27 March 21
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27 March 21
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Ken Klippenstein | Documents Show Amazon Is Aware Drivers Pee in Bottles and Even Defecate en Route, Despite Company Denial
Ken Klippenstein, The Intercept
Klippenstein writes:
If employees actually had to pee in bottles, Amazon said, “nobody would work for us.” That’s a lie.
n anticipation of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s scheduled trip to Bessemer, Alabama, to support the unionization drive by Amazon workers there, Amazon executive Dave Clark cast the $1 trillion behemoth as “the Bernie Sanders of employers” and taunted: “So if you want to hear about $15 an hour and health care, Senator Sanders will be speaking downtown. But if you would like to make at least $15 an hour and have good health care, Amazon is hiring.”
Rep. Mark Pocan replied via tweet: “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a progressive workplace when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles,” echoing reports from 2018 that Amazon workers were forced to skip bathroom breaks and pee in bottles. Amazon’s denial was swift: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”
But Amazon workers with whom I spoke said that the practice was so widespread due to pressure to meet quotas that managers frequently referenced it during meetings and in formal policy documents and emails, which were provided to The Intercept. The practice, these documents show, was known to management, which identified it as a recurring infraction but did nothing to ease the pressure that caused it. In some cases, employees even defecated in bags.
Amazon did not provide a statement to The Intercept before publication.
One document from January, marked “Amazon Confidential,” details various infractions by Amazon employees, including “public urination” and “public defecation.” The document was provided to The Intercept by an Amazon employee in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who, like most of the employees I talked to, was granted anonymity to avoid professional reprisal.
The employee also provided an email sent by an Amazon logistics area manager last May that chastised employees for defecating into bags. “This evening, an associate discovered human feces in an Amazon bag that was returned to station by a driver. This is the 3rd occasion in the last 2 months when bags have been returned to station with poop inside. We understand that DA’s [driver associates] may have emergencies while on-road, and especially during Covid, DAs have struggled to find bathrooms while delivering.”
“We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine,” the email continues. “By scanning the QR code on the bag, we can easily identify the DA who was in possession of the bag last. These behaviors are unacceptable, and will result in Tier 1 Infractions going forward. Please communicate this message to your drivers. I know if may seem obvious, or like something you shouldn’t need to coach, but please be explicit when communicating the message that they CANNOT poop, or leave bottles of urine inside bags.”
Halie Marie Brown, a 26-year-old resident of Manteca, California, who worked as a delivery driver for an Amazon delivery contractor, Soon Express, until quitting on March 12, told The Intercept that the practice “happens because we are literally implicitly forced to do so, otherwise we will end up losing our jobs for too many ‘undelivered packages.’”
An email that Brown received from her manager this past August has a section titled “Urine bottle” and states: “In the morning, you must check your van thoroughly for garbage and urine bottle. If you find urine bottle (s) please report to your lead, supporting staff or me. Vans will be inspected by Amazon during debrief, if urine bottle (s) are found, you will be issue an infraction tier 1 for immediate offboarding.”
While Amazon technically prohibits the practice — documents characterize it as a “Tier 1” infraction, which employees say can lead to termination — drivers said that this was disingenuous since they can’t meet their quotas otherwise. “They give us 30 minutes of paid breaks, but you will not finish your work if you take it, no matter how fast you are,” one Amazon delivery employee based in Massachusetts told me.
Asked if management eased up on the quotas in light of the practice, Brown said, “Not at all. In fact, over the course of my time there, our package and stop counts actually increased substantially.”
This has gotten even more intense, employees say, as Amazon has seen an enormous boom in package orders during the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon employees said their performance is monitored so closely by the firm’s vast employee surveillance arsenal that they are constantly in fear of falling short of their productivity quotas.
One email, provided to The Intercept by a Houston-based driver associate who works for an Amazon contractor, alludes to company cameras that can find workers who leave urine bottles behind in the vans. “Data from these cameras can be sent to Amazon in the event of any incident on the road. (We have had several bad accidents, a stolen van, drivers leaving piss bottles etc in the vans).”
The employee said, “Every single day of my shift, I have to use the restroom in a bottle to finish my route on time. This is so common that you’ll often find bottles from other drivers located under seats in the vans. … The fact that Amazon would tweet that is hilarious.”
Public reports that Amazon employees skipped bathroom breaks originated in a 2018 book by the British journalist James Bloodworth. That book, “Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain,” alleged that Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staffordshire, U.K., resorted to urinating in bottles in order to meet production quotas. While most of the employees I spoke to were drivers who delivered products, workers said the practice was commonplace in factories as well.
The vote by Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama on whether to unionize has become a flashpoint for organized labor. While Amazon has publicly criticized Sanders, he is far from the only prominent politician to voice support for the employees’ right to form a union. Last month, President Joe Biden released a video statement saying, “Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union,” which “should be made without intimidation or threats by employers.”
The election, which ends on March 29, would determine if the more than 5,000 warehouse workers will join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. None of Amazon’s 800,000 employees in the U.S. are currently unionized.
Voters at a polling precinct. (photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
What Can Democrats Do About Georgia's Voting-Rights Restrictions?
Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
Kilgore writes:
emocrats in the Georgia legislature had no power to stop the Republicans who control the General Assembly and the governor’s office from enacting a sweeping new package of voting rules adopted to reverse the GOP’s 2020 election losses in the state. Yes, negative publicity about the changes and the underlying determination to reduce voting by troublesome pro-Democratic minority folks led Republicans to drop some of the most pernicious provisions of earlier bills, like abolishing Sunday early, in-person voting and abolition of no-excuse voting by mail. But now that the deed is done, what can the law’s critics do to undo the damage? There are three different avenues:
Go to court
Before the ink was dry on Governor Brian Kemp’s signature on the new law, voting-rights advocates (including the New Georgia Project, Stacey Abrams’s legendary initiative to register and mobilize minority voters) went to federal court to seek an injunction to halt implementation of the law. Renowned Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias is representing the plaintiffs, who charge that the bill violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and also Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits state laws that dilute minority participation in voting and governance. Their case is buttressed by the rich record of public comments by Georgia (and national) Republicans justifying the new law as a way to turn back the clock on the political trends that carried the state for Joe Biden last November, and won the Senate for Democrats in two January runoffs.
Aside from aggrieved individuals, the Justice Deparment can join or launch Article 2 lawsuits, and it’s likely that Merrick Garland’s federal law-enforcement agency will do just that. The likelihood that other state legislatures controlled by Republicans will join Georgia in cracking down on voting opportunities could create a powerful basis for litigation in the federal courts, though no one should imagine the U.S. Supreme Court — led by Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the 2013 opinion gutting the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act that paved the way for Georgia’s actions — will be sympathetic.
Preempt state election laws in Congress
The Georgia crackdown on ballot access coincided with the beginning of Senate consideration of the For the People Act, a package of legislation solidifying and expanding voting rights in federal elections. If the bill is enacted, which seems unlikely but is still possible, this legislation would preempt much of the new Georgia law by requiring easy access to voting by mail, including the drop boxes and proactive mailing of ballots, which have now been restricted. It would also mean more generous in-person and voting-by-mail opportunities, limits on voter-ID requirements, and a host of other reforms not even on the table in Georgia. In effect, such legislation would set strong national standards for voting rights and election administration that would prevent the sort of race to the bottom Republican-run states are currently engaging in, as part of their effort to reverse the trends that gave Democrats trifecta control of the federal government.
Short of the omnibus reforms in the For the People Act, congressional Democrats could buttress voting-rights prospectively, perhaps by enacting the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore the original VRA enforcement scheme. That would put a pause on voting-suppression measures by states with a history of racist election administration (like Georgia) until they are reviewed by the Justice Department.
Take back control of state government in 2022
The most definitive action Georgia Democrats and their allies could take to mitigate the damage wrought by the new law is to use it to mobilize voters to end Republican control of the state in 2022, or at least convince Republicans it’s smarter to expand their coalition than to deny the franchise to the minority voters they continue to alienate.
The odds are high that Georgia’s preeminent voting-rights champion, Stacey Abrams, will seek a rematch with Brian Kemp in 2022. Given the governor’s own extensive history of manipulating the voting rolls and election administration to further his own career, along with his signature on the new law, it’s very likely an Abrams–Kemp race will be, in no small part, a referendum on voting rights and a test of voter mobilization (and it’s possible Kemp himself will be purged by Trump allies who want to do far worse to the voting rights of their “enemies”). If Abrams joins newly elected Senator Raphael Warnock (who faces voters again in 2022 after winning a special election) at the top of the Democratic ticket next year, a broader party message of diversity and equal justice for a state long dominated by reactionary white men will be unmistakable.
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)
Sen. Bernie Sanders' Next Progressive Frontier: Reshaping a 'Rigged' Tax System
Kelsey Snell, NPR
Snell writes: "Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is turning the committee best known for writing budgets that never become law into a vetting ground for progressive policy."
Sanders views his new jurisdiction as a broad mandate that "essentially in one way or another, touches the lives of every American." In keeping with that vision, Sanders will introduce a pair of bills on Thursday to restore the corporate tax rate to 35% and add a new progressive tax on the estates of the wealthiest Americans.
"What we want to do is use the committee to focus on the crises facing the working class of this country, the middle class of this country, talk about issues like income and wealth inequality, talk about the mass amounts of tax avoidance and tax breaks that the very wealthiest people in this country, talk about student debt, talk about how much it will cost us if we do not address the existential threat of climate change," Sanders said in an interview with NPR. "In other words, look at the major issues facing our country and focus a spotlight on them."
Sanders is introducing the bills, both of which face long odds in the closely divided Senate, as part of a broader push to walk back tax cuts that were enacted under former President Donald Trump and to go further in redistributing the tax burden to corporations and the wealthy.
The first bill would restore the corporate tax rate to 35%, undoing a cornerstone of Trump's 2017 tax overhaul. Republicans cut the corporate rate to 21% in that bill, a move that Joint Committee on Taxation valued at $1.3 trillion over 10 years.
The bill would also end rules that allow companies to further reduce their tax bill by shifting operations offshore.
A second bill would add a new way to tax the wealthiest estates in the country. Sanders says the bill is aimed at the fortunes of the top 0.5%. It would exempt the first $3.5 million of an individual's estate from the estate tax, $7 million for married couples.
Those with estates between $3.5 million and $10 million would be taxed at 45%, and the rate would jump to 50% between $10 million and $50 million, 55% for estates over $50 million and 65% for estates valued at over $1 billion.
The focus on taxes comes weeks after President Biden signed $1.9 trillion in new coronavirus relief spending into law. That bill, which Sanders helped move through the Senate, included billions for unemployment insurance, housing vouchers, rent assistance, stimulus checks and direct aid to millions of people.
Democrats, who control 50 votes in the Senate, passed the legislation without any GOP votes using a budget tool called reconciliation. That process requires just 51 votes to pass and Democrats can muster those votes if they have unanimous agreement and call in Vice President Harris to break the tie.
Congress gets one shot at reconciliation each time they pass a budget — which they can only do once every fiscal year which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 each year.
They have two chances this year because Trump did not pass a budget in fiscal year 2020, and Democrats took the opportunity to pass one of their own when they took over in January.
Sanders now oversees reconciliation as Budget Committee chair, and he is already contemplating what the second bill should include.
"The second reconciliation bill will deal with long-term structural problems that we've had in this country long before the pandemic," Sanders said.
That includes spending on traditional infrastructure programs, like roads, bridges, water systems and wastewater. But Sanders says it should also include climate change and social programs like affordable housing.
"We need to build millions of units of low income and affordable housing," he said. "We must address the crisis of climate change and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel. And when we do those things, deal with infrastructure, deal with climate, we can in fact create many, many millions of good paying jobs."
Those proposals are likely to reignite a familiar battle between centrist Democrats and the demands of the party's progressive base that Sanders represents.
That fight was on display in the last reconciliation fight when Democrats failed to pass a $15 federal minimum wage. Just 42 Democrats voted for Sanders' plan to increase wages, and his long-term plans for wealth redistribution and cutting fossil fuels are certain to meet similar objections.
When it comes to the minimum wage, Sanders says part of the challenge will be demonstrating that the Democratic Party is with him on the policy.
"There is not unanimity within the Democratic Caucus," he said. "And my job is to rally the American people and to create a strategy."
Some of that will involves creating pressure and spreading a message from the budget committee.
When it comes to taxes, part of that message is that tax increases help pay for all of the spending Democrats have passed or plan to approve in the future.
"I do worry about the deficit that we have and the national debt that we have," Sanders said. "And I worry that we have a tax system, which is in many ways extremely rigged. So you have large, profitable corporations over the years pay zero in federal income tax. "
Some, like Sanders, have suggested increasing taxes to help pay for that spending. Reshaping the tax code is part of his broader effort to redistribute wealth in the country.
"What we need to do, in the midst of massive income and wealth inequality, when the rich are becoming much richer, while the middle class struggles, we need a tax system, which says to the wealthy and large corporations that they're finally going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes," he said. "At the end of the day, we need massive tax reform in this country, so that we end the tax loopholes and the giveaways that the wealthy and large corporations."
As for when and how that gets done, Sanders says he isn't making any specific demands. But passing tax hikes outside of reconciliation creates a familiar problem for Democrats — they simply do not have enough votes to do something like that in the Senate where most legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
That's why Sanders says it's time for the filibuster to end.
"As the Republican Party moves further and further to the right, their main task is obstructionism," Sanders said. "And what we have got to say is that majority rules, when the American people want something when the House wants something, we cannot have just a minority of senators preventing us from moving so yes, I do support at this point, repealing the filibuster."
But that's another issue where Democrats aren't unanimous — and they would need to be if they're going to make a change.
Sanders himself used to be cautious about the ending filibuster. Doing away with the 60-vote requirement to pass legislation would give Republicans the chance to reverse policies and pass their own priorities if they controlled the Senate again.
"I think, in the best of all possible worlds, I would like to see a Senate where you can debate for long periods of time, etc., etc.," he said. "But we're not in the best of all possible worlds."
Asked if this new chairmanship and the influence it affords means he is done running for president, Sanders laughed.
"Well," he said. "I am very content being the chairman of the budget committee and Vermont senator right now."
National Guard members near the White House. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Capitol Insurrection Charges Highlight White Supremacists in US Military
Adam Gabbatt, Guardian UK
Gabbatt writes:
f the moustache, trimmed narrowly in the style of Adolf Hitler, don’t give it away, then the antisemitic YouTube rants, the testimony of 34 colleagues and the neo-Nazi reading material certainly do.
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a US army reservist, is – according to court documents – an “avowed white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer”.
The 30-year-old was charged in January with five counts in relation to the Capitol riots, and denied bail this week after a judge expressed concern over Hale-Cusanelli’s alleged enthusiasm for a “civil war”.
A navy contractor who prosecutors say “has access to a variety of munitions”, Hale-Cusanelli might seem like an outlier among the masses who attacked the Capitol on 6 January. But the darker truth is that Hale-Cusanelli was one of dozens of former or current members of the military who have been investigated or charged in connection with the Capitol riot – at a time when the Pentagon warns white supremacy and white nationalism within the military pose a serious threat for the US armed forces.
Hale-Cusanelli was charged with seven crimes, including obstructing congressional proceedings, in connection with the 6 January attack. The criminal complaint said Hale-Cusanelli, who worked at Naval Weapons Station Earle, a support base for military ships, “has access to a variety of munitions”.
Prosecutors said that on 14 January a confidential source used a listening device to record a conversation with Hale-Cusanelli.
“During this conversation, Hale-Cusanelli admitted to entering the Capitol and encouraging other members of the mob to ‘advance’ – giving directions via both voice and hand signals,” charging documents said. “Hale-Cusanelli told the [source] that if they’d had more men they could have taken over the entire building.” In the recording Hale-Cusanelli also admitted taking a flag and flagpole which he later observed another rioter throw “like a javelin” at a Capitol police officer, the criminal complaint said.
During the investigation it emerged that Hale-Cusanelli was able to hold on to his security clearance at Station Earle, despite dozens of his co-workers stating he was open about his white supremacist beliefs, and despite being rebuked for turning up to work with a Hitler-esque moustache.
In a 23 March motion opposing Hale-Cusanelli’s bail – he has been held in jail since his arrest in mid-January – prosecutors said at least 34 of Hale-Cusanelli’s co-workers said he had made no secret of his antisemitism and racism.
One navy seaman remembered Hale-Cusanelli saying that if he was a Nazi “he would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner”. A navy petty officer said Hale-Cusanelli had stated that “Jews, women and Blacks were on the bottom of the totem pole”.
Of the more than 160 people arrested by the end of January, almost one in five were current or former members of the military, NPR reported, and there is evidence that an extremist infiltration of the armed forces is under way.
A Pentagon report released in March found that domestic extremist groups pose a serious threat to the military, both by seeking to recruit members and, more troublingly, have existing extremists join the military to gain training and combat experience.
According to the Military Times, authorities estimate one in five of the people charged by late February were either current or ex-military, with Jacob Fracker and Thomas Robertson among the first to be arrested in connection for their alleged roles in the riot.
Fracker, 29, is a corporal in the national guard, Robertson, 47, a former military policeman in the army reserve, and the pair, who photographed themselves inside the Capitol during the siege, were Virginia police officers until they were fired for their part in the riot. Fracker and Robertson pleaded not guilty to charges including disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, entering and remaining in a restricted building.
Navy veteran Thomas Caldwell is another veteran allegedly involved. He was arrested on 19 January and charged with conspiracy, destruction of government property, obstruction of an official proceeding, and violent entry or disorderly conduct.
Prosecutors allege Caldwell, who served as a naval intelligence officer for 19 years, according to the Washington Post, led a band of Oathkeepers – a domestic extremist group – in storming the Capitol, charges Caldwell denies.
Charged along with Caldwell was Donovan Crawl, a veteran of the marine corps, who prosecutors allege conspired with Caldwell and others to obstruct the Senate’s confirmation of the electoral college vote.
It isn’t just the arrests at the Capitol that have people worried. In 2020 a coast guard lieutenant was sentenced to 13 years in prison after stockpiling weapons with the intention to kill a number of Democratic politicians, journalists and socialists.
Federal prosecutors said Christopher Hasson intended “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country” and described him as “a domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life”.
While the Capitol riot may have shone a light on the issues with extremism that the military faces, there is evidence the problem has been growing for some time.
A 2019 survey by Military Times found that 36% of active duty troops “have seen evidence of white supremacist and racist ideologies in the military” – up from 22% the year before. Among ethnic minorities, 53% reported witnessing racist behavior.
After years of racist pandering and inflammatory rhetoric from Trump, under the Biden administration there is at least an acceptance that there’s a problem. In February Lloyd Austin, the first Black defense secretary in US history, ordered the military to intensify their efforts to combat white supremacy in its ranks, initially by reinforcing existing regulations on extremism in the armed forces.
“The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies,” Austin had told the US Senate armed services committee in January.
“But we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”
Justice Paul Thissen. (photo: Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune)
A Minnesota Man Can't Be Charged With Rape, Because the Woman Chose to Drink Beforehand, Court Rules
Marisa Iati, The Washington Post
Iati writes: "After a 20-year-old woman took five shots of vodka and a prescription pill, she said she was standing outside a Minneapolis bar in May 2017 when a man invited her and a friend to a party. She agreed but soon found out there was no gathering, she later testified."
She “blacked out” instead, waking up on a couch and found that the man she had just met was allegedly sexually assaulting her, according to court records.
Almost four years later, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled this week that Francios Momolu Khalil, 24, cannot be found guilty of rape because the woman got drunk voluntarily beforehand. The decision Wednesday overturned Khalil’s prior conviction of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, which had been upheld by an appeals court, and granted him the right to a new trial.
The ruling also poured fuel on an effort in the Minnesota legislature to expand the state’s definition of “mentally incapacitated” to include voluntary intoxication so that defendants such as Khalil can be convicted of more serious offenses.
At issue in Khalil’s case was a state law that says a person is only considered “mentally incapacitated” and incapable of consenting to sex if they are intoxicated on substances “administered to that person without the person’s agreement,” like if someone spikes a punch bowl at a party. In Khalil’s case, Justice Paul Thissen wrote in an opinion, no one disputes that the woman chose to become drunk.
“If the legislature’s intended meaning is clear from the text of the statute, we apply that meaning and not what we may wish the law was or what we think the law should be,” Thissen wrote.
Khalil has been incarcerated since his sentencing in 2019. His attorney in the lower court said he expects his client to be released soon.
“When you have a 6-to-0 unanimous decision, that tells you that the courts have recognized what I was telling the district court judge all along: You cannot add your own elements to the law,” said the attorney, Will Walker. “Otherwise, nobody would ever have a fair trial.”
Khalil’s attorney in the Minnesota Supreme Court case declined to comment on the ruling.
On the evening of the alleged assault, the woman went to a bar in Minneapolis’s Dinkytown neighborhood with a friend, but the bouncer refused to let her in because she was drunk, according to court records. That’s when Khalil and two other men allegedly approached the woman and her friend and invited them to a party.
Khalil drove the women to a house in northern Minneapolis, prosecutors allege. The friend later testified that the woman immediately lay down on the couch and fell asleep.
When the woman woke up and saw that Khalil was allegedly raping her, she told him she didn’t want to have sex, court records say.
“But you’re so hot and you turn me on,” he allegedly replied.
The woman then lost consciousness and woke up between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. with her shorts around her ankles, she testified. She and her friend left the house in a Lyft vehicle, and the woman went to a hospital to have a rape kit done later that day. She reported the case to Minneapolis police four days later, according to court records.
Minnesota is among a majority of states that treat intoxication as a barrier to consent only if victims became drunk against their will. As of 2016, intoxication provisions in 40 states did not include situations in which someone chose to consume drugs or alcohol, according to Brooklyn Law Review.
Definitions of rape have generally been expanding in recent decades, said Jill Hasday, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who has written about the history of marital rape. Courts that used to require women to prove that they displayed “utmost resistance” to unwanted sexual activity now apply what Hasday characterized as a more realistic understanding of how consent typically happens.
Minnesota rape survivors, advocates and dozens of legislators see the state’s voluntary intoxication defense as a loophole that still needs to be filled. Some legislators put forth a bill in 2019 to make voluntary drunkenness grounds for a felony rape charge, but the legislature instead convened a working group to study the issue. The bipartisan bill in the Minnesota House of Representatives emerged from that group’s report on possible changes to the law.
Under the existing statute, Khalil’s case could be charged as fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct, a gross misdemeanor, according to the court ruling. State Rep. Kelly Moller (D), a co-sponsor of the bill and a prosecutor, said that charge does not go far enough.
“I’ve heard from prosecutors that even charging this as a fifth-degree gross misdemeanor is almost insulting to the victim,” she said, “because it’s such a lesser crime and it doesn’t encompass what the victim actually experienced.”
Moller said she often hears from prosecutors and victims about sexual assaults that cannot be prosecuted because the victim had chosen to consume drugs or alcohol before the attack. At a state House committee hearing in February, a woman testified that when she was raped in 2019, prosecutors told her they could not pursue her case because she had chosen to drink cocktails before she lost consciousness on the day of the attack.
Of the nearly 10 million U.S. women who have been raped while intoxicated, according to background in the court opinion, Moller said most become drunk by choice. She pointed to Khalil’s case to argue that some alleged offenders seek to prey on people in that kind of condition.
If Moller’s bill succeeds in making voluntary drunkenness grounds for a rape charge, prosecutors will still have to explore the defendant’s knowledge of the victim’s state of mind.
“The state still has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew or should have known that the victim was intoxicated to the degree incapable of providing consent,” Moller said. “And that burden is high.”
Protesters carrying an injured man in Mandalay, Myanmar. (photo: AP)
At Least 50 Protesters Killed in Myanmar on 'Day of Shame for Armed Forces'
Reuters
Excerpt: "Security forces killed more than 90 people across Myanmar on Saturday in one of the bloodiest days of protests since a military coup last month, news reports and witnesses said."
yanmar's security forces shot and killed at least 50 protesters on Saturday, news reports and witnesses said, a brutal crackdown on dissent that came as the leader of the ruling junta said the military would protect the people and strive for democracy.
Protesters against the February 1 military coup came out on the streets of Yangon, Mandalay and other towns, defying a warning that they could be shot "in the head and back" while the country's generals celebrated Armed Forces Day.
"Today is a day of shame for the armed forces," Dr. Sasa, a spokesman for CRPH, an anti-junta group set up by deposed lawmakers, told an online forum.
"The military generals are celebrating Armed Forces Day after they just killed more than 300 innocent civilians," he said, giving a rough estimate of the toll since protests first erupted weeks ago.
Anti-coup protesters gesture with a three-finger salute, a symbol of resistance, during a demonstration in Yangon on March 27.
At least four people were killed when security forces opened fire at a crowd protesting outside a police station in Yangon's Dala suburb in the early hours of Saturday, Myanmar Now reported. At least 10 people were wounded, the news portal said.
Three people, including a young man who plays in a local under-21 football team, were shot and killed in a protest in the Insein district of the city, a neighbor told Reuters.
Thirteen people were killed in various incidents in Mandalay, Myanmar Now said. Deaths were also reported from the Sagaing region near Mandalay, Lashio town in the east, in the Bago region, near Yangon, and elsewhere, it said.
Myanmar Now said a total of at least 50 people were killed on Saturday. Reuters could not independently verify the numbers killed.
A military spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment.
After presiding over a military parade in the capital, Naypyitaw, to mark Armed Forces Day, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing reiterated a promise to hold elections, without giving any time frame.
"The army seeks to join hands with the entire nation to safeguard democracy," the general said in a live broadcast on state television, adding that authorities also sought to protect the people and restore peace across the country.
"Violent acts that affect stability and security in order to make demands are inappropriate."
The number of people killed in the turmoil since the coup against Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government is now nearly 380, based on Thursday's toll and a tally kept by an activist group.
Shots to the head
In an ominous warning on Friday evening, state television said protesters were "in danger of getting shot to the head and back."
The warning did not specifically say that security forces had been given shoot-to-kill orders but the junta has previously tried to suggest that some fatal shootings have come from within the crowds.
But it showed the military's determination to prevent any disruptions around Armed Forces Day, which commemorates the start of the resistance to Japanese occupation in 1945 that was orchestrated by Suu Kyi's father, the founder of the military.
Suu Kyi, Myanmar's most popular civilian politician, remains in detention at an undisclosed location. Many other figures in her party are also being held in custody.
In a week that saw international pressure on the junta ramped up with new US and European sanctions, Russia's deputy defense minister Alexander Fomin attended the parade in Naypyitaw, having meet senior junta leaders a day earlier.
"Russia is a true friend," Min Aung Hlaing said. There were no signs of other diplomats at an event that is usually attended by scores of officials from foreign nations.
Support from Russia and China, which has also refrained from criticism, is important for the junta as they are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and can block potential UN actions.
Protesters have taken to the streets almost daily since the coup that derailed Myanmar's slow transition to democracy.
Until Friday evening, activist group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) counted at least 328 protesters who have been killed in the weeks of unrest. Its data shows that around a quarter of them died from shots to the head, raising suspicions they were targeted for killing.
Myanmar's ethnic armed factions will not stand by and do nothing if the junta's forces continue to kill protesters, the leader of one of the main armed groups said.
"The Myanmar Armed Forces Day isn't an armed forces day, it's more like the day they killed people," Gen. Yawd Serk, chair of the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army - South, told Reuters.
"It isn't for the protection of democracy as well, it's how they harm democracy... If they continue to shoot at protesters and bully the people, I think all the ethnic groups would not just stand by and do nothing."
In Miami Beach, as elsewhere on the U.S. East Coast, flooding from seasonal high tides has been made worse in recent years by rising seas. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Atlantic Coast Sea Levels Are Rising at Fastest Rate in 2,000 Years, Study Finds
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes:
et another study has confirmed the unprecedented impacts of the climate crisis: Sea levels along the eastern U.S. are rising at their fastest rate in 2,000 years.
Researchers led by a team at the University of Rutgers studied sea level rise at six sites along the Atlantic coast. They found that the rate of change between 1900 and 2000 was more than double the average for the period between year 0 and 1800, Rutgers Today reported.
"The increasing influence of the global component is the most significant change in the sea-level budgets at all six sites," the study authors wrote.
The research, published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, focused on sea level sites in Connecticut, New York City, North Jersey, South Jersey (Leeds Point and Cape May Courthouse) and North Carolina. The scientists examined sea-level budgets, which are the totality of regional, local and global factors that influence sea level change. Examples of regional factors include land subsidence, or sinking, while local factors include groundwater withdrawal, Rutgers Today explained. The study is the first to examine these factors across a large time frame at the Atlantic sites. Most sea level budget studies have only focused on the 20th and 21st centuries, and only on the global level.
The research found that the dominant force driving sea level change had shifted. During the totality of the 2,000 year period, land subsidence caused by the retreating Laurentide ice sheet drove the change.
However, in the last century, global forces took over.
"Where it used to be this regional land sinking being the dominant force, now it's this global component, which is driven by the ice melt and warming of the oceans," Jennifer S. Walker, lead author and Rutgers University-New Brunswick postdoctoral associate, told CNN.
Since 1950, the global climate crisis has driven 36 to 50 percent of sea level rise at all six sites, the authors determined.
The findings aren't only important for understanding the scale of the current crisis, but also for helping policymakers deal with its consequences. Rising sea levels can increase sunny-day floods and make storms such as 2012's Hurricane Sandy more extreme.
"The impacts from a big storm like that are just going to be exacerbated on top of (the rising seas)," Walker told CNN.
That is why the study chose to study individual locations across a wide period.
"Having a thorough understanding of sea-level change at sites over the long-term is imperative for regional and local planning and responding to future sea-level rise," Walker told Rutgers Today. "By learning how different processes vary over time and contribute to sea-level change, we can more accurately estimate future contributions at specific sites."
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