Uncle Satan to Prosecute Black Stars for Visiting Cuba

Here.

It’s stuff like this that make me think America sucks.

Ameritards are actually so stupid that they think Americans should be fined or go to jail just for visiting Cuba? What a bunch of idiots! Moronicans are the stupidest human beings on Earth.

 

Letter from Rapey, Rapey India

A friend of mine was in India recently. I received email from her when she was there. She told me that the men were very aggressive, creepy and almost rapey. It was difficult to go outside because the men would all stare you down in an excessive, creepy, almost rapey way. In addition, the men were very aggressive sexually, always coming up to her, talking to her and basically obviously trying to pick up on her. The whole scene was so creepy and rapey that she actually dreaded going out. She is a 28 year old Asian-American, so it’s obvious that she is a foreigner.

At one point, I got an email from her telling me that she had almost gotten raped. She had met a couple of Indian men who were very nice and friendly. They invited her back to their place for dinner. She went along with them. They had a very pleasant meal and as it got later, she said she was tired.

They said, “Well, you are too tired to go home, so why don’t you stay here?” There was a huge bed, and they assured her that nothing sexual was going to happen. They would just leave her alone to sleep unmolested. She went along with it. Later that night, the two guys climbed into bed too. I am not sure if they were clothed or not. It was a huge bed, and there was plenty of room for three people. She was wearing a top and pants. They started bothering her. After a lot of cajoling, they convinced her to take her pants off so she was down to her panties. They also got her top off and she was down to her bra.

Then the men kept getting on top of her and trying to penetrate her sexually (not sure exactly how they were trying to do this). One would get on one side and try to penetrate her from the front while another would try to penetrate her from the back. They grabbed at her tits so hard that her breasts hurt for 3-4 days afterwards. They spent much of the night pestering her and trying to get her to have sex with them, but she refused.

I asked why she went along with them. Why had she removed her top and pants? Why hadn’t she left during the night as it was obvious what an uncomfortable scene was unfolding? She told me that she was scared of the guys. She said Indian men are very aggressive and dominant, and these guys were no exception. She had taken off her top and jeans due to fear. She had not left in the night due to fear. There were two of them and one of her, and it seemed safer to stay there than to leave. She told me that she was so scared of them that the just wanted to do everything they said except have sex with them.

I figure this is just Indian guys acting normally in India. It’s also possible that in Indian society, if a woman consents to share a bed with a man, she has consented to sex with them. It also seems as if Indian men regard Western women as “whores” and a prime target for sex, as many Indian women are not available for sex before marriage.

Further, many Indian men have little experience with women and hence behave very aggressively with them. I have noticed this online. Many women complained about the extreme aggressiveness of Indian men online and they told me that they hated all Indian men online.

I run a group for victims of Internet scams, and we used to have group chats. This Indian guy age 25 somehow weaseled his way in there, and he would get on his mike and start describing how he was jacking off now in a really creepy sexual voice. He also told everyone that he was virgin. All of the women absolutely hated this guy and said he was creepy as Hell, but his behavior is rather typical of clueless extreme horndog Indian guys on the Net.

It turns out that many females give in to sex with males out of sheer fear. I do not think it is acceptable to terrorize any female into having sex with you. You shouldn’t be getting sex with women because you have made yourself deliberately so scary that they are afraid to say no to you. I’ve never terrorized any female into having sex with me, and I’ve had tons of sex.

The behavior of these Indian guys was not ok at all. It’s frankly sexual assault. In the US, you don’t get to attack a woman all night long just because you want sex with her. It doesn’t even matter if she is in your bed. It is extremely rapey behavior, and it’s basically criminal, sorry.

You have a right to attack women, that is, grab them, kiss them, or whatever. If she responds positively, then the game is on. If she responds negatively or tells you to back off, at some point the game is off, and you need to give it up. I haven’t engaged in the sort of behavior these guys did ever in my life, and I’ve been around the block quite a bit. I always figured that if you have to pester her or continuously assault her until she gives in, it’s not even going to be worth it.

That said, no DA will press charges on this sort of thing in the US. It’s a date rapey thing, and date rape stuff hardly gets prosecuted. Further, no actual rape occurred, just a lot of assaulty sort of stuff. The cops would say, “Why did you stay with them? Why didn’t you leave?” Anyway, it is a He said, she said sort of thing and those cases almost never see the light of day.

In India, prosecuting a case like this would be hopeless. The cops would not come even if you called them. If they did, they would probably take the woman into custody and rape her themselves. India is probably one of the rapiest countries on Earth, maybe close to South Africa in the running.

Japanese and Blacks

Tulio comments:

Virulent racism of Japanese towards blacks is something I always doubted. It seemed to contradict what black friends that have visited and worked there have told me. They said it’s absolutely fine and they have experienced little racism and what racism they do experience is stuff that tends to be directed toward foreigners in general such as being denied entry into Japanese only places.

Now one place I thought would be extremely racist to black people is Korea. But according to this black guy living there, he said he’s experienced nothing but hospitality and warmth. That even shocked me.

First of all, I am very happy that well behaved Black Americans can have a great experience in Korea and Japan. Black people really ought to be free to travel to and have fun in as many countries as I could. That a Black American is afraid to travel to some country because they will treat him badly simply because he is Black is very painful for me to contemplate. Maybe we Whites don’t realize how lucky we are.

However, a lot of Japanese Americans, both male and female, have very racist attitudes towards Blacks. I knew a Japanese American, and he was quite racist against Blacks.

You see where these Black guys run around and have like 8 different kids by 8 different women and don’t support any of them. That’s profoundly offensive to Japanese people, especially Japanese men. In East Asian society, a man may father children with more than one woman, but he absolutely must support all of his kids. If he does not, he is just a lowdown dirtball.

When these Black guys have 8 kids by 6 different women and don’t support any of them, to a Japanese man, you are little more than an animal. You’re basically a dog. Because that’s what a dog does. A dog just knocks up any bitch he can or as many bitches as possible, then runs away and leaves her and doesn’t help her raise any of the young.

Any Of You Going on the Road This Summer?

Isn’t it great to be on the road?

…the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?

the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

Just wondering.

PS I didn’t write that above. Wish I did though.

World’s Friendliest Countries

Here.

What the survey means is the most friendly countries for expats to go and live in.

These were the top 5 friendliest countries for expats:

1. New Zealand
2. Australia
3. South Africa
4. Canada
5. United States

What do they all have in common? Lots of White people!

In addition to that, they are all:

1. Anglo
2. Social liberal
3. Christian
4. Western
5. Colonial

Draw your own conclusions.

The least friendly countries for expats were dominated by Gulf Arab countries.

1. United Arab Emirates
2. Saudi Arabia
3. Qatar
4. Russia
5. India

India came in last for the second year in a row. Apparently there is just about nothing worse on Earth than being a foreigner in India.

Dickens in Africa: Welcome to Lagos

Amazing article by George Packer about the Hellish city of Lagos, Nigeria.

See that guy squatting over the curb? Wonder what he’s doing? With only .4% of the city hooked up to the sewage system, why do you have to ask?

Mounds of garbage as high as trees. I’ve been told that the minute you step off the plane in Lagos, the first thing you smell is the garbage. It nearly knocks you off your feet.

There is crime, scams and ripoffs everywhere. No one is safe. A woman I know went there and there was an attempt to rip off her in the women’s bathroom in the airport. A Nigerian woman knocked her purse to the ground and tried to steal all the money in it. If you’re White, you’re up for grabs. The cops are all on the take, so they won’t help you.

Everything needs a bribe. Everything.

Power goes out for days at a time in an oil-rich state. People hack into the system to steal power, and this fucks things up even more. Government people sabotage the system, steal power from it and sell it on the side. The entire state is corrupt. An anti-corruption minister recently said as much, that he was the only honest person in the government. Homes are for sale everywhere, but the person you buy it from probably doesn’t even own it. Another scam.

The internet cafes are full of a million fulltime Internet scammers. They sit in there all day long trying to scam Westerners, usually Americans. A Nigerian friend told me he went into his local cafe and there was a local TV News personality who lost his job. The guy was sitting there all day long scamming Ameraicans. Out of 37 people in the cafe, 34 were scammers.

There are rivers running through the city, but the water is black. People drink it anyway. Most of the taxi drivers are drunk and/or stoned on weed. The traffic jams last up to five hours long. People get up long before dawn to drive to work and get home long after dark.

There is a city dump as large as small town. The sides of it are 50-foot cliffs. Down below, shacks contain the residences of 1,000 humans who actually live in the dump.

There are 26 million people “living” in Lagos and another 6,000 arrive every day. It’s Hell on Earth, and it’s getting bigger. It has problems that seem to be utterly unsolvable.

Lagos. It’s the future, and it’s already here.

“The Unsentimental Vision of Mark Twain,” by Alpha Unit

Mark Twain is a racist.

Or Mark Twain is most decidedly not a racist.

Well, it depends on who’s talking about him.

He actually occupied sane middle ground on the issue of race. Ground arrived upon with difficulty, sure. But isn’t sane middle ground the only place to be?

His novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, fed and force-fed to American kids for generations, was banned in various quarters right from the outset, labeled by its detractors as coarse trash. It wasn’t until much later that anybody cared that it contained the word “nigger.” In more recent times its use of this word and its depictions of Jim the slave have been decried for their potential to inflict catastrophic damage to the psyches of Black youth – and undermine the general welfare in these enlightened times.

Some people make the case that Huckleberry Finn is clearly an anti-racist novel. I tend to think so. But being anti-racist in Mark Twain’s time was not the same as being anti-racist now. Twain was not the equivalent of today’s American “liberal.” He didn’t deny the concept of race. He didn’t see racial distinctions as irrelevant.

What I admire about him is his recognition that Brown and Black people deserved to be respected in their own right. They weren’t less human than White people. Whites had no God-given right to treat them however they wanted.

Mark Twain did not entertain, either, any notion that Black people were automatically ugly in comparison to Whites. Because he actually saw them as people, he easily saw what he described as their beauty.

While visiting India, he compared a beautifully-garbed Indian delegation to what he and fellow Christians could have produced had they put on a show of their own. It wouldn’t have been as impressive, he said.

Then there would have been the added disadvantage of the white complexion. It is not an unbearably unpleasant complexion when it keeps to itself, but when it comes into competition with masses of brown and black the fact is betrayed that it is endurable only because we are used to it.

Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare…Where dark complexions are massed, they make the whites look bleached out, unwholesome, and sometimes frankly ghastly. I could notice this as a boy down South in the slavery days before the war. The splendid black-satin skin of the South African Zulus of Durban seemed to me to come very close to perfection…

The advantage is with the Zulu, I think. He starts with a beautiful complexion, and it will last him through. And as for the Indian brown…I think there is no sort of chance for the average white complexion against that rich and perfect tint.

Twain recounted this trip in Following the Equator, written toward the end of his career, in which he chronicles his travels to India, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. While traveling he got to see firsthand the way White colonizers interacted with those under their control.

He expresses sympathy for the Whites who must secure their lives in these strange territories they have put themselves in, and acknowledges the difficulties of both Whites and natives in trying to co-exist under trying circumstances. But he clearly recognizes that it is the natives who have the worst of it.

He tells the story of a White squatter who encounters some Aborigines while at his home – Aborigines who are clearly hostile. Afraid of what he sees as an imminent attack, the squatter persuades them to have a meal with him. It was a Last Supper of sorts; the pudding he served them contained arsenic.

Twain’s assessment:

It was better, kinder, swifter, and much more humane than a number of methods which have been sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, it does not wholly justify it.

He goes on to describe the way Whites had typically interacted with racial “others”:

In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him to death…In many countries we have burned the savage at the stake…In many countries we have taken the savage’s land from him; and made him our slave, and lashed him every day, broken his pride, and made death his only friend, and overworked him till he dropped in his tracks; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving kindness [in comparison] to it.

In assessing these and other acts that the civilized had committed against their inferiors, he concludes:

There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

This year marks the centennial of Mark Twain’s death. He was a great observer and critic of humankind, and remains an amazing teacher, to those who would be taught.

Every people he observed was of the same fallible humanity. The idea of one race’s inherent superiority over any other? A joke.

References

Twain, M., Warner, C.D., Paine, A.B. 1922. The Writings of Mark Twain, Volume 21. New York: Gabriel Wells Co.

Anti-Black Racism In Ecuador

This link is from Niggermania, but the site is a good resource for learning about racism against Black people. I’ve found that the White racist sites are the most straight up honest about the low-down on how racist a place is. If a country or culture is racist as Hell against non-Whites, the racists love it and cheer it on. Cultures or nations that are more tolerant are routinely derided by the racists as PC, hopeless, brainwashed, nigger-lovers, anti-racists, liberals, etc.

Now, these guys have no reason to lie. If a place is racist and nasty, they come right out and say so. If a place is relatively tolerant, they think that sucks, and they call that out loudly. I have some commenters who insist that racists would see a very tolerant place as a viciously racist place. But why would they do that? They hate tolerant lands.

On the other hand, there is a serious problem with misrepresentation of nations by their nationalist citizens, especially Latin Americans, who don’t like gringos in the first place, don’t like to be compared to unfavorably to Gringo Americans. Many middle to upper class White or mestizo Latin Americans will insist that everything is groovy down there. Easy for them to say; they aren’t feeling any pain. But ask a Black Latin American, and you might get a different story.

Anyway, according to this link, 20 years ago (1990) there was de facto Jim Crow discrimination against Blacks in Ecuador. For all intents and purposes, Blacks were not allowed to serve as police or military officers. They were effectively barred from medicine, law and most other high-paying professions. Instead they were largely relegated to field work.

That’s a screwed up situation, and it would be interesting to see if it’s still going on.

Here is another post that talks about being a tourist or ESL teacher in Ecuador. Apparently being a temporary foreign worker or bucks up American tourist of any color is a different matter altogether down there.

Black American tourists are unlikely to encounter serious problems, and the scene on the beach is a lot of fun for Black people, with lots of Black Ecuadorians and Black Colombians hanging out at the discos and partying. It looks like the scene on the beach is different from the rest of Ecuador in that the Blacks have created their own reggae – party scene on the coast.

On the other hand, it’s perfectly possible for de facto wealthy American Blacks (if you have the money to travel to Latin America as a tourist, you’re a rich American in their eyes) to go to a country and have a good time while the native Blacks are still suffering serious institutional discrimination. That’s because the American’s skin tone is washed away by his Rich American image.

Bad Place to Visit, Wouldn’t Want To Live There

Repost from the old site. This article has produced a tremendous amount of controversy, angry comments, and even, oddly enough, virulent hate mail. I guess I hit some raw nerves. I stand by my comments that these cities are some of the worst in the world, and, in doing further research on the Net, have found only further support for my thesis.

Some of these cities, such as Bogotá, for instance, have large wealthy districts that are apparently quite pleasant. If one is rich, one can make a nice life just about anywhere on the globe. But this is not important – what is important is how the majority live.

The title is a play on the line, “Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there”, said about many less-than-desirable tourist locales. This post is about the worst places on Earth to visit, and probably to live too. The ratings were based on research done on the Internet in various places, including here and here.

I’m going to focus on the places that are dirty, smelly, crime-ridden, trashy, rip-off havens, unsanitary and dangerous (Third World), and avoid places that are merely depressing, unsightly, rude, etc. (First World). Why? Because I live in the US, and those Third World qualities are going to be the most disturbing to me. I’m also avoiding active war zones because everyone knows they are horrible.

To be fair to the “Third Worldists” out there, I noted that many people slammed various places in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, South Korea, Ireland Italy, the US, Great Britain and Australia for various reasons, mostly because they are said to be unfriendly, depressing, tacky, cheesy, boring, etc.

Detroit seemed to top the list as worst US city, along with Newark (though it had one fan), East St. Louis and New Haven (though some liked New Haven) were runners-up. Various small towns in the Rockies (especially Idaho) and Texas also were listed. For some reason, a lot of people hate Vancouver, BC in Canada.

To my thinking, many of the horrible cities below point out the catastrophe of Latin American, Indian, Indonesian and Philippine capitalism. In much of Africa, capitalism doesn’t seem to working very well.

For all its faults, impoverished Cuba certainly does not resemble any of these Latin American hellholes in any way, shape or form. I don’t think that capitalism in the First World is failing, but looking at many of the cities below, it’s hard to argue that capitalism is doing anything but failing in those places.

Some of the winners in the Loser Destination Contest:

Colon, Panama: A dirty, crime-ridden disaster of a city. The most dangerous city in Latin America, full of residents who seem like they would just as soon knife you as say hello. Other than the free trade zone, the entire city seems to be sprawling slum. Colon has no redeeming qualities. This city topped many worst lists.

Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador: Guayaquil is horrible. A stinking, steaming, downright dangerous heap of a city with miles of slums. With armies of glowering gang members, this place is dangerous even in mid-day. There are garbage dumps everywhere with corpses laying out in plain sight and guns going off all the time. Quito is similar. Guayaquil topped many worst city lists.

Johannesburg, South Africa: How sad that this country now has one of the worst violent crime rates on Earth. Although popular with tourists, this city is downright dangerous. This city also topped many worst lists. This blog supports the Mandela government, but the problems of this tragic nation seem insurmountable.

*****
Lagos, Nigeria, or the whole country: This city, and even the whole country, seems to top everyone’s list. Garbage is everywhere, the city stinks, the poverty is horrible, animals are slaughtered on the streets, and it seems that at least half the population wakes up every morning thinking, “Who can I rip off today?” Up to 90% of the economy may be “underground”, off the books, or crime-related in some way or another.

Nigeria has what must be the worst government on Earth and the country is rated the second most corrupt on Earth. The national airlines are dangerous and not recommended. The ripoff attempts often start as soon as you land at the airport and won’t let up until you leave.

It’s best to assume that most, if not all, Nigerians you meet in Lagos are out to rip you off in some way or another and then proceed from there. The city is full of impostors, and you really do not know if anyone is really who they say they are. The police and Customs officials are all crooks and so is 99% of the government.

Most bank and post office employees are also crooked. Imagine waiting in line at the post office, and a group of swaggering gangsters with fake ID’s strut in to pick up their stolen goods reshipped from overseas. They go straight to the front of the line ahead of everyone else, pick up their stolen property, and walk away laughing, having paid off the Post Office clerks. Welcome to Nigeria.

There are Internet cafes all over the city, where 150,000 full-time Internet scammers ply their trade in plain view of anyone to see, and the government doesn’t bat an eye or lift one finger to stop them. In many cafes, 80% or more of the patrons are Internet scammers. Nigeria is now world-famous for Internet scams. Even out-of-work TV newscasters scam away in the cafes, trying to steal from Americans.

The scammers started out with the famous 419 email scams but have now branched out into lottery, romance, auction, roommate, orphanage and check-cashing scams. The scams are continuously evolving, and Nigerian con artists are widely acknowledged to be some of the best in the world, as they have been practicing the art for decades now.

On highways outside of Lagos, you can see numerous vehicles wrecked on the side of the road, or even in the middle of the road, some with dead bodies still in them or beside them. Thieves pick through the wreckage and rifle the corpses looking for stuff to steal. All of the roads are dangerous, as armed robbers often set up roadblocks to shake down travelers.

Nigeria is now a world center for counterfeit pharmaceuticals, credit card fraud and drug dealing, and a district of Lagos, Oluwole, is now a world center for top-notch forgery.

The FBI and the US Merchant Risk Council recently came to Nigeria and inspected 40 packages coming into the country from the US to check for stolen goods. 39 of the 40 packages contained stolen property.

When the agents arrived at a Lagos neighborhood and tried to arrest an 18-year-old boy for reshipping scams that targeted US merchants, much of the neighborhood – up to 100 people – rushed out of their homes to defend the local punk from Big Bad Whitey.

Although the country is awash in oil, the power goes out all the time because the government power company is so crooked. The power company has either stolen all of its own budget money or the power comes in, but the crooked company resells it on the side.

As with elsewhere in Africa, Whitey is blamed for all the troubles here. Hatred of Whitey is higher in Nigeria than in much of the rest of Black Africa and the White visitor will definitely feel it.

The degeneration of Nigerian society is complete, and the culture appears near collapse. Mobs lynch thieves in the street and kill them in public for as meager a crime as stealing a cellphone, yet crime rages on anyway. Anyone can just up and say they own your house, put it on the market and sell it and you are out a house. Law enforcement, courts and anything resembling government seem to be nonexistent.
******

******
Lima, Peru: When they tell you to visit Peru, they don’t mean the nightmarish capital. There are teeming slums as far as the eye can see, horrible crime (although not a lot of violent crime), pickpockets everywhere, and on top of all that, the sun never comes out. The fog mixes with the smog and the filthy streets to make a toxic brew. Lima made many worst lists.

But it has its fans, and the upscale Miraflores district is said to be nice. The execrable Shining Path took up their nihilistic, deranged war in this country for a reason – because Peru is a rotten heap of a country.
******

******
Medan (Sumatra), Jakarta, Surabaya, Indonesia: Jakarta is a reeking city with terrible pollution, open sewers and wrenching poverty.

Medan seemed to top many lists for worst city on Earth, though it has a few fans. It’s hot, dirty and polluted, with factories, thieves and leering, menacing men everywhere. There is also nowhere to stay, not that you would want to stay anyway. Besides Medan, the rest of Sumatra is much better.

The river running through Surabaya is so polluted you might vomit walking across the bridge. As you suppress your gag reflex, you will look down and notice that people are actually washing their clothes in this river.
*****

*****
Mumbai, Patna (Bihar), Calcutta, all large Indian cities, India: Indian cities are very dirty and teeming with some of the most miserably poor and wretched people you will ever see, but at least there is not a lot of crime. The Hindu religion keeps crime down because believers fear they will be punished by returning in the next life as something terrible, like one of the huge rats you see scurrying about.

Mumbai has pollution that is so bad that people actually get lung cancer from breathing the air. Mumbai, a stinking and sometimes dangerous city, made many worst city lists.

Patna is the sorry capital of Bihar, the poorest state in India. It’s dirty and miserable, and it’s almost impossible to even get a taxi to get you out of town, which means it’s hard to leave the place.

Calcutta is generally agreed to be one of the worst cities in India.
*****

Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang, China: Deadly pollution, mostly from coal.

Bucharest, all of Romania: Stalinist pollution covers the whole country and everyone seems depressed.

Bali (in particular Kuta Beach), Indonesia: Hopes so high, reality so low. It seems everyone is out to rip you off. Surly locals hungry for money. Dangerous roads, nightmarish traffic, rude, leering men. When it rains, the sewers flood into the streets. Very high crime rate, hustlers everywhere. Most of the rest of Indonesia is pretty nice. Kuta is a tourist trap gone to Hell.

****
Manila, Philippines: A crime-ridden hellhole. There are armed guards everywhere, especially in front of banks due to constant bank robberies. Their nemeses, criminal gangs armed to the teeth, roam streets filled with prostitutes and transvestites.

It’s a town where everyone seems like they are out to rip you off in one way or other, and the hotel workers and cab drivers are all crooked. The latest advice is to have your Filipino friend meet you at the airport and head straight to their place, thereby avoiding all the ripoffs and con artists that seem to descend on every tourist. Traffic is horrible, and pollution is so bad it kills people. But some people don’t mind it.
****

Gdansk, Poland: Combine a high crime rate and daylight robberies with totally crooked, thieving officials, and you get this Polish city. However, a number of others said it’s just fine.

****
Mexico City, Villahermosa, Mexico: Mexico City is a dirty, polluted city suffering an insane, surreal epidemic of street crime, especially violent crime. Add 20 million people, stir well, bring to a boil, cover with a lid of otherworldly smog, and simmer.

Reportedly, tons of human waste are blown into the air every day, and much of the population has constant respiratory infections. The sewer system is reportedly above ground and more or less runs through lots of neighborhoods where many people are residing.

Villahermosa is a Mad Max-style, violent, crime-ridden disgrace of a city. There are stabbings and shootings galore here, even with a 10 PM curfew in place.
*****

Tangier, Morocco: This is a dangerous place with lots of street crime. That’s unusual for a North African country, but Tangier is so close to Europe that it is almost a part of Europe.

*****
Cairo, Egypt: Cairo has horrible pollution, smells terrible, there is trash everywhere, nothing works, there are armies of miserably poor people and it boasts some outrageously awful traffic. In the souks there are huge rats and wild, mangy scavenging dogs running about in plain sight. There seems no escape from aggressive, pestering hawkers. On top of all that, all the Customs officials are criminals.

The crime rate is fairly low, though. Thank President Hosni Mubarak. 25 years ago, Cairo was one of the great world cities.
*****

Bangkok, Thailand: This gigantic city has pollution so bad you need to wear a mask over your face. However, some folks like this city and say it has many positive attributes.

*****
Brindisi, Naples, Italy: No one seems to like Brindisi. It’s a sad, dirty, polluted and ugly city, with hostile, brawling, drunken locals, hungry stray dogs, belligerent drivers, horrible traffic, and miles of soul-killing tenements.

You would think that despite all of that, being genuine Italians, they could still manage to make a decent pizza. Forget it: even the pizza is terrible. Brindisi topped many worst lists, although it has a couple of fans.

I had never even heard of Brindisi and had to look it up on a map. It’s located in southern Italy on the East Coast, southeast of Naples. Naples has a great deal of crime, and many think this city is overrated as a tourist destination, although others say that, despite the drawbacks, it has its joys. All of southern Italy has a lot of crime, but it’s mostly property crime.
*****

*****
Athens, Piraeus, or the whole country, Greece: Greece, especially Athens, gets mixed reviews. A lot of people really hate Athens; others don’t. The detractors say the city is dirty, ugly, depressing, polluted, and covered with garbage and traffic. I was surprised that Athens made the list, as I had always thought it was a wonderful city.

The port city of Piraeus is a nasty place. The whole city smells like a giant sewage treatment plant, and the ocean offshore has a sickening color to it.
*****

****
Suburbs of Paris, France: These tragic towns, full of hostile Arab immigrants angrily refusing to assimilate to French culture or join French society, are a sign that the French model is not working well, at least for some folks.

There is a terribly high crime rate here, and cops and firemen often won’t go there because they get attacked as soon as they show up. These mournful towns are packed with angry, unemployed young Arab men who like to seriously riot every year or so, or even more often if the mood strikes them. Lately, they have been staging mini-riots every night. If only 100 cars are burned, that’s a good night.

Otherwise, Paris, of course, is one of the world’s great cities. But that doesn’t mean you might not walk into a subway station reeking of urine and see junkies shooting up in plain sight. But still, Paris is a must on any serious travelers’ list.
******

Brussels, Belgium: As with Paris, the districts with many Arab immigrants are quite dangerous and unpleasant, but the rest of the city is as nice as any big city.

Abidjan, Ivory Coast: With one of the worst crime rates in Africa (although it has plenty of competition), this city topped many worst lists.

*****
Bangui, Central African Republic: One of the worst cities in Africa, as bad as Lagos. The crime rate is totally insane. The locals will try to steal everything you own and even a contingent of armed guards will not be enough to protect you.

Your hotel room will feel like a war zone. This fiendish city made a number of worst city lists. Lonely Planet’s guidebook more or less tells you to avoid this city altogether. Here is a harrowing report of a visit to Bangui.
*****

Bamako, Mali: Mali has one of the worst governments in Africa, admittedly a race with a lot of competition. Bamako is a sick joke of a town, where the tourist surcharge is rigorously enforced, and the ridiculous, potholed streets are undriveable by any vehicle.

Guatemala City, Guatemala: A totally dangerous, dirty, polluted, terminal patient of a city, full of scary, heavily armed teenage soldiers. The soldiers are there to keep the teeming, crime-ridden slums that stretch as far as the eye can see, from overrunning the place. But this city has a few fans.

Belize City, Belize: This sweltering, miserable, impoverished, crime-ridden, very dangerous city is built on a swamp, with a jungle for a backyard. The beggars are aggressive and even menacing, and shady characters shadow you on the streets as you walk about. Cops are nowhere to be seen. This is one of the worst cities in the Americas. But the rest of the country is a great place to vacation.

*****
Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Sao Paulo is the industrial engine of Brazil. This major city is full of garbage and very dangerous. There are hustlers as far as the eye can see, chaotic streets that render maps useless, not enough cops and Godawful traffic.

Rio de Janeiro, the popular tourist destination with the killer skyline perfect for any postcard, is a deceptive place. It’s a very dangerous city with lots of violent crime. Street gangs armed to the teeth regularly shoot it out in military-style wars with the cops.

Death squads of off-duty cops funded by local businessmen roam the streets at night, murdering homeless, drug-addicted street kids and petty criminals with impunity in a sickening “social cleanup” campaign.

There are pickpockets and muggers all about, often in menacing, youthful gangs (especially on the famous beach) and they frequently operate in broad daylight. A dystopian horrorshow of a city.
******

Nairobi, Kenya: Unfortunately, this city is seriously crime-ridden. Even locals admit that violent crime has reached catastrophic proportions.

Caracas, Barquisimeto, or the whole country, Venezuela: The crime is very bad here, sadly, and there is garbage everywhere you look. This blog supports Hugo Chavez, but crime in Venezuela is a tragic, long-standing problem with no quick fixes.

Guinea-Bissau: There is no water, no electricity, no place to stay, and the only hotel is half-demolished.

San‘a’, Yemen: In a Dickensenian touch, children are actually chained up here in order to beg!

Moynaq and Nukus, Uzbekistan: These two cities broiling in a merciless desert have been ruined and turned into ecological dead zones by Stalinist pollution.

*****
San Pedro Sulu, Honduras: This sad town has a horrible amount of crime. Swarms of locals will attack you on the bus, trying to steal your luggage. You will have to fight them off if you wish to retain your suitcase.

Like the rest of this wreck of a country, it’s full of US gang members gone home to Honduras. People here are very poor and desperate. If you can make it to the nice part of town and afford to stay there, though, you can be quite safe.
*****

*****
Dakar, Senegal: According to some, this large West African city has horrible street crime – it is very dangerous. They say if you don’t have armed guards with you, don’t even go outside your hotel room.

However, others report that they spent a week there and found it to be safe, in fact safer than many American cities. Violent crime is reportedly rare, and the country is one of the most stable in Africa, and has been that way since independence.
*****

Port Au Prince, Haiti: This filthy, degraded, extremely dangerous and desperately poor mess of a city is best avoided at all costs. It sports open sewers, enslaved children, riots, killings and lots of other fun things. This blog did support President Aristide’s efforts to improve the tragedy of a nation called Haiti.

Lome, Togo: Criminals are as common as mosquitoes here, walking around fearlessly in broad daylight in this terrible city full of miserable people and crooked taxi drivers.

*****
Istanbul, Turkey: The 200% tourist markup is fully in force in this dirty, ugly city full of harassing, hawking, hostile locals and crumbling buildings, and you can scarcely find a merchant who does not enforce it. There is also a lot of crime here, including some violent crime, unusual for a Muslim city. The weather is lousy, but there are some pretty mosques to visit. However, Istanbul does have a fan or two.

The rest of the country is a great place to visit, has many fans and is one of the world’s top tourist destinations. Best bet for Turkey is just to head to the tourist spots and blow off Istanbul altogether.
*****

Phnom Penh, Kampuchea: This city has become a very dangerous, crime-ridden place. The gangs of little girl prostitutes add a particularly poignant touch.

*****
Bogotá, Colombia or really the whole country: Bogotá is one of the most dangerous places in the Americas but there seems to be agreement that Colon, Lima and Guayaquil are worse. Really, all of Colombia is dangerous as Hell, to be honest.

This comment about Bogotá was recently rebutted by a Bogotán blogger, with more comments here. His post aggressively taking issue with this entry is in Spanish, but my Spanish is good enough to get the gist of it. Also I am getting a lot of comments coming in from Bogotáns on the Internet aggressively objecting to the content.

The sole issue that these Defenders of Bogotá are taking issue with is my contention that the city is a very dangerous place. To be honest, Bogotá used to have a truly horrible reputation for crime, but in recent years, there has been a huge effort put into cracking down on street crime. For some more agreement that Bogota is dangerous, see here, here, here and here.

I will now attempt to prove that. There are twice as many murders in Colombia as in the US, and the US has seven times as many people. That means that the murder rate in Colombia is an outrageous 14 times that of the US, and the US is considered to have a high murder rate for the developed world.

Colombia has the highest murder rate on Earth, with Washington, DC and Johannesburg not far behind, but in the case of Colombia, we are talking about a whole country, not some festering city. Out of every 100,000 people, 60-70 will be killed every year. Defenders may try to argue that this is due to a simmering civil war, but 75% of the 25,000 homicides are merely of the criminal variety.

On an average day in Colombia, there are 2 bank robberies, 8 highway robberies, 72 murders and 204 assaults or muggings. You have a greater chance of being murdered in Colombia than you do of dying of cancer! Death squads made up of soldiers and off-duty cops roam the streets, murdering drug-addicted, petty criminal street kids, transvestites, homosexuals and prostitutes.

In fact, probably more prostitutes and homosexuals are murdered per capita in Colombia than even in the most barbarian parts of the Muslim World. Want to fly a plane in Colombia? Don’t. There have been 138 plane crashes since World War 2, with 2,745 deaths.

One of the most popular things in Bogotá is scopolamine. This drug is used by crooks to disable their victims so they can rip them off. It is sprayed in the face, dumped in your drink or spiked into a cigarette. Bogotá hospitals receive an incredible 2,000 scopolamine victims every month, or an astounding 66 a day. The drug knocks you out and can cause medical problems.

Colombia has one of the world’s worst road systems. Many roads are not even marked. Drivers are reckless and many cars don’t have headlights at night. Cows have a tendency to wander into the road.

Taxis are totally dangerous and are best avoided, if possible. Women are advised to avoid all taxis at night. Anyone is advised to avoid any taxi that already has someone in it.

In many cases, this is a criminal accomplice of the thuggish driver. In addition to getting scopolamine sprayed in your face, another popular scam is the “jump-start”: you are told that the taxi has stalled and asked to get out and help push. As you do so, the taxi driver leaves with your luggage.

Buses are also best avoided. Thieves haunt the buses, waiting for you to fall asleep, at which point, they rip you off. Certain bus lines are frequented by thieves offering drugged gum, sweets, food and cigarettes. After the drug knocks you out, they rob you blind. In addition to theft and druggings, kidnapping and extortion are also rife on buses.

In view of all of the above, it is nothing short of amazing that all of these Colombians are angrily protesting my characterization of their country as dangerous. Or perhaps they doth protest too much?
*****

Managua, Nicaragua: This dirty, crime-ridden, dangerous disaster of a city has a bombed-out look about it. This blog supports Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista Party and prays that they can ameliorate this mess.

*****
San Salvador, El Salvador: See Managua. Full of dangerous former LA gang members. Death squads roam the streets, slaughtering gangsters by the dozen, but for every one you kill, it seems five more pop up in his place.

This blog supports the FMLN’s efforts to reform this ruined land, but the crime here has become so terrible, one wonders if anything short of an act of God could make things better. In fact, I used to make contributions too the FMLN’s weapons fund via an FMLN agent in Los Angeles during the 1980′s.
*****

*****
Detroit, New Haven, Newark, Gary (Indiana), Hammond (Indiana), USA: Detroit topped all lists as the worst city in the US. An ugly, dangerous, depressing and filthy city with a downtown that looks like a war zone – a despairing district surrounded by miles of crumbling, abandoned industrial buildings, torn-down fences and rusting cars.

Newark is similar, with few to no redeeming qualities. It’s a frightening, polluted city with a postwar look of miles of weedy, trash-strewn vacant lots where crumbling apartment buildings have been torn down. It’s also a dangerous city with a high crime rate.

New Haven, despite the presence of Yale University, is similar. There are legions of homeless, begging drug users clogging the streets, and the crime rate is very high due to hordes of crack-dealing gangs shooting it out on the streets. Congress and Columbus Avenues are notorious for drive-by shootings, drug dealing and muggings.

It is reportedly the HIV capital of the East Coast due to IV drug use. A lot of the more respectable people have been moving out for some time now. Although much of the city is quite ugly, New Haven does have its bright spots, thanks to Yale. There are nice parts of town, parks, trees, etc.

Gary is yet another postindustrial Rust Belt train wreck of a town. A grimy town full of abandoned factories, overgrown lots, rusting fences, graffiti, barred windows and vomit. Go downtown and see tall buildings all boarded up, with no vehicles in sight and unhinged stoplights swaying in the wind – for all practical purposes, a ghost town. This was once a vibrant, working-class city, and now it looks like Road Warrior.

Hammond is similar, a suicidally depressing city lined with shuttered factories on the shores of Lake Michigan. Yet another Rust Belt post-industrial ruin.
*****

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: A collapsing, dirty, crime-ridden hellhole.

Osaka, Japan: I never would have thought that this city would make the list but according to my friend Tumerica, she says it is the worst city she has ever lived in. I tagged her with the title of this story. In blogging, tagging mean you are supposed to write on the topic – kind of like, “Tag, you’re it.” I will let her explain why Osaka is such a crappy place in her post here.

Chinese Teahouse Scam

Chinese tea scam, Chinese tea ceremony scam, etc etc.

Many variations on a simple theme. You are walking along in big Chinese city and you are approached by young students,  male or female, speaking good English. Chinese people have a reputation for being very friendly, so you go along. They want to practice their English. You walk along for a bit and they suggest you go for some tea.

They direct you to some Chinese tea shop. The menu comes, you order rounds of tea. Prices seem a bit on the high side, but not unusual. Some pastries come later. Then the bill comes, and it’s totally outrageous. You’re out $200-750, and you better pay up or else. The nice friendly young “students” act baffled by the whole thing. This scam is spreading all over China and it is nailing Americans and now Brits left and right. It’s epidemic.

You go to the cops and they refuse to do anything about it. Stupid Americans! Haha!

My God, scams are everywhere, aren’t they? Watch out!