Not Voting Is a Powerful Form of Dissent

Doug Bandow

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Imagine living in a country in which the two major parties had nominated a statist, war-mongering crook and a nasty authoritarian narcissist. Imagine being embarrassed that after more than two centuries of existence this apparently was the best your beloved country could do. Imagine considering that the best option on Election Day might be committing ritual Seppuku, but deciding to stay home instead.

The Freedom to Stay Home

Politicians have no right to insist that the disaffected suffer through the humiliation of voting.But then imagine government officials showing up at your door, demanding that you accompany them to the polling place to vote for one of the candidates who you would scratch your eyes out before actually watching speak. That is the world which some high-minded “civic activists” desire.

Every election can be expected to unleash ponderous commentaries bemoaning low voter turnout. Many Americans don’t register, let alone cast ballots. Why, oh why, won’t they get out and participate—which usually means vote left? It is so unfair, we are told. The wealthy, elderly, and well-educated disproportionately participate, which “skews policymaking,” complained the Economist. Just think of all the government programs the underrepresented could vote for themselves if only they showed up on Election Day.

Of course, there is another way of looking at the process. Today those most likely to follow politics, understand issues, watch the news, and know the candidates vote disproportionately. Which might “skew” policy, but presumably in a very good way. Those choosing America’s leaders are actually more likely to know something. Amazing thought!

Forced to Vote

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While you were distracted by BREXIT, Monsanto’s puppets in the U.S. Senate announced a ‘compromise’ to outlaw GMO labeling laws nationwide

Monday, June 27, 2016
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) While UK citizens were revolting en masse against bureaucratic rule in Europe, another cabal of prostituted lawmakers were busy plotting against American food consumers. According to this announcement from the United States Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, committee leaders have reached a “bipartisan agriculture biotechnology compromise solution.”

What exactly is this so-called “compromise?”

The complete banning of all GMO labeling state laws across America.

And that’s just for starters. After that, this new “compromise” decrees that no foods shall be GMO labeled for two years while the USDA ponders the best way to deceive consumers and hide Monsanto’s GMOs for another few years. The suggested law also gives the USDA the right to decree that any foods with less than 50% bioengineered content could be considered non-GMO, by the way.

Learn more:  http://www.naturalnews.com/054489_GMO_labeling_US_Senate_Monsanto_puppets.html#ixzz4CpH926af

Gun-Control Advocates — Check Your Privilege

3 HOURS AGOTate Fegley

I have my doubts about the utility of privilege theory (and strong concerns about the effects it has on civil discourse). But for those who take it seriously, one aspect of privilege that has been explored to a lesser extent is personal security. That is, if it is to be talked about at all, it is typically about how underprivileged groups are more likely to be the target of violence because of their identity, especially if the perpetrator is considered to belong to a privileged class.

Surprisingly, very little attention is given to the fact that state actors enjoy tremendous privileges (for example, notice how, in the event of police brutality, the focus is almost always on the races of the officer and victim and almost never on the privileges police enjoy, such as qualified immunity from civil liability, extra due process protections as listed in the “Law Enforcement Officer’s Bill of Rights,” and preferential treatment from investigating officers and prosecutors).

At least part of the reason for this lack of attention is that to criticize the privilege of government police is also to question the legitimacy of state power itself — something that adherents of privilege theory are hesitant to do as they tend to see state power as the solution to social problems. It is just that the right people need to be in charge of it.

This is probably also why we see so little criticism of gun control advocacy by privilege theorists (the overwhelming majority of whom are probably such advocates themselves), even though this — the ability of the individual, particularly the underprivileged individual, to legally possess the means of self-defense — ought to be jealously defended by them, for they argue that these individuals are precisely those who face the most danger in society. Based on the types of arguments made by privilege theorists on other issues, they should be highly critical of gun control advocates.

For one thing, notice the type of gun violence, as well as the type of gun, most focused upon by the media and by politicians — mass shootings and “assault-type” weapons. This is strange, if we are to believe they are truly concerned about providing an accurate portrayal of gun violence. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, less than one percent of all homicides each year in the U.S. are from shootings where 3 or more are killed. And between 1993 and 2011, 70 to 80 percent of firearm homicides (and 90 percent of nonfatal victimizations) were committed with a handgun, not a scary-looking assault rifle.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GalHGCflkao

Hollywood Stars Want Congress To Issue Gun Control On You While They Have Armed Bodyguards

Gun-registry-loving Obama Security Advisor Refused to “Record another Muslim”

Written by  Selwyn Duke

“A Muslim doesn’t record another Muslim,” said Gamal Abdel-Hafiz (shown). This might not have been noteworthy except that Abdel-Hafiz was an FBI agent at the time and was refusing to do his duty, which at that moment involved taping a Muslim suspect.

That was 2002, and this is now. And now the Cairo-born Abdel-Hafiz has moved on to bigger and perhaps better things — he’s a homeland-security advisor to Barack Obama. And while recording a single Muslim is a problem for him, putting every single American firearm owner on a gun-registry he fancies a good idea. WFAA.com reports on his idea:

A former FBI counter-terrorism agent says lawmakers could make mass murders less likely. “What we need to do is keep the ownership of guns known to the government, so we know who has what,” said security consultant Gamal Abdel-Hafiz.  “And I know a lot of people are against that.”

… “He shouldn’t have been able to buy a gun legally. He shouldn’t,” said Abdel-Hafiz about 29 year-old Omar Mateen [the Orlando jihadist]. He says 3 FBI interviews should have been enough to keep Mateen on the radar, but he also knows why he wasn’t. “Once you investigate someone and clear them, you have to remove them from the watch list by law,” he explained Monday from his office in Dallas.

And even if Mateen had been on a terror watch list, or no-fly list, that would not have prohibited him from legally buying weapons…

“That means the list is useless then,” the former agent said.

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OBAMA TRIES TO WOO ALLIES IN FINAL PUSH FOR TRADE DEALS ONLY CORPORATIONS LIKE

DAN ENGELKE
President Barack Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews aboard Air Force One. Photo credit: Pete Souza / White House
President Barack Obama’s recent trips to Europe and Asia were more than farewell tours with photo ops. While the media focused on an admittedly cute picture of the president shaking hands with Prince George, and dutifully reported his official remarks in Vietnam and Hiroshima, Obama was busy pushing some of the policies he sees as integral to his “legacy.”

These include a military buildup against a newly assertive China and beating the drums for two international trade deals that are increasingly opposed in the United States, Europe and Asia as being too corporate-friendly.

To understand what is driving the opposition to both the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), WhoWhatWhy spoke to experts on the countries Obama visited.

Britain is the second largest economy in the EU. This is not lost on Obama, who sees a unified Europe as more receptive to American economic and political interests. So says Robert Gulotty, a University of Chicago political science professor and author of “America and Trade Liberalization: The Limits of Institutional Reform.”

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4,000 YEARS OF CLIMATE IN ONE CHART

Brexit is also a repudiation of EU global warming mandates

BY MICHAEL BASTASCH | JUNE 24, 2016,

In this Friday, June 24, 2016 file photo, a remain supporter stops to talk to people as he walks around with his European flag across the street from the Houses of Parliament in London. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

When British voters chose to leave the European Union Thursday night, they weren’t just voting against Brussels’ immigration policies, they were also voting against Europe’s growing list of green mandates.

The EU’s allowance of millions of refugees and open borders policy did play a large role in the “Brexit” vote, but it was also a repudiation of global warming policies Brussels has imposed on the U.K.

“The decision by the British people to leave the European Union will have significant and long-term implications for energy and climate policies,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Conservative pollster Lord Michael Ashcroft surveyed 12,369 Brits voting in Thursday’s referendum and found 69 percent of those who voted to leave the EU saw the “green movement” as a “force for ill.”

“By large majorities, voters who saw multiculturalism, feminism, the Green movement, globalisation and immigration as forces for good voted to remain in the EU; those who saw them as a force for ill voted by even larger majorities to leave,” Ashcroft wrote.

Britons have been struggling under high energy prices for years, in part due to rules passed down from EU bureaucrats. Environmentalists opposed leaving the EU for precisely this reason. The Brexit vote signals the U.K. is lurching right, and will likely reject heavy-handed climate policies.

“It is highly unlikely that the party-political green consensus that has existed in Parliament for the last 10 years will survive the seismic changes that are now unfolding after Britain’s Independence Day,” Peiser said.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation after the vote, since he supported the staying in the EU. Cameron was one of the main forces behind the so-called “green consensus” in Parliament, which supported green energy subsidies and energy taxes to pay for them.

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The Tangled Web of Global Warming Activism

Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote,

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

There were several actions required to create the tangled web of deception relating to the claim that human-produced CO2 caused global warming. It involved creating smaller deceptions to control the narrative that instead of creating well-woven cloth became the tangled web. The weavers needed control of the political, scientific, economic inputs, as well as the final message to the politicians to turn total attention on CO2.

Their problem was the overarching need for scientific justification, because science, if practiced properly, inherently precludes control. Properly, you go where the science takes you, by disproving the hypothesis. However, before the planners could get to the science, they had to establish the political framework.

The framework was built around the need to prove the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis (AGW), which held that global warming was inevitable. The assumptions, required of any hypothesis, were that;

· CO2 was a greenhouse gas that slowed the rate of heat escape from the atmosphere.

· An increase in CO2 would cause a global temperature increase,

· Atmospheric CO2 would increase because of human activity,

· Industrial development achieved by burning fossil fuels was the major source of human CO2, production

· Industrial development would increase,

· Temperature increase was inevitable in a ‘business as usual’ world.

Politics

Maurice Strong orchestrated most of the early action because he knew how to set up the bureaucratic structure necessary to control the politics and science. Neil Hrab wrote in 2001 that Strong achieved this by:

Mainly using his prodigious skills as a networker. Over a lifetime of mixing private sector career success with stints in government and international groups…

He began with the 1977 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment Stockholm Conference. As Hrab explained:

The three specific goals set out by the Secretary General of the Conference, Maurice F. Strong, at its first plenary session—a Declaration on the human environment, an Action Plan, and an organizational structure supported by a World Environment Fund—were all adopted by the Conference.

From there Strong created the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) with two main streams that provided the Political faction and the Scientific faction (Figure 1).

Figure 1

The overall objectives of Agenda 21 (details here: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21 ) are masked in platitudes and the moral high ground of saving the planet, but the reality is to use the environment in general as the basis for a political agenda. As Elaine Dewar explained in her book, Cloak of Green:

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