Put it this way: SA just made it legal for women to ride bicycles in public. But only designated recreational areas, under close male supervision, and of course they still have to wear the all-covering abaya.
I’m not claiming the Saudi government is good. It’s clearly given in to the Dark Side. I’m just saying there are a few that are worse.
Ethnic, no, not as such. OTOH, Saudi Arabia does have (mainly in the northeastern provinces) a large Shi’a minority (10-15%), with a zealously Sunni government. And we’ve seen how explosive that kind of divide can be.
And, there is an ethnic/national divide: The foreign-born non-citizen population makes up 31% of the total population. (Including 1.3 million Indians and 900,000 Pakistanis.) That’s a volatile ratio, especially when the immigrants are all guestworkers and clearly not on a citizenship track . . . for what citizenship is worth in a country where nobody gets to vote . . .
Put it this way: It is both telling and disturbing that when Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the first thing the U.S. did was leap in to defend Saudi Arabia. (Hence, “Operation Desert Shield”.) As though SA were going to be next in Hussein’s sights – which it probably was – and as though SA were worth defending – which it certainly was and is not.
If you were to visit NK with the permission or invitation of their government, they would make damn sure you came to no harm. It’s unlikely you’d be robbed, kidnapped, or car bombed, or hit by a stray bullet or artillery shell. When and if to create an international incident is a decision left to the highest levels.
Haiti hasn’t had their shit together in decades. I’d actually say North Korea has a better government, in many ways.
I have to vote for CAR. Say what you want about the other guys, but at least they succeed in actually being a government.
CAR has been effectively ungoverned for decades. No president since independence has managed to control more than a few miles outside of the capital, and the occassional brief periods of peace have been a result of bribing outlying ethnic groups and hiring lots of private security firms. The military is vastly outgunned by just about everyone, leaving most of the country free ground for whatever foreign armies feel like cruising around there (Hi Chad! Hi Sudan!), massive gangs of roving bandits, and even anachronistic wackos from several countries away, like the LRA. At any given time, about 30% of the country is displaced due to violence, and most of this violence isn’t organized or for any particular political purpose, it’s just the result of having no government. Not surprisingly, they’ve seen coup after coup after coup (most recently, one just about a month ago), and none of these short lived governments has managed to do much of anything. They aren’t even doing a great job stealing. CAR as a modern state exists in the imagination only.
There are not “any number” of “hell hole” African countries “like Somalia.” Out of 55 countries, only a handful are at war or facing serious instability. Most of Africa’s billion people live in peaceful, often quite pleasant places.
Interesting point. Who’s hungrier, the North Koreans or the Haitians?
That brings up the question of how to define the “worst” government-are they those which are the most oppressive or totalitarian or simply the governments of the country with the worst conditions? Because the latter may be simply a product of long-existent economic and cultural factors rather than any delibrately malicious government policy.
If people are starving, it doesn’t much matter whether there is a free press or not.
Maybe a few years ago. Not now. There have been big changes in the last couple years there. They have gone from having Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest to having her as a member of parliament.
Myanmar/Burma surely has a long way to go, but i would no longer put them near the bottom of the heap.
Burmese muslim will probably not agree with you.:rolleyes:
The latter, if you’re hungry. “The good is enough to eat, and all the rest is cant.” – Bertrand Russell
Most of the world cares not, and, most of the Islamic world cares not, so sorry.
Most ringing endorsement of the African continent I’ve ever heard!
“Visit Africa today! Only a handful of our countries are at war or facing serious instability!”
I was taking about having to live there, not merely visiting the country.
What about when that South Korean tourist was shot by a North Korea soldier? That’s not high level and it was no stray shell.
There’s a lot going on here about “what place is the worst shit-hole”, but when it comes to governments, can I toss in Gaza, which has a government more devoted to continuing their ideological beef with Israel than the welfare of its people? Yes, it takes two to tango etc. but Fatah in the West BAnk doesn’t seem quite as hell-bent on death-by-cop right now. I’m not seeing this so much with Hamas.
Haiti shares an island with a vastly more successful nation. Implying that its problems are more due to its government and less to do with availability of resources.
Yes – but, the economic factors might well be something a more responsible government could have addressed effectively. All over the world we can see pairs of countries (e.g., South Africa and Zimbabwe; North and South Korea; Haiti and the Dominican Republic) with similar history, geography, culture and resources, but one is much more prosperous the other – and, generally, the one more prosperous is also the one more democratic.