Anyone...
ever seen the Brazilian documentary, Bus 174 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340468/)? When we lived in Brazil my mother was stuck in the traffic jam behind the hijacked bus.

Weirdly despite living in Brazil, the home of the worlds most attractive victims of carjacking, assault and murder (to quote the Onion), I never really saw a crime with my own eyes (possibly because I was pretty drunk most of the time). I did see numerous TV reports of crazy stuff - such as an RPG being missaimed and going through the window of an apartment block and killing a family at dinner. I also heard numerous gunshots (some of them far too close for comfort). Did see a lot of aftermath of crime though - bodies, once part of a brain, a few burnt out cars, bullet holes in the wall of a bank. Oh and a few knife fights in the Sao Januario football stadium (where a woman also tried to sell my 9 and 11 year old sisters cocaine and a pistol in the ladies toilets).

I did see two crimes in South America though, both in Buenos Aires and both within a week of each other. The first one was rather boring - two men breaking a car window and stealing the radio. We did nothing as they had a gun. Secondly I was walking with an American guy, both of us quite tall, and this very short kid comes up to us, with no weapon of any kind, and demands money. The American just punched him in the face without even stopping in his stride.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Wed 20 Feb 2008, 13:18, 4 replies)

The American just punched him in the face without even stopping in his stride.
haha brilliant!
(muggins im afraid dave.my mind is going, i can feel it, Wed 20 Feb 2008, 14:44, closed)

America
Generally, thats how we deal with things over here in the States: punch in the face. I find it to be the catch-all for just about everything.

:D

Cheers,

Sean "Punch 'Em In The Face"
( Citadel Because the world needs less morons, Wed 20 Feb 2008, 16:11, closed)

cocaine and a pistol
of course you can't buy one without buying the other....it was a package deal.


and yes, we Americans are like that. Though, in the South we are still a bit upset that we can no longer have gun-racks with loaded weapons in the back window of our trucks. bah!
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Thu 21 Feb 2008, 2:04, closed)

As a follow up
the same American guy was cheated out of 200pesos by a girl he picked up in a nightclub a few days later. Turned out she wasn't the free young single lady he thought she was, but rather a prostitute who stole his money and ran rather than go through the act.

He spent days complaining about it.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Thu 21 Feb 2008, 3:47, closed)