Hey is it still too early to call it fascism you guys.
At least stocks are up /s
but they're not?
The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
141–150 of 223 posts
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#142This is pretty sad as a headline. It's not a warning, it is business as usual. Civil asset forfeiture started expanding in the 1970s and in the next decade, we got Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. Gitmo? 2002. Room 641A is the next year. Black ops sites, aka "we can torture you as long as we're not in the United States" is somewhere around there. Extrajudicial killings, I read 2,400 in just Pakistan, that's O…
There will always be cynicism, quietism, fear, injustice.
Yet it is possible for people to come together and change the world for the better. This has happened many times before, on a global scale: the spread of democracy, abolition of slavery, decolonization.
Lately I’ve been thinking of this as an existential question. We are thrust into this life, into an unjust world. Each of us chooses how to face it.
I remember an account of a mass execution of some villagers by Nazis in Eastern Europe. I imagine being one of these people facing that time in history, with what feels like too little power.
I believe the best way to face such a thing, if a person can muster it, is courage.
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#143I came across this article[1] the other day, after reading about the US sending people to a prison in El Salvador and wondering what we actually know about the place. An incongruity that I didn't notice at the time but realized a bit later is that the prison is called "The Center for Terrorism Confinement" and it has a capacity of 40,000 people. Why would El Salvador or any country need a terrorist detention facility…
Did you miss the year of press cycles where this guy took El Salvador from one of the worst crime rates in the Western Hemisphere to one of the best by liberally arresting anyone he thought might be related to crime gangs?
From Wikipedia:
> During his presidency, Bukele enacted tough-on-crime policies that scholars have characterized as successfully reducing gang activity and violent crime at the cost of arbitrary arrest and alleged widespread human rights abuses.
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#144At this point you have a better chance of being freed from this prison camp being a citizen of any other nation than the US which is sending people there without giving them a chance to prove that they are innocent or a citizen of the United States.
At least another nation will do whatever they can to get you home unlike the US that just doesn't care. "We made a mistake but we don't care. Nothing we can do." Truly abhorrent especially when the US can do so much to get someone if they really want.
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#145I came across this article[1] the other day, after reading about the US sending people to a prison in El Salvador and wondering what we actually know about the place. An incongruity that I didn't notice at the time but realized a bit later is that the prison is called "The Center for Terrorism Confinement" and it has a capacity of 40,000 people. Why would El Salvador or any country need a terrorist detention facility…
Bukele, who calls himself "the coolest dictator in the world" [0], won his first election in 2019, and his second election in 2024 in landslides. El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world and was basically dominated by brutal cartels. Bukeles solution to this was to use the military to round up everyone who is a suspected gang member. Note that this includes people who simply have too many tattoos or are young male who have relatives related to gangs. They built a mega-prison, aka concentration camp to contain these people, but it seems like it is significantly below capacity, estimated at 16k prisoners while being able to "house" up to 40k people. The conditions in the prison are aweful [1].
It is important to note that his policies seem to be very popular in El Salvador, and other latin american countries are thinking about emulating them. Internal security appears to be much higher now than just a few years ago.
But even if you support extremely harsh and unlawful action against cartels, I would hope that most people see the decision to "rent out" space for foreign "criminals" as a dangerous slippery slope. The government there is now planning to build a similar type of facilities for white collar criminals alleged of corruption, which is a classic in the fascist playbook of wiping out internal opposition. [2]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/26/naybib-bukele-...
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/17/americas/el-salvador-pris...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Confinement_Center#I...
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#146The homicide rate in El Salvador has dropped from 100 per 100,000 to 2.5 per 100,000 in just a decade: https://www.statista.com/statistics/696152/homicide-rate-in-... . The El Salvadoran government has literally brought the country to an entirely different level of development, vastly improving the lives of most of the country’s 6 million people. Disorder and dysfunction doesn’t just hurt those who are killed. It’s a…
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Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#147At this point you have a better chance of being freed from this prison camp being a citizen of any other nation than the US which is sending people there without giving them a chance to prove that they are innocent or a citizen of the United States. At least another nation will do whatever they can to get you home unlike the US that just doesn't care. "We made a mistake but we don't care. Nothing we can do." Truly ab…
In my country top lawyers every once in a while take an interesting case pro bono just because they enjoy having a duel with the State in the courtroom.
But I have been thinking about this. Ultimately our entire judicial system is all just words on paper. What happens when the government ignores a court order?
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#148I came across this article[1] the other day, after reading about the US sending people to a prison in El Salvador and wondering what we actually know about the place. An incongruity that I didn't notice at the time but realized a bit later is that the prison is called "The Center for Terrorism Confinement" and it has a capacity of 40,000 people. Why would El Salvador or any country need a terrorist detention facility…
Bukele, who calls himself "the coolest dictator in the world" [0], won his first election in 2019, and his second election in 2024 in landslides. El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world and was basically dominated by brutal cartels. Bukeles solution to this was to use the military to round up everyone who is a suspected gang member. Note that this includes people who simply have too many tattoos or are y…
What El Salvador did is not new.
But they will run into the same problem as every other SA dictatorship that is "tough on crime": the military will become the new cartel.
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#149I don't think many people have actually contemplated what absence of law, defined as rules that apply to rich and powerful people too, is like. In a world with law, there are restriction on what society's most powerful can and can't do, because there are police officers, detectives, lawyers, and judges, who all work together to make sure there are consequences for crimes. In a world without law, the only restriction…
The problem with Americans is that they believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires. In its original context we find this a funny if depressing cliche but when applied to our current context I think it explains in a very dark way why no one does anything and collective defense never forms.
I remember reading comments like these before I was a millionaire.
Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans
#150At this point you have a better chance of being freed from this prison camp being a citizen of any other nation than the US which is sending people there without giving them a chance to prove that they are innocent or a citizen of the United States. At least another nation will do whatever they can to get you home unlike the US that just doesn't care. "We made a mistake but we don't care. Nothing we can do." Truly ab…
In my country top lawyers every once in a while take an interesting case pro bono just because they enjoy having a duel with the State in the courtroom. But I have been thinking about this. Ultimately our entire judicial system is all just words on paper. What happens when the government ignores a court order?
In the US the government is specifically retaliating against law offices that have done this in ways that Trump doesn't like and those offices are largely caving and offering millions of dollars of pro bono work to Trump.
Leadership within the Democratic party is saying that Trump ignoring court orders is not really a big deal until they ignore an order from the Supreme Court, as if rulings from district and circuit courts somehow don't actually have the force of law.
Spineless cowards, everywhere.