El Salvador's 'Bitcoin President' Pressured, Accused of Attacking Civil Liberties (msn.com) 42
The International Monetary Fund "has indicated it will not give El Salvador a much-needed loan unless it drops bitcoin" as one of the country's legal tenders, reports the Los Angeles Times. And meanwhile the "bitcoin bond" proposed by El Salvador has been "delayed indefinitely."
But the government has taken other actions:
After a dramatic spike in killings here over a single weekend last month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's reaction was swift — and extreme. He sent soldiers into poor neighborhoods to round up thousands of people who he claimed were gang members, then paraded them in front of news cameras in their underwear and handcuffs.
He tweeted pictures of detainees who had been bruised and bloodied by security forces, suggesting they "maybe fell" or "were eating fries with ketchup." And he started feeding the nation's prisoners two meals a day instead of three, warning that if violence continued, "I swear to God that they won't eat a single grain of rice."
It is a distinct look for Bukele, who has been focused in recent months on presenting himself to the world as a modern tech innovator on a quest to turn El Salvador into a cryptocurrency paradise. Not only is Bukele now embracing the mano duro techniques of past Latin American leaders, he is going much further, using the homicide spree — which left 87 people dead in three days — as a pretext for suspending civil liberties and attacking the press.
In recent days, Bukele and his loyalists in the Legislative Assembly ordered a state of emergency that restricts freedom of association, suspends the norm that detainees be informed of their rights at the moment of arrest and denies prisoners access to lawyers....
That Bukele would use the spate of homicides as a pretext to further consolidate power is no surprise to many of his critics, who believe he may be preparing to stay in office past 2024, when he is supposed to step down, even though El Salvador's constitution bans consecutive presidential terms.
But they also say that there may be another motive for his new tough-on-crime stance: diverting attention from the deepening failure of his cryptocurrency experiment.
But the government has taken other actions:
After a dramatic spike in killings here over a single weekend last month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's reaction was swift — and extreme. He sent soldiers into poor neighborhoods to round up thousands of people who he claimed were gang members, then paraded them in front of news cameras in their underwear and handcuffs.
He tweeted pictures of detainees who had been bruised and bloodied by security forces, suggesting they "maybe fell" or "were eating fries with ketchup." And he started feeding the nation's prisoners two meals a day instead of three, warning that if violence continued, "I swear to God that they won't eat a single grain of rice."
It is a distinct look for Bukele, who has been focused in recent months on presenting himself to the world as a modern tech innovator on a quest to turn El Salvador into a cryptocurrency paradise. Not only is Bukele now embracing the mano duro techniques of past Latin American leaders, he is going much further, using the homicide spree — which left 87 people dead in three days — as a pretext for suspending civil liberties and attacking the press.
In recent days, Bukele and his loyalists in the Legislative Assembly ordered a state of emergency that restricts freedom of association, suspends the norm that detainees be informed of their rights at the moment of arrest and denies prisoners access to lawyers....
That Bukele would use the spate of homicides as a pretext to further consolidate power is no surprise to many of his critics, who believe he may be preparing to stay in office past 2024, when he is supposed to step down, even though El Salvador's constitution bans consecutive presidential terms.
But they also say that there may be another motive for his new tough-on-crime stance: diverting attention from the deepening failure of his cryptocurrency experiment.
This is where I'd use crypto... (Score:3)
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You're gonna lose your cash at the first roadblock.
You can store your bitcoin in the cloud.
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Re: This is where I'd use crypto... (Score:1)
Ah yes, The Psychopath Path... (Score:2)
That way if you have the financial resources, you can convert you money into bitcoin and leave.
AKA "Fuck you, got mine" view of the world praised and practiced by people with a transactional approach to relationships, morality and even life itself.
Family, friends, colleagues, relations, acquaintances, alliances, allegiances... Merely words attached to exploitable assets.
While taking care of number one and following the only rule - what's in it for me?
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If I lived in a banana Republic like this. That way if you have the financial resources, you can convert you money into bitcoin and leave. I think most of the countries south of the border fall into the banana Republic category, most of Africa and parts of eastern Europe. Anytime you have a way to convert your wealth and escape is good for the citizens and bad for the government.
Seems like an easy way to lose all your money.
If you have the financial resources I suspect there's easier ways to leave the country and have your money follow.
Gang murders (Score:2)
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Yeah, the gang violence is really bad. A lot of people want that problem solved but it's not an easy problem. Unless we see that he's "accidentally" jailing journalists or competing politicians, he's probably trying to solve the gang violence problem (it's basically what ever president of El Salvador tries to do, in various ways).
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You can't get rid of the gangs without getting rid of the corrupting influence of drug money.
The first step needs to be legalization.
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That's not the problem, or the solution. Drugs are just one method of monetization for gangs. Beyond that, there's child prostitution and human trafficking, there's outright robbery, there's murder for hire, there's carjacking. In California now we have gangs doing smash and grab robberies of stores. In El Salvador, there's highway robbery. There are plenty of ways for gangs to make money, even if drugs are legalized.
So even if you want drugs legalized, stop trying to see it as the solution to every social
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Drugs are just one method of monetization for gangs.
Drug trafficking brings in far more money than everything else you list combined.
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Well now you are making stuff up.
Either show your sources, or stop lying.
He IS the gang murders. (Score:2)
He made a deal with the gangs to tone it down and have him elected in exchange for pizza and fried chicken, separate cell blocks, various "benefits" and even a repeal of laws.
https://elfaro.net/en/202009/e... [elfaro.net]
The documents register the administrationâ(TM)s concessions spanning across months of negotiations, ranging from small day-to-day privileges at the beginning - such as permitting the sale of Pollo Campero (a popular fried chicken restaurant), pizza, pupusas and candy in gang cell blocks, as well as the transfer of prison guards that the gangs viewed as particularly aggressive - to reversing the decision made in April to merge the cell blocks of opposing gangs and even promising to soften the maximum-security regime, repeal laws, and give gang members "benefits" if the government can take control of the Legislative Assembly in the elections in February 2021.
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In exchange for these concessions, the gang with the highest membership in the country committed to shut off the "valves" of murders and, more recently, to "support," as written literally in prison intelligence reports, Nuevas Ideas in the coming elections.
"Next year there will be elections and, as a Barrio, the gang leadership says, they will turn out to support this new party," says one of the reports.
Effectively, he and his party have gone gangster.
It's just that they bought public support and election influence instead of guns and drugs from the rival gang, that's all.
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Let's try the same approach that they've tried 27 times in the last two decades, maybe this time it will work!
This is not about fighting crime, it's about seizing power and never giving it up.
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Who is he seizing power from? The gangs? Good.
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No, he's already in bed with the gangs. His intention is to seize power from the people who think that democracy should be allowed to continue in the country.
El Salvador's Elon Musk (Score:1)
Guilty? Innocent? Who cares. People are disposable. Bitcoin 4eva!
Disagree with me? Then you must be a pedo.
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"People would rather have revenge than justice."
That is what one sociologist said about the current situation in El Salvador. Personally I disagree. I think it's more accurate to say, "People would rather have safety than justice."
Seems historically appropriate. (Score:2)
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Pinochet murdered thousands of people. He also made Chile the most prosperous country in South America.
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During Pinochet's, period prosperity fluctuated but was pretty much the same when he left as when he came to power. It was from the 1990's onward that the recent large increase in Chilean prosperity occurred.
https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
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Pinochet murdered thousands of people. He also made Chile the most prosperous country in South America.
That's an odd way to spell "unequal."
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It's "mano dura" (Score:2)
Rights? Terrorist la have no rights (Score:1)