Are you sure it isn't Wall Street or Washington?
"Venezuelan runners hit road in groups to elude crime" by Juan Forero | Washington Post, June 16, 2013
CARACAS — The ‘‘express kidnapping’’ plague — ordinary people snatched off the street, sometimes in broad daylight. Homicides skyrocketed, with Caracas recording nearly 4,000 slayings last year, more than any other city in the world. Stories of robberies — and worse, robberies gone horribly, fatally wrong — became standard workplace chatter....
Their club, Runners Venezuela, underscores a central reality here: Despite the dangers, the people of this city are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to have as normal a life as possible....
There are many other violent metropolises in Latin America: Rio de Janeiro, with its heavily armed drug gangs ensconced in hillside slums, and Cali in Colombia, where the heirs to the old cocaine cartels battle it out.
But Caracas is far worse, with homicides rising nearly threefold from 1,998 to 3,973 last year for a murder rate of 122 per 100,000, said Active Peace, a group that studies crime trends here. That is 32 times the homicide rate in New York, a far larger city.
The problem partly explains why late President Hugo Chavez’s handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, almost lost an April presidential vote that he had been polled to easily win, analysts say.
Related: AmeriKan Media Eulogizes Chavez
By rigging the poll?
Facing an outcry about crime, among many other deep-seated problems, Maduro has responded by sending troops into the street to bring order to a city populated with heavily armed pro-government militias, drug gangs, common thugs, and a corrupt police.
AmeriKa has those four things, too, when you think about it; however, it's different when our government sends in the guard.
Crime analysts say the tactics will have little lasting impact.
Not if Amerikan security forces do it.
And nationwide, most Venezuelans fear for their lives.
Like certain sections of Boston.
A Gallup poll released in May showed that residents here are the least likely to feel safe among the inhabitants of 134 nations.
Who did they leave out?
Forty percent said there was drug trafficking in their neighborhoods, and 10 percent told Gallup that a relative or close friend had been slain in the previous 12 months.
That could be Amerika, too!
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Look who else was hustled out:
"Jailed US filmmaker freed in Venezuela" by Frank Bajak | Associated Press, June 06, 2013
My first thought upon reading that was SPY! That's his NOC cover!
CARACAS — A US filmmaker jailed for alleged espionage in Venezuela was expelled from the country and returned to the United States on Wednesday in a gesture that could signal a thaw in tense relations between the two countries.
The release of Timothy Tracy, 35, was secured with the help of former representative William Delahunt, who has long worked to improve often strained US-Venezuelan ties and was hired by Tracy’s family as an attorney in the case....
The expulsion came just as Secretary of State John F. Kerry was to meet with Venezuela’s foreign minister, Elias Jaua, on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Guatemala to discuss relations between the two countries, which have been without ambassadors since 2010....
Kerry sure gets around for a guy who is so concerned about global warming.
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Not even prayer will help them now:
"Church in Venezuela faces rationing" Associated Press, June 01, 2013
CARACAS — When it comes to Venezuela’s growing scarcities, not even the Roman Catholic Church has received a dispensation.
Church officials say food shortages and foreign exchange restrictions are causing a lack of ingredients needed to celebrate Mass: altar wine as well as wheat to produce communion wafers....
The church’s concerns echo those of Venezuelans in general, who have struggled to find goods such as toilet paper and staple food items like milk, sugar, and cooking oil.
Economists say the shortages stem from the socialist government’s controls on the prices of some goods and on foreign currency, which makes it hard for producers to pay for things they need to import.
President Nicolas Maduro blames the shortages on hoarding and said antigovernment forces are trying to destabilize the country.
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Also see: Wiping Away This Post About Venezuela
All done!
