This is unbelievable information! We have been lied to, again!

When violent anti-Chavez factions and when Venezuelan opposition presidential candidates like Manuel Rosales start to scream and yell about crime levels in Venezuela, don’t believe them. Most opposition people (opposition to Chavez) believe that Venezuela has a very high crime rate. I constantly argue this point … but now I have found evidence to back what I say, yes, there is crime in Venezuela, but it isn’t as bad as opposition people (or others) make it out to be.

You will be surprised.

The figures I am about to quote are not invented from thin air or from Hollywood movies, they are real figures from a large information website called Nationamaster.com which came into existence by re-interpreting the CIA’s information website. The following description of Nationmaster.com comes from Wikipedia.com, so the information they provide must not be that inaccurate:

"NationMaster features a large database of variables for comparing countries. A wide range of demographic indicators are covered including literacy rates, taxation levels, and murders per capita. These are also available in pie charts, scatterplots, and correlations graphs. NationMaster's database is composed of data that originated from sources including national censuses, UNDP, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, World Bank Development Indicators, the World Resources Institute, the World Health Organization, OECD reports. As of 2006 April it has a mirror of Wikipedia irregularly updated by as much as 438 days ago. NationMaster began in May 2003 as a re-interpretation of data found in the CIA World Factbook, and has since allowed comparisons using data found from other sources as well. For each economic, social, or cultural indicator, NationMaster presents a table of data comparing each US-recognised country. They now claim to have 40 times as many variables as the CIA World Factbook, and have a wider rage of tables comparing countries with respect to data such as the number of ‘McDonalds’ restaurants and parking fines issued per capita."

So here is the information I want to present to readers. It is a listing of countries based on per capita crime rates. The higher the country is on the list, the higher the per capita crime rate. However, before presenting this information, I want to present a fact which is not included in the list below.

Did you know that The Vatican, which is a country, is the country with the highest per capita crime rate in the world? Well, it appears to be true, according to Wikipedia, "Having a resident population of just over 500, and millions of tourists every year, Vatican City has the highest crime rate per capita of any nation on earth, with penal offences at 133.6% in 2002. [1]."

The "Holy (Christian) City of God" has the highest per capita crime rate in the world!

(Imagine what the crime rate in Heaven must be? It must be extremely high. We have been fooled! Heaven is really Hell!)

So, here is the information … and you will probably be shocked to find out that, contrary to what we are led to believe, the countries with the highest crime rates are, with a few exceptions, the most "developed" countries of the world: New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, Chile, the UK (6th), the USA (8th), the Netherlands, Germany, Canada (12th), Norway and France.

This is unbelievable information! We have been lied to, again! Venezuela is 46th … and Colombia, which many people consider to be an extremely dangerous country is 53rd. Believe me, we are being constantly lied to.

"Rank Countries Amount (top to bottom) #1 Dominica 113.822 per 1,000 people #2 New Zealand 105.881 per 1,000 people #3 Finland 101.526 per 1,000 people #4 Denmark 92.8277 per 1,000 people #5 Chile 88.226 per 1,000 people #6 United Kingdom 85.5517 per 1,000 people #7 Montserrat 80.3982 per 1,000 people #8 United States 80.0645 per 1,000 people #9 Netherlands 79.5779 per 1,000 people #10 South Africa 77.1862 per 1,000 people #11 Germany 75.9996 per 1,000 people #12 Canada 75.4921 per 1,000 people #13 Norway 71.8639 per 1,000 people #14 France 62.1843 per 1,000 people #15 Seychelles 52.9265 per 1,000 people #16 Hungary 44.9763 per 1,000 people #17 Estonia 43.3601 per 1,000 people #18 Czech Republic 38.2257 per 1,000 people #19 Italy 37.9633 per 1,000 people #20 Switzerland 36.1864 per 1,000 people #21 Portugal 34.3833 per 1,000 people #22 Slovenia 33.6236 per 1,000 people #23 Poland 32.8573 per 1,000 people #24 Korea, South 31.7267 per 1,000 people #25 Mauritius 29.1982 per 1,000 people #26 Zimbabwe 28.8753 per 1,000 people #27 Lithuania 22.8996 per 1,000 people #28 Spain 22.8867 per 1,000 people #29 Latvia 21.921 per 1,000 people #30 Uruguay 21.7017 per 1,000 people #31 Russia 20.5855 per 1,000 people #32 Ireland 20.2376 per 1,000 people #33 Bulgaria 19.9886 per 1,000 people #34 Japan 19.177 per 1,000 people #35 Romania 16.4812 per 1,000 people #36 Slovakia 16.3537 per 1,000 people #37 Jamaica 14.3231 per 1,000 people #38 Belarus 13.1592 per 1,000 people #39 Mexico 12.8406 per 1,000 people #40 Tunisia 12.5634 per 1,000 people #41 Costa Rica 11.9788 per 1,000 people #42 Ukraine 11.7793 per 1,000 people #43 Hong Kong 11.6817 per 1,000 people #44 Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of 9.689 per 1,000 people #45 Greece 9.6347 per 1,000 people #46 Venezuela 9.307 per 1,000 people #47 Thailand 8.80422 per 1,000 people #48 Moldova 8.58967 per 1,000 people #49 Kyrgyzstan 7.50486 per 1,000 people #50 Malaysia 6.97921 per 1,000 people #51 Qatar 6.76437 per 1,000 people #52 Zambia 5.27668 per 1,000 people #53 Colombia 4.98654 per 1,000 people #54 Turkey 4.11252 per 1,000 people #55 Armenia 4.03889 per 1,000 people #56 Georgia 3.21338 per 1,000 people #57 Papua New Guinea 2.39711 per 1,000 people #58 Azerbaijan 1.76416 per 1,000 people #59 India 1.63352 per 1,000 people #60 Yemen 1.16109 per 1,000 people"

The worse thing about all this is that the anti-Chavez opposition, like Venezuelan presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, is openly pro USA and want to turn Venezuela into another USA-style country.

I am sure that most Venezuelans would not want to rank as high as the UK (6th) or the USA (8th) in per capita crime. Heck, I am sure that the "so-civilized" citizens of the "so-civilized" "western" countries would rather rank like Yemen, which, according to this list has the lowest per capita crime rate.

But that won’t work!

Yemen is a Muslim-run country … and most "westerners" hate or fear Muslims, let alone have their country run by Muslim Law.

Well, how about the "west" becoming like Venezuela (and rank 46th instead of 6th or 8th)? Heck no, that won’t work either because most North Americans have been erroneously led to believe that Chavez is some kind of communist dictator, where there is no freedom of expression.

Just as most of the "west" has be erroneously led to believe ‘’bad’’ things about Chavez, about Saddam Hussein, about Fidel Castro, about North Korea, about Iran, about Iraq, about Afghanistan, about Syria, about Lebanon, about the Sudan, about many non-USA copycat countries, we have been erroneously led to believe that the "western" countries are the safest, implying that the crime rates in "western" countries must be lower than those of "backward" "banana republics" such as Venezuela.

Wrong!

We are constantly being lied to.

Viva Venezuela!

NOTE: The Nationmaster.com website states, with regard to per capita crime rates: "Note: Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence." This basically means that the per capita crime rate information provided can be interpreted in different ways. If, for example, the representative per capita crime rates are based on reported crimes, then the information is not necessarily accurate if a country tends to not report actual or real crimes. However, as noted, if a country does in fact report crimes, it means that the country in question has a system in place to do so. This implies that such a country probably has a broader and more prevalent police force and it also implies that laws concerning crime are more strongly imposed and enforced. This in turn implies that such countries probably tend to be more police-states than those countries which tend not to report crimes … and this, in my view, coincides with my belief that the "western" world is heading increasingly toward police-state societies.

Oscar Heck
oscar@vheadline.com