What is Citizenship?

An exploration into the ethic of citizenship.

Anarchy is Bullshit

Anarchy and Anarchism are utter bullshit. Everybody has a different definition for what Anarchy actually is, and most 'anarchists' use it to describe things that the word doesn't even mean. It's a meaningless term and arguments about anarchist political theory are fucking pointless.

Stupidity: The Movie

Current.com Gives up Journalism for Lent

In the photo here, you will see six items featured at the same time on the homepage of Current. for almost the entire day of February 18th, 2010.

You will notice that one of them is different than the others.

You will notice that it is a serious news story about something that actually fucking matters, that happened today.

You may notice, if you've spent time on Current.com that it is ALSO the ONLY USER POSTED STORY on the front page.

For those of you who don't know, Current.com used to be a news aggregation website that had an open source model for journalism. Users could create content, and then the community could vote on it.

The users generally had a decent sense of journalistic integrity, and otherwise overlooked stories often trended on the site's front page.

Now, it regularly features nonsensical staff picks, or videos that are created in house by staff. Regularly the front page is flodded with 'news items' that have minimal votes, without any regard to the user population or what stories are actually trending on the site.

It used to be that current.com was ahead of the 24 hour news networks by several news cycles. Today the story of a disgruntled man flying an airplane into a federal building did not reach the front page until nearly 10 hours after it happened.

Recently there was a shift in management, with Al Gore stepping away and some new guy from MTV stepping up to the plate. And the journalistic integrity of current.com has since been steadily sliding downhill into mindless garbage. Just like MTV moved away from showing music videos, and toward mindless garbage. Who'da thunk?

Politics and Ethics part 3

Or, Why Newt Gingrich is a total asshole

This is Viewer Supported Media. Are you Viewing? Support it, or it will go away.

Politics and Ethics Part 2

Or why Private Health Insurance is a Bigger National Threat than Terrorism.

This is Viewer Supported Media. Are you Viewing? Support it. $1, $10, $100, I don't care...

The Punk Patriot: Politics and Ethics (part 1)

The show don't pay for itsself...
If you don't want it to go away, drop a dollar or two.

The Punk Patriot Show is BACK!

CIA moonlights in corporate world

The CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side.

Full article at POLITICO.com

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eNxgZJdE

But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.

A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.

“If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety,” CIA spokesman George Little told POLITICO.

There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details.

Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics.

“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some time.”

But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley.

BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000 to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the CIA intelligence techniques.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eNxlOtw2

The Punk Patriot's Interview for Current.com's US Politics

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Corporate Coup D'etat today

More on the Corporate Coup D'etat today. Gary Ruskin talks about the implications of the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United V FEC.

Public Citizen has a Petition you should fill out, calling for a Constitutional Amendment that would make it clear that Corporations are NOT PEOPLE.

Stupid Christians missing the point in Haiti

I heard on NPR the other day, and saw here in Reuters that there is a missionary group sending "aid" to Haiti in the form of Solar Powered Audio Bibles.

These are solar powered stereo systems that blast high decibel readings of the gospel in Haitian Creole.

From the Reuters article:

The Albuquerque-based organization said it was responding to the Haitian crisis by "providing faith, hope and love through God's Word in audio."

Look, I'm ostensibly a Christian and I think that this is complete and utter bullshit.

Why don't they save the money they spent on their fancy loudspeakers, and DO the things the bible commands them to do, like provide food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, and shelter to the homeless?

The Haitian people are suffering from things like lack of food, water, and medical supplies.

Something that they are not suffering from is a lack of high volume bible verses being blared at them out of a solar powered boom box.

But as soon as these audio bibles get there, they can add "having biblical verses yelled at them by an electronic box" to that list.

Not surprised AT ALL by Coakley v Brown

the Punk Patriot

Coakley lost.

And she should have lost too.
She had absolutely no grasp of retail politics whatsoever. She seemed to be relying on the fact that the Massachusetts Democratic party is a 500 pound gorilla that wins everything ever, and that this fact alone would sweep her right into office, without any regard for campaigning.

Coakley overlooked a simple fact of politics. It's the voters that put you into office. Your votes aren't granted to you, you have to EARN them.

This is a fact that the Democratic party seems incapable of learning, over and over and over again.

In fact, the Democratic party is SO adverse to learning this lesson, that they come up with excuses left and right to avoid facing this simple truth.

They are so convinced that 51% of the votes are already theirs that when they run a terrible campaign and lose, they quickly scan the scene for somebody else to blame. They blame Nader. They blame the Green Party. They blame the weather. They even blame the voters. It's not the voters' fault that you lose elections. Its your own fault, for not earning their vote.

Now the talking heads are all saying that this race is going to change the results of the 2012 election, because if the healthcare bill fails, then Obama will be a failure, and the voters won't re-elect him.

WRONG. I've taken a course in statistical analysis, and the cardinal rule of statistical analysis is that "correlation does not determine cause and effect."

If Obama loses in 2012, it's not going to be because of this one race. This one race is maybe, possibly, perhaps, an indicator of the national political climate. Maybe. Or maybe it's just that Coakley was such a terrible candidate that Democrats couldn't stomach voting for her, and just stayed home.

Let's say that it is an indicator though. Am I really supposed to be upset that the corporate give-away that is the current healthcare bill is going to fail? And why can't the Democrats pass a bill, when they have a larger majority in the Senate than the Republicans have had in the past 23 years?

Why was it that George W Bush was able to ram anything he asked for through congress? Was it because the Republicans had a marginal majority? Or was it because the majority of Democrats in Congress voted along with George W Bush? Was it because George W Bush was a more effective president? Or was it because the Democratic leadership offered absolutely NO meaningful opposition?

Let's say that Obama DOES lose in 2012. If he does indeed lose, he's likely going to lose not because of the healthcare bill passing or failing.

He's going to lose because the healthcare bill that came out of the Senate was a corrupt bill that forced consumers by Federal law to purchase a financial product from a private, for-profit enterprise or be subjected to thousands of dollars in fines.

He's going to lose because he spoke about ending the war, and not only continued the two we had, but started two more-- one in Pakistan, and one in Yemen.

He's going to lose because he promised healthcare reform, and allowed the Congress to give us corporate welfare for the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

He's going to fail, not because congress fails to pass a bill, but because he failed to spend the political capital he had after the 2008 election. He could have done as FDR did, and asked the voters, who had just swept him into office, and were ripe with enthusiasm, to give him a Congress that would create sweeping reform. Be he didn't. He's going to be a failure because he didn't ask congress for the sweeping kind of reform that the voters who put him into office wanted.

He must have been too busy picking out his new dog. You know, important stuff.

This all goes back to the lesson that the Democrats continually fail to learn. You have to EARN our votes. Maybe if your party could produce something that wasn't a compromised corporate give-away for once, if your party could stop complaining about Republican policies while voting for them, maybe, just maybe, you could earn the respect of the voters.

MLK's FBI Files May Soon See Daylight

From Discovery.com

On Monday, Jan. 18, 2010, the United States will commemorate the achievements of civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King, Jr.

While today we look at King with great respect and admiration, any student of history will know that this wasn't always the case.

King's efforts to end racial discrimination were seen as a threat by segregationists, white supremacists and even the government of the United States.

For years, King was under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for allegedly having connections to Communists -- a charge King repeatedly denied. The FBI even set up a task force, labeling King the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country." For J. Edgar Hoover, then the director of the FBI, King was almost an obsession.

Although the investigation turned up almost no evidence that King had any association at all with Communists, embarrassing details about King's sex life were uncovered, which would later be used against him.

While some of the documents related to the King investigation have been released (found here), there are still aspects of the case that have been kept out of the public eye. Out of the more than 16,000 pages tied to the investigation, a little over 200 are available to the public. The wiretap transcripts themselves remain sealed.

Today, USA Today reported on efforts being spearheaded by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, among others, to have full contents of the investigation made available to the public.

More from USA Today on the legislation that Kerry is proposing:

The bill calls for creating a Martin Luther King Records Collection at the National Archives that would include all government records related to King. The bill also would create a five-member independent review board that would identify and make public all documents from agencies including the FBI.

[ Read the full article here ]

Why the US Economy is Insane

by The Punk Patriot

I saw on yahoo's homepage one of those innocuous articles about current news.

Today, it was "4 dangers that could wreck the US Economy" Here's the article.

The basic gist is that there are four things which could send us back into a recession once again, and they are as follows:

1) Housing Tanks All Over Again
2) Stocks Crash
3) There's a US Debt Crisis
and my favourite:
4) Consumers Become Rational

Yup! So here's the situation-- if consumers don't continue to spend beyond their means, and go into debt, (which of course, will inevitably lead to disaster scenario #3, which would lead to crisis #1, which would lead to crisis #2) then the economy will tank.

So here's how the economy currently works: Since we don't make anything and are a consumer based economy, consumers don't have wages from creating value in the economy, so they go into debt to do things like eat or keep a roof over their head.

Since the reason they took out the loans is that they don't make enough to eat and keep a roof over their head, they default on the loans they took out to eat.

Then the banks all fail because they didn't make enough money on the loans, so they Lobby Congress to get the taxpayers' dollars to bail them out.

Repeat.

What's great is that this article totally ignores the cognitive dissonance present within just a few paragraphs, in one they tell you to save money, in case the market crashes. Then two paragraphs later, they say that consumers saving their money will cause the market to crash. And that is Capitalism in America today.


photo credit: WeAreCitizenRadio.org

NEW SHIRT OVER AT ETSY.COM

Mortality: We're all gonna die

Realizing that death is immanent can allow one to be more liberated and kind. Small disputes seem pointless in light of the fact that we only have limited time on this earth together. Remind your friends and neighbors to enjoy their blip in time with this simple message.

Printed on Anvil Recycled t-shirts.
Available in lots of colors of ink on lots of colors of shirt.
Sizes S, M, L, & XL

Shown here, blue on grey.

Please specify your size and color preference in the order form under 'message to seller.'

Obama Administration's first outright and total lie:

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site, a false “mythbuster” to reassure the public.

From the New York Times


Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.

Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.



“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.



The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening.

At some point, someone named Michael Hicks made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious, and little Mikey is still paying the price. (His father, also named Michael Hicks, was stopped for the first time on the Bahamas trip.)

Both lists are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are given to the Transportation Security Administration, which in turn sends them to the airlines.

A spokesman for the T.S.A., James Fotenos, said that as a rule, “there are no children on the no-fly or selectee lists,” but would not comment on Mikey’s situation specifically.

[Read the full article]
[read a more in depth article on the same subject by Allison Kilkenny over at TrueSlant]

PunkPatriot says: Also, the USA has never tortured prisoners...

Matt Taibbi & RFK Jr on Obama's Sellout to Wall Street

We lost Habeas Corpus again... or did we ever get it back?

A Horrendous Decision on Habeas Corpus

From The Progressive

...the D.C. Circuit Court undercut that “meaningful opportunity” by ruling ruled that a detainee has to show by a “preponderance of evidence” that he is being wrongly held, instead of the usual “reasonable doubt.”

To put that in plain English, you're guilty until proven innocent. Read the rest of the article here.

Calvin Trillan's Thrillin' Prediction

Moment of Zen - Calvin Trillin's Prediction

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