Photo Essay | Foreign Policy

Rated by audieo57 on Jul 12, 4:55am

Who are the Uighurs? China's Muslim ethnic minority. It constantly amazes me how much i don't know about the world

Rated by DJNazzy on Jul 06, 11:36pm

The problem with "Freedom" with a lovely capital "F" is that it's such a buzz word in the United States and the Western World. It also encompasses so many separate variables that its extremely difficult to measure in such a list. Social freedom? Freedom of thought? Freedom of choice? Freedom of movement? I'm sure Freedom House measured them all...but its so faulty... My biggest issue with this list is how some nations included have practically non-existent governments or civil societies, such as Chechnya, Western Sahara or Somalia. Then, on the other side, you have totalitarian dictatorships like Turkmenistan and North Korea - essentially isolated from the rest of the world. And yet still, you have countries maintaining relatively decent ties with the global community, like Belarus, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe. Then you have China, a global power rival to the United States. To me, these are all different cases. So different, they cannot merely be grouped into "Least Free Places on Earth." Some are not free due to a more organic lack of anything near an economy or government to organize society, whilst others have state-produced lack of freedom. I think this differs quite a bit from the other end of the scale. In this list, you can have excellent freedom of health and wellbeing but a lack of economic freedom (Cuba), or economic freedoms with a lack of informational or political freedom (China), or basically no freedom at all (North Korea). Or you could be in a war zone... which personally I don't think fucking counts... thanks FP. But in any case, on the other side, you have Sweden, Norway, France, UK, Canada, the US, the rest of the OECD... basically all "Free". Sure, you can argue the minute details of the freedom of the press in Russia compared to Denmark, or the freedom of wellbeing in the United States compared to France, but honestly... they don't differ on the scale that this list does. Somalia and Cuba on freedom of wellbeing don't even come close. Turkmenistan and Syria on political freedom, same thing. China and Sudan on, well, anything, are light years apart. The OECD and other developed nations have all have seemed to "Max Out" on capital "F" Freedom, where it seems these "least" free countries either shouldn't be measured by their Freedom because they lack the necessary prerequisites to be judged, like a government or economy, or they have some freedom in certain areas, either in their economies, their societies, their minds or their wellbeing, whilst failing miserably in a few categories, mostly political or social (in the cases of totalitarian regimes, informational and mental freedom is lacking). Now I'm ranting...

Rated by largeGROUCH on Jul 06, 10:00pm

` JUST ONE OF THE "LEAST FREE PLACES" ON EARTH Tibet (China) "...China maintains tight control over Tibet, a remote Himalayan region known as "the roof of the world." Although most regard the exiled Dalai Lama as their leader, Tibetans lack the right to freely elect their officials or determine their political future. The monk above offers his prayers at the Dalai Lama's palace temple in Dharamsala, India. Chinese security forces routinely engage in arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and execution without due process, punishing even nonviolent protests against Chinese rule. China further restricted freedom of movement and exerted more control over the practice of Tibetan Buddhism following massive antigovernment protests in 2008..." CLICK THE PICTURE TO SEE THE REST