“For the purposes of this index, a failing state is one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant portion of its population, does not provide domestic security or basic public services to its citizens, and lacks a monopoly on the use of force. A failing state may experience active violence or simply be vulnerable to violence.”
The report is well written, well researched, and well diagrammed. One for your bookmarks.
Speaking of failed states:
Last year offered several good illustrations of what might be termed “pockets of failure” within otherwise strong and stable states. In the United States, Hurricane Katrina exposed gaping holes in the country’s disaster preparedness. Viewers around the world watched in astonishment last August and September as the world’s superpower left thousands of its citizens stranded for days.
Mission accomplished, a heck of a job, well done.
markfromireland
No tag for this post.
Don’t forget our appalling infant mortality rates!
Perhaps one reason for the failure is the complete lack of interest in reality amongst this crew - see the excerpt from a Condi interview found here: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Condoleeza_Rice_admits_she_responded_to_0509.html in which she admits they responded to the Iranian letter *before* they translated it.
In other news, W is at 31% popularity and CNN reports that the majority (57%) of unfavorables on W are based on “Iraq, Iraq, Iraq” while high gas prices which they assumed would be the reason (sic) are only 15%.
“We’ve not had a chance to do our own translation and of course we’ll do that …”
Yah grania you’re right and that’s going to go up fewer and fewer Americans even where both partners work and have reasonably good jobs can afford health care or even minimal health insurance. NOBODY slips through that net here.
This is one of the (many) reasons why when I hear how wonderful things are I point out things like:
On average we’re healthier, wealthier, better educated, have more civil liberties, less crime … there’s a park a few minutes away from central station here - I can either walk round it and add 30 minutes to get to where I’m going or I can walk through it. It’s open 24 hours a day walking through it late at night you’ll see old ladies out for an evening stroll, they’re wearing their rings, the often very expensive necklaces their husbands gave them, carrying their handbags, they’re not even slightly nervous, why should they be?
This crowd of corrupt buffoons running American and living in their “gated communities” are symptomatic of something deeply rotten and it ain’t in the state of Denmark. The only other place I ever saw “gated communities” was apartheid era South Africa. The only difference that I can see is that in the US the elite fear everybody - and with good reason, they’ve been robbing you all blind for years.
Siun thanks for that link - Not even slightly surprised.
Hmm let’s see:
Carter (Democrat): Complete failure to anticipate Iranian Revolution. Total success in stoking the hatred felt for the Shah’s regime thus ensuring the revolution’s success.
Reagan (Republican): failed war in Middle East US forces defeated pull out in confusion under attack from a Lebanese guerilla movement that had been in existence for only one year.
Bush 1 (Republican): - A somewhat won conventional war which laid the seeds for all the current ones.
Clinton (Democrat): - US forces pull out in confusion under attack from lightly armed milita controlled by a bunch of warlords in one of the most abjectly poverty stricken countries in the world.
Bush 2 (Republican): - Miserably abject failure in Afghanistan. Incipient civil war in Pakistan rapidly becoming an open civil/secessionist war I wonder if Kindasleazy Rice gets all steamed about Balochistan or whether she even knows where it is. USA ordered out of bases in Central Asia. Spectacular failure in Iraq. Now preparing to fail even more spectacularly in Iran and Syria. Sends US Navy to protect US oil interests in Nigeria result a flourishing little guerilla war in Nigerian delta the ummmm bit of Nigeria that has ummmm oil. North Korea gets nuclear weapons. Oh yes and has sent “military advisers” to “reform, strenghten, and modernise” the Lebanese army …. See: Reagan above.
Jeez: “If at first you don’t suceed fail fail again.”
it’s that innate american optimism!
but then I well remember learning that the US had no Vietnamese specialists in any department at the height of that one …
as Phil Ochs sang
Have a stick of our bubblegum … coz we’re the cops of the world
Whereas these days the song would have to be about the nightsticks used to sodomise underage boys in Abu-Ghraib.
feeling guilty for mistreating Ochs’s song which I sing in my head rather often - full lyrics here:
Ochs was pretty clear on US nature and intentions but I don’t think even his dark visions could have foreseen Abu Ghraib.
Full lyrics where? :-)
ack - and I was trying to save you work by using proper html …
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/cops-of-the-world.html
Proper html like this? :-)
You probably fell foul of bloggers unbelievably dim validation routines I can get away with for example using a target attribute in my link elements on the main posts because I just went in and replaced the default doctype statement. But the php that controls the comments page - no can do and it am seriously dim - for example it takes char entities and translates the damned things. Dim terribly terribly W3C compliant of course but still dim. Between that and repeated outages I am in all seriousness thinking of migrating completely across to MFI or just saying “to hell with it” and buying yet another domain and buying a hosting package. The problem with that of course is bandwidth costs.