To be fair, armies that aren't Yes Men tend to have the opposite problem of trying to run the state.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The law in the night
Yeah, but in Latin America, there is this issue of sending the Army to do things it isn't really supposed to.
Specially when it comes to public security, where the military isn't really trained to do Law Enforcement duties. On top of being trained to fight other military forces, it doesn't have the doctrine, resources to deal with civilian problems and the whole organization is built to shoot first and win regardless of the cost. On top of lacking an investigation arm and apparatus proper for civilians.
Not ideal for civilian oriented situations. Unless you are dealing with a unit that is designed to do COIN and fight para-military organizations, using conscripts to act like the police or replace it, is usually asking for trouble.
Inter arma enim silent leges
Cringe but free
New York Times: The lake that allows the Panama Canal to function recorded the lowest water level ever for the start of a dry season this year, which means that vastly fewer ships can pass through the canal.
The Panama Canal Authority has reduced daily traffic through the narrow corridor by nearly 40 percent compared with last year.
🍊orange fursona🧡
Does that mean, some ships will have to divert to Tierra del Fuego at this moment?
ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔
Specially when it comes to public security, where the military isn't really trained to do Law Enforcement duties. On top of being trained to fight other military forces, it doesn't have the doctrine, resources to deal with civilian problems and the whole organization is built to shoot first and win regardless of the cost. On top of lacking an investigation arm and apparatus proper for civilians.
While I do normally agree with this, this is also the harsh reality: The local armed forces are the only ones who can deal with the drug cartels, since them are heavily armed, and the civilian police forces are not.
The other choice to deal with them? Asking for a foreign country to deal with them, just like in Haiti, something that very few goverments in the region, outside maybe Colombia, want to do for fear to make the things ever worse, and this goes double for us here in Mexico, who already had a nasty history of foreign invasions since the independence of the country from Spain and losing half of our territory at the hands of the U.S.
And the Americans are really pondering on the possibility on launching military strikes against the drug cartels in my country, forgetting that doing so would probably cause them to retaliate against American interests and citizens in Mexico.
On Thursday, Brazil's Supreme Court unsealed documents in which the country's intelligence agency Abin was accused of carrying out surveillance on key political and judicial figures critical of the former president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Among the people who Abin allegedly spied on were three Supreme Court justices and a speaker of Brazil's lower house of Congress.
As a result of this, the police raided the house of Carlos Bolsonaro, the ex-president son, while he was away.
Lula da Silva the current president, has, on the other hand, sacked the deputy director of the national intelligence agency and four department heads.
Bolsonaro says he and his family are being persecuted.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68150527
And
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68128142
............
The US is threatening to impose sanctions on the oil industry in Venezuela as a response to the latter's Supreme Court upholding the ban on opposition candidate María Corina Machado.
The sanctions were already in place, since 2019, then in October they were loosened a bit, and now the U.S. threatens to impose them again in April if Venezuela doesn't "met its commitments under the electoral roadmap," according to the U.S. Treasury.
Venezuela rejected the US warning as "rude and improper blackmail.".
She threatened to immediately halt deportation flights for Venezuelan migrants who are in the US illegally if the "economic aggression" intensified.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68139518
IIRC, ABIN's the Brazilian intelligence agency that handles foreign intelligence.
Russian MFA condemns Ecaudoarian decision to hand over Russian-made military hardware to the US to send to Ukraine.
Nayib Bukele the President of El Salvador, has been re-elected for a second term.
Primary results show that 70% of votes have been counted and that he got 83% of them.
He already declared himself the winner before the results came out
Nayib Bukele who once described himself as "the world's coolest dictator," has held a strict anti-gang policy, which is credited with lowering the murder rate in the country and gaining the President great popularity.
On the other hand:
An estimated 75,000 people have been arrested under emergency measures that have been repeatedly extended.
In a report in December, Amnesty International criticized the "gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence.".
His re-election itself is technically illegal, since the constitution forbids him from serving two consecutive terms.
But he got around that, by "standing down" several weeks ago, so "technically" he is not breaking the letter of the law.
Edited by jawal on Feb 5th 2024 at 5:58:00 PM
Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurt
Surrounded by weirdoes
Chile is having a hard time with wildfires on the Valparaiso region.
And Chilean Ex-President Sebastian Piñera died in an helicopter crash.
Satellite images show troop build up at Guyana-Venezuela border.
Edited by Caps-luna on Feb 9th 2024 at 2:07:03 PM
Again? I mean, Maduro isn't exactly trustworthy, but still. What source did you get this from, anyway?
Edit: nvm I found several news sites reporting on it, such as this Yahoo News article redirected from Bloomberg that also mentions Venezuela military forces building a base on Anacoco island. 2 hours ago, man.
Edited by CelestialMacaw on Feb 9th 2024 at 11:18:37 AM
i sniff ground crayons and cheeto dust
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Seems to be the reason.
Edited by kkhohoho on Feb 9th 2024 at 1:39:06 PM
The Wandering Geek
Agh, shit...
Every time someone claims to be realistic is a dour cynic in disguise.
R.I.P. Kabosu, AKA Doge
Not sure if this is the right topic to post this, but...
That's also the first time criminals escape from a federal prison in Brazil.
I'm neutral about the meme, but she was beautiful.
The law in the night
I only have a cursory knowledge of what's going on in El Salvador right now, but I think it's weird the coverage I saw has been pointing out that the guy in charge has arrested a bunch of people, and handily won his reelection, without anyone questioning whether the elections were fair, or if he won because he jailed everyone who would vote against him.
Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.
Bukele is extremely popular in El Salvador. He was always going to win reelection despite its blatant unconstitutionality. The margin is a bit ridiculous and IMO points to manipulation, but even in a fair election he'd have blown his opponents out of the water. Salvadorans just love the guy. Regardless of any (very real, to be clear) concerns about human rights amid the gang crackdown, or abuse of said crackdown to go after political opponents, the crackdown itself is extremely popular.
The overwhelming margin is probably related to Bukele going after the legislature and wanting the ability to pass his further agenda unobstructed.
ok boomer
The Reconqueror
Sometimes the way Bukele handled the gangs problem is a two sharped knife, because a lot of people will aplaud the idea to put in jail to all the gangs members, while by the other side, human rights are being taken in the parklot and that means that if you have a Mickey Mouse tattoo you can end in jail because the police will think you are on one... and considering there are too much people inside...
But sometimes getting too much supporting human rights put you in the wrong side of the coin...
It reminds me of that Indonesian guy who was popular because he was tough on crime but now nobody likes him because of course he's a fascist dictator. Or maybe he was Malaysian?
Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.
Maybe you're thinking about Rodrigo Duterte, who was President of the Philippines.
R.I.P. Kabosu, AKA Doge
So Lula, the president of Brazil, compared Israel's attack on Gaza to the Holocaust. The Israeli government is understably pissed at him and considers him a persona non-grata until he apologizes for his statement.
Edited by CosmosAndChaos on Feb 21st 2024 at 3:32:52 PM
I'm neutral about the meme, but she was beautiful.
And now Lula is facing impeachment over his statements
The process has been spearheaded by a congresswoman from Bolsonaro's Liberal Party, the document has been endorsed by about 120 congresspeople (out of 513 in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies).
From the article - "The petition argues that Lula “committed hostility against a foreign nation”, “compromised the neutrality” of the country, and exposed Brazil to a “danger of war”, as defined by the Impeachment Law, in article 5, item 3."
The request is expected to be stalled indefinitely by Speaker Arthur Lira. But if it proceeds, it would require a 2/3 majority on the Chamber (342 of 513 congresspeople) and then Senate (54 of 81 senators) to oust Lula.
Yeah that guy.
Surely, because the Mexican Generals and Soldiers are experts in building first level airports and modern railways, to provide the country of all the medicines they need and to provide the country with a Medical System as good as Denmark...,
...and while the people here in Spain complains about how slow is the services and the urgency is reduced to hospitals, they will smile to see that, at least, there are enough medicines...
...while it seems the only experience on the Mexican Army now is to be /Yes-Man of the President
Edited by Travsam on Jan 26th 2024 at 2:52:34 PM