i do see that this is, you know, it's just an, a no brainer for most of a finance doping. what are its performance benefits? we really don't know. it is more a misconduct issue. the sports should be dealing with quite differently. would be astronaut, saw hoping to make history on wednesday as the 1st all civilian could be launched into open space. next slide is taking a 1000000000 entrepreneur and 3 other novices into space. cape canaveral in florida mission followed to civilian subaltern flights in july. ah, this is educated as get a round up of the top stories. a senate judiciary committee is examining how the f b. i handled the investigation into disgrace, gymnast, teen dr. lowry nasir. he's been jail for sexually assaulting. hundreds of young

athletes are forced into the agencies conduct accused the f. b, i are making fundamental errors among the key witnesses is usa olympic med list. simone biles, a south korea says it has carried out its 1st on the water launched miss ar test. whether the moon giant watch what's the launch from a test site. so says it has also successfully developed other various homegrown missiles hours earlier north korea fi to short range ballistic missiles off it's east coast. they landed in the sea of japan. rub mcbride has more. this comes on what has been a busy day of missile activity on both sides of the d. m. z. first of all, south career is claiming something of a 1st with the launch of this s l b m. now this is a submarine launch, ballistic missile, which is something of a technological achievement, to launch a missile from a submarine submerge below the surface. it breaks free and that its main rocket 5

and away it goes. in fact, south korea becomes only the 7th country in the world to have mastered this technology. this know how it says earlier, wednesday it had the successful launch office as of it's coast in afghanistan, it's been one month since the taller bon sees the capital cobble and took control of the government after its military success is now facing the challenge of creating a durable administration countries economy is in ruins and according to the world food program, up to 1x4ww people are on the brink of starvation. 18 prime minister ariel already has sacked. the chief prosecutor who wanted him charge over the murder of president jovan l. moyse prosecutor had also asked immigration agents to bar the prime minister from leaving the country where the moist was assassinated in july. those are headlines were back in half an hour right now. it's the stream with

government support swindling russia's parliamentary elections take place in september. but as opposition, leader elected violently remains in prison and to finalize the band from taking part, could the due to the criminal be wide open for another clean sweep? supporting the personal coverage on al jazeera. ah, i am josh rushing, sitting in for me. okay. and your industry today is democracy in el salvador risk. the country is making international headlines of the world 1st to declare bitcoin a legal tender. but critics of the president is government say they're undermining checks and balances in a graph are continue power. as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your questions right there in the youtube live chat, join me for today's conversation. all right, joining us today,

we have jose marino. he's the president at the foundation for democracy, transparency and justice. he is in san salvador. paul steiner serves us outdoor ban, salvador and government. as the president of the national commission for small micro companies is also in san salvador and completing our line up as john holmes and mexico cities al jazeera, long time, corresponding covering latin america actually reported from el salvador and showed us how life is changed there recently let's see, some of the report feel the difference in the streets of less palmers, a tough neighborhood in the capital, says julio se so. he should know the under living on the streets, painting murals almost window, and frankly lament. we're living calmly now without problems. you can go and get a soda or a beer wherever around here, before it wasn't light before it wasn't like that, you wouldn't see a light in the street after 7 pm. there's a lot of police here right now and that didn't exist before. and the story should

still right, and it was obvious as we visited, that the gangs were present even if they're a piece. a great report, john, and a lot of the changes that are happening in el salvador. and i have some stats to bring up later. the show to show how murder rates are down to violet down. but a lot of the, the changes people are crediting president, the new president elected in 2019 president kelly. can you tell me? who is he? what, what, what's so interesting about him? yeah, it was really interesting to be there actually, and he is a really interesting person character at the moment in central america. he's a young president, he's really good on twitter is really good on social media marketing and yes, actually makes it the coin sort of initiative. but i think that some of that is also seen, i think by lo, salvadorans is someone who can get in the country for 30 years. in the policy you

willing parties in which has been a lot of political gridlock and also a lot of institutional corruption. and he said, i'm going to cut the rules that i'm going to make things happen. so on the success side of the ledger for him to handle the pandemic quite well, the back nation campaign and salvador wealth. and also what you saw in the report there in terms of violence in the country. this countries just don't like guy was so low and he has managed to reduce that. now that has been reported by theory and credit media that he's done that by doing a truce between gang, which something he said and some of the other governments in the part has done so to basically how we've done that. but has he reduced violence? he's government has reduced by the, in the country and i think that accounts for his high popularity, right? this is a popular president right now and then salvador, that's the good side to legit. now we go back to the other side of the ledger,

which is the fact that the president in his time of both is in the time that we went, he just, he's supreme court that he's congress just elected, had said the president of the country could run against reelection, if you want to put this in perspective in the 1st president, if you chose to do that, been running for reelection once in 70 years. and the last one that did it was a military dictator. so that is something that's a big deal in el salvador, right now. he's done other things like replace the supreme for justice if he's just forcibly moved to forcibly retire for a 3rd of the country's judges. and those are moved, but he says he needs to do to clean house. that's pretty cool. now obviously, if you're looking at that, you're a journalist, you're speech organization. you're thinking, i've seen this before in latin america. where is this going from the president? so it's a really interesting moment in the country with president kelly and those sort of

like 2 or 3 sites that thank you so much. and from your perspective what, what do you see there? will i agree that this, this facet of president mckelly as attractive, i guess garnett, international attention. he protects this anti sound is meant damage. he worse genes in his baseball cap, backwards even to former locations are oh, this is the image he projects, right? it looks makes him look mother and, and connected with the youth. but he's actually millennial, he's, he's almost, he's 40 years old by now. he has a fixation, i guess, with his own image. he. he is a very good in twitter. yes, he is very social media saving he, he's known for having for example, he,

he fired public servant via twitters, a few months ago. but he saw he also has a large following of internet trolls and, and bullies. he's, he's definitely unaffected communicator of i will qualify off a usually shallow discourse. he's highly intolerant with critics, particularly with independent media. john might have seen this as well as some other he tiling potter and also human rights offenders and civil society organizations just like ours. in also he, he's what you would define typically as a, as a, not the right thing and populist. he has discourse that where he claims to be connected with the people. yet he's, he's very keen of, of the paraphernalia, usually, of power surround the, usually by soldiers the economist just to find him perfectly. a few days ago he

said that you kind of said that bouquet is an old fashioned autocrat. guys, a tech loving mother lever and i and i tend to agree with this finish. and so paul, i want to ask you your views because i want to understand 1st or would you actually be considered in the administration? it would just be asking you about your boss. yeah, your actually, he, in fact gave me the, the, the role of president of me, which is the national commission for small micro companies. i've been working with the president now for a number of years before he was elected president with a view to helping him into power and obviously become the leader of what is actually a transformation of the nation. it's, it's, it's hard to talk about what are in front of people around the world without putting things into context. hours. i'll put the context in 3 statements. first of all,

under the 15th of september and 1821. when the declaration of independence was written, the very 1st act, the very 1st article of the, the act says, having declared this, independence in this for publication before the people consider it as something of their own. and i think that puts something into perspective of where the country began in terms of democracy. it actually established a feudal system where we got rid of the king, but we actually transferred the funeral system from the spanish to the cradles. there's an organization in washington global financial integrity and they report for solder, for the years, 2001 to 2015. they estimate approximately $20000000.00 a year, a sorry, over that period,

left the state in corruption, evasion, money laundering, and illusion. and the result of that was the 1st dimensional, multi dimensional, already measurement by the un where we had approximately 98 percent of all homes, you know, solve it or suffered at least one of the 5 different dimensions of poverty. and lame a, just a few 57 percent of home suffered from unemployment or self employment. 70 percent of homes have no access to social security. 45 percent the home suffer from overcrowded household. i could continue, but i think that's, that's plenty to put the, the context there, address, formation or revolution. according to erica general, as we used to work for the department of justice, requires 3 things. one, it requires a pause and the people united in the cause and the 3rd of february 29th,

2019. it needs a conviction to actually take action. and the people took action in 2019. and i gotta get back because i don't think you can discuss el salvador without talking about your homicide right there. you've gone from being the murder capital the world to now it's less than mexico. if we can go to my screen, i'm going to show a little graphic here that shows the declining rate of murders. but i also happen to notice that the decline started in 2015. this is 4 years before he gets elected . so when he takes credit for this with his security plan, how do you justify the fact that we're really the greatest drops in this trend? started years before he came into office, the jobs did start in 2015, sorry, in 2016. 2015 was our most valuable year ever and it was when sense of it was placed

as the most violent capital in the world. and since then, it started dropping again. but we were still talking of a large percentage 20 odd murders per day. and now that has been dropped dramatically over the last 2 and a half years with a view to getting to the point where they've been a lot of days where we've had 0 homicides that was unknown, unheard of before. well, i mean, just because of a church between the gangs i don't believe so. i believe that it is a direct result of having a better control over the territory before the strategy was go in about with the police and them and the military make a big show and then leave. so while they were there and the gangs left, but when the military left, they got back to have been here. i have been here, i mean, yeah, but i want to ask paul if he then disregards entirely the, the journey they, the newspaper investigations, the,

the media exposure that an apparent truce has been reveal happening between the 3 primary gangs of subtler and the government. the, the evidence is mounting pulse. so do you think this is, this is just fake news. i guess, can i just throw into this? and this is for our viewers at home. we're going to tweet out a report right now. this is from the international crisis group. it's called miracle, or mirage gains and plunging violence in el salvador. and there's a bite down here that says, statistical studies show that the territorial control plan, which is his plan, is most likely not the sole cause specific local falls and murder rates do not correspond precisely to those areas where the plans been implemented. instead in large part games appeared to themselves, had decided to go back to waco violence. paul, i would hope that they have actually chosen to do that, but the truth of the matter is that, but how's that was asking pretty specifically. does a government acknowledge that there's been

a church between the gangs as reported by the media or the report so of, of some sort of agreement that has been reached with the gangs are based on people who are not necessarily known for reporting news, but creating and i think that it's very different. i'm sorry. yeah, i have to say, oh, well, respected out light out outlets and salvador indeed in the region bottles. so just put in a little bit of perspective, what would you want to bring up the editor of been deported, right. has he been at the country, one of his editors was, was supported by, by the same government and, and this is the whole strategy, right? discrediting attacking the media, the journalists that do the investigation and i can hear, i still haven't heard any response. serious response with evidence from the government discrediting the story from the side of the the story has expanded and

rested in recent days. newspaper just 2 days ago. also revealed, one of the officials that the, for the fido identified as being part of, of the negotiations with the gangs, was also meeting up with gang leaders at a hospital. so they would pull out gang leaders from the prison. they would take them as if they were sick to a hospital and hope in some other, and then they would meet with public officials to continue their conversations or negotiations or whatnot. i could clear out, but not necessarily any conversations. and i think it's very easy to jump to a conclusion, especially when you want to actually make a point in terms of your opinion and what's happening. i think the truth of the matter is if you look at the ground, you look at the streets and you go to different cologne. yes. which is where people live. you see a big difference. you see a big difference. people are more open. i've had people tell me their po,

quick question for you, another one for a 2nd. when you say that's what we did go, let's finish my point. load your answers fall, but telling you we're just there in the streets. what did you fall? we were talking to is my question to pull, we can speak lou. i think the story that she we spoke to more people saying that we really have to come down however, which way that we can go out at night. the question to him was, does extortion still continuing to in your, in your neighborhood? and we asked people there because it's what we found in the past. due balance has gone down, but the gangs we still operate and they still got their business. is that, and we actually see that happening when we're in that neighborhood. the gang is still there and they still credit it. the question is if they still operating, if they still exist, it's 2 people in the neighborhoods,

do you think that's happening? and if so, what's the government's plan to stop? but then listen, we, we have a plan control territory which is nowhere near finished. it's spent the whole year last year waiting for funds which the congress did not wish to, to, to, to provide. but what we have got is a tremendous advance what we, what we can see and regard of those. so say, as an investigative criminologist, who has made a number of analyses. i provided al jazeera copy of his latest report prior to this interview. and one of the things that it demonstrates is it, it's not just on the sides that have been reducing over the period. but also extortion, also thefts and also female bands. so from that point of view, and that's not the government stating it, it's a private analyst and stating that. but the,

the whole point i think here is that you can't just center a transformation of a country on just said the century or that transformation. paul, i got to jump ahead running out of show really quickly. part of that transformation has been accepting big coin as the national currency. there are a national currently there. here i have a bit of video i want to share on that. for the 1st time, a non feared currency becomes legal, tender in a nation, stay around 23 percent of our salvatore's economy. is remittances alone? those romantic remittances come specifically from the united states. and the legacy financial system is not fair to them. now you could stay in the comfort of your own home and you could immediately receive remittance in seconds and the fee is minimal . the adoption of the legal tender by the government will follow to our service,

primarily the valuable distraction from the increase in the authoritarian measure. being taken by president night, kelly to consolidate power. and of course, as a criminal currency that has a highly volatile value, international actors have also express worry about this move the international monetary fund, which is currently in negotiations with the government out or over. a major loan has express worry that it could be used as a vector for money laundering. whorehouse has been seeing their i said jorge and i actually meant, oh yeah, i think you said, i apologize. i don't know where our graphics guy here is. jorge on the show. don't, don't, we're no look, there's been a lot of hype about the adoption of bit gwinnett legal tender. and i understand that mostly because the government has used its international publicity machinery to, to project an image off of this, making it more prosperous and modern. and also then the government has been,

has been also successful in, in mother life, a part of the international crypt community. but, but i think the reality is very far from there and it will give you 3 quick reasons . look, that the whole crypto bit going adoption project has like transparency from the beginning. did you know that the, the initial announcement of the adoption of a lot that would make bitcoin obligatory, and some other was made at a bit going convention in the states and united states long before the sub lawrence were informed about this one. the mental change. surely monetary policy. i think this reflects well on what i mean by lack of transparency, $200000000.00 of government funds. i've already been used in this for the project, and there are very little, there's very little clarity on what the purpose of these funds would be at least a big chunk of it. to kelly has says that these that the project that the option of pick up would make payments cheaper and it would encourage for investment even he

has had this up there. there is, however, no evidence, no documentation from the government explaining how this will happened. a civil society organization requested just last week, all technical documentation supporting the law, and none was provided because there is none, no technical dividend supporting the idea and the objects behind the adoption of crypto as as illegal took a currency 2nd, research post. so policy and pay, i want to get a chance to jump in on this because we're running out of time. but paul doesn't assert the part of the country. about half the country there has access to the internet uses it regularly, doesn't serve them better than the other half. that doesn't have access to the internet. $1100000.00 businessmen invoice less than $2400.00 a month. and 4600000. salvatore is depend on their sales to eat and live

less than 70 look sorry. more than 70 percent of the population has not got a bang. and so from that point of view, the banks will not touch them because they are informal because they don't have a credit track record with bitcoin. all they need is their national identification . and the advantage of that is that there's a very large proportion of them that receive remittance is, as you heard in your report, this year, it's estimated that $7000000.00 will arrive and solve it, or in the form of remittances. if you look at the average percentage of cost of remittances, you're talking of over a $1000000.00. if you take on board all types of remittance costs, that will be saved. that money could come in the extra income or could come in terms of investment by their, their relatives overseas. additionally, i don't need to be respectful here, but i think this is a, this is

a lot of numbers you're putting out. but why has the government failed to produce a single technical document to explain the link? it's you're making between growth and opportunities for salvador and, and the implementation to forced implementation off bitcoin as a legal, tender. i still fail to comprehend that why hasn't government produced a single piece of evidence. and what we have seen on the country is a cam paying a publicity campaign for sub organs to adopt the quickest pace possible dis, currency. they do not fully understand in which by the way is absolutely on popular . it's extremely unpopular. you know, that be only half a 1000000 already subscribed in the last 7 days. that, that it, that is great. update that your president announced that cindy was not in

the government while it was launched in february on sorry, march 1 more time 7 last week. we've had 7 days of about half a 1000000 people registering it. now the, the interesting thing about that is that by setting the wallet as a national wallet, the president can control all commissions on it. so that means that someone in new york can send 100 dollars to his relative here, or who receive a 100 dollars and can transfer it to his bank account if he has 10 commissions all the way through that man that treats wallet who owns that i'm sorry. who owns that? she vote the wallet that you're talking about. who owns a government owned wallet and who's it run by? it's run by a subsidiary, i believe, of a private company with bucks. yes, it's a private company that has thoughts and could be eventually sold out to somebody

else. yes, it was founded with government money, but it's a public company. you have to see this in the context of the democratic backsliding office. so just just one second a minute i was i think you've got to make this point type. the absolutely so book kelly is immersed in this quick power graph. he has already eliminated the chords. he has the majority in the assembly. he's points for reelection. undoubtedly, he wants to amend the constitution, he wants a new constitution and now he wants us to believe that the new currency, the new legal currency, will be, will benefit salvadorans to which or to whom he is now denied. even the rights totally separate and but you don't have to if you're, if you're, if you're hyper, i hate to do it, but we have to end the show there. paul, i want to thank you. hey, john,

i want to thank all of you for being on the stream today, and i wanna thank you for watching until next time we'll see in the stream. ah frank assessments, by way it is lesson again to suppress informed opinions what you saw happening is come on to it was 42. there was petune is the critical debate that we are here. it's not between kula and any other group that we have concrete here between 34 years re running to keep people in depth analysis of the days global headlines inside story on our jazeera, the latest news as it breaks. the concern is that muscles forces are coming round

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