October 31, 2013

Wawrinka, Gasquet book last 2 ATP Finals spots

PARIS (AP) -- Richard Gasquet and Stanislas Wawrinka took the last two spots in the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals after Milos Raonic lost to Tomas Berdych 7-6 (13), 6-4 on Thursday in the third round of the Paris Masters.

Raonic needed at least a runner-up finish in Paris to have a chance to qualify for the London tournament next week, which features the top eight players. This will be Wawrinka's first appearance; Gasquet also qualified in 2007.

''It was more difficult for me to qualify this time than six years ago,'' Gasquet said. ''It was tough for me to come back, and today I believe the tennis is at a very high level. I played a lot better than six years ago.''

Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, David Ferrer, Juan Martin del Potro and Berdych had already assured their spots before playing in Paris. Andy Murray also qualified but withdrew from the event to recover from back surgery. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/wawrinka-gasquet-book-last-2-211147331--ten.html

October 31, 2013

Chris Hedges, beacon in the fog

This is where we are headed. I do not say this because I am a supporter of revolution. I am not. I prefer the piecemeal and incremental reforms of a functioning democracy. I prefer a system in which our social institutions permit the citizenry to nonviolently dismiss those in authority. I prefer a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power. But we do not live in such a system. Revolt is the only option left. Ruling elites, once the ideas that justify their existence are dead, resort to force. It is their final clutch at power. If a nonviolent popular movement is able to ideologically disarm the bureaucrats, civil servants and police—to get them, in essence, to defect—nonviolent revolution is possible. But if the state can organize effective and prolonged violence against dissent, it spawns reactive revolutionary violence, or what the state calls terrorism. Violent revolutions usually give rise to revolutionaries as ruthless as their adversaries. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. “And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/our_invisible_revolution_20131028


....................

Chris Hedges at Moravian College: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies




....................

The anthropologist Joseph Tainter in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” looked at the collapse of civilizations from the Roman to the Mayan. He concluded that they disintegrated because they finally could not sustain the bureaucratic complexities they had created. Layers of bureaucracy demand more and more exploitation, not only of the environment but the laboring classes. They become calcified by systems that are unable to respond to the changing reality around them. They, like our elite universities and business schools, churn out systems managers, people who are taught not to think but to blindly service the system. These systems managers know only how to perpetuate themselves and the system they serve, although serving that system means disemboweling the nation and the planet. Our elites and bureaucrats exhaust the earth to hold up a system that worked in the past, failing to see that it no longer works. Elites, rather than contemplate reform, which would jeopardize their privilege and power, retreat in the twilight of empire into walled compounds like the Forbidden City or Versailles. They invent their own reality. Those on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms have replicated this behavior. They insist that continued reliance on fossil fuel and speculations will sustain the empire. State resources, as Tainter notes, are at the end increasingly squandered on extravagant and senseless projects and imperial adventures. And then it all collapses. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_folly_of_empire_20131014


....................

Chris Hedges: Urban Poverty in America Made Me Question Everything




...................


It is not the poor who make revolutions. It is those who conclude that they will not be able, as they once expected, to rise economically and socially. This consciousness is part of the self-knowledge of service workers and fast food workers. It is grasped by the swelling population of college graduates caught in a vise of low-paying jobs and obscene amounts of debt. These two groups, once united, will be our primary engines of revolt. Much of the urban poor has been crippled and in many cases broken by a rewriting of laws, especially drug laws, that has permitted courts, probation officers, parole boards and police to randomly seize poor people of color, especially African-American men, without just cause and lock them in cages for years. In many of our most impoverished urban centers—our internal colonies, as Malcolm X called them—mobilization, at least at first, will be difficult. The urban poor are already in chains. These chains are being readied for the rest of us. “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread,” Anatole France commented acidly. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sparks_of_rebellion_20130930


....................

How Corporations Destroyed American Democracy - Chris Hedges




.....................

Police abuse is routine in Elizabeth, as it is in poor urban areas across the country. This incident did not make news. But it illustrated that if you are a poor person of color in the United States you know what most us are about to find out—we have no civil liberties left. Police, who arrest some 13 million people a year, 1.6 million on drug charges—half of those for marijuana counts—carry out random searches and sweeps with no probable cause. They take DNA samples from many of those they arrest, even some eventually found to be innocent, to build a nationwide database. They confiscate cash, cars, homes and other possessions based on allegations of illegal drug activity and direct the proceeds into police budgets. And in the last three decades the United States has constructed the world’s largest prison system, populated with 2.2 million inmates. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_origins_of_our_police_state_20130916/


....................

Chris Hedges - Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle




....................

The executive, legislative and judicial branches of government have been taken over by corporations and used to protect and promote the criminal activity of Wall Street, the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, the looting of the U.S. Treasury by the banking industry and the corporate seizure of all major centers of power. The primacy of corporate profit trumps our right to a living wage, affordable and adequate health care, the regulation of industry and environmental controls, protection from corporate fraud and abuse, the right to a good and affordable public education, the ability to form labor unions, and having a government that serves the basic needs of ordinary citizens. Our voices, our rights and our aspirations are no longer of concern to the state. And if we try to assert them, the state now has mechanisms in place to shut us down. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/locking_out_the_voices_of_dissent_20130714


....................

Listen: http://rdwolff.com/content/economic-update-social-turmoil-coming

by Richard Wolff and Chris Hedges.
Published on April 12, 2013


Updates on CEO pay, the assault on social security, Maggie Thatcher, and "job creation." Interview with Chris Hedges on deepening social crisis, divisions, and turmoil coming. Response to listeners: on French socialists, hidden money, and workers coops paying taxes.

....................

Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power.

The Department of Justice seizure of two months of records of phone calls to and from editors and reporters at The Associated Press is the latest in a series of dramatic assaults against our civil liberties. The DOJ move is part of an effort to hunt down the government official or officials who leaked information to the AP about the foiling of a plot to blow up a passenger jet. Information concerning phones of Associated Press bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Conn., as well as the home and mobile phones of editors and reporters, was secretly confiscated. This, along with measures such as the use of the Espionage Act against whistle-blowers, will put a deep freeze on all independent investigations into abuses of government and corporate power. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rise_up_or_die_20130519


.....................

October 31, 2013

Poll: 1 in 4 Americans would light up a fat one if they could legally

Legalizing marijuana would more than double the potential market for the drug, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

Results show that 26 percent of Americans say they would buy marijuana at least on rare occasions if it was legal in their state, compared to 9 percent who said they buy it at least on rare occasions now. The percentage who said they would buy marijuana often, jumped from 1 percent who do so now to 4 percent who would buy if it was legal.

When asked about their buying frequency, 18 percent of respondents said they would buy marijuana more often than they do now if it was legal. That includes 16 percent who said they never buy marijuana now but would, at least on rare occasions, if it was legal to do so.

Respondents under age 30 were most likely to say both that they would buy marijuana if it was legal (35 percent) and that they do so now (16 percent). But even among those 65 and older -- almost none of whom said they ever buy marijuana now -- 9 percent said they would buy it at least occasionally if it was legal. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/31/pot-poll_n_4179029.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037&ir=Politics

October 31, 2013

Consumer Confidence in U.S. Declines to More Than One-Year Low

(Bloomberg) Consumer confidence eroded for a fifth straight week, reaching the lowest level in more than a year as pessimism about the economy chipped away at views of conditions closer to home.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index fell in the period ended Oct. 27 to minus 37.6, the weakest reading since October 2012, from minus 36.1. While the end of the 16-day federal government shutdown helped stabilize a measure of outlooks for the economy, households grew more pessimistic about their finances and the buying climate.

The slump in sentiment during the gridlock over the federal budget and debt ceiling has been deeper than both of the previous two shutdowns in 1995 and 1996. More pessimism among the jobless shows limited employment opportunities are weighing on consumer attitudes about making purchases.

“The combination of fiscal follies in the nation’s capital, slower economic activity and a deceleration in hiring clearly has impacted consumer confidence,” said Joseph Brusuelas, a senior economist at Bloomberg LP in New York. “While sentiment is likely to rebound in coming weeks, it may not rise to pre-crisis levels.” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-31/consumer-confidence-in-u-s-declines-to-more-than-one-year-low.html

October 31, 2013

Richard Wolff: "old centers of capitalism are suffering the effects of capitalism’s withdrawal"

by Richard Wolff.
Published on October 27, 2013

This article originally appeared at e-International Relations


After 200 years of concentrating its centers in western Europe, north America, and Japan, capitalism is moving most of its centers elsewhere and especially to China, India, Brazil and so on. This movement poses immense problems of transition at both poles. The classic problems of early, rapid capitalist industrialization are obvious daily in the new centers. What we learn about early capitalism when we read Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Maxim Gorky and Jack London, we see now again in the new centers.

What the October 2013 shutdown of the US government teaches us are new lessons about what is happening to the increasingly abandoned old centers of capitalism. Similar lessons flow from the long, painful economic crises now besetting western Europe and Japan. In simplest terms, these old centers of capitalism are suffering the effects of capitalism’s withdrawal.

The causes of withdrawal are well known. In the century before 1970, it became quite clear that the long history of class struggles inside the old centers of capitalism had produced a basic compromise. Capitalists retained their nearly total control over enterprise decisions: what to produce, how to produce, where to produce, and what to do with the profits. Employees, in exchange for ceding that control, obtained rising real wages. Over the same period, capitalists reorganized the world economy (via formal and informal colonialisms) to serve as the “hinterland” for the capitalist centers in western Europe, north America, and Japan. That hinterland provided the food, raw materials, migrant laborers and part of the market for those old capitalist centers. Real wages in that hinterland stagnated or fell.

In the 1970s, the gap between real wages in the old capitalist centers and those in the hinterland had become enormous. At the same time, the development of jet engines and modern telecommunications opened new opportunities for capitalists in the old centers. Their response is transforming the world. Those capitalists realized that they could manage production and distribution facilities almost anywhere in the world as easily as before they had managed facilities within their town, cities, and countries. The more competitive among them moved quickly to take advantage of the much lower real wages in the hinterland by moving old facilities or establishing new facilities there. The laggards are quickly following to avoid competitive destruction. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://rdwolff.com/content/us-political-dysfunction-and-capitalism%E2%80%99s-withdrawal

October 31, 2013

Want a New Law? If You’re the Banking Industry, Just Write It Yourself

via truthdig:


Want a New Law? If You’re the Banking Industry, Just Write It Yourself
Posted on Oct 30, 2013


The folks at MapLight, which traces the connections between money and policy, have a disturbingly clear report this week tracking the role the banking industry played in pushing a measure the House is considering that would water down a section of the Dodd-Frank Act covering how banks operate.

In fact, “pushing” understates it. According to The New York Times, the law was largely written by Citigroup’s banking lobbyists—which is like letting the fox tell you which chickens he wants to steal. The Times notes:

In a sign of Wall Street’s resurgent influence in Washington, Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. (Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.)

The lobbying campaign shows how, three years after Congress passed the most comprehensive overhaul of regulation since the Depression, Wall Street is finding Washington a friendlier place.

The cordial relations now include a growing number of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, whose support the banks need if they want to roll back parts of the 2010 financial overhaul, known as Dodd-Frank.

This legislative push is a second front, with Wall Street’s other battle being waged against regulators who are drafting detailed rules allowing them to enforce the law.

That article ran in May. This week, MapLight reports ahead of the vote that the banking industry and other supporters gave $22.4 million in campaign contributions while labor unions and consumer groups opposing the measure donated $3.9 million. The biggest benefactor? Speaker of the House John Boehner, who received $917,500 in contributions from the bill’s supporters. Boehner, of course, is the keeper of the switch deciding which legislation gets to the floor for a vote. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/want_a_new_law_if_youre_the_banking_industry_just_write_it_yourself

October 31, 2013

Amy Goodman: The Rising Resistance to Obama’s Drone Wars

from truthdig:


The Rising Resistance to Obama’s Drone Wars

Posted on Oct 30, 2013
By Amy Goodman


“I wasn’t scared of drones before, but now when they fly overhead I wonder, ‘Will I be next?’” That is the question asked by 8-year-old Nabila Rehman, from northwest Pakistan. She was injured in a drone attack a year ago, in her small village of Ghundi Kala. She saw her grandmother, Mamana Bibi, blown to pieces in the strike. Her brother Zubair also was injured. Their case has become the latest to draw attention to the controversial targeted killing program that has become central to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and global war-making.

“We really just have a very simple message to the U.S.: How do you justify killing a grandmother? How does that make anyone safer?” Mustafa Qadri posed the question on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. Qadri authored a new Amnesty International report titled “‘Will I Be Next?’ U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan.”

Nabila and Zubair are unique among the growing number of drone-strike victims: They were able to appear before Congress, along with their father, Rafiq ur Rehman, to testify about the strike and the devastation it brought to their family. They are featured in a new documentary being released for free on the Internet this week, “Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars,” by Brave New Films. In it, Rafiq, a primary-school teacher, describes that day:

“People enjoyed life before the attacks. It was 2:45 on October 24th of 2012. After school finished I went into town to buy school supplies.” When he returned home, they told him his mother was dead. There was a crater where her garden was. She was picking okra with the children. “That’s where my mother was killed,” Rafiq continues. “My family has been destroyed since my mother was killed.” Nine children in all were injured, as this drone strike fit a typical pattern, with one initial strike, followed closely by another to hit the rescuers. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_rising_resistance_to_obamas_drone_wars_20131030

October 31, 2013

More Weiner wackiness

Forgive me if I'm glossing over some of the fine points here, but let's try to recall a basic timeline of Anthony Weiner's life in the past few years.

Weiner used to be a Congressman from New York, but he sent some ladies some pictures of his junk over social media. After a fashion, he resigned in what we colloquially call "disgrace." At the time of his undoing, Weiner was thought of as a guy who had the aspiration to run for mayor in New York City -- but with his record marred by scandal, those dreams were presumed to be dead.

But a while later, he decided to run for mayor of New York City anyway. To begin that process, Weiner gave a supposedly soul-baring interview with The New York Times' Jonathan Van Meter. Only we come to find out, he didn't really bare his soul -- those sexting shenanigans had actually continued apace, after the period of time he'd claimed to have been a changed man. What amounted to a brief bubble of interest in Weiner's long-shot candidacy got popped, seemingly overnight. Now, New York City is (probably!) getting Bill De Blasio for mayor, and the rest of us are stuck with the memory of Sydney Leathers.

All failing electoral campaigns try to implicate the media in some way. That's just life. But I've never seen a losing candidate get angry at the media for not being more ruthless. And now that Anthony Weiner has done so, I have to imagine that I'll never see this happen again. In the meantime, let us cherish this precious, outlier angel while we have it. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/anthony-weiner-jonathan-van-meter_n_4179503.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

October 31, 2013

Bill Moyers' Preview: The Top Secret Trade Deal You Need to Know About

http://vimeo.com/78197007


Preview: The Top Secret Trade Deal You Need to Know About
October 30, 2013


A cornerstone of President Obama’s plan to create more American jobs is a new agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), referred to by some as “NAFTA on steroids.” The TPP is a coalition of North and South American and Asian trading partners that many believe could give multinational corporations even greater freedom to ignore borders and run roughshod over individual countries and the rule of law. At least that’s what it may be about. While negotiations are being carried out in secret and very little about the terms has been leaked, enough is known to worry about its possible effect on trade unions and our copyright and patent laws, not to mention environmental, health and safety regulations.

This week on Moyers & Company, Bill discusses the TPP with two perceptive observers of the global economy. Yves Smith is an expert on investment banking who runs the Naked Capitalism blog, a go-to site for information and insight on the business and ethics of finance. Dean Baker is co-director of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.


http://billmoyers.com/segment/preview-the-top-secret-trade-deal-you-need-to-know-about/

October 31, 2013

Food Companies and Monsanto Spend Millions to Defeat Washington GMO Labeling Initiative

(Truthout) Coca-Cola, Nestle and Pepsi are among the more than 30 food manufacturing companies that have spent millions of dollars alongside biotech firms such as Monsanto to oppose the labeling of genetically engineered groceries in the state of Washington.

On October 18, 2013, the Grocery Manufacturers of America revealed that some of its most powerful members quietly funneled large donations through the trade group to oppose Initiative 522, a Washington ballot measure that would require groceries containing genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled as such. The group voluntarily reported the names and contribution amounts of the donors it had kept secret to state election officials after state Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit earlier in the month.

Members of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, which was forced to create a political committee to comply with state law, have contributed more than $11 million to No on 522, the campaign opposed to the labeling initiative. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/19698-revealed-big-processed-food-companies-spend-millions-to-defeat-washington-gmo-labeling-initiative