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Argentina formally requested to join NATO on Thursday as a global partner, a status that would facilitate greater political and security cooperation. President Javier Milei’s right-wing government aims to boost ties with Western powers and attract investment. The request came as Nato’s deputy general secretary Mircea Geoana discussed regional security challenges with Argentine defence minister Luis Petri, who was visiting Brussels. Mr Geoana said he welcomed Argentina’s bid to become an accredited partner in the alliance — a valued role short of “ally” for nations not in Nato’s geographical area and not required to participate in collective military actions. Nato membership is currently limited to European countries, Turkey, Canada, and the United States. The designation could allow Argentina access to advanced technology, security systems, and training that was not previously available to it, the Argentine presidency said.

I can't see the UK agreeing to this, not when Argentina still claims Las Malvinas.

#argentina #nato #associate membership application

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been slammed for refusing to apologise for the criminal activities of British agents who infiltrated the IRA during the Troubles. During Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday afternoon, Mr Sunak was asked if he would make a public apology to the victims of those agents. Last month an interim report from a lengthy investigation into the Troubles-era practices of a former double agent known as Stakeknife was released. Launched in 2016, Operation Kenova was set up to investigate a large number of kidnappings, tortures and murders linked to the army agent while working inside the Provisional IRA. If found that the unnamed agent “was involved in very serious and wholly unjustifiable criminality, including murder” and that “it is likely that his crimes as an agent resulted in more lives being lost than were saved”. The report also called for an apology from the British Government for their use of such agents.

I suspect an apology would be tantamount to an admission of guilt, which could make the British government liable. This is probably linked to the UK's Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill which nobody in Ireland, north and south likes and that the UN has said should be scrapped.

#uk #northern ireland #the troubles #british agents #stakeknife #murders #sunak #no apology

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Greedflation, but for prisoners

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Today in "Capitalists Hate Capitalism" news: The Appeal has published the first-ever survey of national prison commissary prices, revealing just how badly the prison profiteer system gouges American's all-time, world-record-beating prison population:

https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-commissary-prices/

Like every aspect of the prison contracting system, prison commissaries – the stores where prisoners are able to buy food, sundries, toiletries and other items – are dominated by private equity funds that have bought out all the smaller players. Private equity deals always involve gigantic amounts of debt (typically, the first thing PE companies do after acquiring a company is to borrow heavily against it and then pay themselves a hefty dividend).

The need to service this debt drives PE companies to cut quality, squeeze suppliers, and raise prices. That's why PE loves to buy up the kinds of businesses you must spend your money at: dialysis clinics, long-term care facilities, funeral homes, and prison services.

Prisoners, after all, are a literal captive market. Unlike capitalist ventures, which involve the risk that a customer will take their business elsewhere, prison commissary providers have the most airtight of monopolies over prisoners' shopping.

Not that prisoners have a lot of money to spend. The 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of convicted criminals, and so even though many prisoners are subject to forced labor, they aren't necessarily paid for it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Six states ban paying prisoners anything. North Carolina caps prisoners' pay at one dollar per day. Nationally, prisoners earn $0.52/hour, while producing $11b/year in goods and services:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

So there's a double cruelty to prison commissary price-gouging. Prisoners earn far less than any other kind of worker, and they pay vastly inflated prices for the necessities of life. There's also a triple cruelty: prisoners' families – deprived of an incarcerated breadwinner's earnings – are called upon to make up the difference for jacked up commissary prices out of their own strained finances.

So what does prison profiteering look like, in dollars and sense? Here's the first-of-its-kind database tracking the costs of food, hygiene items and religious items in 46 states:

https://theappeal.org/commissary-database/

Prisoners rely heavily on commissaries for food. Prisons serve spoiled, inedible food, and often there isn't enough to go around – prisoners who rely on the food provided by their institutions literally starve. This is worst in prisons where private equity funds have taken over the cafeteria, which is inevitable accompanied by swingeing cuts to food quality and portions:

https://theappeal.org/prison-food-virginia-fluvanna-correctional-center/

So you have one private equity fund starving prisoners, and another that's gouging them on food. Or sometimes it's the same company. Keefe Group, owned by HIG Capital, provides commissaries to prisons whose cafeterias are managed by other HIG Capital portfolio companies like Trinity Services Group. HIG also owns the prison health-care company Wellpath – so if they give you food poisoning, they get paid twice.

Wellpath delivers "grossly inadequate healthcare":

https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/

And Trinity serves "meager portions of inedible food":

https://theappeal.org/clayton-county-jail-sheriff-election/

When prison commissaries gouge on food, no part of the inventory is spared, even the cheapest items. In Florida, a packet of ramen costs $1.06, 300% more inside the prison than it does at the Target down the street:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24444312-fl_doc_combined_commissary_lists#document/p6/a2444049

America's prisoners aren't just hungry, they're also hot. The climate emergency is sending temperatures in America's largely un-air-conditioned prisons soaring to dangerous levels. Commissaries capitalize on this, too: an 8" fan costs $40 in Delaware's Sussex Correctional Institution. In Georgia, that fan goes for $32 (but prisoners are not paid for their labor in Georgia pens). And in scorching Texas, the commissary raised the price of water by 50% last summer:

https://www.tpr.org/criminal-justice/2023-07-20/texas-charges-prisoners-50-more-for-water-for-as-heat-wave-continues

Toiletries are also sold at prices that would make an airport gift-shop blush. Need denture adhesive? That's $12.28 in an Idaho pen, triple the retail price. 15% of America's prisoners are over 55. The Keefe Group – sister company to the "grossly inadequate" healthcare company Wellpath – operates that commissary. In Oregon, the commissary charges a 200% markup on hearing-aid batteries. Vermont charges a 500% markup on reading glasses. Imagine spending decades in prison: toothless, blind, and deaf.

Then there's the religious items. Bibles and Christmas cards are surprisingly reasonable, but a Qaran will run you $26 in Vermont, where a Bible is a mere $4.55. Kufi caps – which cost $3 or less in the free world – go for $12 in Indiana prisons. A Virginia prisoner needs to work for 8 hours to earn enough to buy a commissary Ramadan card (you can buy a Christmas card after three hours' labor).

Prison price-gougers are finally facing a comeuppance. California's new BASIC Act caps prison commissary markups at 35% (California commissaries used to charge 63-200% markups):

https://theappeal.org/price-gouging-in-california-prisons-newsom-signature/

Last year, Nevada banned any markup on hygiene items:

https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/10425/Overview

And prison tech monopolist Securus has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to the activism of Worth Rises and its coalition partners:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/

When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Prisons show us how businesses would treat us if they could get away with it.

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/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Spring. Värmland, Sweden (April 20, 2015).

#garden #flowers #spring flowers

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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A dancing male Nuthatch/nötväcka. Somewhere close, a female nuthatch watches, trying to decide if the dance is impressive enough to make him a good partner. Värmland, Sweden (April 20, 2019).

#eurasian nuthatch #nuthatch #nötväcka #birds

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Chaffinch/bofink, Greenfinch/grönfink, Western jackdaw/kaja, Great spotted woodpecker/större hackspett, Great tit/talgoxe and Eurasian nuthatch/nötväcka. Värmland, Sweden (April 20, 2019).

#birds

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Bumblebee/humla on a flowering currant/rosenrips. Värmland, Sweden (April 20, 2020).

#bumblebee #humla #insects #flowering currant #rosenrips

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Frövettern. Värmland, Sweden (April 20, 2021).

#frövettern #lake #värmland #sweden

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Wood anemone/vitsippa. Värmland, Sweden (April 20, 2015).

#wood anemone #vitsippa #spring flowers #spring #plants

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thoughtlessarse · 3 hours

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Tree Swallow @ The Great Swamp Conservancy Canastota, NY

#original photographers #birds #nature photography

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thoughtlessarse · 4 hours

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Languages: Deutsch

Bosnian Serb lawmakers on Thursday (18 April) adopted a report denying that the killing of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war constituted genocide, and thousands of Serbs later protested against a United Nation’s resolution to commemorate the atrocity. The massacre in 1995, which happened in the week after the UN safe zone of Srebrenica was attacked by Bosnian Serb forces, was seen as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two, and international courts have ruled it constituted genocide. The parliamentary step came as Serbia and Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic campaign against a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide that is being debated in the United Nations and should be voted on in the General Assembly in early May. After the vote in the Serb Republic’s parliament, thousands of people from across the region joined a protest against the resolution organised by the ruling coalition in the Serb Republic’s de facto capital of Banja Luka. Milorad Dodik, the region´s nationalist president, said that the Bosnian Serb army operation in Srebrenica was a “big mistake”. “It was a crime but it was not a genocide,” Dodik told supporters who were applauding and waving Serb flags. He called on Muslim Bosniaks to pull back their support for the resolution, saying that otherwise the Serbs will not live with them in the same state.

#bosnia and herzegovina #bosnian serbs #genocide denial #srebrenica

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thoughtlessarse · 6 hours

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The European Commission proposed on Thursday to start negotiations with the United Kingdom to allow young people to move freely, work and study in both regions after Brexit. According to the EU, the withdrawal of the UK from the EU following a referendum in 2016 has damaged mobility between the two areas. “This situation has particularly affected the opportunities for young people to experience life on the other side of the Channel and to benefit from youth, cultural, educational, research and training exchanges,” the Commission said. When the UK was still a member of the economic and political bloc, its nationals had the right to live and work freely in the EU, with reciprocity for EU nationals in the UK. Under the agreement proposed by the EU's executive arm, EU and UK citizens between 18 and 30 years old would be eligible to stay up to four years in the destination country.

Both Tories and Labour rejected the proposal.

#eu #uk #freedom of movement proposed #for under 30s #brexit

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thoughtlessarse · 7 hours

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