Posted on 12/06/2005 3:40:11 PM PST by OregonRancher
Rio de Janeiro -- "Emergency room restricted due to overcrowding (risk of death)" is handwritten on a sign in huge letters on the door of the emergency room at Bonsucesso General Hospital in this teeming city.
On a hot Friday night on Rio's sprawling north side, where the heat radiates from the pavement even after sunset, the hospital, known as HGB, starts to boil, too.
"HGB is an international reference when it comes to gunshot treatment," Dr. Flavio Sa, in charge of registering the incoming gunshot patients, said with a mixture of pride and perplexity. "In the last four years, the increase in gunshot wounds has been significant, and today ... it is an endemic problem in the hospital."
At 8:40 p.m. this day, there were already four bullet wound victims in emergency. Four minutes later, another arrived. Among them was a police officer, Marco Antonio dos Santos, 34.
According to his police comrades, Santos and his partner, Edson Stocco, 36, were on a police call when they were attacked by bandits. Santos was hit in the eye by a bullet and by shrapnel from a grenade. His eye cannot be saved.
"This is getting worse than Afghanistan," said a female police officer who asked not to be identified because of the undeclared war in the city between drug dealers and police.
Brazil has the world's highest death toll from firearms. With 100 million fewer citizens than the United States, it has 25 percent more gun deaths, at about 36,000 a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
At 36,000 deaths a year, it's way worse than Afghanistan.
When are people going to learn, Socialism just doesn't work... it breeds elitism and poverty and huge chasms between the classes.
Guys. If you want to see a good movie that really depicts the problems in Brazil go rent "City of God". A foreign film that kicks but. If it sucks I'll pay for the rental.
If anyone wants to see an excellent movie about Rio's gang problems, check out "City of God". Also, on the dvd is a really good documentary with interviews of the police, drug dealers/gangsters and slum dwellers.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/
Looks like you have been nibbling on the anti-gun propaganda again. This article's agenda is very plain.
In the documentary on the "City of God" dvd, the chief of police seems to blame all of the problems on the gun manufacturers (USA Colt and Swiss Sig Saur). In my opinion, if there were no guns, Brazil would then be the stabbing capital of the world and they could start putting the blame of their problems on knives. The real problem is that they decided long ago to seperate the classes into different parts of the city.
So you view anti-gun propaganda as a really good documentary.
I don't know about the documentary, but I've seen the movie "City of God" and it's not anti-gun propaganda, it's just a good movie about growing up in some seriously f---edup third world slums.
Actaully, most of the documentary was good. It was just the part with the interview of the misguided police chief (who later resigned and went deeper into politics) that made me groan. Rio has no hope with idiots like that in charge.
Forget the agenda. Look at the facts as presented. It's a war zone.
With that Carnival and decadence it's like a huge and worse New Orleans
Capitalism doesn't work either in a pit like Brazil. Nothing works. Nothing ever will
A good time to thank God for being born in America
My brother works for John Deere, he trouble shoots computer networks for their opperations all over the world, including China, Europe, India, Ireland, and Brazil. He says the place he dreads the most is Brazil, the crime and more so the Govt. corruption is simply amazing.
"used to be?" in 1980..I attended a conference in Rio..took the wife and girls..we were at a new hotel..it was like a fort..armed guards...with AK-47s..at the front lobby, and armed guards patrolling the hotel's beach
No it's not a war zone, but Forteleza is paradise.
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