#global tel link

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech is a scam - and a harbinger of your future

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Here's how the shitty technology adoption curve works: when you want to roll out a new, abusive technology, look for a group of vulnerable people whose complaints are roundly ignored and subject them to your bad idea. Sand the rough edges off on their bodies and lives. Normalize the technological abuse you seek to inflict.

Next: work your way up the privilege gradient. Maybe you start with prisoners, then work your way up to asylum seekers, parolees and mental patients. Then try it on kids and gig workers. Now, college students and blue collar workers. Climb that curve, bit by bit, until you've reached its apex and everyone is living with your shitty technology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Prisoners, asylum seekers, drug addicts and other marginalized people are the involuntary early adopters of every form of disciplinary technology. They are the leading indicators of the ways that technology will be ruining your life in the future. They are the harbingers of all our technological doom.

Which brings me to Minnesota.

Minnesota is one of the first states make prison phone-calls free. This is a big deal, because prison phone-calls are a big business. Prisoners are literally a captive audience, and the telecommunications sector is populated by sociopaths, bred and trained to spot and exploit abusive monopoly opportunities. As states across America locked up more and more people for longer and longer terms, the cost of operating prisons skyrocketed, even as states slashed taxes on the rich and turned a blind eye to tax evasion.

This presented telco predators with an unbeatable opportunity: they approached state prison operators and offered them a bargain: "Let us take over the telephone service to your carceral facility and we will levy eye-watering per-minute charges on the most desperate people in the world. Their families – struggling with one breadwinner behind bars – will find the money to pay this ransom, and we'll split the profits with you, the cash-strapped, incarceration-happy state government."

This was the opening salvo, and it turned into a fantastic little money-spinner. Prison telco companies and state prison operators were the public-private partnership from hell. Prison-tech companies openly funneled money to state coffers in the form of kickbacks, even as they secretly bribed prison officials to let them gouge their inmates and inmates' families:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/mississippi-corrections-corruption-bribery-private-prison-hustle/

As digital technology got cheaper and prison-tech companies got greedier, the low end of the shitty tech adoption curve got a lot more crowded. Prison-tech companies started handing out "free" cheap Android tablets to prisoners, laying the groundwork for the next phase of the scam. Once prisoners had tablets, prisons could get rid of phones altogether and charge prisoners – and their families – even higher rates to place calls right to the prisoner's cell.

Then, prisons could end in-person visits and replace them with sub-skype, postage-stamp-sized videoconferencing, at rates even higher than the voice-call rates. Combine that with a ban on mailing letters to and from prisoners – replaced with a service that charged even higher rates to scan mail sent to prisoners, and then charged prisoners to download the scans – and prison-tech companies could claim to be at the vanguard of prison safety, ending the smuggling of dope-impregnated letters and other contraband into the prison system.

Prison-tech invented some wild shit, like the "digital stamp," a mainstay of industry giant Jpay, which requires prisoners to pay for "stamps" to send or receive a "page" of email. If you're keeping score, you've realized that this is a system where prisoners and their families have to pay for calls, "in-person" visits, handwritten letters, and email.

It goes on: prisons shuttered their libraries and replaced them with ebook stores that charged 2-4 times the prices you'd pay for books on the outside. Prisoners were sold digital music at 200-300% markups relative to, say, iTunes.

Remember, these are prisoners: locked up for years or decades, decades during which their families scraped by with a breadwinner behind bars. Prisoners can earn money, sure – as much as $0.89/hour, doing forced labor for companies that contract with prisons for their workforce:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

Of course, there's the odd chance for prisoners to make really big bucks – $2-5/day. All they have to do is "volunteer" to fight raging wildfires:

https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-wildfire-california-incarcerated-firefighters-face-dangerous-work-low-pay-and-covid19/

So those $3 digital music tracks are being bought by people earning as little as $0.10/hour. Which makes it especially galling when prisons change prison-tech suppliers, whereupon all that digital music is deleted, wiping prisoners' media collection out – forever (literally, for prisoners serving life terms):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/captive-audience-how-floridas-prisons-and-drm-made-113m-worth-prisoners-music

Let's recap: America goes on a prison rampage, locking up ever-larger numbers of people for ever-longer sentences. Once inside, prisoners had their access to friends and family rationed, along with access to books, music, education and communities outside. This is very bad for prisoners – strong ties to people outside is closely tied to successful reentry – but it's great for state budgets, and for wardens, thanks to kickbacks:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/12/21/family_contact/

Back to Minnesota: when Minnesota became the fourth state in the USA where the state, not prisoners, would pay for prison calls, it seemed like they were finally breaking the vicious cycle in which every dollar ripped off of prisoners' family paid 40 cents to the state treasury:

https://www.kaaltv.com/news/no-cost-phone-calls-for-those-incarcerated-in-minnesota/

But – as Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever – what happened next is "a case study in how prison communication companies and their private equity owners have managed to preserve their symbiotic relationship with state corrections agencies despite reforms — at the major expense of incarcerated people and their families":

https://www.levernews.com/wall-streets-new-prison-scam/

Immediately after the state ended the ransoming of prisoners' phone calls, the private-equity backed prison-tech companies that had dug their mouth-parts into the state's prison jacked up the price of all their other digital services. For example, the price of a digital song in a Minnesota prison just jumped from $1.99 to $2.36 (for prisoners earning as little as $0.25/hour).

As Paul Wright from the Human Rights Defense Center told Schwenk, "The ideal world for the private equity owners of these companies is every prisoner has one of their tablets, and every one of those tablets is hooked up to the bank account of someone outside of prison that they can just drain."

The state's new prison-tech supplier promises to double the amount of kickbacks it pays the state each year, thanks to an aggressive expansion into games, money transfers, and other "services." The perverse incentive isn't hard to spot: the more these prison-tech companies charge, the more kickbacks they pay to the prisons.

The primary prison-tech company for Minnesota's prisons is Viapath (nee Global Tel Link), which pioneered price-gouging on in-prison phone calls. Viapath has spent the past two decades being bought and sold by different private equity firms: Goldman Sachs, Veritas Capital, and now the $46b/year American Securities.

Viapath competes with another private equity-backed prison-tech giant: Aventiv (Securus, Jpay), owned by Platinum Equity. Together, Viapath and Aventiv control 90% of the prison-tech market. These companies have a rap-sheet as long as your arm: bribing wardens, stealing from prisoners and their families, and recording prisoner-attorney calls. But these are the kinds of crimes the state punishes with fines and settlements – not by terminating its contracts with these predators.

These companies continue to flout the law. Minnesota's new free-calls system bans prison-tech companies from paying kickbacks to prisons and prison-officials for telcoms services, so the prison-tech companies have rebranded ebooks, music, and money-transfers as non-communications products, and the kickbacks are bigger than ever.

This is the bottom end of the shitty technology adoption curve. Long before Ubisoft started deleting games that you'd bought a "perpetual license" for, prisoners were having their media ganked by an uncaring corporation that knew it was untouchable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

Revoking your media, charging by the byte for messaging, confiscating things in the name of security and then selling them back to you – these are all tactics that were developed in the prison system, refined, normalized, and then worked up the privilege gradient. Prisoners are living in your technology future. It's just not evenly distributed – yet.

As it happens, prison-tech is at the heart of my next novel, The Bezzle, which comes out on Feb 20. This is a followup to last year's bestselling Red Team Blues, which introduced the world to Marty Hench, a two-fisted, hard-bitten, high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley finance scams:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

In The Bezzle, we travel with Marty back to the mid 2000s (Hench is a kind of tech-scam Zelig and every book is a standalone tale of high-tech ripoffs from a different time and place). Marty's trying to help his old pal Scott Warms, a once-high-flying founder who's fallen prey to California's three-strikes law and is now facing decades in a state pen. As bad as things are, they get worse when the prison starts handing out "free" tablet and closing down the visitation room, the library, and the payphones.

This is an entry to the thing I love most about the Hench novels: the opportunity to turn all this dry, financial skullduggery into high-intensity, high-stakes technothriller plot. For me, Marty Hench is a tool for flensing the scam economy of all its layers of respectability bullshit and exposing the rot at the core.

It's not a coincidence that I've got a book coming out in a week that's about something that's in the news right now. I didn't "predict" this current turn – I observed it. The world comes at you fast and technology news flutters past before you can register it. Luckily, I have a method for capturing this stuff as it happens:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Writing about tech issues that are long-simmering but still in the periphery is a technique I call "predicting the present." It's the technique I used when I wrote Little Brother, about out-of-control state surveillance of the internet. When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA spying in 2013, people acted as though I'd "predicted" the Snowden revelations:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-writing-radicalized-young-hackers-now-he-wants-to-redeem-them/

But Little Brother and Snowden's own heroic decision have a common origin: the brave whistleblower Mark Klein, who walked into EFF's offices in 2006 and revealed that he'd been ordered by his boss at AT&T to install a beam-splitter into the main fiber trunk so that the NSA could illegally wiretap the entire internet:

https://www.eff.org/document/public-unredacted-klein-declaration

Mark Klein inspired me to write Little Brother – but despite national press attention, the Klein revelations didn't put a stop to NSA spying. The NSA was still conducting its lawless surveillance campaign in 2013, when Snowden, disgusted with NSA leadership for lying to Congress under oath, decided to blow the whistle again:

https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad

The assumption that let the NSA get away with mass surveillance was that it would only be weaponized against the people at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve: brown people, mostly in other countries. The Snowden revelations made it clear that these were just the beginning, and sure enough, more than a decade later, we have data-brokers sucking up billions in cop kickbacks to enable warrantless surveillance, while virtually following people to abortion clinics, churches, and protests. Mass surveillance is chugging its way up the shitty tech adoption curve with no sign of stopping.

Like Little Brother, The Bezzle is intended as a kind of virtual flythrough of what life is like further down on that curve – a way for readers who have too much agency to be in the crosshairs of a company like Viapath or Avently right now to wake up before that kind of technology comes for them, and to inspire them to take up the cause of the people further down the curve who are mired in it.

The Bezzle is an intense book, but it's also a very fun story – just like Little Brother. It's a book that lays bare the internal technical workings of so many scams, from multi-level marketing to real-estate investment trusts, from music royalty theft to prison-tech, in the course of an ice-cold revenge plot that keeps twisting to the very last page.

It'll drop in six days. I hope you'll check it out:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

[7amaspayrollmanager]

I should stop but u know what's really bothering me is that there are people online going "these protests are not helping you're not helping the people of gaza at all with your boycotts they're meaningless" and like linking the website to some peace group in tel Aviv like "these are REAL activists who are making change" and its like- the people of gaza the medics, the journalists, every day people that I follow asked us to protest. And have said that it warms their hearts when they see the protests on their phones with whatever little connection they have. To zionists, the people of Gaza genuinely are not even active voices in the struggle unless they can exploit them if they direct their frustrations towards Hamas as they're starving bc of Israel's siege. That's how awful they are

There is a page on instagram that should have more followers and its @gaza_coalition and its a group of gazans running the page and one of their latest posts is asking people around the world to protest on new years eve. This is late but I'm still going to post this because I am really sick of people just assuming that the hours and effort that palestinians and allies in cities around the world are putting into organizing protests and boycotts for the people of Gaza "don't actually care for Palestinians." As a palestinian get fucked this has been the greatest solidarity we have ever seen on a global stage and the people of gaza need boycotts, need the protests, need the direct action

ID/ Direct your efforts towards organizing demonstrations on New Years Eve, demonstrate in front of American embassies, key decision-making centres, and establishments of involved actors and entities to exert pressure on the United States, its allies, and all those complicit in the ongoing massacres in Gaza.

GLOBAL CALL FOR SOLIDARITY PROTESTING GENOCIDE ON NEW YEAR'S EVE CEASEFIRE NOW OPEN THE RAFAH CROSSING AND LIFT THE BRUTAL SIEGE IMPOSED ON GAZA

After an excruciating 82-day period marred by a genocidal war targeting the Palestinians in Gaza, the Security Council issued a hollow resolution, stripped of any substantive reference to an urgently needed ceasefire, succumbing to American pressure and veto. This cowardly act not only granted lsrael the audacity to persist in its slaughter of Gaza's populace, but it also exposed a reprehensible collusion within the Arab and international community.

Consequently, we vehemently refuse to accept the celebration of the New Year while cannons persist in obliterating families, maiming and killing innocent children. We call to mobilize our collective strength on this momentous occasion, transforming it into a global protest against the unrelenting massacres and their supporters. Since the initial moments of this aggression, the United States, along with its allies in Israel, has fiercely rejected any prospects of a ceasefire.

Many governments have conspired against reaching a ceasefire, perpetuating their historically hostile policies towards Palestinian rights. This culmination of tyranny was exemplified by the article by the Foreign Ministers of Germany and Britain, characterised by insufferable conceit and a gross distortion of facts. The cessation of aggression and the very notion of a ceasefire are derided as a "blow to peace," as if this imaginary concept can only be achieved at the expense of the lives and dignity of our martyred children.

For a brighter future, humanity must unite in the face of this rampant tyranny, a relentless affront to the sanctity of life and the principles of justice.

End ID

[xyriath]

but seriously if you are at all blogging about the i/p conflict you NEED to read that standing together article from that post i just reblogged. please. please please please please please. these are the people who are actually doing something about freeing palestine and have been for years. And here's the thing:

IF YOU WANT PEACE IN ISRAEL, IN PALESTINE, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IT'S GOING TO COME FROM.

Because yeah. The way this site is spreading around uncritical posts is a huge issue (and a reason I haven't been around since October). Standing Together is doing a hell of a lot more than blogging about it. They're on the ground putting in the work. Nine days before the October 7 attack, they were in Tel Aviv publicly protesting about the systematic oppression of Arabs (not just Palestinians) in Israel.

"The global left has to be synced with what we need." Trust me, the right is. Boy HOWDY is the right synced. I have gotten more support about my Judaism from the far right than the left and it's??? kinda fucked up??? Someone who worked for Pat Robertson should not feel safer than someone dedicated to activism, but here we are. I can feel how easy it would be to be radicalized towards the right, and I'm actively fighting against it. Now imagine that multiplied by millions of people, plenty of whom don't have the same desire to do so, or feel like they don't have the luxury of safety to do so.

Seeing Hamas being portrayed as sympathetic and talked about like they had a right to commit all of the atrocities that they have is making me lose my MIND. They're a group run by corrupt billionaires who actively started this conflict with the intent of silencing the Palestinian people who have been protesting their tyranny. They have been siphoning money from Palestinians for years and this entire attack is them deliberately throwing Palestinians into the path of slaughter to distract from that fact, the same way that Netanyahu absolutely took advantage of the threat and tragedy to try and get himself off the hook for his own corruption.

Also check out the google doc linked in the article. It's not just a good way to learn how to communicate, but a very good resource for finding out if something you're sharing is worthwhile. In fact, it does a really god job of breaking down why I've felt so uncomfortable about a bunch of the posts on my dash. Some excerpts:

This got way longer than I had intended, but hopefully does its job. Go read the article and, yes, if you need to, reevaluate your activism. Because if it's not what people involved actually want or need, then it's just for you. And that's kinda fucked up.

[matan4il]

Update post:

The fighting along Israel's northern border continues. Today, a Hezbollah attack drone was intercepted over Ein Ha'Mifratz, not too far from the famously mixed city of Akko, in northern Israel. The IDF has been targeting terrorist squads and infrastructure in southern Lebanon in response to the on going Hezbollah attacks on civilians communities here. Meanwhile, a Hezbollah senior has threatened today that Israel is "not ready" for what they have prepared for it.

An Iranian delegation is visiting Egypt, and just like everything else that legitimizes the Islamist regime in Iran, and allows it to get a step closer to its vision of being a world power, this should concern us. The Iranian-funded Houthis have been attacking ships traveling through the Red Sea, which affects global shipping, but the impact to Egyptian economy is even greater, as all of these ships are not passing through the Suez Canal, meaning they're not paying Egypt for this passage either.

A big thank you to @curieklei for sharing this NYT link with me: France is another country clearly denouncing South Africa's false lawsuit against Israel. That's on top of the US, the UK, Canada, and Germany, with the latter even saying it would join the lawsuit on Israel's side.

Yesterday, Jan 18, was the one year birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest Israel hostage, who was kidnapped to Gaza when he was just 9 months old. He has spent a quarter of his life in captivity, and counting. In Tel Aviv, his uncle gave a speech, in which he brought up reading what developmental stepping stones Kfir should be going through right now, based on his age. He should be seeing many colors, but he's only experiencing darkness. He should be crawling on safe, warm ground, instead he's kept underground. In Jerusalem, a mural has been dedicated to Kfir and the rest of the Bibas family, including 4 years old Ariel, all still held hostage in Gaza. Since 'kfir' in Hebrew means lion cub, and 'ariel' means God's lion, the whole family is depicated as lions:

These are Shachar and Tamar. During the war, Shahar was seriously injured, and had to have his leg amputated. He's going through rehabilitation, and before even finishing it, he and his girlfriend Tamar got engaged:

The medical first aid that the army is giving the soldiers has dramatically increased their odds of surviving even some critical injuries. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the percentage of soldiers wounded, who died from their injuries, was 15%. During the Protective Edge operation in 2014, the percentage dropped to 9.2%. According to IDF statistics, so far in this war, the percentage is even lower, at 6.7%, less than half of what it used to be during the Lebanon war. These advancements in emergency medicine have also helped civilians injured seriously by Hamas terrorist on Oct 7 to survive. Much like in the past, it's sure to be used around the world, and help save the lives of many, without Israel ever getting credit for its global humanitarian aid.

This is 19 years old Adir Tahar.

On Oct 7, he was stationed at the Erez checkpoint, on the border between Gaza and Israel. Just a reminder: there were no Israelis going into Gaza since Israel withdrew in 2005. There were Gazans coming into Israel daily, to work here, to get medical treatment, etc. Without soldiers at the checkpoint, it would have been closed. By serving there, Adir wasn't just protecting Israelis, he was also serving the Palestinian population in Gaza.

On the day of the massacre, Adir fought back against the Hamas terrorist and saved many others, before he was killed in battle, when they shot an RPG at him. But then, they abused the body of this kid. They cut off parts of it, including beheading it. David Tahar, Adir's father, recently recounted how he watched a Hamas vid showing his son's headless body. What was left, was so mutilated, they had to identify it based on his dog tags, personal items he carried and DNA. During an interrorgation of two terrorists who were involved in this, it turned out that one of them tried to auction Adir's head for 10,000 $. The family originally had to bury the body, knowing its main parts were missing. The interrogation produced enough intel, for the IDF to be able to retrieve the head from where it was kept in an ice cream shop's freezer, with signs of further abuse on it. The family opened the grave and re-buried their kid.

They are now trying to raise enough money, to open a center for endangered youth, dedicated to Adir's memory, in the city where he lived, Jerusalem. The last time I saw an update, they were looking to raise 500,000 shekels, and got donations of 27,000 shekels. I really hope they succeed. Either way, may Adir's memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[gothhabiba]

The historical link between meat and colonisation in Israel

In her PhD thesis on the historical role of Tel Aviv under the British Mandate for Palestine, Dr Efrat Gilad shows that while Zionist technocrats promoted a diet of little to no beef, urban settlers enjoyed their steaks and stews. Furthermore, their love for meat led them to play a key role in the colonisation of Palestine. (23 March 2021).

In your thesis you studied colonisation in Israel through attitudes towards meat consumption. What gave you this idea and why was it a worthwhile one?

There were various indicators that meat would be a useful entry point to the history of Jewish settlers in Palestine. One indicator had to do with a surprising statistic I came across. In 2019, according to OECD statistics, the world’s leading beef consumers were Argentina, the United States, and almost tied for third place were Brazil and Israel. Israel is an anomaly on this list. The other countries that tend to lead in meat consumption are also global meat producers and exporters. Their meat industries evolved over centuries, beginning with European settlers who used cattle to colonise. As cowboys or gauchos drove livestock across vast territories dominating the land, producing and consuming meat became linked to national identity. 

Israel, however, does not produce the majority of the beef it consumes; rather, it mostly relies on imports. While colonisation is part of Israel’s past and present, Jewish settlers did not drive herds of animals to dominate Palestine’s landscape as did the cowboys and gauchos of the Americas. The ecologies and economies of livestock in Palestine were vastly different than in the above-mentioned countries. This does not mean there is no historical link between meat and colonisation in Israel – my research actually shows that there is – but that the historical trajectory that led Israelis to consume as much beef as Brazilians was different, and thus required further investigation. My dissertation is the first comprehensive history of meat in Palestine/Israel grounded in extensive archival research. 

Can you describe your research questions and the methodology you used to approach those questions?

As a historian, my methodology involves archival research and analysis of historical documents. Early on I noticed a gap between two types of sources. On the one hand, there was a clear correlation between the growing numbers of European Jews settling in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s and the soaring demand for meat. This was evident in many sources including data on livestock imports and slaughter, newspaper articles on the price of meat and its availability, the building of new slaughterhouses in Palestine’s cities, and multiple disputes between consumers, butchers and cattle dealers. On the other hand, when reading through sources produced by Zionist technocrats – such as economists, agronomists and nutritionists – I noticed a vastly different attitude to meat. While urban settlers were preoccupied with gaining more access to meat, Zionist technocrats seemed determined to convince Jewish settlers to adopt a diet of little to no beef.

My work then focused on three interconnected questions: Why did Zionist technocrats oppose meat consumption? How did urban settlers create systems to allow them access to meat in a country of limited supply (and in defiance of national experts)? And finally, how did urban settlers – in creating those systems – promote the colonisation of Palestine?

What are your answers?

First, I found out why Zionist technocrats opposed meat consumption, and this was entangled in ideas about climate, nutrition and economy. Zionist technocrats adopted an idea rooted in colonial medicine according to which consuming meat was harmful in Palestine’s heat. This was a significant finding because it highlights European Jewish settlers’ alienation from Palestine’s environment, and resonates with histories of other settler colonies, allowing us to think comparatively and transnationally about colonisation. The second layer in the discourse against meat was linked to the settler colonial economy. Beef consumption depended on Palestinian breeders and regional Arab livestock merchants, and increasingly also on overseas imports. This threatened Zionist leaders’ aspirations for a self-reliant Jewish settlement, which they believed was essential to its expansion. Thus, technocrats believed, high levels of beef consumption obstructed Zionist goals.  

My second major finding shows how urban Jewish settlers ignored technocrats by generating a booming meat economy. Settlers first supported Palestine’s existing meat economy but gradually also created separate systems of import and slaughter. Because local supply chains of beef were deemed insufficient and firmly in the hands of Arab and Palestinian merchants, Jewish butchers and cattle dealers tapped into their connections to the European trade and created new networks of overseas cattle import. In creating their own meat infrastructures, especially in Tel Aviv, settlers worked to dominate Palestine’s meat trade. Whereas the literature often focuses on ideologues or rural “pioneers”, I show how urban settlers are historical agents who were perhaps oblivious or defiant of national ideologies pertaining to the meat trade but who nevertheless played a key role in a national endeavour: the colonisation of Palestine. 

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jack Elbaum

The pro-Hamas and antisemitic chants and statements made by those in connection with the encampment have even drawn comment from the White House: “While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous — they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America.”

Here is a comprehensive list of the chants and statements that produced such a response.

A protester stood in front of pro-Israel students who were waving Israeli and American flags with a sign reading, “Al-Qassam’s next targets,” referring to the military wing of the Hamas terrorist organization.

A man yelled at two Jews, “Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 … 100 … 1,000 … 10,000 … The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”

A crowd chanted, “Al-Qassam, you make us proud; kill another soldier now!”

Demonstrators yelled “Jews, Jews” in Arabic and others were saying “Go back to Poland.”

A group of demonstrators off-campus chanted, “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!”

“Hamas we love you. We support your rockets too!” 

“Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas’ fight!”

“It is right to rebel, Al-Qassam, give them hell!”

A person in the encampment said, during a speech, “Let it be known that it was the Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel] that put the global intifada back on the table again. And it is the sacrificial spirit of the Palestinian freedom fighters that will guide every struggle on every corner of the earth to victory.” 

She continued, “Remember that militancy breeds resistance. Thousands upon thousands of students around the world have been moved to rebel because of your militancy.” 

Members of the encampment created a “human wall” after a leader yelled, “Zionists have entered the camp!” The leader then directed the people there to take “one step forward … push them out of the camp.”

When asked if he condemns Hamas, a Columbia student responded, “I don’t need to condemn anybody. I condemn you motherf—ker!”

Another student led the following chants: “From the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab!” and “Resistance [Hamas] is justified!”

There are more at the link above.

[thoughtportal]

Last week, the nation’s largest prison and jail telecom corporation, Securus, effectively defaulted on more than a billion dollars of debt. After decades of preying on incarcerated people and their loved ones with exploitative call rates and other predatory practices that have driven millions of families into debt, Securus is being crushed under the weight of its own. In March, the company’s creditors gave the corporation an eight-month extension to pay up, urging its sale to a new owner to stave off an otherwise imminent bankruptcy. 

Securus is one of two corporations that dominate roughly 80 percent of the U.S. prison telecom industry, forming an effective duopoly that thrives on the captive markets found inside the nation’s lockups. Both companies are owned by private-equity firms: Securus, by Platinum Equity, and ViaPath (previously Global Tel Link), by American Securities.

The slow death of the largest player in this space is not accidental. It follows six years of intense advocacy to expose the vulnerability of the prison telecom industry’s business model on both ethical and economic grounds. Organizers have waged a strategic war against Securus, educating investors and the public about the company’s predatory practices while successfully advocating for legislation and regulation to rein them in.

With Platinum now on the hook to pay $1.3 billion of Securus debt this year following a series of failed attempts to refinance, bankruptcy seems inevitable. The company’s failure would represent a remarkable victory for advocates—and a potential beginning of the end for the prison telecom industry as we know it.

[kp777]

By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

April 17, 2024

Yanis Varoufakis hailed the effort as "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."

"Coups. Assassinations. Riots. Detentions. Disinformation. We know the tactics that have been deployed to undermine our democracies. But who is behind them?"

Progressive International (PI) asks and answers this and other questions with an extensive new database published Wednesday that connects the dots in what the leftist group calls the "Reactionary International"—a loose global network of right-wing leaders and organizations working to subvert democratic institutions.

PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."

"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.

"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.

"The twin insurrections at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and Brasília's Three Powers Plaza in 2023 left no doubt about the international coordination of reactionary forces," PI argued. "Yet far too little is known about the entities of this network, their sources of financing, and their institutional allies operating inside our political systems."

Ultimately, PI aims to "support democratic systems to become more resilient to their insidious tactics."

From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.

A cursory search of the database's contents shows users can:

Learn about Israel's NSO, Rayzone, and Team Jorge, and how a team of Tel Aviv tech entrepreneurs fuel unrest in Latin America;

Meet the Grey Wolves, Turkey's roving death squad with links to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ethno-nationalists in his governing coalition; and

Explore the global network of the Falun Gong, its Trump-connected media outlet The Epoch Times, and its traveling dance troupe known as Shen Yun.

Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."

PI invites the public to contribute to the database.

"Together, we will not only name, shame, and expose the forces of the far right—but also dismantle their network of complicity," the group said.

[azspot]

We are not here to debate the moral squalor that defines the life of the hedge fund billionaire and chair of the seminary’s trustee board, Michael Fisch. We are not here to denounce him for the personal fortune, reportedly worth at least $10 billion, a fortune he built preying on the poorest among us, those families that went into debt to pay his prison telecommunications company’s exorbitant fees which charge up to $15 for 15-minute calls, fees that see families across the U.S. pay $1.4 billion each year to speak to incarcerated loved ones. We are not here to decry the pain he and his corporation ViaPath, formerly Global Tel Link, caused to hundreds of thousands of children, desperate to speak to an incarcerated mother or father, to tell them about school, or that they miss them, that they need to hear their voice to know everything will be okay, that they are loved. We are not here to contrast the lives of these children, bewildered at the cruelty of this world, living in dilapidated apartments in inner city projects, with the feudal opulence of Michael Fisch’s life, his three mansions worth $100 million lined up on the same ritzy street in East Hampton, his art collection worth over $500 million, his Fifth Avenue apartment worth $21 million and his four-story Upper East Side townhouse. So many luxury dwellings that sit empty much of the time, no doubt, while over half a million Americans are homeless. Greed is not rational. It devours because it can. It knows only one word — more.

Chris Hedges

[eretzyisrael]

Israeli and European archaeologists provide new insight into the mystery of ancient Gaza wine

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

Published: APRIL 27, 2023 15:22

Grape pips (seeds) that were excavated from a Byzantine monastery in the Negev hint at the origins of the ‘mysterious’ Gaza wine and the history of grapevine cultivation in desert conditions. One of the seeds – probably from a white grape – has been dated to the 8th century and may be the earliest of its kind documented anywhere in the world. 

It is thought it could be linked to the sweet white wine - the Gaza wine - that archaeologists have seen references to in historical records, but a lack of evidence of white varieties from the period has until now left uncertainty over its true origins. The wine was produced in the Negev and shipped across the Byzantine Empire, as well as to Germany, France, and Britain, where it is thought to have been enjoyed by royal households. 

Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) including Dr. Meirav Meiri of the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and Israel National Center for Biodiversity Studies; the University of York (England); and the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) used genetic analyses to identify several different grape cultivars that were grown in Negev vineyards including both white and black grapes. Colleagues at the University of Haifa, Bar-Ilan University and the Israel Antiquities Authority collaborated in the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the [US] National Academy of Sciences under the title “New insight into the mystery of ancient Gaza wine.” 

Identifying characteristics of ancient grape seeds

Dr. Nathan Wales from the University of York’s archaeology department commented that “this is the first time that genetics has been used to identify the color of an ancient grape and gives us a glimpse into the internationally famous Gaza wine during the period.  It also gave us the opportunity to link ancient seeds with modern varieties that are still grown around the Mediterranean today.”

“The modern winemaking industry is heavily reliant on a limited number of European grape cultivars that are best suited for cultivation in temperate climates. Global warming emphasizes the need for diversity in this high-impact agricultural crop. Grapevine lineages bred in hot and arid regions, often preserved over centuries, may present an alternative to the classic winemaking grape cultivars,” the team wrote.

“Our study of a legacy grapevine variety from the Negev Highlands desert of southern Israel sheds light on its genetics, biological properties, and lasting impact.”

Since the domestication of the wild vine in Southwest Asia over 6,000 years ago, it is been primarily grown for wine. Viticulture (grape growing) and viniculture (winemaking) evolved along multiple historical pathways in diverse wine regions and produced a myriad of legacy cultivars, the team wrote. 

Wales added that identifying the grape varieties that grew in the Negev during the Byzantine period and the genetic characteristics that were nurtured in these dry, desert conditions, could provide valuable insights into how plant varieties could be developed to resist the extremes of climate conditions today.”

The grapevines made some of the largest profits of any crop in Byzantine times and trade from Negev with Lebanon and Crete, for example, have sprung modern varieties of red wine that are still produced in these areas today. “Despite the Early Islamic (seventh to tenth centuries) and the Mamluk (13th century) enforcement of Muslim law that forbids wine production and consumption, vines continued to be cultivated for the local consumption of table grapes, raisins and, in limited amounts, ceremonial wine among Jews and Christians,” the team wrote. “However, knowledge of the specific grapevine cultivated in the Negev was lost.”

[mariacallous]

The Palestinian issue has always been close to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s heart – and a rallying cry for his conservative base. During his two decades in power, Turkey’s strongman has had a tumultuous relationship with Israel, marked by periodic spars with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and occasional attempts at normalisation. All the while, Erdogan has never shied away from publicly displaying his support for Hamas, hosting its leaders in Istanbul and viewing the group as a legitimate part of the Middle East’s political map.

But after 7 October, Erdogan gravely miscalculated, failing to condemn its atrocities against Israeli civilians and reiterating that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization. It is a liberation movement.” Such strong endorsement of the group at such a painful time effectively led to Turkey being frozen out of hostage negotiations, regional diplomacy, and prospects of playing a greater role in a post-conflict Gaza. Outraged and shaken by Israel’s disregard for Palestinian civilians in its military offensive in Gaza, Erdogan has since blasted Israel for “war crimes” and “genocide,” while criticising the West for its perceived double standards and unequivocal support for Israel.

Had the Turkish president been more measured in his public endorsement of Hamas, slightly more diplomatic in his tone and less willing to endorse Hamas so wholeheartedly after 7 October, Ankara would have likely found itself at the core of international diplomacy on Gaza. In much the same way he did on the Black Sea grain deal and the prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine, Erdogan could have led the diplomacy around hostage negotiations and regional de-escalation. He also could have found a bigger global pulpit to make a case for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and grab the international community’s attention for Turkish proposals such as a trusteeship system for a future Palestinian state. 

Instead, 7 October highlighted Turkey’s diplomatic estrangement when it comes to Arab-Israeli matters, despite Erdogan’s popularity on the Arab street. In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, Turkey was all too eager to play a role in regional diplomacy and emerge as the leader of a regional front that could isolate and pressure the Israeli government to abandon its hardline policies in Gaza. Instead, it was largely bypassed in hostage negotiations, and despite its links with the political leadership of Hamas, Turkey has not emerged as a diplomatic hotspot on the Palestinian issue nor in efforts to avert regional escalation.  

Worse for Ankara, the Gulf states and Egypt – despite their condemnation of Israel’s disregard for civilian lives in Gaza – have made it abundantly clear that they are not interested in entering a united anti-Israel front led by Turkey or abandoning the normalisation track with Tel Aviv.

Ankara’s tepid ties with Washington has not made it any easier for Erdogan. Once the lynchpin of US policy in the Middle East, for almost a decade now Turkish-US relations have been a drama shaped by mutual grievances, which range from Turkey’s objections to US support for Syrian Kurds to Washington’s criticism of Turkey’s human rights record and its burgeoning relations with Russia. To many in Washington, Turkey came to be seen as an “unfaithful ally.” Increasingly, Turkish-US relations look to be on the verge of a slow marital break-up, with deep suspicions and grievances on both sides.

The Biden administration started off in 2021 with a policy of keeping Erdogan at arm’s length, initially intended to better manage the relationship after four confusing years of President Donald Trump. But things have hardly improved much since then. There is little engagement at the leadership level between Erdogan and Biden and the strategic divergence between the two capitals on the emerging world order and its various challenges is stark.

With the war in Ukraine, Washington had to accept Turkey’s balancing act between Moscow and Kyiv and turn a blind eye to Turkish trade with Russia in violation of Western-led sanctions. Inside NATO, there is both appreciation (for closing off the Bosphorus to Russian warships) and frustration (for blocking Sweden’s membership bid for a time and trading with Russia) with Turkey.

When it comes to the Middle East, Erdogan’s pro-Hamas position has irritated the Israeli government and its public so much that it has rendered a potential Turkish role in Gaza is unrealistic, at least in the short-term. For the United States, this created a new level of regional tension that needed to be managed. The US secretary of state Anthony Blinken skipped Turkey in his first tour of regional diplomacy after 7 October, and Erdogan, angry at Washington’s unequivocal backing for Israel, refused to meet with Blinken when he visited Ankara in November.

When the two finally met in January, on Blinken’s fourth trip, the conversation was as much about Gaza as about getting Turkey to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession – a priority item for the White House ahead of the NATO summit in Washington this summer. Turkey finally did ratify Sweden’s accession – much to the relief of Sweden and NATO member states.

The question now is whether or not this provides enough of a basis for a reset in Turkish-US relations – one where the two allies can work together on a number of strategic issues, including European security. The period of estrangement has helped neither side strategically and is particularly glaring at a time when the US is trying to manage its diplomacy around two major wars – both in Turkey’s immediate neighbourhood. Amid such geopolitical turmoil, both Turkey and the US need better relations with one another. But to get there, Washington and Ankara need to manage their divergences and identify common interests – especially on the geoeconomic front. They also need to accept that whatever partnership emerges will be ‘à la carte’ and very different from the perfect alignment of the post-cold war period.

Getting the much-delayed ratification of Sweden’s NATO accession through the Turkish parliament has given a temporary boost to the relationship and created a feel-good moment within the alliance as it prepares for the 75th anniversary summit. Sweden’s ratification will now be followed by the US Congress signing off on the sale of F16s to Turkey – something that Ankara desperately wants.

But the real strategic conversation starts afterwards. Once the give-and-take is over, the two allies need to sit and talk about the future of Syria and Iraq and the worsening situation in Gaza. Ukraine and the Black Sea are also burning issues, as is Iran, and the tightening of sanctions on Russia. The Biden administration is painfully aware that Turkey is politically and geographically very close to it all – and more vulnerable than it would like to admit.

All of this ties back to Gaza. At some point, there could be a role for Turkey in the reconstruction of Gaza or within a multinational peacekeeping force. It is hard to imagine the current Israeli government agreeing to a Turkish role – but then again it is hard to see what will happen in the region in a year or two.

For now, Turkey and the US need to take baby steps – learn to talk again, rediscover each other and build some level of trust to better coordinate in the two wars raging on Turkey’s borders. This conversation is largely bilateral, but can benefit Europe and other NATO allies as well. Europeans in particular could benefit from a Turkey that is on better terms with the US by reaching out to Ankara off the back of this détente, and focus on nurturing closer cooperation with Turkey on key security concerns in Europe’s eastern neighbourhood and further afield in the Middle East. From this, they could also benefit from a deeper economic partnership with Turkey – both a top market and a production base for Europe’s. If Turkey manages to tilt towards transatlantic partners in Ukraine, and can play a constructive role in Gaza, it can once again emerge as a useful partner, indispensable for the US and for Europe.

[beardedmrbean]

Norman Vasquez often has to choose between buying soap or calling his family while serving time at Colorado’s Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility.

He’s struggled to maintain relationships with his children while serving a 35-year sentence. Losing those connections has been the most difficult part of his incarceration, he said.

“I never thought I would lose the most important relationships in my life due to the fact that I cannot afford to call my children every day,” he said.

Vasquez, whose statement was read aloud by an advocate, was one of 15 people who urged Colorado lawmakers last week to pass a bill that would make phone calls free to people incarcerated in state prisons and their families.

The approximately 17,000 people incarcerated in the Colorado Department of Corrections pay 8 cents a minute for phone calls — or $4.80 for an hour, according to data collected by the state. Last year, people in the Department of Corrections and their families paid $7.7 million to talk on the phone, state data shows.

Requiring incarcerated people to pay for phone calls breaks their connection with their families — the exact connection that studies say helps people succeed after they leave prison, proponents of the bill said. The lack of free calls places a financial burden on imprisoned peoples’ families — many of which are living in poverty — and keeps incarcerated people from connecting to resources outside of the prison walls that can help them re-enter society, they said.

“Their kids and their spouses will be more connected to them — they’ll be more likely to succeed when they leave,” said Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat sponsoring the bill, HB23-1133. “That means we have healthier communities, more public safety and less people in prison.”

The bill is part of a wave of legislation across the country to provide free phone calls to incarcerated people and regulate the private companies that dominate the prison communications industry. The sponsors of the Colorado bill pitched it as a small step to reduce recidivism and save taxpayer money in the long term.

People who maintain family relationships are more likely to succeed after release and avoid a new criminal charge. The state saves money when it imprisons fewer people, Amabile said.

Vasquez knows he will need his family when he is released.

“Who do I turn to when it’s time to go home?” he asked.

$4 million investment

Eight cents a minute may not seem like a lot, but it adds up over years of incarceration, said Rep. Mandy Lindsay, one of the bill sponsors. A daily 15-minute phone call adds up to $438 a year. Other types of communication like video calls and emails cost money, too. Incarcerated people have no ability to make a living wage and their loved ones are often strapped for cash.

Lindsay, an Arapahoe County Democrat, has experienced this firsthand — her brother-in-law is incarcerated.

“It became very quickly apparent how cumbersome, how expensive, how burdensome it becomes,” she said.

The bill would require the Department of Corrections to take on the costs of phone calls and allows the state to pay for video chats and emails as well. The change would cost the state approximately $4 million a year, which includes also paying for video calls and emails, according to the fiscal note.

The fiscal note assumes the Department of Corrections will finalize a new contract with a lower per-minute fee of 2 cents a minute and estimates that, on average, incarcerated people spend about 20 minutes a day on the phone.

Virginia-based ViaPath — previously known as Global Tel Link or GTL — provides phone and video call services to people in the Department of Corrections at no cost to the state and instead pays the state to operate in the prisons. Under the current contract, ViaPath keeps all the revenue from inmate calls and pays $800,000 a year to the state in a “cost recovery fee” to cover the salaries of staff members who work on the phone systems, according to the contract.

The bill would ban the Department of Corrections from receiving money from phone service providers for the right to operate in the system.

The phone technology provided by ViaPath allows the department to monitor and record calls and manage whom incarcerated people talk to. The company also provides software that scans recorded phone calls for keywords.

“The added security features are what the vendors provide and are the reason we have these contracts. It would be contrary to public safety to simply plug in phones and open them up for use,” Department of Corrections spokeswoman Annie Skinner said in an email.

The Department of Corrections does not oppose the bill, Amabile said.

Having to pay for phone calls also can keep people who are eligible for parole from leaving prison, said Jamie Ray with Second Chance Center, an Aurora nonprofit that helps people leaving prison. People need a place to live before they can be released on parole and need to make phone calls to set up that living situation.

Phone calls with his family reminded George Davis of who he was while he served his years in the Department of Corrections. The phone calls gave him hope, sanity and a desire to do better. They saved his life, he told lawmakters at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill.

“A ‘we miss you’ can increase your sense of self-worth,” he said. “Hearing the words ‘I love you’ can invoke a will beyond our knowing to keep striving. It is through those connections that lives are changed.”

Glaring market failure

The Colorado bill is part of a nationwide effort to regulate or eliminate costs for phone calls for incarcerated people.

California and Connecticut already have made phone calls free for people in prisons and a dozen other states are considering similar changes, said Bianca Tylek of Worth Rises, a nonprofit advocacy organization that advocates for free phone calls nationwide.

Several jurisdictions are switching to a cheaper method of paying per phone line instead of paying per minute, she said.

“In 2023, we shouldn’t be talking about a per-minute rate for phone calls — that’s absurd,” she said.

Even under the per-minute model, other states are paying cheaper rates than Colorado. Illinois negotiated a contract where each minute costs nine-tenths of a cent.

Federal government agencies have looked at the issue as well. After years of litigation, the Federal Communications Commission in 2022 set a 21-cent-per-minute cap on interstate phone calls and set maximums on fees. A former FCC commissioner in 2017 called the prison phone industry “the clearest, most glaring type of market failure I’ve ever seen as a regulator.”

Nobody testified against the Colorado bill during hearing last week in the House Judiciary Committee, but Amabile knows convincing lawmakers to spend millions on phone calls for incarcerated people could be a hard sell.

But the state must do something to reduce the Colorado Department of Corrections’ 40% recidivism rate and downsize the department’s ever-expanding budget, she said.

Under Gov. Jared Polis’ proposed 2023-24 budget, the state Department of Corrections’ budget for the first time would exceed $1 billion — a 28% increase from the 2015 budget.

“We are just paying and paying and paying because we are not doing everything in our power to make sure that when they leave that they don’t come back”

More work to do

The bill will not affect phone calls from jail. People in the state’s 50 county jail facilities paid $7.9 million last year to make calls. More than $3.4 million of that went back to the jails in the form of commissions.

[unimarckpharm]

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[hosttoguest]

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[digitalcreationsllc]

FTC targets telecom provider for inmates after massive data breach

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it wants to require a prison communications provider to improve its security practices and incident reporting policies after the company failed to protect sensitive information about “hundreds of thousands” of users and did not notify all victims of the breach. The draft complaint and proposed order against Virginia-based Global Tel*Link Corp.,…