Last Call For The Law Of The Amazon

Amazon's Prime delivery services are very convenient, offering one-day and even same day delivery on items in dozens of US cities.  And the people paid to deliver those millions of packages daily are mostly contractors, not making minimum wage, in unsafe conditions, with no breaks, and no benefits.

Several people described instances when they felt their bosses at Amazon-affiliated courier companies took advantage of them.

Four drivers across three companies said their employers misrepresented the job by promising health benefits without following through. One worker said that when he started his job, his employer promised that he would get health benefits within 90 days of employment. He said he was fired within days of qualifying.

Eight workers across four companies said drivers were denied overtime pay, despite working well over 40 hours a week. Thirteen workers across five companies complained about wages missing from paychecks.

"The culture is predatory," said Ku Irvin, who started working as a driver for DeliverOL, in Aurora, Colorado, in November 2016. "It's a revolving door. A lot of promises are made that are not kept."

Nine months later, Irvin became a manager but said he couldn't stomach it. "Once I got behind the desk, I saw what was going on and it was sickening to me," he said.

A few drivers told Business Insider that they felt powerless to address problems because they feared retaliation.

They described the measures they feared as firings, withholding of wages, and denial of work — meaning drivers could be sent home without a delivery route on days they were scheduled.

"If I didn't come in on my day off, they threatened to fire me," Justin Waring, a former driver for Courier Distribution Systems, in Lisle, Illinois, told Business Insider.

A supervisor at a New Jersey-based logistics company, Prime EFS, sent a threatening text to drivers in late April:

"Tomorrow is Saturday. The Weekend. Where everyone wants to call out," read the message, which was viewed by Business Insider. "You're scheduled for tomorrow so I expect everyone confirmed and on time tomorrow. Any callouts I will make sure you do not receive a route for a week." Prime EFS did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

One Richmond, Virginia-based driver at another Amazon-affiliated courier company claimed he was sent home on a scheduled workday as punishment for arriving one minute late.

"That's their way of disciplining you," said the driver, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting fired.

I've talked about Amazon's Dickensian warehouses in the past, and things haven't gotten much better there, but I sure as hell wouldn't work for the company's white collar divisions either.

The company is a stain on the country, frankly.  It needs to be dismantled.

The Mustache Versus The World

Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton's Mustache made it painfully clear Monday (during a Federalist Society speech, natch) that the Trump regime wasn't going to tolerate the International Criminal Court meddling in US affairs any longer.

The United States will not in any way cooperate with the International Criminal Court, national security adviser John Bolton announced in a speech to the Federalist Society on Monday, blasting the ICC as an unaccountable, bureaucratic body that runs counter to the U.S. Constitution and is "antithetical to our nation's ideals."

In his first speech as national security adviser, Bolton made the case that the ICC's authority is invalid, subverts American sovereignty, and concentrates power in the hands of an unchecked authority in a way that is "antithetical to our nation's ideals." In November, the ICC prosecutor asked to investigate crimes allegedly committed by members of the U.S. military who served in Afghanistan. Bolton called those claims unfounded. The national security adviser said it was no coincidence he made his speech on the ICC one day before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"Today, on the eve of September 11th, I want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the President of the United States," Bolton said. "The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.We will not cooperate with the ICC," Bolton said. "We will provide no assistance to the ICC. And we certainly will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us."

The ICC was formally established in 2002, although then-President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. to "un-sign" the Rome Statute and the Senate never ratified it. Bolton suggested the ICC was created to attack U.S. leadership, not to truly hold egregious international criminals accountable.

"In theory, the ICC holds perpetrators of the most egregious atrocities accountable for their crimes, provides justice to the victims, and deters future abuses," Bolton said. "In practice, however, the court has been ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous. Moreover, the largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States. The objective was not limited to targeting individual U.S. service members, but rather America's senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure."

If the ICC does come after the U.S., Israel, or any allies, Bolton said the U.S. will not sit quietly. He listed a number of possible actions Bolton might pursue, from withdrawing financial aid to banning judges from entering the country.

"We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by U.S. law," he said.

Now there are plenty of countries who are not party to the Rome agreement of 2002 and are not members of the ICC besides the US, but all NATO members are (except for Turkey, of course). We've heard this before, Bolton's Mustache has been tangling with the ICC since it was created 16 years ago.  But Alex Whiting at Just Security cautions that this time, with Trump at the helm, the stakes are much higher, and the damage that the Trump regime will do could be irreversible.

[t]here is the looming Afghanistan investigation, which will likely be authorized any day now by a pre-trial chamber and which no doubt prompted Bolton’s speech today. Indeed, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on Monday, “They told us they were on the verge of making that decision, and we’re letting them know our position ahead of them making that decision.” The pending decision is expected to authorize the prosecutor to investigate the Taliban and Afghan government forces, as well as U.S. personnel for acts of torture against detainees in Afghanistan and at black sites in Poland, Romania, and Lithuania. There are reasons to believe that the ICC prosecutor will focus on the crimes of the Taliban, that far exceed in scale the allegations against U.S. persons, but just the existence of this investigation will likely become an impediment to a more constructive relationship between the U.S. and the ICC in the future. On Monday Bolton described the potential U.S. targets of an ICC investigation as “American patriots, who voluntarily went into harm’s way to protect our nation, our homes, and our families in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.” Given this framing, it will be challenging for future administrations to find a path back to even a constructive relationship with the ICC.

In sum, the policies announced today should not be dismissed as just some more overheated bluster from Bolton and this administration. The new rhetorical framing and policy positions genuinely risk serious damage to the ICC and the rule of law around the world, and these steps will be difficult, if not impossible, to undo. The court, for instance, may no longer be recognizable by the time a new U.S. administration makes the effort to pick up the pieces.

While the new U.S. posture reflects the particular ideological stances of Bolton and President Trump, it is also a further consequence of the misguided embrace of torture by U.S. government officials following 9/11. It is because the ICC is turning to scrutinize allegations of U.S. torture in Afghanistan and elsewhere that Bolton had to turn his sights on the court and bring out a wrecking ball. The U.S. has a proud tradition of initiating, supporting, funding, and participating in international institutions to achieve accountability for international crimes, dating back to Nuremberg and continuing through the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. Today the U.S. turned against that legacy, likely for many years to come.

I fully expect Trump to demand that fellow NATO allies leave the ICC once it becomes clear that US military personnel will be facing war crimes investigations for 16 years in Afghanistan.  And if I were Vladimir Putin, I could think of no easier way to destroy NATO permanently than to talk Trump into this exact fight we're seeing play out now.

Race To The Bottom, Con't

FOX News resident white supremacist Tucker Carlson defended his white supremacist propaganda segment from Friday with the usual nonsense we've come to love and expect from the right, with such bad faith all-star hits like this:

The organized left is lying about a segment we did on Friday night. Our topic was "diversity is our strength," a phrase our leaders use to end conversation rather than spur it. You hear it all the time. We asked, what exactly does it mean? Is it true?

We only asked if having non-white people in America was actually good for America, what's the big deal?

Here are the words from our segment: "How precisely is diversity our strength? Can you think of other institutions, such as marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are?"

So he's a segregationist and implies here that marriage should only be available to men and women of the same race (one of each, can't have same-sex marriages!)  Also, the US military integrated generations ago, and we've done fine since then.

"Do you get along better with your neighbors and coworkers if you can't understand each other, or share no common values? And if diversity is our strength, why is it OK for the rest of us to surrender our freedom of speech to just a handful of tech monopolies?"

My downstairs neighbor is deaf, Tucker.  I understand them quite fine, thanks.  And plenty of co-workers where I'm at speak a number of different languages, French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin, and hey, English!

Also, what do tech monopolies have to do with language at your workplace?  That's not a diversity issue, it's a broader free speech one.

These are the questions our leaders out to be asking every day. How does a nation of 325 million people hang together? What do we all have in common as Americans? Why should we remain a country? Nothing is more important than answering this. 

I'd say through common values like dignity, acceptance and tolerance, but you clearly don't share those values with the rest of America.  Problem isn't us, pal.  It's you.

But our leaders aren't even asking these questions. Instead they're trying to silence anyone who raises them, while at the same time promoting mindless tribalism for political expedience. Division keeps them in power. 

The guy with the 8 PM prime time cable TV show and weekday radio show, heard and watched by millions, is "being silenced" you guys.

What's at stake isn't a cable news segment. It's the existence of rational conversation in America. If they can prevent you from asking honest questions, there's nothing they can't do. More on this tomorrow night.

Except, as we pointed out, nobody is "preventing" Tucker Carlson from using his free speech rights.  He's just upset that he's not protected from the consequences of it.

The real issue is that Carlson's rancid racism is watched by millions, including Donald Trump, on a daily basis.  He's preparing the ground for Trump's inevitable mass deportation regime and rallying white supremacists to get out and vote.

If you thought America was ugly before, wait until Republicans survive 2018 with control of Congress.  We'll never get the country back to sanity at that point.

StupidiNews!

• More than one million in North and South Carolina are expected to evacuate coastal areas in the path of Hurricane Florence, now a Category 4 monster storm headed for Wilmington by Friday.
• Russia has launched its largest military drills ever held, the "Vostok-2018" joint exercises held with China and Mongolia are being condemned by NATO as preparations for "large-scale conflict".
• US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the US will not move to block Pakistan from getting an IMF bailout despite July comments from Pompeo that the US had "serious reservations."
• A measure of small business owner confidence has hit a record high as Republicans seek to make January tax cuts permanent before midterm elections.
• California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law the state's bill to go to 100% renewable energy by 2045, and signed an executive order mandating the state be carbon-neutral by then too.