Japan Ranked the 5th Most Peaceful Nation
05/23/2008 @ 12:00 pm
Reuters is reporting on the release of the Global Peace Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The report is based on 24 indicators including U.N. deployments overseas, respect for human rights, levels of violent crime, and arms sales.
The Group of Eight economic powers ranked as follows: Japan (5th), Canada (11th), Germany (14th), Italy (28th), France (36th), Britain (49th), U.S. (97th), and Russia (131st), out of 140 ranked.
Iceland ranked first.
The bottom 5 included Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Israel, and Iraq.
By “arms sales,” do they mean a country’s ranking is lower if lots of people buy guns? If so, this braindead survey can take a long walk off a short pier. I can’t imagine how Britain could rank higher than the U.S. on this. Britain probably has a higher violent crime rate than America by now.
May 25th, 2008 at 3:43 amMy thoughts on why Japan is a Peaceful Nation:
1. Article 9 of it’s Constitution.
2. Because Gojira is protecting it from Evil Outsiders.
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/littleboy/godzilla.html
(oh! I mustn’t forget this chap)
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/littleboy/01.html
thankyou
remora
May 25th, 2008 at 6:56 amhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index
(all qualitative scales are 1 to 5)
1 Number of external and internal wars fought, Total number
May 25th, 2008 at 1:04 pm2 Estimated deaths due to external wars, Total number
3 Estimated deaths due to internal wars, Total number
4 Level of organized internal conflict, Qualitative scale
5 Relations with neighbouring countries, Qualitative scale
6 Level of distrust in other citizens, Qualitative scale
7 Number of displaced persons as percentage of population, Refugee population by percentage of the origin country’s population
8 Political instability, Qualitative scale
9 Level of respect for human rights (political terror scale), Qualitative measure
10 Potential for terrorist acts, Qualitative scale
11 Number of homicides Intentional homicides, per 100,000 people
12 Level of violent crime, Qualitative scale
13 Likelihood of violent demonstrations, Qualitative scale
14 Number of jailed persons, Persons incarcerated per 100,000 people
15 Number of police and security officers, Civil security officers per 100,000 people
16 Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP Cash outlays for armed forces, as a percentage of GDP
17 Number of armed services personnel, Full-time military personnel per 100,000 people
18 Imports of major conventional weapons, Imports of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
19 Exports of major conventional weapons, Exports of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
20 United Nations deployments, Total number
21 Non-United Nations deployments, Total number
22 Number of heavy weapons, Weapons per 100,000 people
23 Ease of access to small arms and light weapons, Qualitative scale
24 Military capability or sophistication, Qualitative scale
How the mighty have fallen. The decendants of the once ferocious vikings take first, second and third place. Only upside is that I live in one of those countries =)
But how can New Zealand come in as fourth? It’s where Mordor is for crying out loud, the place is overrun with violent sheep and rampaging orcs.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:08 amif you be a stat.-geek, here are the numbers used to calculate japans ranking http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/japan/2008/
and the list in full http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/2008/
May 30th, 2008 at 6:10 amif you be a stat.-geek, here are the numbers used to calculate japans ranking http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/japan/2008/
and the list in full http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/2008/
@Paul
after having had a look at the numbers for the US and my own country, I can tell you that ease of access to weapons is not what makes for the USs position. On a scale of 1-5 my country (ranked top three in this survey) scores a 2 and the US scores 3. On level of violent crime, both the UK and the US scores 1 on a scale of 1-5.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:21 am@Paul
after having had a look at the numbers for the US and my own country, I can tell you that ease of access to weapons is not what makes for the USs position. On a scale of 1-5 my country (ranked top three in this survey) scores a 2 and the US scores 3. On level of violent crime, both the UK and the US scores 1 on a scale of 1-5.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:22 amargh, sry for ehm, scaled-double-posting
May 30th, 2008 at 6:24 am