QUAGMIRE!
This is now, officially, a quagmire. There is no escaping it, the facts are there for the entire world to see. The body count stands at over 150 civilians each and every day dying in the senseless violence. 24/7/365. Over 55,000 in the last year alone. This must end at once. There is absolutely no hope of rescuing the situation. We must unilaterally withdraw all our troops, RIGHT NOW! Er. Um. Wait a second. Never mind.
We don't have any troops in Brazil.
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - More than 150 Brazilians were murdered each day last year on average, putting Brazil on a par with some war zones in terms of its homicide rate, the Justice Ministry said on Monday.
Some 55,000 Brazilians died of homicide in 2005 — a few thousand more civilians than in three years of war in Iraq, according to leading estimates.
Brazil, a continent-sized nation of 185 million people starkly divided into rich and poor, has had notoriously high crime rates for years. Millions of poor live in urban slums and unpoliced rural areas where guns are easy to come by.
Though the murder rate is high, Marcelo Durante, coordinator of the Justice Ministry's report, said homicides have fallen slowly in recent years thanks in part to an initiative to collect guns from the streets.
Citizens have voluntarily turned in thousands of weapons in places like Rio de Janeiro, the famous beachside city whose urban slums have some of the highest crime rates in Brazil.
A referendum in 2005 to ban gun sales failed, in part because some voters had lost faith in police.
(Note for the Clueproof™. This post is not - in any way - meant to make light of the situation in Iraq. It is meant to provide some sort of perspective.)
World news | Gaius Monday, 25 September , 2006
By Bertrand R., Monday, 25 September , 2006 @ 10:43 pm
Perspective? There are also approximately 49 homicides each day in the U.S. How does your post or my additional statistics of homicides in the U.S. have any correlation to the Iraq war?
If you think education is expensive try ignorance.
By Donna, Monday, 25 September , 2006 @ 10:54 pm
Ok, I got some further perspective by doing a bit of googling, then calculating. I found an FBI statistic on murder rates in the USA for the year 2004, which says the murder rate was 5.5 per 100,000 persons. The murder rate in Brazil, with its 186 million folks, is 29.6 per 100,000 persons. The murder rate in Iraq, with its 26 million folks, is 49 per 100,000 persons.
By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 26 September , 2006 @ 1:11 am
Uhm..
“This post is not - in any way - meant to make light of the situation in Iraq. It is meant to provide some sort of perspective.”
The perspective would be the number of people dying in firefights and bombings before the US moved in and after the US moved in.
Your perspective is like saying, ok, we tampered with the honey and it is sour now, but look, the sourgrapes are also sour, so it is not our fault that honey became sour, it is a natural process.
By syn, Tuesday, 26 September , 2006 @ 4:41 am
Further, given the large numbers of refugees fleeing across the border, corrupt police force, gangland-style justice, mob-mentality banana republic rioting and high homicide rates one could say that Iraq is far more advanced than Mexico.
By Jeff Quillin, Tuesday, 26 September , 2006 @ 11:25 am
Based on this grim statistic does it mean we should invade Brazil? You know, to stop the genocide and bring peace and stability to the region? Isn’t that the reason we’re in Iraq, now that the WMD excuse has fallen through? Why does this reasoning work for Iraq but not Brazil?