The El Salvador diaries: The psychology of mass incarceration

 Al Jazeera English

On May 17, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, the head of El Salvador’s National Civil Police, took to Twitter to broadcast the news that “more than 31,000 terrorists” had thus far been “captured” since the inception of the national state of emergency at the end of March.

The state of emergency was occasioned by a surge in homicides following a collapse in negotiations between Salvadoran gangs and members of the administration of President Nayib Bukele, including Carlos Marroquín, the director for the reconstruction of social fabric.

Before the latest “terrorist” roundup, El Salvador already boasted a prison population of about 39,000; as of October 2021, the diminutive country had the fourth-highest per capita imprisonment rate in the world (first place goes to – who else? – the United States). Now, under the ongoing state of emergency, the Bukele regime has spontaneously enacted a “special law” paving the way for the rampant construction of new jails. After all, locking up poor young men is clearly a better way to reconstruct El Salvador’s “social fabric” than, say, offering options for economic survival that would allow folks to refrain from joining gangs in the first place. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Uvalde school massacre: The American nightmare

 Al Jazeera English

In his official remarks on the May 24 elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas – during which 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two adults – United States President Joe Biden demanded: “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”

Affirming that “to lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away”, Biden declared himself “sick and tired” of the whole mass shooting thing, adding: “And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”

He shared an epiphany he had just had on a 17-hour flight from Asia, which was that “these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world” – and went on to pose the question: “Why?”

The answer, of course, is far more complex than the handy assignation of all responsibility for “carnage” to the gun lobby – although the ludicrous ease with which armaments can be purchased in the “land of the free” is certainly a significant part of the problem. There are more guns than people in the US, and states like Texas have abolished laws requiring handgun carriers to possess any sort of permit or training. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

George W Bush is not funny

 Al Jazeera English

Everyone has by now heard about the latest gaffe by former United States president and unconvicted war criminal George W Bush, father of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and other fantastically bloody escapades.

In a recent speech at his very own George W Bush Presidential Centre in Dallas, Texas, Bush condemned the “absence of checks and balances” in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which had enabled “one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq”.

Quickly realising his not-really-mistake, Bush corrected himself: “I mean, of Ukraine” – but added slightly under his breath: “Iraq, too, anyway”. The spectacle elicited gleeful laughter from the audience, as did Bush’s subsequent attribution of the Iraq-Ukraine mix-up to his age: “Seventy-five”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The El Salvador diaries: My days as a ‘terrorist’

 Al Jazeera English

When I arrived in El Salvador on April 12 – a bit more than two weeks into the national state of emergency imposed by President Nayib Bukele, self-proclaimed “coolest dictator in the world” – I did not mention my profession to the San Salvador airport immigration official who inquired as to the purpose of my visit. Instead, I announced enthusiastically that I had come to take surfing lessons – which, had it been true, would almost certainly have meant the death of me.

And yet journalism itself is dangerous business these days in El Salvador, at least if you are a journalist concerned with reporting what is actually happening rather than obsequiously regurgitating whatever Bukele says is happening. Armed as I am with a US passport, I obviously have precious little to worry about compared with Salvadoran reporters. But one can never be too careful in the world’s coolest dictatorship.

The state of emergency came about following an abrupt spike in homicides at the end of March – the result of a breakdown in government negotiations with Salvadoran gangs, discussion of which topic is now conveniently criminalised. A supremely ambiguous law enacted on April 5 threatens anyone who shares gang symbols or information alluding to gangs with up to 15 years in prison  – bad news, to say the least, for the likes of El Faro, the acclaimed Salvadoran investigative news outlet that initially exposed the negotiations. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Israel’s policy: Kill the messenger, attack the mourners

 Al Jazeera English

On Friday, May 13, The New York Times website ran the headline “Israeli Police Attack Funeral of Slain Palestinian Journalist”, which was then updated to “Israeli Police Attack Mourners at Palestinian Journalist’s Funeral”. The journalist in question, of course, was 51-year-old Shireen Abu Akleh, the veteran Al Jazeera reporter shot in the head and killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank.

As the Times reported, Israeli police officers had commenced “beating and kicking mourners” at the funeral procession in Jerusalem, thereby “forcing pallbearers to nearly drop the coffin”. This, at least, was mercifully straightforward information coming from the same news outlet that had just days before opted to use the noncommittal phrase “Dies at 51” in its announcement of Abu Akleh’s murder. . . .

Over the course of her dedicated career, Abu Akleh herself embodied Palestinian humanity by speaking truth to power. Now, the occupying power has spoken back by shooting her in the head and attacking her mourners – a response that can only be classified as acute and multitiered state savagery, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of refusing to let Palestinians live, die, or be buried in peace. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The US goes ballistic: America’s gun epidemic

 Al Jazeera English

While in Havana this past February, I made the acquaintance of a man in his mid-fifties, who hailed from the eastern Cuban province of Guantánamo and who in 1986 had endeavoured unsuccessfully to sail on a makeshift boat from Cuba to the so-called “land of the free”: my own homeland, the United States.

Apprehended by Cuban authorities, he was sentenced to three years of labour on a coffee farm – where, he said, he was treated in a reasonably civilised fashion, and where he was able to put his mechanical engineering degree to use by designing a coffee de-pulping machine.

Although his love for the Cuban system of government has hardly grown over the past three-and-a-half decades, the man declared that the only place on Cuban soil where you would find things like institutionalised torture was the US military base at Guantánamo Bay. In spite of his own attempted abandonment of the country in favour of the epicentre of global capitalism, he maintained that there were certain priceless perks that corresponded to life in Cuba, including free healthcare and the freedom to go to school or walk down the street without the fear of being shot. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The legal psychedelics industry: capitalism on drugs

 Al Jazeera English

On April 19, the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel hosted the inaugural Benzinga Psychedelics Capital Conference, advertised as “bringing together leaders of the BIGGEST publicly-traded Psychedelics companies with investors from across North America”. General admission was $697, plus a $26.86 fee. Attendees were promised a “chance to be in the room with the leaders who will take the Psychedelics industry to the next level”.

Indeed, capitalism is already tripping over itself to get people tripping on legal psychedelics. The estimated market opportunity of which is orbiting somewhere in the hundreds of billions of dollars, according to conference keynote speaker Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” reality television fame. The industry comprises an array of products beyond LSD, including psilocybin – the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms – as well as mescaline, MDMA, and the hallucinogen DMT, found in Amazonian ayahuasca.

Psychedelics are still illegal under United States federal law, in keeping with the longtime US “war on drugs” that has so handily served elite corporate interests and militarisation schemes abroad and at home – and that has historically criminalised, inter alia, Black Americans and protesters against the Vietnam War. But just as criminalisation is profitable for the powers that be, legalisation can also bear fruit. And as venture capitalists, investors, Silicon Valley tech bros, and Big Pharma players currently race to pound down the doors of perception into the realm of decriminalised psychedelics, capitalism’s latest hallucination is poised to become reality. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Elon Musk’s $44bn Twittocracy

 Al Jazeera English

When I was asked to write about the $44bn purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk – the South Africa-born CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and richest person on the planet – I was torn. I have written about Musk on various occasions in the past, like when Time magazine selected him as its “2021 Person of the Year” even while acknowledging his track record – which comprises numerous allegations of atrociously sexist and racist conditions in his US factories, as well as violations of local pandemic regulations to keep workers working and Twitter threats against employees wishing to unionise.

Time mused that “the vast expanse of human misery can seem an afterthought to a man with his eyes on Mars”, as though apathy for the human condition is somehow a romantic, Person of the Year-type attribute. Earthly misery has meanwhile only been exacerbated by the fact that we now have to hear about Elon Musk day in and day out – which is why I was at first hesitant to contribute to the din. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Resurrection by reading: An ode to used books

Al Jazeera English

It has by now become platitudinous to remark that people hardly read books any more – and physical ones even less – absorbed as we are by the demands of the digital age: scrolling, clicking, obsessively checking likes, and converting emotions into sequences of little yellow faces.

As a child, I read books constantly – along with everything else: the magazine that arrived with the Austin American-Statesman every Sunday to my parents’ house in Texas, appliance warranty papers, the text on the cereal box at breakfast. Decades later as I travelled the world in my twenties and thirties, resurrecting the ravenous reading habit was always on my to-do list – and yet it was inevitably easier to just continue scrolling and clicking.

Prior to spending the month of February 2022 in Cuba, I had not read a book for leisure in nearly a year – and I had not even finished that one. Then, one afternoon in Havana, I was overcome with spontaneous determination and dispatched myself in search of a used bookstore. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The UK’s quick Rwandan fix for the ‘Migrant Menace’

 Al Jazeera English

Back in December 2020, the Independent reported that Chris Philp – the then UK parliamentary under secretary of state and minister for immigration compliance and justice – had “refused to rule out sending asylum seekers to a remote island or disused oil platforms, or creating a ‘giant wave machine’” to repel migrant-bearing dinghies in the English Channel.

Now, Britain’s Conservatives have devised an even better solution to the migrant issue, whereby the United Kingdom will simply send asylum seekers to the African nation of Rwanda, about 6,500km (4,000 miles) away. And the new plan is already making waves. As John Washington, author of The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexican Border and Beyond, remarked on Twitter: “How much more darkly bonkers the global border regime will yet become is terrifying”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.