to handle its new consumer recycling scheme in the US. |
| Mexico: Legislation Strikes Blow Against Privatization, Secrecy by Dan Jaffee, CommonDreams.org April 28th, 2002 In less than 24 hours this past Wednesday, big advances for three major pieces of legislation indicated that Mexico -- for 20 years the ''model student'' of so-called free market policy reforms, and long noted for high levels of government secrecy and corruption -- may be charting a new, more independent course. At a moment when the Bush administration is chilling domestic dissent, restricting the free flow of information and promoting corporate deregulation, Mexico appears poised to do virtually the opposite. |
| USA: Crumbling Public Sector Makes Country Vulnerable to Bio-Terrorism by Naomi Klein, Toronto Globe & Mail October 24th, 2001 Only hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Republican Representative Curt Weldon went on CNN and announced that he didn't want to hear anyone talking about funding for schools or hospitals. From here on, it was all about spies, bombs and other manly things. |
| USA: Prison Building Spree Creates Glut of Lockups by Bryan Gruley, Wall Street Journal September 6th, 2001 Two hundred miles north, at a Wackenhut-run prison in Holly Springs, Miss., 130 steel bunks stood bare and unused in two cavernous cell blocks. Wackenhut had closed the units because it no longer had inmates to fill them. Every day, the empty space was costing the company money it had expected to be paid by the state. |
| Mexico: Prisons Opening Maquiladoras Associated Press July 30th, 2001 State officials in Tamaulipas say they want U.S. companies to open workshops inside Mexican prisons to help train prisoners for factory jobs. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: Financial Institutions Eye Public Services by Gumisai Mutume, Inter Press Service March 6th, 2001 Anti-privatisation protestors are expected to descend on the streets of Johannesburg this month as they demand a reversal of the sale of their municipal water supply to French multinational Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux. |
| INDIA: 325,000 Telecom Workers Strike over Corporatization Plan Agence France Presse September 6th, 2000 Some 325,000 Indian state telecom workers began an indefinite strike Wednesday, to push for guarantees against layoffs and pension losses when their department becomes a corporation next month. |
| USA: Prisoners Who Speak Out Receive Punishment, Suit Says by Peter Blumberg, San Francisco Daily Journal August 23rd, 1999 Two inmates allege in a lawsuit to be filed today that state corrections officials violated their civil rights by punishing them for helping the media expose a prison labor program as an illegal sweatshop, according to their lawyers. |
| Death, Neglect and the Bottom Line by William Allen and Kim Bell, St. Louis Post-Dispatch September 27th, 1998 St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services leads the expanding field of private companies providing medical care behind bars. The industry tries to keep a low profile, but a five-month investigation by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found a disturbing pattern of deaths and untreated illnesses behind bars. |
| Canada: Business-Education Partnerships a Troubling Trend by Bernie Froese-Germain and Marita Moll, Education Monitor June 1st, 1997 Berne Froese-Germain and Martia Moll, two researchers with the Canadian Teachers Federation, outline the scope of the problem. |
| US: Company Ties Not Always Noted in Security Push When the storm erupted several months ago over plans by a United Arab Emirates-based company to take over management of a half-dozen American port terminals, one voice resonated in Washington. Stephen E. Flynn has advocated a port security system that can check every container bound for the United States for radioactive threats. |
| JAPAN: Koizumi's Postal Bomb The Prime Minister's rejected reform legislation by Japan's Upper House is grave news for him and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party. |