Where Is Switzerland on this List?

Impact LabThe top ten most peaceful nations:

• 1 New Zealand,
• 2 Denmark,
• 3 Norway,
• 4 Iceland,
• 5 Austria,
• 6 Sweden,
• 7 Japan,
• 8 Canada,
• 9= Finland,
• 10= Slovenia.

The Global Peace Index, a report prepared for the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks 144 countries in a league table of peacefulness.

The index defines peace as “the absence of violence”.

Twenty-three criteria on which the league table is compiled include political stability, risk of terrorism, murder rate, likelihood of violent demonstrations, respect for human rights, internal conflicts, arms imports and involvement in foreign wars. _ImpactLab

The ten least peaceful countries:

• 1 Iraq,
• 2 Afghanistan,
• 3 Somalia,
• 4 Israel,
• 5 Sudan,
• 6 Democratic Republic of the Congo,
• 7 Chad,
• 8 Pakistan,
• 9 Russia,
• 10 Zimbabwe

Like any such list, it was compiled more for political reasons than to be informative. You have to take it with a tonne of salt. But there is plenty to think about. These are calculations generally done by the subconscious mind, on local, regional, and global levels. Every time we consider a travel route or a vacation plan.

People do not emigrate from Switzerland or the Cayman Islands to Egypt or Gaza.

On Letting the Muslims Kill Each Other

Muslim jihadis appear to have no scruples concerning who they kill. It is easy for them to rationalize killing almost anyone. In Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, and other countries, muslim on muslim violence is common, and deadly.

Diana West suggests that it might be in the best interest of westerners to simply allow the various sects, factions, schisms and tribes of Islam to fight among themselves for a while.

There's another Middle Eastern strategy to deter expansionist Islam: Get out of the way. Get out of the way of Sunnis and Shi'ites killing each other. As a sectarian conflict more than 1,000 years old, this is not only one fight we didn't start, but it's one we can't end. And why should we? If Iran, the jihad-supporting leader of the Shi'ite world, is being "strangled" by Saudi Arabia, the jihad-supporting leader of the Sunni world, isn't that good for the Sunni-and-Shiite-terrorized West?
With the two main sects of Islam preoccupied with an internecine battle of epic proportions, the non-Muslim world gets some breathing room. And we sure could use it — to plan for the next round.

To plan for the next round? That is an interesting way of stating that the war between Islam and the modern world will not end until either Islam reforms itself to be more tolerant, or Islam is gone forever from the universe.

Since neither result is likely to occur in the next hundred years, expect the long war (multi-millenial so far) to continue.