I'm done fooling around, so....
"Brazil security forces launch massive sweep of large slums" | Associated Press March 31, 2014
RIO DE JANEIRO — About 1,400 police officers and Brazilian military forces rolled into a massive complex of slums near Rio de Janeiro’s international airport before dawn Sunday in the latest security push ahead of this year’s World Cup.
Oh, yeah, the soccer matches this summer before the Summer Olympics in 2016.
Their president a Putin and spending big dough to cater to the elite sectors of distraction while the people are in poverty?
I mean, I know $ports are important, but....
No shots were fired as the Mare complex of 15 slums became the latest impoverished area to see security forces move in to take control and try to push out heavily armed drug gangs that have ruled Rio’s shantytowns for decades.
In the coming days, army soldiers will begin patrolling the virtually treeless, flat area of about 2 square miles in northern Rio that hugs the main road to the airport and is home to about 130,000 people.
Security forces will eventually set up permanent posts in Mare as part of the ‘‘pacification’’ program that began in 2008 and is meant to secure Rio ahead of the World Cup and also the 2016 Summer Olympics. Police have installed 37 such posts in recent years in an area covering 1.5 million people.
Pacification, in this context, is not a rubber implement inserted into the baby's mouth so he/she will keep quiet; it means the "security" forces are going to beat you over the head if you don't obey.
Sunday’s operation comes at a critical time for the security effort. In recent months, gangs have brazenly attacked police outposts in other shantytowns on orders from imprisoned gang leaders who want to stymie the spread of ‘‘pacified’’ slums. With each area policy occupy, gangs lose valuable territory for the manufacture and sale of drugs.
The cover for oppression is the drug war in which governments play both sides.
Hilda Guimares, an elderly woman who was on her way to church in Mare as officers from Rio’s elite BOPE police unit quickly moved past, said she welcomed the presence of the state.
‘‘This had to happen and it’s about time,’’ said Guimares, a longtime resident of the area. ‘‘We’ve needed to clean up this neighborhood for so long, but we’ve always been ignored. For too many years these gangs have been ruling this place.’’
Other residents, most of whom were too afraid of both the police and the gangs to give their names, had mixed feelings.
During the five-year-old ‘‘pacification’’ program, shootouts in the affected slums are unquestionably down. But many residents complain of heavy-handed police tactics.
Many times they turn out to be much worse than the gangs they are allegedly fighting!
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I'm trying to build something here and they are tearing it down!
Related: Brazil Bests Israel in Evicic Games
See for yourself whether you think the Globe is covering Brazil as well as it can or should, or whether other agenda-pushing issues and areas are of more concern.
Same with Venezuela:
"CARACAS CLASHES -- An activist struggled with riot police during a protest Tuesday. In a challenge to President Nicolas Maduro, prominent opposition politician Maria Corina Machado vowed to take her seat in the National Assembly despite her ouster (Boston Globe April 2 2014)."
A printed snapshot and photo you will not find on the web.
Nor was this in my printed paper:
"Quake hits off coast of northern Chile" by Luis Andres Henao | Associated Press April 02, 2014
SANTIAGO, Chile — A powerful magnitude-8.2 earthquake struck off northern Chile on Tuesday night, setting off a small tsunami that forced evacuations along the country’s entire Pacific coast. Five people were crushed to death or suffered fatal heart attacks, the interior minister said, but Chile apparently escaped major damage or overwhelming casualties.
I know it is only a handful, but the cavalier way in which the deaths were dismissed....
The shaking loosed landslides that blocked roads, power failed for thousands, an airport was damaged, and several businesses caught fire. About 300 inmates escaped from a women’s prison in the city of Iquique, and Chile’s military was sending a planeload of special forces to help police guard against looting....
The quake also shook buildings in Peru and Bolivia....
Hawaii, thousands of miles away in the Pacific, might see higher waves Wednesday, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.
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