Saturday 2 June 2007

Peace on Earth

The United States is less peaceful than Jordan, Bosnia, Costa Rica, Zambia, Indonesia, Macedonia, Serbia, Egypt, Cambodia, Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala and Yemen, according to the Global Peace Index produced by the economist Intelligence Unit, which you can see not at the EIU site which is pay-only, but here instead.

In fact, the US ranks in 96th place from a total of 121 countries, handily getting better results than Russia, Iraq, Iran, Israel and Sudan. You may reflect that much of the peacelessness in Iraq is America's fault, but let's allow them the small consolation, shall we?

By clicking on a country's name on the list above, you're taken to a page containing a host of indicators which have been used to calculate the country's peace index, and its ranking on the list. Just to show that there's nothing knee-jerk about the US placing on the part of the Hate America crowd, before anybody tries that old excuse. This is the Economist, after all.

Just for the record, the US's fellow war-mongerer, the United Kingdom, could only scrape a measly 49th spot. Obviously not trying hard enough.