Cuomo just issued an executive order that NY state agencies must cease doing business with companies that boycott, divest or sanction the Israeli government for apartheid, ethnic cleansing, & colonialism.

In June 2015, the NY State Assembly (the lower house of the state legislature) issued a resolution denouncing BDS. StandWithUs, the pro-Israel group that lobbied for the resolution, hoped the resolution would be followed by a bill outlawing BDS. In January 2016, the NY State Senate (the upper house of the legislature) passed a bill prohibiting the state from doing business with companies that honor BDS. StandWithUs has been lobbying its ass off to get the Assembly to now pass the bill. In March, drawing on the dregs, they even brought the smarmy Bassem Eid (a Palestinian collaborator with Israel) to lecture the Assembly about the perils of BDS.

Apparently Cuomo & his Zionist advisers got tired of waiting for legislative action & just preempted the process by issuing the executive order. Maybe he wants to get it done in time to be considered as a vice presidential candidate to Clinton. Opposition to BDS, which she has sworn to defeat, would stand him well.

It isn’t certain what legal action will prevail against the executive order but it’s likely civil liberty & Palestinian solidarity groups will initiate actions because it’s an arrant violation of the Bill of Rights. What is certain is that political action opposing this attempt to destroy BDS & civil liberties is more imperative than ever. How dare these two-bit hustlers think they can advance their careers on the backs of Palestinians & on the corpse of civil liberties!

Build the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of apartheid Israel. Don’t be daunted by the hustlers anymore than Palestinians are by the military might of Israel.

(Photo of Cuomo from New York Post)

Every year, 240,000 displaced rural residents (displaced by land grabs in the IMF model of agribusiness plantations) move to Manila, making it the fastest growing city in the world. The World Bank reports squatters now comprise 40% of 12 million Manila residents. They are mostly unemployed or part of the informal economy & live on US$1.00 a day or less.

Neoliberal capitalism is a scorched earth policy which includes privatizing public lands in metropolitan Manila & legal maneuvers to legitimize the piracy. Many slums & shanty towns were built on public lands & are being razed to build resorts, swanky shopping malls, golf courses.

Quezon City–identified in 2008 as the richest city in the Philippines–has embarked on a massive infrastructure program including business parks, IT & call centers, high-priced condos, shopping malls, & other projects designed to attract foreign investment. Shanty towns will not be allowed to stand in the way of that.

The battles in Quezon City go back years with appeals by residents to the Commission on Human Rights, to the Manila Development Authority (which authorizes demolition squads), & attempts to get the Quezon city council to declare moratoriums on evictions until there are enough relocation sites–mind you, not provision of public housing for evictees, but empty lots where they can move. But the aggressive, often violent, evictions continue, including riot cops with water cannons & other assaultive weapons against unarmed residents, including elderly & children. Residents have always mounted fierce resistance & have pelted the demolition crews, bulldozers, & riot cops with bottles, rocks, & plastic bags with poop & urine.

The Philippines is a highly militarized society, in concert with the US Pentagon. It receives millions of dollars in US military aid & holds annual joint military exercises with the US. The US & Filipino antiwar movements have a joint demand: “Money for housing, not for war!”

(Photo by Bullit Marquez/AP)

Long live Kashmiri Intifada! End the Indian occupation!

Of course under neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, it’s often impossible to distinguish criminal enterprises from legal businesses. One of the places that’s most evident is in global waste management systems. The IMF/World Bank economic model requires privatizing waste management which has resulted in monstrosities like this all over the world: toxic, stinking mountains of plastic & metal detritus, putrid food waste, animal & human poop, & countless other rotting, disease-ridden unmentionables.

The IMF waste management system involves the poor, including children, working these festering mountains for recyclables which they resell for a few bucks a day. As a result, they suffer numerous health problems, including skin & respiratory infections. Since neoliberalism also requires privatized healthcare, many cannot receive the medicines required for their conditions. That’s what kind of world we live in.

This dump site in Guwahati city, Assam, India is taking over wetlands & the habitats of these Greater Adjutant Storks so that their numbers are gradually declining. That nightmare is repeated at dumpsites around the world.

IMF leaders recently conceded that neoliberal capitalism is a failure. That’s beyond dispute. But they’ve so heavily & systemically invested in those methods of plunder & economic colonialism since the 1980s that some of the environmental damage they’ve wreaked is beyond repair or will take generations to undo–like the oceans filled with oil slicks, swirling vortices of plastic detritus, & wildlife depletion. Of course they have no intention of reforming the system of plunder for profit & couldn’t if they wanted to.

The lessons that need to be taught school children about the environment will not be forthcoming. There will be moralizing & sentimentality about Mother Earth but no elaboration of the real causes of climate change & environmental wreckage. That’s our job because that’s what kind of world we live in & it is not suitable for human, animal, or vegetative life.

(Photo from EPA)

Combining white privilege with security of state citizenship (and passport), these arrogant fools have a habit of demeaning the experiences of Chinese, Tibetan and Uighur dissidents and refugees. With dehumanising and selective leftists like these, who needs to rightwing to destroy ideals of socialism?”

Let me just say that in 50 years of political activism I have had countless knock-down drag-out political battles & have often taken the worst of it. But I have never, even in my heart of hearts, wished that kind of harm on anyone. It is beyond civilized discourse to suggest a woman activist be tortured, shot down, or imprisoned because she dares to differ with you.