Saturday, January 18, 2020

Philippines reimposes ban on workers deploying to Kuwait
THE PHILIPPINES OFW WORKERS ARE THEIR ONLY EXPORT
THEY ARE KNOWN AS TFW TEMP FOREIGN WORKERS WHEN
THE EMIGRATE. THEY ARE THE ECONOMIC ENGINE OF THE 
FILIPINO ECONOMY BASED ON THE REMITTANCES THEY SEND
HOME FROM WORK ABROAD 
AFP•January 16, 2020

Philippines to reimpose a ban on its citizens going to work in Kuwait

The Philippines said Friday it was  reimposing a ban on its citizens going to work in Kuwait after a Filipina maid, Jeanelyn Villavende, was allegedly killed by her employer, echoing
a 2018 row between the two countries.

The Philippines said Friday it was reimposing a ban on its citizens going to work in Kuwait after a Filipina was allegedly killed by her employer, echoing a 2018 row between the two countries.

President Rodrigo Duterte approved the ban as his government accused the emirate of covering up the killing of a maid, one of about 240,000 Filipinos working in the Gulf state.

They are among the millions of its citizens the Philippines has sent to work abroad, seeking salaries they cannot get at home.

The money they send back accounts for about 10 percent of the Philippine economy.

Duterte's government briefly banned Filipinos deploying for work in Kuwait two years ago amid a diplomatic row that began with the discovery of the remains of a murdered Filipina maid in her employers' freezer.

"The result of the (Philippine) re-autopsy... indicates that overseas Filipino worker Jeanelyn Villavende was sexually abused," Duterte spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement, referring to the woman at the centre of the new ban.

Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello alleged Thursday that an earlier autopsy in Kuwait had concluded that Villavende died from heart failure arising from physical injuries.

The labour department said in a separate statement that the ban covers all Filipinos going to work in Kuwait, though skilled workers and professionals with un-expired contracts are exempted.

Workers already on the job in Kuwait are allowed to finish their contracts.

Officials at the Kuwaiti embassy in Manila could not be reached for comment Friday.

Panelo said the ban would only be lifted once Kuwait agrees to fully implement the terms of an agreement signed after the 2018 row that offered security guarantees for Filipino workers.

At the height of the earlier ban Duterte alleged that Arab employers routinely raped Filipina workers, forced them to work long hours and fed them scraps.

His government then ordered its embassy staff in Kuwait to help Filipina maids flee allegedly abusive bosses, provoking the emirate to expel the Filipino ambassador.

Tensions later died down and the ban was lifted three months later after the two governments thrashed out the labour agreement and Duterte made a public apology to the Kuwaiti government.

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Web result

Overseas Filipino Worker - Wikipedia

Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) is a term often used to refer to Filipino migrant workers, people ... The Philippine government has stated officially for decades that it doesn't maintain a labor export policy, and has continued to claim so as of 2012. ... Overseas Filipino Workers can only be legally deployed to countries certified ...
Apr 17, 2018 - Migrante International, a global alliance for overseas Filipino workers, have long called for the abolishment of the system. “'Yan 'yung system ...
Feb 9, 2010 - The Philippines and its remittance economy. ... People, the Philippines' best export ... up that are being marketed solely to OFWs, that is, Overseas Filipino Workers. ... Yet returning workers are only a small part of the story.
Jul 12, 2017 - The government has long embraced exporting labor as official economic ... was finding labor markets: The state not only promoted Filipino workers to the ... Overseas Filipino Workers, or OFWs, represent a subset of Overseas ...
Jan 1, 2004 - Although Filipinos have a longstanding tradition of migration to the United ... be promoted, but only for temporary work via regulated channels.
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 07:52 PM August 27, 2012 ... overseas Filipino workers are, in truth, martyrs for slaving abroad just to help their ... The labor export policy was supposed to be a temporary solution to the economic crisis in the 1970s.
Sep 15, 2019 - No country has worked harder than the Philippines to export its ... Since the mid-1970s, the government has trained and marketed overseas workers, not just ... nearly 600 stories a year on overseas Filipino workers, or “OFWs.
by F Cai - ‎Cited by 10 - ‎Related articles
Aug 24, 2011 - The unprecedented growth of overseas contract workers is one of the ... there was an unprecedented 1.4 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) sent abroad. ... In the case of the Philippines, the labour export policy only ...
Feb 9, 2010 - The Philippines and its remittance economy. ... People, the Philippines' best export ... I HAVE been in Manila, where it's clear that the most successful export of the ... going up that are being marketed solely to OFWs, that is, Overseas Filipino Workers. ... Yet returning workers are only a small part of the story.
OFWs work in different countries and most of them are paid in the currencies of the ... Exports have improved the structure and competitiveness of the Philippine ...
Missing: ONLY
by F Cai - ‎Cited by 10 - ‎Related articles
Aug 24, 2011 - In terms of remittances received from OFWs, the number amounted to a historical USD 17.3 ... The first group of Filipino workers arrived in Hawaii in 1906, and more ... In the case of the Philippines, the labour export policy only ...
by E San Juan Jr - ‎2009 - ‎Cited by 27 - ‎Related articles
The accelerated migration of Filipino contract workers in the last two decades, comprising at ... every president since the export of “warm bodies” was institutionalized as an ... valed only by the trade of African slaves in the previous centuries.




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WHY TRUMP WANTS TO INVEST IN NORTH KOREA
North Korea Fact: Trillions of Dollars in Wealth Is Sitting Below the Surface
THAT AND REAL ESTATE, A TRUMP HOTEL IN PYONGYANG 

Anthony Fensom, The National Interest•January 17, 2020
This article originally ran in December of 2017.
Key point: Investment and profitable extraction won't come until sanctions end.

JUST LIKE AFGHANISTAN


With China accounting for an estimated 90 percent of North Korea’s international trade, the sanctions are set to bite on one of the regime’s last major remaining sources of cash.

“There are very limited ways for North Korea to make money: selling weapons, smuggling and mining,” according to Choi Kyung-soo, president of the North Korea Resources Institute in Seoul.

“Because of sanctions, it’s very hard for them to make weapons or to sell [narcotic] drugs, so the only legitimate way for North Korea to make money these days is from selling minerals.”

Yet should the situation change, Russia and even South Korea are reportedly eyeing plans to tap the North’s mineral wealth.

In May, South Korea’s infrastructure ministry invited bids for possible infrastructure projects in the North, including those concerning the resource sector. It reportedly sees such resources as potentially covering the cost of repairing the North’s infrastructure, should reunification occur.

Another strategic gamble for Kim Jong-un could be abandoning plans to become a nuclear power in favor of international support to develop the nation’s mining and energy sector.

Previously, the regime has traded off its nuclear ambitions in return for international economic aid. The estimated $10 trillion in resource wealth could fund “several more generations of leaders called Kim,” as the Guardian puts it.

In the meantime though, the North’s mineral and energy resources likely will remain untapped for the foreseeable future, barring an abrupt shift in policy by Pyongyang.

Anthony Fensom, a Brisbane, Australia-based freelance writer and consultant with more than a decade of experience in Asia-Pacific financial/media industries. You can find him on Twitter: @a_d_fensom.



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KAKISTOCRACY
Chris Collins, First U.S. Lawmaker To Endorse Trump, Gets 26-Month Prison Sentence

A kakistocracy [kækɪ'stÉ‘krÉ™si] is a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens.

Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost•January 17, 2020


A judge on Friday sentenced former Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), an early and staunch ally of President Donald Trump, to 26 months in prison after he pleaded guilty last September to conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, used his position as the largest shareholder in the Australian biotechnology company Innate Immunotherapeutics to illegally give other stockholders an inside tip that a test of the company’s main product had failed.

“You were a member of the [company’s] board ― that has legal significance. You owed a duty to Innate and you betrayed that duty,” U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick said during the sentencing, according to Matthew Russell Lee of InnerCityPress.com.

“It makes people believe the market is rigged,” Broderick added.

Federal prosecutors earlier this week urged a sentence of close to five years.

Collins cried as he spoke to the court shortly before his sentencing.

“I have no excuse. I tarnished my reputation,” he told the judge, as reported by The Washington Post.

“It’s hard to look at my wife ― she had her credit card canceled. My daughter had her brokerage account canceled. I apologize to the FBI for lying to them. I’ll be paying the consequence for that here momentarily,” Collins said.

Before the criminal investigation, Collins had used his Trump endorsement to raise his profile in Washington. He bragged about the clout he gained from his early backing of Trump, claiming it made him “significantly more visible.” And he was an early adopter of Trump’s bullying and blustering style, a copycat routine that has become popular throughout the GOP.

Collins, who represented a district that covers much of western New York, committed the crime that sent him to prison while he was visiting the White House for a June 22, 2017, congressional picnic. He received an email from the CEO of Innate Immuno announcing that the company’s main drug on which the company’s future hinged had failed a key test. Collins then called his son, another shareholder, from the South Lawn of the White House to tell him about the news and to plan for them to dump the stock.

The next morning Collins, his son and the father of his son’s fiancée sold their stock in the company before the drug test failure was announced and while a freeze on trading was in place for the company’s shares in Australian stock markets. They each saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling early. The company stock plunged 92% after Innate Immuno publicly announced the drug’s failed test.

Well before Collins broke the law, his odd position as the largest shareholder of Innate Immuno attracted attention. The Wall Street Journal and The Buffalo News both reported in January 2017 on suspicious trades Collins and other House Republican lawmakers made as Congress passed a bill that included provisions beneficial to Innate Immuno and other biotechnology firms. He also reportedly bragged to colleagues about how many “millionaires I’ve made in Buffalo.”

After seeing his political profile soar as an early backer of President Donald Trump, former Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) is headed to prison. (Photo: John Normile via Getty Images)

An investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics in 2017 found that Collins violated House ethics rules by providing nonpublic information to investors and visiting the National Institutes of Health in his official capacity to discuss Innate Immuno drug trials.

Collins, 69, was indicted and arrested for wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to the FBI on Aug. 8, 2018. After his arrest, Collins initially said he would not run for reelection in 2018. But he reversed course, ran for his seat and won by less than one percentage point. He had won reelection in 2016 with 67% of the vote. His resignation from office became official last Oct. 1.

Collins was first elected to his House seat in 2012. A former mechanical engineer and business owner, he served as Erie County executive from 2007 to 2011.

Throughout the investigation into his illegal conduct, Collins struck a Trumpian pose as an innocent targeted as part of a “partisan witch hunt.”

He attacked The Buffalo News for “making up fake news on folks [the paper] can’t beat at the ballot box.” He called his then-colleague Rep. Louise Slaughter, a Buffalo-area Democrat who has since died, a “despicable human being” for filing an ethics complaint against him. And he attacked investigations into his activities as a “partisan witch hunt.”

In the wake of Collins’ guilty plea, his lawyers argued in court for a lenient sentence, saying that his actions were impulsive and that he has suffered enough by losing his political career.

Collins’ son and the father of his son’s fiancée also pleaded guilty in the case and await sentencing

Quickly joining Collins in early 2016 as Trump’s second official backer on Capitol Hill was then-Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) ― who also now faces prison time. Hunter pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws in December, gave up his House seat earlier this week and awaits sentencing. Like Collins, Hunter initially characterized the charges facing him as a “witch hunt.”

Reporter Carla Herreria contributed to this story.


Donald Trump's 'kakistocracy' is not the first, but it's revived an ...


https://www.theguardian.com › commentisfree › apr › donald-trump-kakisto...
Apr 18, 2018 - The first recorded use of kakistocracy was in a sermon, delivered in 1644 by Paul Gosnold. His audience was the “King's parliament” ...






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To defuse palm row, Davos diplomacy likely between India, Malaysia


By Joseph Sipalan and Neha Dasgupta, Reuters•January 17, 2020


FILE PHOTO: A worker unloads palm oil fruits from a lorry inside a palm oil factory in Salak Tinggi, outside Kuala Lumpur, MalaysiaMore

By Joseph Sipalan and Neha Dasgupta

KUALA LUMPUR/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Trade ministers from India and Malaysia are likely to meet on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos next week amid a palm oil spat between the two countries, a Malaysian government spokesman told Reuters on Friday.

Hindu-majority India has repeatedly objected to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad speaking out against its recent policies which critics say discriminate against Muslims.

Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation, is the second biggest producer and exporter of palm oil and India's restrictions on the refined variety of the commodity imposed last week have been seen as a retaliation for Mahathir's criticism of New Delhi's actions.

India's trade minister Piyush Goyal denied on Thursday that the government was trying to hit out at Malaysia in particular.

The row between the countries, nevertheless, pushed benchmark Malaysian palm futures to its biggest weekly decline in more than 11 years on Friday.

No agenda has been set for the proposed meeting between Goyal and his Malaysian counterpart Darell Leiking on Friday, the spokesman for Malaysia's Ministry of International Trade and Industry said, adding that the request for a meeting had come from India.

An Indian government source said a meeting was indeed likely with Leiking. A spokeswoman for India's trade ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Malaysia did not want to escalate the palm spat with India by talking of any retaliation for now, after Mahathir's media adviser called for tighter regulations on Indian expatriates and products. Malaysia instead wants to rely on diplomacy.

A separate Indian government source said it was important for New Delhi also to talk things out with Malaysia.

"We too have a lot to lose in Malaysia, there are 2 million Indian-origin people there," the source said.

There were a total of 117,733 Indian nationals registered as foreign labor in Malaysia as at June 2019, accounting for nearly 6% of the total foreign workforce in the country. Ethnic Malaysian-Indians are the third-largest community in the Southeast Asian country.

Another reason for frosty ties between the countries is the continued presence of controversial Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik in Malaysia, said one of the sources.

Naik, who faces charges of money laundering and hate speech in India, has lived in Malaysia for more than three years and has permanent residency in the country. He denies the Indian accusations.

The sources declined to be identified as they were not authorized to talk to the media.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das, Joseph Sipalan in Kuala Lumpur and Neha Dasgupta in New Delhi, Editing by William Maclean and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Former U.S. Marine: Suleimani’s Killing Is the Apotheosis of American 'Strategy'
A strategy that has achieved the opposite of its promises is a failure. Before another moment is wasted, Americans need to ask their leaders the same question General David Petraeus plaintively asked at the height of the Iraq War: “Tell me how this ends.”
by Gil Barndollar

For all the righteous uproar it produced and the consequences still unfolding, in a way the killing of Iranian Major General Qassim Suleimani this month was business as usual. A longtime foe of America, Suleimani was killed by a Hellfire missile from a Reaper drone, like countless Al Qaeda terrorists, Taliban leaders, and other militants. Traveling to Iraq from Syria, Suleimani probably didn’t even require the full exertions of America’s vast intelligence and special operations manhunting machine. His death by drone was far more mundane than the Hollywood raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Only the Iranian response—a casualty-free retaliatory missile strike—was new.

Suleimani’s killing, in its operational impact and its potential ramifications, will almost certainly be “bigger than bin Laden.” But the best-case scenario is that it will be equally meaningless. Bin Laden’s death was not part of any realistic strategy to “defeat terrorism”—it was simply a high-profile tactical success. Suleimani’s death is part of the same problem: An American “strategy” that, despite decades of effort, thousands of American lives, and trillions of dollars, has achieved next to nothing of worth in the Middle East.

The White House’s justification, that Suleimani was an imminent threat to Americans in Iraq, sounds dubious. No real evidence has yet been put forward to support this claim. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whilst doing the “full Ginsburg” of all five major talk shows, quickly shifted to rote denunciations of Suleimani, Iran, and even the Obama Administration. No one has made a realistic case for how killing Suleimani will moderate Iranian behavior.

Instead of having an adult conversation about ways, ends, and means, the Trump administration gave Americans hollow moralizing and adolescent chest-beating about “taking a bad guy off the battlefield.” But revenge, as others have noted, is not a strategy. Neither is attriting enemy leaders.

One would think U.S. leaders had grasped this basic truth by now. The United States has killed tens of thousands of terrorists and Islamic militants since 9/11, to the point where “droning” is now a verb. Most were at least threats to U.S. troops. A few were even plotting attacks on America. Yet today there are nearly four times as many Sunni Islamic militants as there were on September 11, 2001.

Suleimani’s longtime deputy, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, has already been installed as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force. He may lack the charisma and some of the skill of his predecessor but the Quds Force probably won’t miss a beat. “Decapitation” and “mowing the grass” have not defeated anything.

Merely being there has also become a key tenet of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Despite the destruction of ISIS’s caliphate, the serious threat to U.S. troops from Iranian proxies, and now the expressed will of the Iraqi people through a majority of their parliament, President Trump and Secretary Pompeo sound determined to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. Yet any U.S. soldier or Marine who patrolled Afghanistan or Iraq daily to execute vague or meaningless tactical tasks could preach to the emptiness of military presence as an end in itself. As the former Marine Corps Commandant, General P.X. Kelley, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in the wake of the Beirut bombing: “presence as a mission is not in any military dictionary.” That American forces may be forced to leave Iraq may be the one positive, though unintentional, outcome of Suleimani’s killing.

While extolling attrition and presence, American “strategy” has ignored means that are far more decisive than any weapon. Chief among these is sentiment towards the United States.

Despite sanctions, proxy war, and the incessant propaganda of the theocracy, Iranians, especially the young, have remained surprisingly pro-American for decades. Iran was the lone Muslim-majority country to express popular sympathy with America after 9/11. Visiting American wrestlers have been surprised to find themselves treated like celebrities. Young Iranians voraciously consume American popular culture, from McDonald’s imitations to HBO’s Chernobyl.

This sentiment, critical capital for a future free and democratic Iran, has been severely damaged by the killing of Suleimani. Though most Iranians appear to regard their government with increasing contempt, Suleimani was revered as the defender of the nation and slayer of ISIS. Many studies, including a recent one by the University of Maryland, show him to have been the most popular political figure in Iran. Trump has tossed aside the potential sympathy and receptivity of tens of millions of Iranians for the tactical gain of removing one key leader and operative.

The Trump Administration’s policy of maximum pressure has become, at a minimum, low-level war. The idea that killing one man would cow a proud nation of 80 million people is delusional. A war with Iran, even a limited one, will only further entrench the Iranian theocracy. People naturally rally around the flag during wartime, as even Hitler and Stalin discovered of each others’ states. Absent a total war for regime change—a daunting geographic and military challenge—America will likely be far worse off with regard to both Iran and the Middle East as a result of killing Suleimani.

A strategy that has achieved the opposite of its promises is a failure. Before another moment is wasted, Americans need to ask their leaders the same question General David Petraeus plaintively asked at the height of the Iraq War: “Tell me how this ends.”

Gil Barndollar is a fellow with Defense Priorities and with the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship. He served as a U.S. Marine infantry officer from 2009 to 2016.
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Pain still acute as Hungary's Jews mark liberation of Budapest ghetto

By Marton Dunai, Reuters•January 17, 2020


Pain still acute as Hungary's Jews mark liberation of Budapest ghetto
Man stands front of the Memorial Ghetto Wall during the commemoration of the liberation of the Budapest ghetto by the Red Army, 75 years ago in Budapest

By Marton Dunai

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian Jews on Friday marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Budapest ghetto and the end of the Holocaust, which killed more than 500,000 Jews and destroyed a once-vibrant Jewish culture across Hungary.

"I lost 49 family members," survivor Eva Fahidi told a small crowd at the Holocaust Memorial Wall, part of the wall that once surrounded the ghetto in central Budapest. "I was 19 years old and suddenly so hated anything could be done to me."

"Hate is the most horrific sentiment," she warned. "Hate yields more hate, a cycle that never ends."

Budapest today boasts a large and vibrant Jewish community, but anti-Semitism remains a persistent problem. Nearly 20% of people dislike Jews, according to a 2018 CNN poll, the highest proportion among seven European countries polled.

In 1944, about 100,000 Jews remained in Budapest. When the fascist Arrow Cross party seized power that fall, about 70,000 were gathered in a small area comprising 162 apartment buildings, surrounded by wooden planks.

Starvation, freezing temperatures and ongoing violence killed thousands within weeks. Arrow Cross gunmen often herded groups of Jews to the banks of the Danube and shot them into the icy river.

The guards fled only when the Soviet Red Army laid siege to Budapest. The wooden perimeter planks were burned immediately in the harsh winter.

Hungary has grappled with that past. Leaders, including Prime Minister Viktor Orban, first deflected part of the blame to a German occupation, but eventually acknowledged Hungary's role in the genocide.

The reckoning continues. Zoltan Pokorni, a prominent member of the ruling Fidesz party, teared up as he recalled last week that his own grandfather took part in the killings.

"(Citing) the German occupation is no excuse but at most an attempt to whitewash the past," he said at a recent event marking the murder of Jews at another Budapest location. "The victims were Hungarians, as were most of the killers."

"We must see the victims as more than Jews, complete in their existence. Likewise we must see the killers as more than that: we must see how they became killers. I am here to tell you, this pain makes us one and the same.

(Reporting by Marton Dunai, editing by Larry King)

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BOMB CYCLONE, POLAR VORTEX, SNOWNADO IT'S COMING FOR YOU

Winter storm takes aim at northern tier, bringing blizzard conditions
A storm gathering strength in the Plains is poised to drop snow along a 1,500-mile stretch from North Dakota to Boston.


SEE 

Winter storm to make travel 'hazardous' across U.S.

MEANWHILE AS YOU SIT AROUND THE FIREPLACE ROASTING CHESTNUTS AS YOU GET SNOWED IN 
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National Archives exhibit blurs signs in Women’s March image critical of Trump

The original, unaltered photo of the 2017 Women’s March in the District. An altered version appears in an exhibit at the National Archives. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Officials acknowledged making multiple alterations to a photo of the 2017 Women’s March showcased at the museum. Some signs held by marchers criticizing the president or referencing  women’s anatomy were blurred.
WASHINGTON POST BEHIND PAYWALL 

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WHY TILLERSON CALLED TRUMP A FUCKING MORON
Trending

‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s rant at generals

The new book “A Very Stable Genius” documents how Trump lashed out at attempts by military leaders and diplomats to teach him about U.S. alliances.
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Life in a Troubled Mississippi Prison, Captured on Smuggled Phones

PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX USA 
Life in a Troubled Mississippi Prison, Captured on Smuggled Phones

Rick Rojas,The New York Times•January 16, 2020
An image provided by an inmate at the Mississippi 
State Penitentiary, who says it shows the clothing 
of a fellow inmate who was hit by nonlethal ammunition.
 (The New York Times)

ATLANTA — The cellphone rang once before someone picked up. On the other end was an inmate inside Unit 29 of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. “Hello,” he said.

Then, in a steady voice that competed against a cacophony of rowdy conversations and a fuzzy signal, he urgently described to a complete stranger the turmoil he said existed on the inside. Some inmates needed medical attention, he said. All of them could use a hot shower.

“Mold everywhere, rats everywhere,” said the inmate, who was serving time for armed robbery, aggravated assault and other charges.

Then the line suddenly fell silent. When the inmate returned a moment later, he explained that an officer had walked past and that he had needed to quickly stash his phone. He had paid $600 for the smartphone — contraband in prisons nationwide. If caught with it, years could be tacked onto his already lengthy sentence.

He then handed the phone to another inmate. “They’re treating us like animals,” that inmate said, before passing the phone on yet again.

And so it went, from one prisoner to the next, in a phone call with a reporter that stretched on for roughly an hour. The inmates complained about unreliable electricity and water, injuries that had not healed, and the vermin that forced them to hang leftover food from the ceiling. One inmate mentioned his girlfriend; another, the countdown to his release, now almost a month away.

The meandering conversation was punctuated by lulls, as the phone was hidden or passed around, capturing the ambient noise of life inside the maximum-security prison.

Parchman, the oldest prison in Mississippi, with a notorious reputation for harsh conditions, has descended into dilapidation and chaos, including a recent burst of violence that left several inmates dead.

Inmates have used illegal cellphones to capture and transmit images — inmates fighting, broken toilets, holes in prison walls, dangling wires and dead rodents caught in sticky traps — that have come to define the crisis in Mississippi. Many photos were texted to The New York Times.

Across the country, prisons are rife with smuggled cellphones, allowing inmates access to the internet, social media and their old lives outside the prison walls. But state officials said the phones have been used by inmates to propel unrest, and by gangs to orchestrate attacks on rivals, inside and outside of prison.

Officials said the pervasiveness of cellphones — nearly 12,000 were seized in Mississippi in 2018 — has threatened prison security. And, by providing an uncontrolled link to the outside world, they also have undermined the very notion of incarceration.

“There is a lot of misinformation fanning the flames of fear in the community at large, especially on social media,” Pelicia E. Hall, the state corrections commissioner, said in a recent statement. “Cellphones are contraband and have been instrumental in escalating the violence.”

Gang warfare, decrepit accommodations and a severe shortage of corrections officers has attracted widespread attention and come to dominate the state’s political agenda. Activists and others say the problems are long-standing, but they credit the images with igniting a surge of outrage.

“The story never really would have broke” without cellphones, said Honey D. Ates, whose son is serving a 15-year sentence at the state prison in Wilkinson County.

“We can hear all about it,” she said, “but actually seeing it, it’s times a hundred.”

It has been nearly impossible for corrections officials to curb the use of cellphones, as they have been difficult to ferret out. “As fast as you take them out, they’re back in,” said Martin F. Horn, a former top corrections official in New York City and Pennsylvania, who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“It sort of defeats the purpose of a prison wall, if you will,” Horn said.

In recent years, an inmate on death row in Texas used a smuggled phone to make threatening phone calls to a state senator. After an hourslong riot killed seven prisoners at a state prison in South Carolina, officials there blamed phones as a reason for the violence. Even Charles Manson, the closely guarded notorious mass killer who died in 2017, was repeatedly caught with phones.

In Mississippi, inmates, their relatives and activists said that phones are often brought in by corrections officers and case managers, and the devices, usually pay-as-you-go burner phones, can cost upward of $300 inside. Elsewhere, visitors have sneaked them in, and there have been documented cases of phones being shot over prison fences with potato guns and deposited by drones.

State officials in Mississippi have resorted to a range of measures, including seeking court orders to get service providers to shut down specific devices. In a statement, the Mississippi Department of Corrections said that it also used technology to interrupt cellular signals, regularly conducted shakedowns and used dogs to sniff out the devices.

Mississippi’s prisons have been rocked by an outbreak of violence and disorder in recent weeks. Five inmates have been killed, including three at Parchman, and many others have been injured. In the chaos, two inmates escaped but were later caught. For several days, all of the prisons were locked down.

Critics said the unrest reflected a pattern of problems in state prisons, which are stretched thin under the weight of an inmate population still swollen from the tough-on-crime measures of the 1980s and 1990s. Some elected officials and civil rights groups, in a complaint calling for a federal investigation, described “extreme” staff vacancies despite having the third-highest incarceration rate in the country.

State leaders have acknowledged the severity of the concerns, and corrections officials have warned of a brewing crisis as they press lawmakers for more funding. On Monday, Hall, the corrections commissioner, issued a statement reiterating concerns over Unit 29 at Parchman, quoting a letter she had sent in August describing a facility that was “unsafe for staff and inmates due to age and general deterioration.”

As the violence flared, inmates broadcast live on Facebook as fires raged inside one prison. They posted images of faucets spewing discolored water, and walls splotched with mold.

Those images catapulted the crisis into public, coming at a pivotal moment as a new legislative session begins and Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, was sworn in on Tuesday.

Officials and others have said that much of the unrest has quieted. The state Department of Corrections has lifted lockdowns at all of its facilities except for Parchman. But the recent turmoil has brought new scrutiny, including from the rappers Jay-Z and Yo Gotti, who filed a lawsuit on Tuesday on behalf of prisoners, assailing what they described as an “utter disregard” for inmates and their rights.

State officials have countered that the depictions shared on social media only added to the discord. The outgoing governor, Phil Bryant, told reporters recently that the inmates craved limelight. “You’re making them stars,” he said, “and they’re convicts.”

Albert Sykes, an activist on criminal justice issues, said many inmates feared repercussions over cellphones, a lifeline for staying in touch with families, especially as rolling lockdowns caused by staffing shortages have curtailed visitation.

The inmates’ fears have been fueled by the case of Willie Nash, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for having a cellphone in a county jail. He was being held on a misdemeanor count when he asked a jailer if he could charge his phone’s battery, an inquiry that led to the new charge. The sentence was upheld last week by the Mississippi Supreme Court, even as justices noted that it was “obviously harsh” and “seems to demonstrate a failure of our criminal justice system.”

Ates said that her son had expressed his own fear, but that she had encouraged him to be defiant. “You can’t shut all of us up,” she said, “and you can’t take all the cellphones.” In recent weeks, she has become something of a switchboard operator, receiving messages on Facebook from inmates across the state.

One video that has been widely shared showed an inmate at Parchman, who spoke on the phone briefly the other day, with an open wound that he said he had received after being struck by what he thought was a rubber bullet. His back was covered in blood and he walked over to a sink, where he turned the knobs but no water came out.

“Please try to help us,” said the inmate, who was convicted on aggravated assault and gun possession charges. “Let the world know.”

He then passed the phone back to its owner. Its battery was draining, and the electricity had flickered out again. The inmate apologized for cutting the conversation short, but said he needed to go.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

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