[Peace-discuss] Notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

A light set of notes tonight (maybe you've got enough recent older notes to 
add to these); I just don't have my mojo workin' due to some long work days 
and downtime due to illness. Have a great show guys.

-J



Censorship: The censors are seeking to publish on a network that won't 
censor them. Go figure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50150981 -- The BBC has made its 
website available on Tor ("The Onion Router") sometimes called the 'dark web'.

Tor-hosted websites can use a top-level domain of .onion which are 
reachable by anyone who uses the Tor network. To get on the Tor network, 
get the Tor Browser -- a modified version of Firefox that makes it easy to 
browse websites on the Tor network -- from torproject.org/download/.

The BBC (state-funded British media) has been noteworthy for not covering 
stories of great importance. Recently the BBC has failed to keep up with 
Julian Assange stories including his eviction from the Ecuadorian embassy 
(RT had exclusive coverage; other networks abandoned the site), Assange 
being moved in a prison van for reasons unknown (again, RT had exclusive 
coverage), and coverage of Assange's hearing a week ago (as journalist John 
Pilger said to Afshin Rattansi on Rattansi's RT show "Going Underground"):

> Afshin Rattansi: It didn't make Channel 4 news here. It made headlines 
> around the world, but not news here.
> 
> John Pilger: No, it didn't make it-- the BBC-- deliberately, 
> deliberately excluded the most important case: a publisher and 
> journalist is brought to a court. He is convicted of nothing. Charged, 
> in this country, with nothing. The charges against him are not only 
> concocted but as his QC pointed out yesterday, the treaty --
> extradition treaty -- between Britain and the United States has a
> specific section in it that says a person cannot be extradited if the
> offenses are said to be political. Sixteen of the seventeen, at least,
> charges against Assange in the United States are unlawful. They are
> political. That's not opinion. That's not a piece of agitprop. They are,
> under law, political. They're based on a 1917 law called the Espionage
> Act which was used to chase down conscientious objectors.

RT has had no special access to Assange's activity. RT merely did what any 
journalist in the area could have done but chose not to do -- keep their 
cameras rolling and report on what they saw and heard.

The footage BBC ran of Assange's eviction was licensed from from RT's 
RUPTLY. What reporting the BBC carried in their article on his hearing 
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50132599) left out pertinent details (such 
as the conflicts of interest of the people involved in the case against 
Assange, that Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser was reportedly elevated from 
being a magistrate to a judge for this case, and nothing which appears in 
that article was clearly sourced by a reporter in the courtroom instead of 
someone listening to reports from people who were there including John Pilger.



Business/Economy: Restaurateur organizations got the economics of the New 
York City $15/hr minimum wage wrong: restaurant revenue and restaurant 
employment are up, not down.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-15-minimum-wage-was-supposed-to-hurt-new-york-city-restaurants-but-both-revenue-and-employment-are-up-2019-10-28

> Critics would have you believe that upping the minimum wage in
> restaurants will lead to massive layoffs and closures. But since raising
> the minimum wage to $15 per hour nearly a year ago, the restaurant
> industry in New York City has thrived.

[...]

> When worker pay goes up, employers can respond in a number of different 
> ways. They can cut hours, lay off workers, accept smaller profits or 
> raise prices.
> 
> With profits so low in the restaurant industry, averaging just 3%-5%, 
> employers may not have the option to accept less in profits without 
> going in the red.
> 
> In many industries, increased labor costs may prompt businesses to lay 
> off American workers and move operations overseas where labor costs are 
> lower. But this isn’t a viable solution in the restaurant industry, 
> since most of the work is done on-site.
> 
> That leaves restaurant owners with two options. The first is to
> decrease the number of hours each employee works, which might explain
> why income gains from a higher minimum wage aren’t as large as one would
> predict.
> 
> Still, massive layoffs in the restaurant industry are unlikely because 
> owners need a certain number of staff to operate a full-service 
> kitchen.
> 
> The other option is to increase prices, which many restaurants in New 
> York City have done.
> 
> Some in the restaurant industry have argued that raising menu prices
> will lead to fewer people dining out and, consequentially, more
> restaurant closures.
> 
> But this hasn’t happened.
> 
> In fact, both restaurant revenue and employment are up. The reason for
> this is that restaurants don’t have to raise prices very much to pay for
> a minimum-wage increase.
> 
> In one study, for example, a $0.80 minimum wage increase equated to a
> 3.2% increase of food prices in restaurants in New Jersey. This is the
> amount that the New Jersey minimum wage increased in 1992.
> 
> Even a one-time increase of 10% to 15% is unlikely to dissuade large
> numbers of customers from dining out. That would amount to an extra
> $1.20 on a $12 burger.
> 
> The focus on single restaurants also ignores the larger economic impact
> of raising the minimum wage. According to an analysis by the Federal
> Reserve Bank of Chicago, if low-wage workers have more money in their
> pockets, they will have more money to spend, potentially expanding the
> number of consumers who can afford to eat out.
> 
> In fact, some people — including those from the Economic Policy
> Institute — have posited that a minimum-wage increase will actually lead
> to an increase in employment because of the effects of giving low-wage
> workers a raise. Other advantages to restaurants may include lower
> turnover rates and better job performance.




Russiagate/Propaganda posing as entertainment: Call of Duty (videogame) 
makes Russia the new enemy of the game, blames Russians for US war crimes, 
hides blame from Russian audience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Z4SeOieCY -- RT's report filled with 
quotes and footage from the game including how the edition for non-Russian 
customers makes Russia the enemy while the Russian edition makes some 
made-up family the enemy. The war crimes of the US are pinned on Russia, 
and the White Helmets (US stooges who, among many horrible choices, work 
with murderers and pose for fake death pictures) become the "Green Helmets" 
for the Russian edition.





Corporate-friendly policy: US tax forms are complex and costly, and gratis 
tax filing not universal and hard to find because the tax preparation 
industry writes the IRS's rules.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-tried-to-hide-emails-that-show-tax-industry-influence-over-free-file-program 
-- ProPublica's report on what they learned from suing the IRS

> For a decade and a half, the IRS program to allow most Americans to file
> their taxes for free has been floundering.
> 
> Now, IRS emails obtained by ProPublica help show why: The agency has
> allowed the tax preparation industry to write the rules.

[...]

> This year, as part of our coverage of the IRS and TurboTax maker Intuit,
> we filed a request for correspondence between the IRS and the Free File
> Alliance, an industry group. The request sought records surrounding a
> public-private partnership called Free File.
> 
> Under that program, which has long been championed by Intuit, the IRS
> agrees not to create its own tax filing system that would pose a threat
> to the industry’s profits. In exchange, Intuit and several other tax
> prep companies agree to offer free tax filing to most Americans. But the
> program has been declining for years, with less than 3% of eligible
> Americans using it this year.
> 
> The email correspondence sheds light on a pivotal moment for the future
> of Free File in the fall of 2018: An expert body called the IRS Advisory
> Council (IRSAC) had spent months investigating the program. It was
> preparing to publish a blistering report concluding that the IRS’
> “deficient oversight and performance standards for the Free File program
> put vulnerable taxpayers at risk.”



Chicago Teachers fight the good fight against corporatist mayor Lori Lightfoot

 From Redacted Tonight at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2RORUTCo_E

 > Redacted Tonight's Anders Lee: New Chicago mayor [...] Lori Lightfoot
 > has reached a conclusion to the strike: On Tuesday her office has issued
 > a letter promising to continue negotiations with teachers while also
 > directing them to get back to work. Truly some masterful negotiation
 > tactics right there! Only someone with the lightfooted heels of Hermes
 > could maneuver such a closing offer to strike a grand bargain without
 > having to do any bargaining. The Teachers Union, however, didn't quite
 > appreciate Lightfoot's feat. No punion intended.
 >
 > [Plays a clip from CBS News]
 >
 > CBS News: Mayor sent out a letter saying that she wants students to
 > go back to class during the negotiations. Your thoughts on that?
 >
 > Alison Eichhor, teacher: Yeah, that's not gonna happen. I don't know if
 > the Mayor's familiar with what unions do but we've gotten more deals,
 > more tentative agreements, in these last two days than we have in ten
 > months.
 >
 > [end clip]
 >
 > Anders Lee: C'mon, you gotta let Mayor Lori work that lightfooted magic!
 > She wants to improve Chicago public schools too. She just needs some
 > time for you to work without a contract so she can get around to it. And
 > she believes all the same things you do! Just look at what she
 > campaigned on:

 From a Jacobin article titled "Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Has Become 
Rahm Emanuel 2.0" at 
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/lori-lightfoot-chicago-teachers-union-strike

 > "[...] Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to end business as usual in
 > Chicago. Instead, she’s antagonizing teachers, refusing to fully fund
 > public schools, and giving the rich whatever they want. That agenda
 > didn’t end well for Rahm Emanuel. It won’t for Lightfoot, either."
 >
 > Anders Lee: Now that she's in office and none of that stuff is
 > happening, is exactly the time to trust her!

[...]

> The mayor could have easily avoided a strike by sticking to her campaign
> promises. Lightfoot actually ran on many of the Chicago teachers’
> longtime demands for public education: an elected representative school
> board rather than one appointed by the mayor, a freeze on charter-school
> expansion, strong investments in public schools. She even told the
> Chicago Sun-Times, “As mayor, I will … provide each school with basic
> educational support positions like librarians, nurses, and social
> workers” — the CTU’s own contract demands in this strike.
> 
> Like Rahm in 2012, Mayor Lightfoot is now claiming there’s simply no
> money to give students what they need. In reality, Chicago — like the
> rest of the country — is facing a priorities crisis, not a funding
> crisis. Not only is Chicago Public Schools now receiving one billion
> dollars more yearly from the state, but the city recently decided to
> move ahead with plans to give over a billion in public funds to build
> Lincoln Yards, a luxury real-estate development project. As we’ve seen
> in strike after strike since West Virginia erupted in early 2018,
> politicians can be forced to find the money — if they are compelled to
> from below.