While this is good to remember, it is not the only step to take.

It reminds me eerily of the last ditch claims of "states' rights" in the 1960s 
in attempting to resist the enforcement of the voting rights act. Think: George 
Wallace on the steps of the Alabama Governor's Mansion, or the blocking of the 
entrance to the University of Mississippi by State Troopers. The rhetoric 
constructs it as an attack on local sovereignty, which it is. It's a short step 
from there to water canons and police dogs, the kind deployed in Mississippi in 
the past and employed now against the sovereign nations resisting the Dakota 
Access Pipeline. 

If Brexit goes forward, I think Scotland will exit the UK and possibly Northern 
Ireland. In short, the breakup of the UK. 

Those seem not to be viable options in the US. The US Civil War was fought over 
just such concerns. Or maybe we will see the break up of the United States? 
That wd be a wet dream for the radical right. 

It is a strategy also employed by the far right as they attempted to resist the 
civil right of marriage equality: passing discriminatory state and local 
legislation, the kind that backfired economically on Mike Pence and North 
Carolina. In the latter case, things fell into place only after the supreme 
court—in the majority radical right wing—made an unequivocal decision. I am not 
against this strategy but it is not enough.

New York State by an executive order by Mario Cuomo and a radical pro-Likud 
lobbying group prohibits the state of new york from doing business with any 
firms participating in the BDS movement against the Israeli occupation of the 
West Bank. This underscores just how powerful a weapon economic boycotts can 
be. We cannot allow this weapon to be taken away from us. Boycotting the red 
states economically is an option. A difficult complex one, but one with effect. 

We need to resist at every level to slow down the swing to the right in the us 
and abroad. It will become more difficult to resist with each day and the 
consequences more dire.

The final irony—for the moment—is that while in the transformation from what 
might be called the "dualistic" spectacle (my way of referring to Debord's 
formulation of the concentrated vs the diffuse soectacle) to the integrated 
spectacle, China moved closer to capitalism for growth, Europe, the US, 
Australia, et al. have moved closer to China and Russia in authoritarianism. 

Keith Sanborn

> On Nov 28, 2016, at 11:51 AM, Sandra Braman <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Over 350 cities in the US took the position that they would not go along
> with particular provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.
> 
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