We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇸🇻 Gangsters in El Salvador are terrified of strongman Nayib Bukele
He protects citizens from crime. But who will protect them from him?
On February 4th El Salvador is holding elections. Mr Bukele is constitutionally barred from standing for a second term. Yet he is standing, having confected a Putinesque workaround to dodge term limits. And he is certain to win, having brought peace to a country previously terrorised by criminal gangs. He is one of the most popular leaders in the world. Many politicians in the region wonder if they should emulate him.
Mr Bukele has also used his crusade for public order as an excuse to move towards authoritarianism. He has used soldiers to intimidate lawmakers. He has purged and packed the judiciary. He has imposed a “temporary” state of emergency, which keeps being extended. Journalists face prison if they report on the gang crackdown in a way that “creates panic”. Election rules have been tweaked to give the ruling party an advantage. The powers Mr Bukele has amassed are enough to cow the press, the judiciary and his opponents. When re-elected, he will no doubt continue to dismantle checks and balances. If, one day, Salvadoreans tire of him, they may find it hard to remove him. And he is only 42.
One lesson is that politicians who respect the rule of law must take street-level crime seriously or risk being outflanked by strongmen. Mr Bukele warns that if the opposition were to win, they would “let all the gangsters free”, as one campaign ad put it.
The best way to reduce gang violence in Latin America would be to legalise drugs everywhere, removing the largest prize over which gangsters fight. This would not be a panacea—the gangs in El Salvador made their money largely from extortion. And it is not going to happen soon—the United States would make life unpleasant for any country that tried it.
So leaders who care about civil liberties must do the hard, patient work of figuring out how to fight crime without trampling on them. That means training police better to investigate crimes, and speeding up trials so suspects don’t spend years in cells awaiting their day in court, during which they may be recruited by gangs. It does not mean using the army as cops.
📝 The Rothschilds want to legalise every hardcore drug to ”fight the cartels”.
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Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek Minister of Finance) describes AI as a new form of capital that produces not goods, but behavioral modification. This is achieved by engineering perceptions.
The answers provided by ChatGPT, or the images rendered by StableDiffusion — as these increasingly inform our perceptions, they in turn define the reality we experience.
This is what makes AI so powerful — he who controls the AI, defines the reality of tomorrow.
⚡️🇺🇸 Some more things coming out for the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Under the preliminary drafts of the bill, the USAF is requesting a release of $57,000,000 USD ($57.0 Million) to retire all remaining 162 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in current service. Apart of the 2023 NDAA, there was a clause for a few million dollars to be released every so often to gradually retire the (then) 250 airframes by 2034; however due to the push by the Dept of Defense to ‘shed’ obsolete or obsolescent airframes that cannot be overhauled or upgraded further without a whole new airframe, it appears the USAF wants to retire all 162 remaining A-10s by the end of 2026.
The USAF plans to fully divest the 340-total remaining A-10s entirely, including those that currently serve in a handful of Air National Guard units in some states; which will be replaced by F-15EX Eagle IIs (like what is already happening with the Michigan State Air National Guard’s A-10s), or F-35A/Bs.
Included ...
My older sister lives in the country in between Velma Oklahoma and Duncan Oklahoma near the Fuqua Lake area, this story was told by a rural mail delivery woman who delivers the mail in the country.
The incident happened while she was on her route, when she came upon to the mailbox a male Chinese nation came out brandishing a, AK-47 rifle being very hostile,
I don't know if he pointed it at her since it is against the law to do so but she was terrified and said she was never going back and that the location that had a guard tower. Was the sheriff department notified, I don't know, did she notify her supervisor, don't know. But word is from the country folk who live in the area they have seen the guard tower at the pot place;
I refuse to call it a farm because it is an insult to farmers.
And yes she was traumatized by that ordeal
