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	Privatization means that a public service is taken over by a for-profit business by Diane Ravitch New York Review of Books USA   The New York Times recently published a series of articles about the dangers of privatizing public services, the first of which was called “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers.” Over the years, the Times has published other exposés of privatized services, like hospitals, health care, prisons, ambulances, and preschools for children with disabilities.   In some cities and states, even libraries and water have been privatized. No public service is immune from takeover by corporations that say they can provide comparable or better quality at a lower cost.   The New York Times said that since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms “have increasingly taken over a wide array of civic and financial services that are central to American life.”   Privatization means that a public service is taken over by a for-profit business, whose highest goal is profit. Investors expect a profit when a business moves into a new venture.   The new corporation operating the hospital or the prison or the fire department cuts costs by every means to increase profits. When possible it eliminates unions, raises prices to consumers (even charging homeowners for putting out fires), cuts workers’ benefits, expands working hours, and lays off veteran employees who earn the most.   The consequences can be dangerous to ordinary citizens. Doctors in privatized hospitals may perform unnecessary surgeries to increase revenues or avoid treating patients whose care may be too expensive.   The Federal Bureau of Prisons recently concluded that privatized prisons were not as safe as those run by the bureau itself and were less likely to provide effective programs for education and job training to reduce recidivism. Consequently, the federal government has begun phasing out privately managed prisons, which hold about 15 percent of federal prisoners.   That decision was based on an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, who cited a May 2012 riot at a Mississippi correctional center in which a score of people were injured and a correctional officer was killed. Two hundred and fifty inmates participated in the riot to protest the poor quality of the food and medical care. Since the election, the stock price of for-profit prisons has soared.   There is an ongoing debate about whether the Veterans Administration should privatize health care for military veterans. Republicans have proposed privatizing Social Security and Medicare. President George W. Bush used to point to Chile as a model nation that had successfully privatized Social Security, but The New York Times recently reported that privatization of pensions in Chile was a disaster, leaving many older people impoverished.   For the past fifteen years, the nation’s public schools have been a prime target for privatization. Unbeknownst to the public, those who would privatize the public schools call themselves “reformers” to disguise their goal. Who could be opposed to “reform”? These days, those who call themselves “education reformers” are likely to be hedge fund managers, entrepreneurs, and billionaires, not educators.   The “reform” movement loudly proclaims the failure of American public education and seeks to turn public dollars over to entrepreneurs, corporate chains, mom-and-pop operations, religious organizations, and almost anyone else who wants to open a school.   In early September, Donald Trump declared his commitment to privatization of the nation’s public schools. He held a press conference at a low-performing charter school in Cleveland run by a for-profit entrepreneur. He announced that if elected president, he would turn $20 billion in existing federal education expenditures into a block grant to states, which they could use for vouchers for religious schools, charter schools, private schools, or public schools.   These are funds that currently subsidize public schools that enroll large numbers of poor students. Like most Republicans, Trump believes that “school choice” and competition produce better education, even though there is no evidence for this belief.   As president, Trump will encourage competition among public and private providers of education, which will reduce funding for public schools. No high-performing nation in the world has privatized its schools.   The motives for the privatization movement are various. Some privatizers have an ideological commitment to free-market capitalism; they decry public schools as “government schools,” hobbled by unions and bureaucracy. Some are certain that schools need to be run like businesses, and that people with business experience can manage schools far better than educators.   Others have a profit motive, and they hope to make money in the burgeoning “education industry.” The adherents of the business approach oppose unions and tenure, preferring employees without any adequate job protection and merit pay tied to test scores. They never say, “We want to privatize public schools.”   They say, “We want to save poor children from failing schools.” Therefore, “We must open privately managed charter schools to give children a choice,” and “We must provide vouchers so that poor families can escape the public schools.”   The privatization movement has a powerful lobby to advance its cause. Most of those who support privatization are political conservatives. Right-wing think tanks regularly produce glowing accounts of charter schools and vouchers along with glowing reports about their success. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing organization funded by major corporations and composed of two thousand or so state legislators, drafts model charter school legislation, which its members introduce in their state legislatures.   Every Republican governor and legislature has passed legislation for charters and vouchers. About half the states have enacted voucher legislation or tax credits for nonpublic schools, even though in some of those states, like Indiana and Nevada, the state constitution explicitly forbids spending state funds on religious schools or anything other than public schools.   If the privatization movement were confined to Republicans, there might be a vigorous political debate about the wisdom of privatizing the nation’s public schools. But the Obama administration has been just as enthusiastic about privately managed charter schools as the Republicans.   In 2009, its own education reform program, Race to the Top, offered a prize of $4.35 billion that states could compete for. In order to be eligible, states had to change their laws to allow or increase the number of charter schools, and they had to agree to close public schools that had persistently low test scores.   In response to the prodding of the Obama administration, forty-two states and the District of Columbia currently permit charter schools. As thousands of neighborhood public schools were closed, charter schools opened to take their place.   Today, there are about seven thousand publicly funded, privately managed charter schools, enrolling nearly three million students. Some are run for profit. Some are online schools, where students sit at home and get their lessons on a computer. Some operate in shopping malls.   Some are run by fly-by-night characters hoping to make money. Charters open and close with disturbing frequency; from 2010 to 2015, more than 1,200 charters closed due to academic or financial difficulties, while others opened.   Charters have several advantages over regular public schools: they can admit the students they want, exclude those they do not want, and push out the ones who do not meet their academic or behavioral standards. Even though some public schools have selective admissions, the public school system must enroll every student, at every point in the school year.   Typically, charter schools have smaller numbers of students whose native language is not English and smaller numbers of students with serious disabilities as compared to neighborhood public schools. Both charters and vouchers drain away resources from the public schools, even as they leave the neediest, most expensive students to the public schools to educate.   Competition from charters and vouchers does not improve public schools, which still enroll 94 percent of all students; it weakens them.   Charter schools often call themselves “public charter schools,” but when they have been challenged in federal or state court or before the National Labor Relations Board, charter corporations insist that they are private contractors, not “state actors” like public schools, and therefore are not bound to follow state laws.   As private corporations, they are exempt from state labor laws and from state laws that govern disciplinary policies. About 93 percent of charter schools are nonunion, as are virtually all voucher schools. In most charter schools, young teachers work fifty, sixty, or seventy hours a week. Teacher turnover is high, given the hours and intensity of the work.   Over the past twenty years, under Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, the federal government thas spent billions of dollars to increase the number of privately managed charter schools. Charter schools have been embraced by hedge fund managers; very wealthy financiers have created numerous organizations—such as Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform Now, and Families for Excellent Schools—to supply many millions of dollars to support the expansion of charter schools.   The elites who support charters also finance political campaigns for sympathetic candidates and for state referenda increasing charters. In the recent election, out-of-state donors, including the Waltons of Arkansas, spent $26 million in Massachusetts in hopes of expanding the number of charter schools; the ballot question was defeated by a resounding margin of 62–38 percent. In Georgia, the Republican governor sought a change in the state constitution to allow him to take over low-scoring public schools and convert them to charters; it too was defeated, by a vote of 60–40 percent..   There is no evidence for the superiority of privatization in education. Privatization divides communities and diminishes commitment to that which we call the common good. When there is a public school system, citizens are obligated to pay taxes to support the education of all children in the community, even if they have no children in the schools themselves. We invest in public education because it is an investment in the future of society.   Whatever its faults, the public school system is a hallmark of democracy, doors open to all. It is an essential part of the common good. It must be improved for all who attend and paid for by all. Privatizing portions of it, as Trump wants, will undermine public support and will provide neither equity nor better education.   http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/08/when-public-goes-private-as-trump-wants-what-happens/ http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/06/05/trump-devos-demolition-of-american-education/ http://wapo.st/2rpD52O   * Access the complete article via the link below. Visit the related web page
	The Philippines: Never Again, Never Forget by Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development Philippines   19 November 2016   The Philippines: Never Again, Never Forget   The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) strongly condemns the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, the cemetery of national heroes, in the Philippines. The burial of Marcos conveys a distressing message, not only to Filipinos but also to people’s movements all over the region that massive state-perpetrated human rights violations are being honoured. FORUM-ASIA extends its solidarity to all Filipinos who refuse to forget the past human rights violations, the plunder of the nation’s coffers, and the destruction of democratic institutions under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.   Ferdinand Marcos was the President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He declared Martial Law and ruled the country with an iron fist from 1972 to 1981. Upon the declaration of Martial Law, all fundamental freedoms were curtailed, the Congress was suspended, and media was completely shut down. The opposition leaders and activists were arrested, detained, tortured, and killed. The grave corruption and neoliberalism economic policy under his rule triggered widespread resistance in urban and rural areas.   In 1986, after the snap election, more than two million Filipinos occupied the street of EDSA for three days from 22-25 February. The People Power Revolution was successful in forcing Marcos to step down and restoring democracy in the Philippines.   The Task Force Detainee of the Philippines (TFDP), one of FORUM-ASIA members in the Philippines, documented 101,538 human rights violation cases perpetrated by Ferdinand Marcos under his dictatorship regime.   “The Philippines was considered as one of the most democratic countries in the region since Filipino people ousted Ferdinand Marcos by non-violent resistance in 1986. We are deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision and Rodrigo Duterte’s administration to honour the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos,” says John Samuel, Executive Director of FORUM-ASIA.   The Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 recognises “the heroism and sacrifices of all Filipinos who were victims of summary execution, torture, enforced or involuntary disappearance and other gross human rights violations committed during the regime of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos covering the period from September 21, 1972 to February 25, 1986 and restore the victims’ honor and dignity.” The Act further states that “The State hereby acknowledges its moral and legal obligation to recognise and/or provide reparation to said victims and/or their families for the deaths, injuries, sufferings, deprivations and damages they suffered under the Marcos regime.”   The burial of Ferdinand Marcos today, thus, explicitly undermines the recognition of those who had lost their lives and freedoms fighting for human rights and democracy.   “The burial of Marcos today also reminds us all that the struggles for human rights and democracy is a never-ending battle. We, FORUM-ASIA, stand in solidarity with our Filipino friends in the fight for freedom and justice in the Philippines and in the region,” concludes John Samuel.   * FORUM-ASIA is a regional human rights group with 58 member organisations in 19 countries across Asia.   19 Nov 2016   Thousands march in ''Bersih'' protests calling for Malaysian PM Najib Razak to step down over corruption scandal. (Reuters)   Thousands of protesters gathered in Malaysia''s capital to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Razak over his alleged involvement in a multi-billion-dollar misappropriation scandal.   Clad in yellow shirts, protesters marched from various spots towards the heart of Kuala Lumpur amid tight security.   The mood among those gathered was festive, with drums and vuvuzelas heard along with speeches, songs and chants by participants calling for a "clean Malaysia" and "people power".   The protest came a day after the head of pro-democracy group Bersih, the organisers of Saturday''s rally, was arrested along with several other supporters of the demonstration, including opposition leaders and student activists.   "We are not here to bring down the country. We love this country. We are not here to tear down the government, we''re here to strengthen it," Bersih deputy chair Shahrul Aman Shaari told the crowds gathered at the National Mosque.   Another Bersih leader Hishamuddin Rais was arrested on Saturday at the rally, with police also issuing warnings to other participants.   Mr Najib, who is in Peru for the APEC Summit, said the protesters were "a tool of the opposition".   Mr Najib''s administration has cracked down on the media and civil society in an attempt to silence criticism over his involvement in a financial scandal at state fund 1MDB.   Lawsuits filed by the US Justice Department in July say more than $US700 million of misappropriated funds from 1MDB flowed into the accounts of "Malaysian Official 1", whom US and Malaysian officials have identified as Mr Najib.   Mr Najib has denied wrongdoing, but has taken steps critics say aim to limit discussion of the scandal, such as sacking a deputy prime minister and a former attorney-general, besides suspending newspapers and blocking websites. 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