Global peace report says United States is more violent than China and Cuba

[Robbien]

Source: AP

BRUSSELS - Cuba and China are more peaceful than the United States, according to a global peace index published Thursday.

The report, which says the world is becoming a more violent place, was prepared by the Sydney, Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace. It says nearly two-thirds of the countries that it ranks each year have become more violent since 2007.

The report uses data from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which is affiliated with the Economist news magazine, to examine a country's murder rates, crime, social unrest, its number of prisoners and its level of military spending.

World peace would save the global economy some $7 trillion a year, the report says.

Read more: http://www.metronews.ca/halifax/world/article/547593--global-peace-report-says-united-states-is-more-violent-than-china-and-cuba

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The report ranked 149 countries. The U.S. placed somewhere in the middle at #85, falling behind China (#80) and Cuba (#72).While receiving low marks for its domestic murder rate, military expenses and role in international conflicts, it received a boost for respecting human rights and strengthening international relations.

Not surprisingly, Iraq was where it was last year — in the bottom spot.

And New Zealand snagged the top spot, earning the title of most peaceful nation in the world.

actual report link:

http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi-data/#/2010/scor

[hack89]

1. Same report says America is freer than China and Cuba

Freedom of the press, civil liberties, competitive elections, less political corruption - there is no comparison.

[Robbien]

3. More freedom of the press. Ha! Where have you been?

More competitive elections? Ha! We are given our candidates and if we choose wrong the machines change it.

Political corruption is measured by bribes. Since we call them campaign contributions and lobbyist support, our extensive system of bribery is not counted. I figure our system of bribes are bigger than anyone's.


Freedom is a term that is highly subjective and favors Western countries.

[hack89]

5. Do you think the Global Peace Report is accurate?

I am simply repeating what they report. Are you saying their methodology is flaw and their conclusions wrong?

[Robbien]

6. Yes, their methodology

There is no way that the country that is considered the policeman of the world who has over 700 military bases scattered all over the globe and who sponsors such entities such as Blackwater, Bectel, etal and who is engaged in large scale warfare both abroad and in-country (against immigrants), is only in the middle of the list of peaceful nations.

And how is it fair that the countries we invaded, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and by stealth Pakistan now are on the bottom of the list.

[hack89]

8. So the general premise of the OP is wrong too?

or at least not supported by any hard facts? If it is all BS, why did you post it in the first place?

Those factors that you cite are the reason we ranked so low. You just want to minimize all the good things they cite that raises our ranking.

Have you ever considered that America, like most countries, is a mix of good and bad? Where I live is very peaceful - no violence, no crime, good governance, community involvement to tackle societal issue. There are many in America like my town. I know that doesn't gibe with your "Amerikkka is evil" shtick but it is the truth.

[Robbien]

9. Just like your community

most places in the world care for its citizens that reside in their communities.

The report is supposed to highlight the general policies of each country, the policies at the top of its structure. I believe it is flawed but that doesn't negate the report.

The report is.

Therefore it is a news item and I posted.

[WinkyDink]

33. Afghan wedding parties rejoice at the news.

[hack89]

34. Because we know that Taliban ruled Afghanistan

was such a free and peaceful place.

[Proletariatprincess]

2. Peace is a subversive word in the USA.

I can just hear the righties now complaining that the world is wrong and disparaging any group, especially the UN, that sees the pursuit of peace as a worthy endeavor.

[fascisthunter]

4. true... idiots carry now at town hall meetings

a prime example of how fearful and agressive become have become here, and it ain't getting better, it's getting worse.

[Imajika]

7. Pretty stupid conclusions...

"Cuba and China are more peaceful than the United States, according to a global peace index published Thursday."

Sure, if we set up a police state we can have "peace" too.

There was little to no rape, murder or robbery on the streets of Moscow when Stalin was running the show. Does that mean we could achieve higher marks as a "peaceful" nation if we install an authoritarian dictator? Just because there is little street crime does not mean people feel at "peace".

This ridiculous list has North Korea (139) ahead of Israel (144). I am pretty sure that alone makes this index total nonsense. Virtually no one would opt to live in North Korea over Israel. Even if you vehemently oppose Israel's policies, it is a vastly better place to live than the North Korean slave state which exists in perpetual famine and deprivation.

[rollin74]

10. +1

exactly.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. I don't know about that - I'd wager the average N Korean feels more

safe and secure in N Korea than the average Palestinian feels in Israel.

[Imajika]

12. No, I seriously doubt it...

Israeli Arabs have a vastly better standard of living than North Koreans. They can also actually do things like vote.

North Korea is a decaying, totalitarian slave state with a horrendous standard of living for 90% of its citizens. Israeli Arabs have a higher standard of living than Arabs living in most of the surrounding countries.

We are talking about the country of Israel here, not the Palestinian territories.

The index is idiotic to rank a nation like Israel below North Korea.

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Standard of living has nothing to do with it. The ranking is on peace and

security.

Israel is in a constant, ongoing state of war. Hardly a day passes when someone doesn't die at the hands of the Israeli government. So, there's no nightclubs in N Korea. But nobody is setting off bombs in them, either. N Korea is no workers' paradise - is it ranked only marginally higher than Israel - but shootings and bombings and terrorism are not a part of their daily news (if they had any daily news).

BTW, do you think there are no Palestinians in Israel? The Palestinians are to Israel as the Mexicans are to us - they are the cheap labor that they can exploit. And like Mexican-Americans in Arizona, Israeli Arabs are under constant threat, because the RW Israeli Jews don't trust their loyalties even if they've been citizens since the country was founded, and even if they serve in their military and police and in every aspect of life in Israel.

I think the rankings are entirely justified there. OTOH, I think the US should be ranked lower than it is.

[Imajika]

18. There is virtually no security in North Korea..

..for the majority of the people. It is a nearly completely collapsed communist state where huge numbers live hand to mouth on a daily basis. Factories are idle, workers often have to pay the state companies just to stay on their rolls so they can go scrounge for food or scrap to sell, the risk of imprisonment for saying anything the state deems traitorous is high (and if you are arrested your family for 3 generations runs the risk of being jailed or shot too), starvation is almost a constant issue, etc, etc.

No, North Korea is vastly less "peaceful" than Israel. It is not even a close call.

"And like Mexican-Americans in Arizona, Israeli Arabs are under constant threat"

This is silly. No matter how deplorable the Arizona law is or whatever threat the Israeli Arabs feel, it is not even close to the level of deprivation that exists in North Korea. The idea that North Korea is a more peaceful place than Israel is just beyond ridiculous.

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. Again, standard of living is NOT what this report is about.

It is the Global PEACE Report, not the Global Standard of Living Report. Are there daily shootings on the borders of North Korea? Are gangs running rampant in their cities? Are there terrorists attacking police and government installations on a regular basis? Are the streets swarming with violent protesters?

No doubt, life is more precarious in N Korea, but it is ALSO more peaceful on the whole than Israel. By the way, how does Israel maintain its 'peace and security'?

With machine guns.

How's that different from N Korea?

[Imajika]

24. North Korea can't even maintain actual security for its people

"How's that different from N Korea?"

This is the point. Israel uses its military and police to maintain security, and it actually works. There are not people starving to death throughout Israel. Israeli-Arabs have a HIGHER standard of living than many other Arab countries around Israel. North Korea can't even provide basic security to its people with all its machine guns. The entire place is a crumbling relic of the command and control communist past. North Korea as a nation fails at virtually every category one could measure - it literally does almost nothing well enough to provide even a low level of security for its people.

Cuba, for example, may be a police state with little to no political freedom, but they at least succeed at it on a basic level. As obnoxious as I find the Castro brothers, what the nation trades for freedom it actually does get back in terms of basic security. People are generally housed, educated and fed. It may not be a great life in terms of material options and cutting edge services, but it at least sort of works.

There is simply no way Israel should be ranked lower than North Korea on a "peace" index that weighs the kind of factors this survey does. If they had strictly figured out how much combat all the countries in the world participated in and then ranked that and called it a "peace" index, I wouldn't have a problem with it. This index tries to tie many factors, even things such as access to primary education, into a ranking scheme. It just doesn't work. The results are patently silly. The information may be good on its own, but the way they tie it together and call it a "peace" index is laughable since the results do not reflect any kind of reality.

[RaleighNCDUer]

27. Like a broken fucking record...

:eyes:

[hack89]

13. In N Korea there are real death camps and real starvation.

In 1996 alone, more North Koreans died of starvation than all the Arab deaths at the hands of Israel since 1948. A million Koreans in one year versus 15,000 Arab civilians since 1948.

I think any North Korean would trade places with a Palestinian in a heart beat.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. Bullshit.

There are no "death camps". There are concentration camps, and people there die at rates higher than outside the camps I expect, but there are no death camps where the INTENT of the camp is to kill those who are sent there. To equate NK concentration camps with Nazi death camps diminishes the horror of the holocaust.

As for the starvation issue, that is also bullshit because nobody knows. There have been NO outside assessments of what the famine in N Korea did for the simple reason that N Korea would not let ANYBODY in to see for themselves. So if you are claiming a million Koreans dead of starvation, you are simply parroting somebody else's uninformed guess. The famine was real, but nobody outside North Korea has any idea how many died, and I doubt anyone IN North Korea knows either.

And, what does famine have to do with the object of the listing on peace? You are merely conflating issues to prop up a spurious argument.

[hack89]

23. You really think that North Koreans have it better than the Palestinians?

Really?

Here's a good paper on North Korea's famine - it takes willful ignorance to ignore all the evidence that is out there.

www.petersoninstitute.org/publications/wp/wp08-9.pdf

As for the prison camps - that's quite a reach to say I am minimizing the Holocaust. But if you think concentration camp makes it better, fine. Now tell me that any Palestinian suffers conditions worse than this:

Indeed, Kim and others believe that while the two women will be treated differently, they will still probably be sent to a regular prison — called a kyohwaso, or reformatory — rather than a prison for political prisoners, where conditions are relatively better. Kyohwaso life is extremely harsh: scholars estimate only 50% of prisoners survive their first year. One of the first accounts of the North Korean prison system, a 2000 memoir called The Aquariums of Pyongyang, tells of routine torture and deprivations on par with those of Nazi concentration camps. The book's author, Kang Chol Hwan, was imprisoned in the Yodok concentration camp at age 9 for 10 years with his family. He suffered starvation and disease and was forced to attend public executions. "I attended some 15 executions during my time in Yodok," he wrote. Kang was imprisoned at the camp because his grandfather had been sentenced for suspicious behavior.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1903572,00.html#ixzz0qTiPKnBG

You are the one that said that the average North Korean feels safer than the average Palestinian. My point is that the North Korean government brutalizes, kills, and starves it's own population to a degree that Israel has never come close to approaching. Never. 15,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed in 60 years. That's a bad month in North Korea.

[RaleighNCDUer]

28. nevermind that the AVERAGE North Korean is not in a concentration camp,

the fact remains that the concentration camp is NOT a "death camp" where people are sent for processing for execution. There is a difference. Dachau and Thieresienstadt were concentration camps, Sobribor and Treblinka were death camps which had no purpose other than to turn people into corpses. That's not saying nobody died at Dachau, but they were not sent there to die.

In your quote you cite the guy who lived in one for 10 years - awful long time if it was a death camp - who witness 15 executions in that time. One every 8 months hardly makes it a "death camp". Yes, a lot of people died of starvation - but they were dying of starvation outside the camps as well. The camp was not built as a place to send people to starve to death. You do the Holocaust an injustice if you equate these concentration camps with Nazi death camps (but it makes such a good point, politically).

And I never claimed the N Koreans had it 'better' than the Palestinians. Only that in their daily lives they felt more peace - they were not under constant threat of being shot or bombed just for being who they are. Any who speak against the government, yes - but in a totalitarian regime you learn real quickly not to do that. What they have is food insecurity. Malnutrition, even starvation, but not snipers picking them off, jets bombing their homes and terrorists blowing up their markets. That makes their lives less secure, but more peaceful. But of course, the rating was global peace, not food security.

[pattmarty]

19. Ok mister brilliance, tell me now what country has the most people.............

..........in prison? And, I mean the most BY FAR. Take your fucking time, I'll wait........

[Imajika]

21. Who cares? What has that got to do with it?

Where does this idea come from that a high number of prisons/prisoners equals less "peace".

Having an effective police force and a high incarceration rate can simply mean we are good at locking up criminals and are thus MORE "peaceful" for the vast majority of Americans who are law abiding citizens.

We also don't do political prisoners. Places like North Korea do. Not only that, but in a place like North Korea you can be arrested on suspicion of being a counter revolutionary for just being related to someone who was arrested.

Additionally, you can achieve higher incarceration rates due to LESS draconian sentencing. In this case the sentence is not enough of a deterrent to prevent the crime, so you end up locking up more people who decide it is worth taking the risk. I could have Chicago virtually street crime free if I put 25000 armed troops on the street and gave them the order to just shoot anyone they think is breaking the law. Soon there will be very little gang violence or street crime, therefore far fewer people going through the judicial system and to jail. That doesn't equal peace, it just means you traded freedom (and the street crime associated with it) for full on oppression.

[pattmarty]

25. Please let me know the drugs you are doing. I definitely want some........

..........so I can be in the same deluded space you are OBVIOUSLY fucking in.

[SILVER__FOX52]

22. We do have a police state....

Where you been?

[totodeinhere]

14. "Level of military spending" should not be included in the survey and it unfairly skews the results.

What does how much a country spends on it's military have to do with how peaceful it is inside the country? Murder rates, crime, and social unrest should be considered, but not military spending. Military spending has no impact on how peaceful my life is in this country. My chance of being murdered or robbed and that sort of thing has an impact on how peaceful my life is, but not military spending. Whether my country spends trillions on defense spending or nothing should have no impact on my chances of being murdered if I take a walk down the street.

I suspect that since the USA has the highest rate of military spending as a percentage of GNP in the world that this fact really skews our country's rank on the peace index. I'll bet that we would do much better if they left military spending out of the survey.

Of course that doesn't make our huge amount of military spending right. You won't find a more vociferous opponent of military spending than I am. But IMO that is a different issue and it has nothing to do with a country's level of peacefulness.

[Bragi]

17. Seriously, Cuba?

I've visited Cuba several times, traveled extensively on my own, and didn't find it to be menacing in any way. I'm not sure these rankings mean anything.

[hack89]

26. Cuba gets penalized for lack of basic freedoms and civil rights

these rankings tell you nothing about the quality of life for their citizens.

[robcon]

29. Cuba and China are peaceful because of they are police states

That's peace at the cost of freedoms.

[Bragi]

31. Not so fast...

I don't buy the ideological premise that freedom entails or causes a lack of peacefulness. In many places, people are free, and peaceful.

I don't think the violent streak in American society comes from its freedoms and civil liberties, I think it comes from its history.

- B

[Bragi]

30. The word used is "violent", which Cuba isn't

I do agree that Cubans lack freedoms and civil rights, at least as far as I can tell. My point is that the article says Cuba and China are deemed to be "more violent" than the U.S.

This just isn't so. For the most part, in terms of person-to-person violence, most of the world is less violent than the U.S. As for China, you can have money and stuff stolen, but it's almost impossible to get beaten up there by anyone other than police.

- B

[hack89]

32. The EU and UN would disagree

England, for example is the most violent country in Europe with a violent crime rate four times higher than ours. We are rightfully criticized for a high murder rate compared to other Western democracies (but nowhere near South America, Africa or ME rates) but our violent crime rate is lower than nearly every European country. And it has been steadily declining for decades.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

[shirleym]

35. Actually, the US is more violent than either Iran or Venezuela nt

Neither of those countries have attacked another or invaded another country.

[defendandprotect]

36. Not a surpise . . . Quite a few hold America as 'terrorist' nation -- !! I agree!!

[awoke_in_2003]

37. "respecting human rights"

Two words- Guantanamo Bay. Ok, two more- Extraordinary Rendition.