Violence in the Real World, Coming Your Way Soon

Worldwide, 468,000 homicides occurred in 2010. Some 36 per cent of all homicides take place [in] Africa, 31 per cent in the Americas, 27 per cent in Asia, 5 per cent in Europe and 1 per cent in Oceania. _UNODC

Chances are, if you are reading this page you've been spared the worst aftereffects of violent crime. Most readers of the Al Fin blogs live in North America, Oceania, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore . . . In other words, most of you do not understand what it is like to live in a truly violent society.

But as certain as your societies are shifting under your very feet, you will. Oh yes, you will.

UNODC Global Intentional Homicide Rates

The war in Afghanistan has claimed a total 3,238 allied lives. This is about the number of murders in Brazil every month. Last month’s conflict between Palestinians and Israelis produced approximately the same number of fatalities as a “hot” weekend in Caracas. The probability of being shot dead as you walk on any street in Baghdad is lower than that of dying on any street in Guatemala. Worldwide, the murder rates have declined slightly, or not risen much. But in Latin America they are soaring. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have the highest homicides rates in the world, closely followed by those of other countries in the region. In 2011 in Brazil, 112 people per day were killed; in Mexico, 71 per day. _CarnegieEndowment

In many nations of SubSaharan Africa, violence is just as bad or worse as described above. There is simply a more relaxed standard of compiling statistics on the dark continent. You simply have to be there to get a feeling for how bad things are.

Latin America, on the other hand, is intimately tied to expensive programs run by a wide assortment of developed world law enforcement agencies. So records must be kept. And the reality is very ugly indeed.

Violence in Latin America is fueled by drug money pouring south from the US and Canada. In Africa, the violence has many causes -- from tribal massacres to religious hatred to a dark and unrestrained inchoate urge to bloody anarchy.

Thanks to the inexorable demographic logic of modern immigration policies, the same type and level of violence that is accepted on an everyday basis across much of the third world, will soon come to neighborhoods very close to your own -- if you live in or near a large city.

Immigrant communities within first world urban areas not only contain the seeds of latent violence -- they are an irresistible attractant for larger-scale and more organised violence. Immigrant conclaves form a safe haven for criminal and other violent organisations from the old countries, often generating levels of local violence so great as to become virtual "no-go zones" for law enforcement.

The coming changes are inevitable. But don't thank me, I am merely the messenger. Thank your politicians. You elected them.