Imperial Revenge

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele came to office in a country plagued by gangs and a constitution that prohibits the death penalty. His solution was to declare a state of emergency in order to suspend civil rights for gang members, build a huge prison in the mountains, and pack them in to be isolated for life. It’s called a “terrorism confinement center.” Mussolini rid Sicily of the Mafia with a similar endeavor, so there’s actually quite a precedent for the success of such an operation.

It’s relatively cheap because it doesn’t have the humane features that Western prisons provide. For example, prisoners aren’t even allowed mattresses or bedsheets and spend 23.5 hours per day in large cells with the beds stacked around 10 feet high. They’re fed rice and beans. The understanding is basically that they’ve lost their humanity but can’t be executed so this is the best alternative. The general public is glad to be rid of them.

El Salvador achieved dramatic reductions in crime overnight, fueling Bukele’s popularity and reducing incentives to leave for the USA, where many El Salvadorans now say they feel less safe than their native country. There have been calls to do the same thing in other Latin American nations.

The Trump Administration just ignored a judge’s order and dispatched a bunch of Tren de Aragua prisoners to this facility. Sure, this is mostly theatrics while America is flooded with migrants, but it’s still satisfying to watch:

This obviously doesn’t sit well with the powers that be in the West, so Bukele’s life prospects don’t seem very good. It’s why all Western coverage of this matter wails about human rights, which most people in El Salvador don’t care about when it comes to these criminals. He’s probably too popular and has instilled too much stability in his country for a color revolution but the Evil Empire never relents.

Recently, it canceled an election in Romania and hit the winner with criminal charges because he doesn’t support a war with Russia. The leadership in Serbia is now being subjected to what has the makings of a color revolution because it has a similar lack of enthusiasm for conflict with the Russians. According to the transitional democracy playbook, prosecutions in Serbia will be coming next.

In the Philippines, it just settled a score with another one of its opponents, the elderly former president Rodrigo Duterte. He was guilty of both not wanting his country to be utilized for a war with China and executing criminals with a brash brand of street justice which could be called “extra-judicial killings.”

When he arrived on a flight from Hong Kong, he was subjected to a surprise arrest and quickly put on a plane to The Hague before anyone could organize resistance to his abduction. If they’d tried to drag him out of his house to a jail, and then transport him from jail to the airport, this would’ve been a different story. The Evil Empire doesn’t want a stable Philippines which can make self-interested decisions about China any more than it wanted a stable Ukraine.

The Philippines is a place where I’ve done a lot of business, including Davao, a city far to the south where Duterte had been the mayor. The head of a company I worked with had a portrait of him in his office. Two of his predecessors had been kidnapped and one had died of a heart attack before he could be ransomed.

He told me that he didn’t think teenagers should be thrown out of helicopters, “but.” It was like when someone in America tells you he’s not racist, “but” and then goes into a screed about all the crime and mayhem that black people commit. He went on to explain that throwing teenagers out of helicopters was a great way to put an end to them dealing drugs because they were cocky about being too young for the death penalty.

It’s important to note that the Philippines isn’t a nation with the resources to deal with the severity of the crime that plagues it. In America, we have the resources it’s just that we don’t bother to effectively deal with crime for reasons such as doing this would be racist. So, shooting criminals in the head and leaving them in the street as a warning to other criminals must be understood in the context of poverty in the Philippines. Lengthy due process just isn’t feasible for tackling severe crime in this environment.

For instance, a heavy rain can cripple Davao because it doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with the water. Filipinos who can afford decent trucks have snorkels on them for this reason. Most of the roads in the city are just concrete because laying asphalt for a smooth ride would cost too much. I stayed at a luxury hotel where you had to pass your luggage through bomb detectors and the view from the bar on the rooftop was a massive slum. If you have a private school, you’d better have guards with shotguns at the gate, so the kids don’t get kidnapped. There was also the Islamic insurgency, which is another component I don’t have time to cover today.

It pisses me off what they’ve done to Duterte. I admire what Bukele has been able to accomplish in El Salvador. Although, I hope he realizes that he’s got a target on his back that won’t go away after he leaves office and takes appropriate precautions. He’s not going to be left alone.