#international politics

I wrote a piece for the BuzzFeed Community Summer Challenge and I would really appreciate the support of just clicking the link. The post is my first attempt at a movie review/sarcastic and honest criticism of Arab American stereotypes.

Stop Palestinian hate.

Palestinian Girl Watches Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With The Zohan So You Don’t Have To.

Globally, human freedom in retreat, while nationalism, populism, and hybrid forms of authoritarianism gain strength….

Today, on Human Rights Day, the @CatoInstitute is pleased to release the fourth annual Human Freedom Index (HFI),the most comprehensive measure of freedom ever created for a large number of countries around the globe.

The report measures a broad array of personal, civil and economic freedoms around the world and the extent to which basic rights are protected or violated. The HFI captures the degree to which people are free to enjoy important rights such as freedom of speech, religion, association, and assembly, and also measures freedom of movement, women’s freedoms, crime and violence, and legal discrimination against same-sex relationships. 

Because freedom is inherently valuable and plays a role in human progress, it is worth measuring carefully. The Human Freedom Index, co-published by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada, and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Germany, ranks 162 countries based on 79 distinct indicators of personal, civil, and economic freedom, using data from 2008 to 2016, the most recent year for which sufficient data are available. The index is a resource that can help to more objectively observe relationships between freedom and other social and economic phenomena, as well as the ways in which the various dimensions of freedom interact with one another. 

New Zealand and Switzerland are the two freest countries on this year’s index, while Venezuela and Syria rank last. The United States ranks 17, notably below its best index ranking. In 2008, the U.S. ranked 11, then fell notably until 2013, after which it rose through 2016, the latest year for which the index gathers sufficient data that is comparable globally. 

Unfortunately, more countries than not have seen their level of freedom decline, compared to 2008 or to last year’s report. Overall, the report finds global freedom fell slightly since 2008 from 7.07 to 6.89 on a ten point scale.

Over that longer period, notable deteriorations occurred in Russia, Hungary, Argentina, and, in more recent years, Turkey. Some of the largest drops in freedom in the world occurred in Greece and Egypt, further reflecting a strengthening of populism and authoritarianism that have afflicted countries on every continent in the past decade.

The good news is that over the long term, freedom has spread to a diversity of countries too, including numerous ex-socialist countries, Latin American nations, one sub-Saharan African country (Mauritius) and several Asian countries that all belong to the top quartile of the freest countries in the index. Many are on the rise, and some, like Taiwan, have seen notable increases in freedom in recent years.

Learn more, and join the conversation on Twitter with #FreedomIndex18…

The Pacific island country Kiribati is the only country in the world found in all four hemispheres. Although spread out over a distance around the same size as from New York to Los Angeles, the country’s total land area is only slightly larger than New York City.

The tiny European state of San Marino is the world’s oldest continuously existing sovereign state and was founded in 301 AD. It’s also the world’s oldest republic and has used the same method since 1243 to elect the country’s leaders and has a constitution dating to 1600.

Of the 40 US midterm elections held since the American Civil War, the President’s party has lost seats in 37 of them. The only times that a President’s party gained seats were following the 1934 elections during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term and the Great Depression, in 1998 during Bill Clinton’s second term after the Republican-led impeachment effort, and in 2002 during George W. Bush’s first term following the September 11 attacks. 

In 2012, the Republic of Ireland passed a law which made that political parties lose half of their state funding if they do not put forward at least 30% female or 30% male candidates for elections. The result was that in the next general election in 2016, 40% more women were elected raising the number of women in the Dáil Éireann, the Irish lower house of parliament, to 22%.

In April 2018, France passed a law banning the use of meat terms to describe vegetarian products. The law means that companies will be fined for using terms like “sausage” or “steak” to describe products that do not contain meat and is also applicable to products marketed as dairy alternatives.

Around 58% of the world’s oceans lie outside the jurisdiction of all countries and anyone sailing in these international waters is placed under the jurisdiction of the flag state of their vessel which determines the nationality of the vessel. As this also determines the taxing jurisdiction of the vessel, countries like Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands are popular countries for registering ships. Landlocked countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg are also surprising popular due to their favourable tax rates.

Following the publishing of book in 1799 by a Scottish explorer in West Africa, the mythical mountain range of Kong appeared on world maps for more than two hundred years showing the mountain range stretching for hundreds of miles from Côte d’Ivoire to Nigeria. In 1889, a French army officer returning from a trip to Africa tried to debunk the myth, but for years after the mountain range continued to appear on maps because everyone had always thought it was there.

Although US presidents traditionally take the office of office with their hand on the Bible, the constitution does not stipulate that a Bible must be used. Theodore Roosevelt did not use a Bible when he took the oath as no Bible could be found at his swearing in, while Lyndon B. Johnson similarly used a Roman Catholic missal instead in lieu of a Bible. John Quincy Adams, uniquely chose to use a law book to indicate his intention of upholding the constitution and emphasising the separation of church and state.

Only four countries in the world recognise the Georgian breakaway region Abkhazia: Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru. Nauru is also the only country that recognises both Abkhazia and Kosovo. 

On the 25^th of October 2018, Ethiopia elected the country’s first female president. The role is largely ceremonial, but forms part of a series of major political reforms in the country since their new Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, came to power in April. The PhD holding prime minister has also recently selected a cabinet made up of 50% women, including the country’s first female defense minister.

In southern Benin on the west coast of Africa there is a village built in the middle of a lake that is sometimes referred to as the “Venice of Africa”. The village which has a population of around 20,000 people was originally formed in the 16^th and 17^th century by a tribe fleeing the larger Fon tribe who participated in the slave trade. According to Fon religious practices, they were forbidden from raiding anyone dwelling on water and the village provided a safe haven for the smaller tribes. Today, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site with its own market and a school built on the lake.

At the time of partition in 1947, the border between India and East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh) was left extraordinarily complex with 102 Indian enclaves found in Bangladesh while 71 Bangladeshi enclaves were found in India. This border also included the world’s only instance of a counter-counter-enclave, Dahala Khagrabari, whereby a piece of Indian territory was found within a piece of Bangladesh, which was itself in a piece of India within Bangladesh. To simplify their international borders, the two countries agreed to exchange enclaves in 1974 with a revised agreement reached in 2015 which transferred land between the two and allowed residents of the area to travel freely between the two countries.

In the period following the adoption of the American Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, it was common practice to say the pledge while doing what was called the Bellamy Salute with your right arm extended at a slightly upward angle with the palm open and fingers pointing directly ahead. When fascist movements in Europe started using a similar gesture in the build up to World War 2, the salute became problematic and in 1942 the US Congress decreed that the Pledge of Allegiance should said with the right hand over the heart.

Nepal is the only country in the world that uses a non-quadrilateral flag

There are three countries in the world entirely surrounded by one other country. Italy surrounds two, San Marino and Vatican City, while South Africa entirely surrounds Lesotho. Three other countries, Brunei, the Gambia, and Monaco, are in a similar situation except that they have a border with the sea.

There are only two countries in the world where Coca-Cola cannot be bought, Cuba and North Korea. Both countries have banned the company due to their anti-American sentiments and until 2012, the product was similarly banned in Myanmar (Burma) due to American sanctions against the country.

Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) was such a peaceful colony that the British instituted universal suffrage in the country in 1931, only three years after its adoption in Britain. Its path to independence was also so moderate and peaceful that when the country gained independence in 1948, parts of the countryside supposedly didn’t even realise.

With around 350 buildings over 150m (492 ft), Hong Kong has the most skyscrapers in the world. New York by comparison only has around 264 while the city with the third most skyscrapers, Dubai, has only 181. 

The tiny European country of Luxembourg passed a law in 2017 which granted Luxembourgish companies the mineral rights to any resources found in space such as from asteroid mining. The first of its kind in Europe, the law is meant to attract private space companies to open business in Luxembourg and the country already has €25 million invested in a company focused on mining space resources.

The Polish alphabet is made up of 32 letters. Based on the Latin alphabet, but excluding q, v andx, the alphabet also includes the acute accent (ć, ń, ó, ś, ź), the overdot (ż), the tail (ą, ę); and the stroke (ł).