🇸🇻 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”.
đź—„ Archive
The world’s fastest drone, the XLR V3, just went from 0 to 124 mph (200 km/h) in 1 second, faster than a Formula 1 car off the line.
Designed by Swiss engineers, the XLR V3 is a high performance FPV (First Person View) racing drone built with ultra light carbon fiber, high torque brushless motors, and cutting edge aerodynamics. It’s not just fast, it’s rewriting what’s possible in drone engineering.
This drone accelerates faster than:
✔️ An F1 car
✔️ A Tesla Plaid
✔️ Even a fighter jet on launch
Imagine what they're not showing us...
⚡️A Russian drone strike hit the car of Chief Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolf in Kherson, head of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine’s local chapter.
Yosef is well known for assisting SBU and Nationalists in tracking down pro Russian Ukrainians who supported Russian forces during the liberation and uses his synagogue, as a shield, to help assemble FPVs for Ukrainian forces.
🇨🇦 Stefan Molyneux on X: Almost every government policy in the West is designed to prevent family formation for the native population.
📝 Roger Marques: "Could not agree more.
Housing is expensive.
Families taxed to the bone.
Prices are so high that both elements of the couple must work.
Women are incentivized to not care about having children in their prime.
Public schooling literally retards children.
The culture is profoundly anti-children.
What else?"