[Peace-discuss] anti-neoliberalism notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

A few extra topics (in addition to those already posted) to spur discussion 
on News from Neptune. Have a good show guys.



Russiagate: A new reason for the conspiracy -- jobs! Also, Russiagate's not 
dead!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rfbR66Qxps -- Twitter apparently has a 
head of "Site Integrity": Yoel Roth, Ph.D. Twitter released data describing 
228 accounts they had somehow linked to Russians which Twitter accusing of 
being "Russian bots" (accounts set up to allow organizations to automatedly 
post tweets from multiple accounts in order to create the appearance of 
multiple people chiming in on some issue all taking the same side). These 
are the accounts we're supposed to believe put Trump in the White House. 
Another set of Twitter data identified the same accounts to be somehow 
connected to Venezuela (which is supposed to make anything posted by these 
accounts suspect).

Someone named Josh Emerson (@josh_emerson) told Yoel Roth that his data was 
confusing:

> [a screenshot showing two lists of alleged 'bot' accounts from
> Twitter] The IRA accounts are on the left, The Venezuela (January 2019,
> set 2) accounts are on the right. They are the same damn bots. So which
> is it? Are they Russian or are they Venezuelan?

Roth replied:

> In this case, we initially misidentified 228 accounts as connected to
> Russia. As our investigations into their activity continued, we
> uncovered additional information allowing us to more confidently
> associate them with Venezuela.

And Roth tells us the data he's referring to is available for download at 
about.twitter.com in their "election integrity hub".

The replies making fun of Twitter's entire story here came thick and fast:

> Malcolm Fleschner: [Maxwell Smart, from "Get Smart" voice] "Would you
> believe... Iran?"
> 
> Unfiltered: Well isn't that convenient, a movable boogyman data set.
> 
> It's Me: All jokes aside, Yoel [Roth] seriously sounds like a
> ghosthunter.
Aaron Maté points us to a new reason for Russiagate: jobs.

> Aaron Maté: Jimmy, this is an underrated aspect of the Russiagate
> racket: because [...] it's a jobs program. You go to Penn, you have [an]
> expensive fancy-sounding Ph.D., and you need to justify it in some way,
> and you also need a job. And so Russiagate has been like a cottage
> industry: all these think tanks, data analytic things -- it's a jobs
> program. On the one hand it's capitalizing on a general human need to do
> fulfilling work, people want to do fulfilling work, and that's what it
> is for this subset of people who drink the Kool-Aid and get paid lots of
> money to study 'Russian bots'. Not because Russian bots are any actual
> threat to anybody, or even if Russian bots exist because, as you pointed
> out, the Russian bots are concocted by the very people supposedly
> investigating them. But because warning us about Russian bots serves a
> narrative: it keeps us scared of Russia, and the people who profit off
> of tensions with Russia make a lot of money (like weapons manufacturers,
> and foreign governments who --
> 
> Jimmy Dore: And New Knowledge who will sell you protection from Russian
> bots.




Labor/walkout: Exploitation tip -- to keep workers economically dependent, 
one must pay workers enough to not be able to afford to walk off the job.

https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/ohio-sonic-workers-walk-off-job-leave-scathing-note-bashing-terrible-management-the-whole-store-has-quit 
-- Three Sonic (drive-thru, fast food) restaurants in Ohio had no employees 
as everyone on staff walked out to protest new management.

> According to reports, Circleville, Lancaster and Grove City have all
> experienced complete staff walkouts after the fast-food stores were
> purchased by new ownership.

Why did they leave?

> According to the Ohio news outlet, employees claimed they saw their
> wages reduced from at or near-minimum wage to $4.00/hour for tipped
> employees, although a spokesperson for Sonic Drive-In claimed "no wage
> rates at any level" decreased under the new ownership in a statement
> obtained by Fox News.
> 
> The changes reportedly pushed the employees over the edge, leading them
> to walk out of the store during their shifts, turn off the lights and
> lock the door behind them.
> 
> Circleville and Lancaster stores both were left with notes blasting the
> new management as the reason for the walkout.
> 
> Circleville left a handwritten noted signed by the “Ex Sonic Crew” that
> blamed the new owners for the negative change.

See attached images or the following URLs for the signs:

Circleville: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0IveBVX4AA4nI_.jpg
Lancaster: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0MQQwIXQAAH-wi.jpg

The Circleville sign reads:

> Warning
> 
> Due to terrible management the whole store has quit. The company has
> been sold to people that don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves.
> Sorry for the inconvenience, but our team refuses to work for a company
> that treats their employees like they are shit when they have put
> everything into this store. We have worked too hard for too long. We are
> all off to better things. So to the New Owners FUCK You!
> 
> Sincerely, Ex Sonic Crew

The Lancaster sign reads:

> Subject: Sonic 955
> To: Lance Lamphar; Rick Fee; Sara Holben; Sherri Burchett 
> (sburchett at houchensindustries.com)
> 
> This is the Management team at Lancaster!
> 
> We would just like to tell you cause you are the most trashiest company
> we have ever seen. To hide such information from your "team" is
> unbelievably selfish and inconsiderate to the "people you care about."
> You guys pushed someone who has 11 years of sonic under their belt for
> someone who has only been in the company for 6 months. She was loyal and
> would/did anything you (LANCE) asked of her. She gave 11 years of her
> blood, sweat and tears into this company only to get NOTHING but
> BACKSTABBED. So what makes you think that ANYONE else would want to work
> for someone as SLEEZY as you. So since 11 years practically means shit
> to this company anymore, you just lost another 9 years... and 8 years...
> and 5 years... and 2 years... and 2 years... and 1 year.
> 
> Lance- You let people work underneath the table at your stores but makes
> other stores feel like shit because their labor is high. Why you have 8
> workers on the same shift, but only 4 people on your clock. You
> manipulate and try to come off to be this wonderful guy but the more I
> get to know you, [the] more shady you appear to be. You knew the entire
> time that the company was getting sold. BY THE WAY GM'S, YOU'LL FIND
> THIS OUT TOMORROW, threw Sherri under the bus to save YOUR ASS and
> practically lost her position. This is a joke. YOU'RE A JOKE. You say
> racist things, you put people down and make them feel below you, you
> push push push push people to make them better or say "you can do better
> than this... blah blah blah" DO WHAT I DO FOR A WEEK AND SEE IF YOU
> LAST. It's hard to take [criticism] from someone who is the laziest
> person ever.
> 
> I NOW understand why this store can't keep a general manager. It wasn't
> because they were horrible it's because they were as frimey as you
> (LANCE) but they just got caught by the right person.
> 
> Signed, THE BREAKFAST CLUB

An unnamed representative for Sonic Drive-In told Fox News:

> no wage rates at any level decreased under the new ownership, although
> Sonic carhops may receive tips in addition to their wages.





Labor: Should sex work be decriminalized and/or regulated?

https://daily.jstor.org/regulating-sex-work-in-medieval-europe/ -- 
"Regulating Sex Work in Medieval Europe" brings up interesting 
contradictions for those who want to make sex work a 1st class business 
opportunity today.

A group called "Decriminalize Sex Work" wants to end prohibitions on 
selling sex in the United States including ending arrests of sex workers, 
and bring about regulations for sex workers. This would make sex work like 
any other business -- tax-paying, working within regulations, possibly 
being licensed -- and bring up some contradictions too.

Historian Ruth Mazo Karras wrote that Medieval Europe gave sex work legal 
status but didn't get much respect from the community (the work was 
considered 'sinful').

> Different parts of Europe handled this tension in different ways. Some
> municipalities licensed brothels, set up red-light districts, or created
> municipally-owned sex work establishments. Publicly-owned, regulated, or
> taxed sex trade could be an important source of income for a town. For
> sex workers, these practices sometimes provided protection. In London,
> for example, having a legal status freed sex workers from harassment by
> city authorities. And regulations in Southwark and Sandwich, England,
> limited brothel owners’ ability to financially exploit workers with
> predatory loans and high prices for ale.
> 
> Official brothels could also breed collective action by bringing the
> workers together under one roof. In several cases, French sex workers
> organized to protest when a female brothel keeper was replaced by a man,
> or when other sex workers operating clandestinely threatened their
> business.
> 
> But official status and recognition could also be a tool for controlling
> workers. Regulations often meant they had to work, and sometimes live,
> in a brothel. Some municipal brothels in continental Europe restricted
> sex workers’ mobility and limited their ability to leave the profession.
> In some cases, the rules also made it clear that women could be raped.
> “As a municipal service, prostitution was made available to all who
> qualified, and the women who provided it had no say in determining how
> their bodies were to be used,” Karras writes.

One could imagine another conflict between one deciding whom to have sex 
with ad-hoc and performing undesired sex work due to observing public 
accommodation law.

Legal complications come up for business/public interactions and don't 
often come up in discussions about regulating sex work. Recently the US 
Supreme Court decided Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights 
Commission -- a Colorado bakery (Masterpiece Cakeshop) sued the Colorado 
Civil Rights Commission after Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips said 
he didn't want to make a custom cake for a gay male couple. Masterpiece 
would sell the couple a pre-baked cake that the couple could decorate 
themselves but Masterpiece would not do the custom decoration work 
requested by the gay couple because homosexual marriage conflicted with 
Phillips' strongly-held religious beliefs. Masterpiece held that cake 
decoration was the medium of Phillips' expression, so to compel Masterpiece 
to customize the cake for the gay couple would be compelling Masterpiece to 
specific speech (which is a 1st amendment violation). Previously 
Masterpiece lost to the Commission but SCOTUS held that the Commission 
"failed to act in a manner neutral to religion" and thus "violated the 
First Amendment to the United States Constitution" and thus reversed the 
Commission's decision.




Possibly less drone victim information from US drone attacks

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-revocation-reporting-requirement/ 
-- executive order 13862

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJhXUxPNDbU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LejT92SG-IU -- Trump administration changes 
Obama administration rule on releasing information on who drones kill. 
Brian Becker and Kathy Kelly are shown speaking.

On March 6, 2019 Pres. Trump issued executive order 13862 that will revoke 
Obama administration rules made in 2016: the Director of National 
Intelligence will no longer be required to release an

> unclassified summary of the number of strikes undertaken by the United
> States Government against terrorist targets outside areas of active
> hostilities, as well as assessments of combatant and non combatant
> deaths resulting from those strikes, among other information.

The Pentagon is still obliged to report

> civilian casualties caused as a result of United States military
> operations during the preceding year (civilian casualty report).
> Subsection 1057(d) requires that the civilian casualty report be
> submitted in unclassified form, but recognizes that the report may
> include a classified annex.

in compliance with the NDAA of 2018 (National Defense Authorization Act).

There's also an anonymous claim from the White House Security Council which 
says this executive order is to 'minimize civilian deaths' (it's not clear 
how less reporting will result in fewer deaths) and to reduce "superfluous 
reporting".

It's not clear how effective the (now revoked) Obama administration 
executive order 13732 was: drone deaths were underreported and people 
killed were called "enemies killed in action" even if they were not the 
intended target and not fighting the US. So we were reliant on estimated 
deaths and now we have less information with which to determine future 
estimates.

-J
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