Venezuela is not one of the countries with the highest crime rate of the world

Titled, "Street Crime in Venezuela." An image of late President Hugo Chavez, created by anti-Venezuelan cartoonist and media shill, David Horsey, published in San Francisco Gate and many other capitalist media.

Working as a political cartoonist, first for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and currently for the Los Angeles Times, David Horsey's cartoons are syndicated, showing up throughout the corporate media in the US and Europe. He's one of the capitalist media's favorite sons, a Pulitzer Prize Winner with an honorary (unearned) doctorate from Seattle University. In 2010 he wrote, "Venezuelans wary of nation’s future." He based his title on an anecdote saying that on New Years Eve he was in Caracas, "sharing whiskey with a disillusioned Socialist named Armando." He described this "socialist,"

"Armando is a slim, graying, middle-aged Web site artist with an indecent sense of humor and a decent command of English left over from his years working in London two decades ago. He was explaining why he helped vote Hugo Chavez into the Venezuelan presidency in 1999 and has lived to regret it."

He quoted Armando,

“I was hoping for a Swedish kind of socialism where everyone gets rich. Instead, we are getting a Cuban kind of socialism where everyone will be poor.”

Considering Horsey's media ethics, only the gods know if Armando ever existed at all but if he did, what brand of "socialist" hopes for a "kind of socialism where everyone gets rich" ?!

Horsey went on with his attempt to malign Venezuela, Venezuelans and our government with a description of Caracas as nasty and deceptive as his cartoons:

"Armando and I had just met at a party hosted by mutual friends who live in a house perched on a hill overlooking the city. Like so many homes of the middle class in Caracas, this one stands behind a fence topped with razor wire in a neighborhood that can only be accessed through a guarded gate."

David Horsey's cheap, sourceless shots at Venezuela are only one small example of the massive 15 year media campaign against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, one that continues to be ramped up, one battle after another. Any topic within their boundless imagination - from publishing false rates of inflation to tawdry stories about toilet paper are put to use. After President Maduro's effective 2013 counterattack in the imperialist war on the economy, his stunning electoral victories and his success in putting down their sabotage of the food supply & electrical system, they began a new 2014 assault with lies about crime in Venezuela, honest investigative journalism be damned.

With their current disinformation campaign, the state-corporate media in the United States, Canada and Europe have been very effective spreading their caricatures of Venezuela as an extremely dangerous place to visit. This propaganda is one of their methods intended to isolate Venezuela, inciting fear to discourage travelers from visiting and witnessing for themeselves the amazing progress achieved, first under the leadership of President Chavez and now with President Maduro at the helm. The capitalist media's use of the recent assassinations of Monica Spear and Thomas Berry serves as an example of their deceptive practices. These continuous attempts to undermine the Venezuelan government demonstrate the threat it poses for capitalism in Latin America and indeed, the world.

In the following article, Oscar Heck, a Canadian citizen who has lived in Venezuela for years provides crime and homicide rates for Venezuela compared with other countries. These facts speak for themselves.

- Les Blough in Venezuela

Venezuela is not one of the countries with
the highest crime rate of the world

Published in Spanish in Aporrea. Translated into English for Axis of Logic by Les Blough, Editor.

It is completely false that Venezuela is one of the countries with the highest crime rate of the world. Although it is not possible to obtain accurate data, you can get a general idea of the reality in this topic. In accordance with information on the internet, the countries with the highest crime rate in the world are the following:

Iceland (Reykjavik) with 14,726.95 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Sweden (Stockholm) with 13,455.08 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
New Zealand (Wellington) with 12,586.64 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Grenada (St. George's) with 10,177.89 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Norway (Oslo) with 10,086.72 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Wales (Cardiff) with 9,823.38 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
England (London) with 9,823.38 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Denmark (Copenhagen) with 9,460.38 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Finland (Helsinki) with 8,697.37 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Scotland (Edinburgh) with 8,428.97 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
Canada (Ottawa) with 4,123.97 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants

Venezuela does not appear on this list.

There is also a partial list of countries with the highest number of crimes committed (recorded), based on the most recent data:

USA: 11,877,218 crimes committed
United Kingdom: 6,523,706 crimes committed
Germany: 6,507,394 crimes committed
France: 3,771,850 crimes committed
Russia: 2,952,370 crimes committed
Japan: 2,853,739 crimes committed
South Africa: 2,683,849 crimes committed
Canada: 2,516,918 crimes committed
Italy: 2,231,550 crimes committed
India: 1,764,630 crimes committed
South Korea: 1,543,220 crimes committed
Mexico: 1,516,029 crimes committed …

Venezuela exits this list in position number 34, with 236.165 crimes committed (i.e. registered). Even if it is calculated per capita, using these numbers, and compared for example with the US, 4.5 more crimes are committed in the US than in Venezuela. 10 times more crimes are committed in Canada (the country of my birth) and in Germany, than in Venezuela.

This is not fantasy.

Moreover, when we are talking about murders, Caracas is ranked the sixth city worldwide for murders per capita, but the murder as such is not representative of crime in general. More murders are committed in cities located in Honduras, Mexico and Brazil. In the list of the 50 cities ranked for the number of murders committed, 3 Venezuela cities are listed compared with 4 US cities, 5 Colombia cities, 9 Mexican cities and 14 Brazilian cities.

These are the facts. Do not tell me that Venezuela is one of the countries with the highest crime rate of the world.

Oscar Heck was born to a French Canadian father and an Indian mother, first arriving in Venezuela in the 1970s, where he worked as a missionary in some neighborhoods of Caracas and Barlovento. He was a collaborator in English on Vheadline.com.

Source: Aporrea (in Spanish). Translated by Axis of Logic.