On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Perry E. Metzger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Over the last few years the world has been wringing its hands over how > horrible it is that Somalia has no central government. The New York > Times regularly publishes stories about how awful the lawlessness > there is. > > In the meanwhile, however, there are several mobile phone carriers in > the country. Life expectancy has shot up. Most people have enough to > eat for the first time in decades. By nearly every objective measure, > the country is better off, and it is substantially better off than > neighboring territories.
On the subject of Somalia... Transparancy International ranked Somalia at the bottom of its table of transparent countries (i.e., Somalis is the most corrupt): http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table It is ranked worse than DRC, Iraq, Burma and Haiti. S. -- "I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode. I think it was called, 'The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down'." -- Homer J. Simpson
