BANANA REPUBLICANS

Question: Those folks who were deported on that plane to El Salvador: how do we know they were violent Tren de Aragua members, or even Venezuelans? Was there a real passenger manifest? Was there a record of due cause arrests? Correct procedures? Transparency? They were probably just Latinos caught up in a sweep of people who "fit the profile".

And how is sending them to a horror prison any different from what Russia does? And why is this not a crime against humanity?

Frankly, much as the rightwing are crowing about this, it looks very much like the United States ended up with massive egg all over its face, because there is no way in hell that Venezuelans who broke our laws are within the jurisdiction of El Salvador, and by dumping them there whatever happens to them is, ultimately, our responsibility.


Quote from Human Rights Watch: "A state of emergency adopted in March 2022 that suspended basic rights remains in force. Authorities have committed widespread human rights violations, including mass arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment in detention, and due process violations."
[SOURCE: https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/el-salvador . ]

That report details things which would make even Ron De Santis blush.


Yeah, I know, MAGA doesn't give a flying intercourse about the human rights of any brown people, and the end justifies the means yada yada yada, but just casually dumping arrestees in some random Latin American hellhole is an egregiously despicable act which will tarnish our reputation for generations. At the very least be held against us when we travel abroad.

And by the way, our reputation was already pretty lousy after we decided to use Guantanamo Bay as a torture facility where human rights did not apply.

Essentially, we've become the biggest baddest banana republic there is.

I suspect for some people this is a reason to start proudly shouting that we're numbah one. We're number one! We're number one! We're number one! Yay! Ammurica! Oo! Ess! Ay!

This is a competition that rational people did not want to win.




AFTER THOUGHT: There was a protest at the Tesla Dealer on Van Ness Avenue yesterday. Apparently only middle class Caucasians. The brown people may not have wanted to run a risk of being disappeared and dumped into an El Salvadorean hellhole.

The White Folks have not yet grasped that this could also happen to them.


Random word advice: Don't leave fingerprints and avoid security cameras.




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