Most hated totally unfailed state (according to the Foreign Policy Magazine/Fund for Peace Failed States Index)

in what insane way is ireland not a 'failed' state

In case anyone wants to discuss the more frivolous aspects of this study, the failed states are:

Somalia
Zimbabwe
Sudan
Chad
DR Congo
Iraq
Afghanistan
Central African Republic
Guinea
Pakistan
Ivory Coast
Haiti
Burma
Kenya (what happened? I am confused.)
Nigeria
Ethiopa
North Korea
Yemen
Bangladesh
East Timor

that's in order of failedness.

And a word from fallen soldier big Dom Passantino:

Yeah… you know how when you talk to people from Norway or Denmark or Finland they’re always on some jokey “Hahaha, everyone from Sweden is a cunt” tip, but you can see in their eyes they really actually do loathe every single human being from Sweden? This clip kinda proves why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fRNIdZe05I

ok- obviously, we're not going to make in onto that list any time soon, but FFS when is their data from?

anyway, don't hate any of the above states, but i'll vote for ireland because we shouldn't be there.

yeah, surprised to see iceland so low down their list. i mean, haven't they read michael lewis's searing expose?

I guess Australia's so high due to decent economy + isolation

voted australia btw

Ethiopa

whew, that was a close one!

thirteen months of sunshne

voted australia btw

Self hatin' roo.

; )

The list of actual failed states above is a bit odd. What definition of failed state are they using? Many of those countries are a bit rubbish in one way or another, but calling them "failed" suggests that the state has disintegrated (or come close to so doing). That's not really the case with Ethiopia, North Korea, Nigeria, or Kenya.

Obviously the voters have not been to Sydney recently.

Aren't most North Koreans starving or in concentration camps? Aren't North Korea dependent on foreign aid to feed their people? I'd call that fairly failed.

Yeah but the state is there, doing its stuff. People may be sad, but fuck them. It's not like Somalia, where the state does not exist, or Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the country is run as a colony.

But I take your point. The whole "failed state" thing is open to two meanings - a state that does not deliver good stuff for its people, or a state that does not exist in any real sense. The article linked to leans towards the former.

No, the report has an explicit definition: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/06/22/2009_failed_states_index_disorder_in_the_ranks

It then goes one to say the rankings are bullshit, but their working definition is at least plausible:

Failed states have two defining criteria: They deliver very low quantities and qualities of political goods to their citizens, and they have lost their monopoly on violence. Nation-states on the cusp of failure are either "weak" or "failing"—but not "failed." "Collapsed" ought to be reserved for geographical expressions without governments, such as Somalia.

OK, it doesn't say the rankings are bullshit, it says most of the countries it calls failed on the map are not in fact failed, which is weird.

caek i think that piece is a dissenting opinion about what the definition of a failed state should be. it does say that the rankings used a different rationale.

i think i prefer the official rankings' broad inclusion of things like "human rights" versus that author's very dictator-friendly emphasis on the state's "monopoly on violence" as the ultimate test of non-failure.

If you're going by the "monopoly on violence" criteria, surely there's no way NK or Burma can be considered failed states? The rest seem to qualify, more or less, although I don't know anything like as much as I should about Bangladesh.

Reasons to hate them all:

Australia - drunken boorish arseholes
Finland - tweeists
Ireland - paedos
New Zealand - umm... a bit dull maybe?
Norway - probably some raping and pillaging back there somewhere
Sweden - sexual deviants
Switzerland - cowards

what a pity blighty didn't make it to the top table, then we could respond in kind.

Switzerland is by far the one I hate the most here, for many fairly obvious reasons

I mean come on it's fucking objectionable whichever way you look at it

eh, the neutrality or the clocks?

Australia but I mainly hate Australia because really boring people from Scotland spend loads of money going there on holiday just so they can speak English in a place with a hot climate and that's really lame.

Or the libertarian crypto-fascist racist eyes-closed crypto-militant stockpiled hoarding privileged tosspottery of it all xp

I thought you'd left Oxbridge now?

xp to joe, ah, I thought that guy was with the Fund for Peace (and therefore one of the report's authors), but in fact he's with the World Peace Foundation. Those peace people.

lol Matt

If you're going by the "monopoly on violence" criteria, surely there's no way NK or Burma can be considered failed states? The rest seem to qualify, more or less, although I don't know anything like as much as I should about Bangladesh.

I don't think it is true of Ethiopia to any greater extent than it is true of, say, the USA.

i'd post something nice about switzerland (anyone from switzerland i've ever met has been very nice) but i'm still smarting from a passantino zing from opining that saudi arabia might be a cool place to work.

the irish. for st. patrick's day.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i suppose its unfair to blame an entire country for tuomassundae.jpg huh

A Norwegian annoyed me tonight, so them.

I'm not sure if Ireland counts as an unfailed state.

Can't say I hate any of these places, though I guess LJ otm regarding Swiss banks, but considering voting for Ireland just to take out my irritation for hearing about how (distant relative) is in a secretarial/admin job that would probably pay under 20k in the UK and is getting 45k for it

Then again since a lunch of two burgers + can of lager + can of coke cost 33 euro when we visited Dublin I guess they need it

(they were "gourmet" burgers - but of the 6 or so places serving lunch in the area we walked through they were all charging that kind of money)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I don't think it is true of Ethiopia to any greater extent than it is true of, say, the USA.

whoah, hold up, the US lacks, for instance, an Ogaden

(^^ this is re: monopolies on violence)

Aw cmon guys, we're not that bad!