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AlterNet reports:
Most peaceful countries"We are living in the most peaceful century in human history; however, the 2014 Global Peace Index shows that the last seven years has shown a notable deterioration in levels of peace."
So begins this year's peace index [script heavy site], an annual report released by the nonprofit Institute for Economics and Peace. The study ranks 162 countries (covering 99.6% of the world's population) according to a complex set of indicators that gauge the absence of violence and political instability. These include a nation's level of military expenditure, its relations with neighboring countries and the percentage of the population held in prisons.
Check out this infographic [pdf] to see which countries are the most and least peaceful, and access the IEP's full report here [pdf].
1. Iceland
2. Denmark
3. Austria
4. New Zealand
5. Switzerland
6. Finland
7. Canada
8. Japan
9. Belgium
10. Norway
Least peaceful countries
1. Syria
2. Afghanistan
3. South Sudan
4. Iraq
5. Somalia
6. Sudan
7. Central African Republic
8. Democratic Republic of the Congo
9. Pakistan
10. North Korea
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday August 10 2014, @05:32PM
Some major reasons the United States ranks much lower than Europe:
1. The highest, by far, military expenditure in the world. This has nothing to do with high crime rates among inner-city minorities or Mexican immigrants.
2. Involvement in lots of wars in the last decade (Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya), and covert actions in Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine, and just about everywhere else. Also nothing to do with inner-city minorities or Mexican immigrants.
3. The largest prison population in the world. This one is mostly about the War on Drugs, because the vast majority of prisoners in the US are there for non-violent drug offenses, typically pot possession.
4. A murder rate that is 5 times that of Europe. This one is only partially caused by the specific populations you refer to: almost half of murders are committed by white people, and lots of murders and other violent crimes happen in rural areas.
So yes, it matters that there are still serious problems of violent crime among non-white people in the inner cities, but if you completely solved that problem you'd still be seeing the US ranking something like 105th overall.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Jiro on Sunday August 10 2014, @07:25PM
I didn't say that all the figures are caused by minorities, I used that as an example of what was wrong. The *main* problem is simply that the whole thing is completely arbitrary. You want the uS to score low? Then just pick the things you don't like about the US that can be connected to peace and weigh them highly.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday August 10 2014, @08:28PM
I'm really curious what standards of peace you would use that would cause the US to be ranked highly as a promoter of peace.
You can argue that the wars waged by the US were fully justified, or that they prevented a greater war from happening. But to claim that a nation that is fighting a bunch of wars right now is more peaceful than Switzerland (who last fought a war in 1847) is simply silly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.