Geoffrey Nunberg: Why do we Idolize Jerks?

From the book Ascent of the A-Word by Geoffrey Nunberg. Reprinted by arrangement with Public Affairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. This is an age of ass-holism simply because we find the phenomenon and its practitioners so interesting, or provocative, or compelling, or compellingly repulsive, or sometimes all those at once. I'm not thinking so much of assholes of opportunity like Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson, or of incidental assholes like James Cameron or Brett Favre, whose ass-holism only adds a colorful sidebar to an independently impressive career. There's little about those people that's particular to the age, save that in earlier periods the public probably would have been spared the details of the personal tics and twitches that qualify them for the asshole label. What's unique to our time is the fixation with certain iconic assholes, who exemplify each in his way the problematic allure of the species. Steve Jobs, for example, was a modern personification of the asshole as achiever, someone whose ass-holism seems to be inextricable from his success as a leader. The traditional paragons of the type are the storied tough guys from military, business, and public life, whose leadership styles are packaged in memoirs and advice books, like What It Takes to Be #1: Lombardi on Leadership, Rudy Giuliani's Leadership, 29 Leadership Secrets from Jack Welch, and above all a four foot shelf of inspirational works on George S Patton, the first general to have been explicitly designated an asshole by both his men and his superiors. From Patton we learn: If he slapped a soldier, well, it was certainly wrong, but he thought it necessary for the morale of his troops. It was often said that his troops would accomplish the impossible, then go out and do it all over again.

Ellen Brown: Establishing a Democratic Public Banking System!

On July 27, 2012, the National Association of Letter Carriers adopted a resolution at their National Convention in Minneapolis to investigate establishing a postal banking system. The resolution noted that expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important to the effort to save the public Post Office and preserve living wage jobs , that many countries have a successful history of postal banking, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States itself, and that postal banks could serve the 9 million people who don't have bank accounts, and the 21 million who use usurious check cashers, giving low income people access to a safe banking system. A USPS bank would offer a public option for banking, concluded the resolution , providing basic checking and savings, and no complex wheeling and dealing. The USPS has been declared insolvent, but it is not, because it is inefficient - it has been self funded throughout its history. It is because in 2006, Congress required it to prefund postal retiree health benefits for 75 years into the future, an ominous burden no other public or private company is required to carry. The USPS has evidently been targeted by a plutocratic Congress, bent on destroying the most powerful unions and privatizing all public services, including education. Britain's 150 year old postal service is also on the privatization chopping block, and its postal workers have also vowed to fight. Adding banking services is an internationally proven way to maintain post office solvency and profitability. Serving an Underserved Market, without going broke. Many countries operate postal savings systems through their post offices, providing people without access to banks a safe, convenient way to save. Great Britain first offered this arrangement in 1861. It was wildly popular, attracting over 600,000 accounts and 8.2 million accounts, and 8.2 million in deposits in its first five years. By 1927, there were twelve milion accounts, one in four Britons with 283 million on deposit. Other banks followed.    

Bill Boyarsky: The Ambiguous Battle for Jobs!

It's the great unanswered question of the presidential campaign. Just how can America actually create jobs? President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are ducking the specifics, tearing each other down and offering little hope to the 15 percent of Americans without enough work. The rhetoric of the campaign, and the coverage by political journalists don't deal with the subject, except in the context of the back and forth insults that have marked this contest. For example, last month Obama, talking about why the rich should pay their fair share of taxes, stated the obvious: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. The Internet didn't get invented  on its own. Government research created the Internet, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together." Any successful entrepreneur with a restaurant or retail operation on an interstate highway would probably agree. But Romney picked it up as more evidence of Obama's rejection of the national entrepreneurial spirit: "It shows how out of touch he is with the character of America," Romney said. Obama isn't out of touch with the American character, but the negativity of his unrelenting attacks against Romney puts him out of touch with the main American need, specific ways of lowering the unemployment rate. Away from the campaign trail, in the real world, life is different, and the entrepreneurial spirit exists to a great extent because workers, business people and governments work together on the complex and frustrating task of actually creating jobs. The New York Times reported Sunday how state government, using financial incentives and salesmanship, with a little help from Congress, persuaded Nissan to build cars in Tennessee. Now, the Times said, Tennessee has more than 60,000 jobs related to automobile and parts production. The state unemployment rate, once above the national average, is now slightly below it.    

Chris Hedges: Criminalizing Dissent!

I was on the 15th floor of the Southern US District Court in New York in the courtroom of Judge Katherine Forest last Tuesday. It was the final hearing in the lawsuit I brought in January against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I filed the suit. along with lawyers Carl J Mayer and Brice I Afran, over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We were late joined by six co-plaintiffs, including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. This section of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on December 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize US citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military. which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and "habeas corpus", and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself, the Homeland Battlefield Bill, suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within the homeland, as well as those abroad. The essential thrust of the NDAA is to create a system of justice that violates the separation of powers, Mayer told the court. The Obama administration has taken detention out of the judicial branch and put it under the executive branch. In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction, invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks, whether she will make the injunction permanent.       

Prof. James F Tracy: False Flag Terror and Conspiracies!

The news medias readiness to accept official pronouncements and failure to more vigorously analyze and question government authorities in the wake of domestic terrorist incidents contributes to the American public's already acute case of collective historical amnesia, while it further rationalizes the twenty first century police state and continued demise of civil society. Some may recall "Bugs Raplin" (Giancarlo Esposito) the resolute investigative journalist depicted in Tim Robbins 1992 political mockumentary Bob Roberts. After being framed as the culprit in a false flag assassination attempt by corrupt political huckster Bob Roberts, Raplin delivers a perceptive soliloquy, that among other things effectively describes the American public's moribund civic condition and short circuited democracy. The reason Iran Contra happened, Raplin begins, is because no one did anything substantial about Watergate, and the reason Watergate happened is because there were no consequences from the Bay of Pigs. They're all the same operatives, the foot soldiers at the Bay of Pigs, the plumbers that got busted at Watergate, the gunrunners in Iran Contra, all the same people, same faces. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out the connection here: A secret government beyond the control of the people and accountable to no one, and the closer we are to to discovering the connection, the more Congress turns a blind eye to it. We cant talk about that in open session, they say. National security reasons. The truth lies dormant in their laps, and they stay blind out of choice. A conspiracy of silence. Twenty years later, amidst the vast outsourcing of intelligence and military operations, many more events may arguably be added to such a shadow government's achievements: The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal bombing, the September 11 terror attacks, the non existent weapons of mass destruction prompting the occupation of Iraq, the July 7, 2005 London tube bombings, the shoe and underwear bombings, all of which have contributed to the official justification of imperial wars abroad, and an ever expanding police state at home. 

Felicity Arbuthnot: Amnesty International or War Propaganda?

Amnesty International has released satellite pictures of craters in Syria, citing an increased use of heavy weapons, including near residential areas. The BBC reports, quoting Amnesty: Images from "Anadan" revealed more than 600 probable artillery impact craters from heavy fighting between Syrian armed forces and armed opposition groups. Further: "Turning Syria's most populous city into a battlefield will have devastating consequences for civilians. The atrocities in Syria are mounting already," warned Christoph Koettl, emergency response manager for Amnesty International USA, without acknowledging that the killings of civilians are committed by the US NATO Free Syrian Army (FSA) rather than the government. The Syrian military and the opposition fighters must both adhere to international humanitarian law, which strictly forbids the use of tactics and weapons that fail to distinguish between military and civilian targets. Amnesty's record on impartiality suffered a fatal blow, when they stated in 1991 that Iraqi soldiers had torn babies from their incubators in Kuweit, and left them to die on the hospital's "neo-natal" unit. Arguably this sealed the 1991 onslaught on Iraq. The story that the Kuwaiti government rewarded Amnesty with $500,000 for endorsing this pack of lies has not gone away, and as far as I am aware, to date, has not been denied. Amnesty's record suffered a further blow, when it organized a demonstration last year, outside the London Syrian Embassy, with CAABU- Council for Arab British Understanding, calling for the overthrow of the sovereign Syrian government. A plan which was outlined by the US Embassy in Damascus in December 2005. This action arguably falls under the definition of incitement to terrorism, set out by the UN Security Council on 4th May 2012.    

John Pilger: How the "Chosen Ones" ended Australia's Olympic Prowess!

The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbor bear the names of Australia's world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold medalist Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Majorie Jackson. As you board, there is a photograph of the athlete in her prime, and a record of her achievements. This is vintage Australia. Often shy and never rich, sporting heroes were nourished by a society that, long before other countries won victories for ordinary people: The first 35 hour working week, child benefits, pensions, secret ballots and, with New Zealand, the vote for women. By the 1960's, Australians had the most equitable spread of personal income in the world. In modern day corporate Australia, this is long forgotten: "We are the chosen ones," sang a choir promoting the 2000 Sydney Olympics. One of the ferries is named after Evonne Goolagong, the tennis star who won Wimbledon in 1971 and 1980. She is Aboriginal, like Cathy Freeman, who won a gold medal in the 400 meters at Sydney. For all their talent, both belong to a carefully constructed facade, behind which Australia's secret indigenous history is suppressed and denied. The late Charlie Perkins, an Aboriginal leader who played first division football in England, told me: "There's an ambivalence that consumes many of us. I was so pleased to be back home, seeing that wonderful light, hearing the birds, seeing my mates, but felt the racism more than ever. For one thing, no white person ever invited me home for a meal, for anything. Blacks weren't even allowed in the grandstands, not even in the blacks only sections." In the 1960's Charlie led "freedom rides" into the north-west of New South Wales, where "nigger hunts" were still not uncommon. Abused and spat at, he stood at the turnstiles of local swimming pools and sports fields and demanded that a race bar be lifted: "In South Africa, at least you knew were you stood," he said. "In Australia, you can have a friend and an enemy all in one person, especially if you are like me, of mixed blood.