United States: Top destination for adults who seek to relocate

According to Gallup, seven hundred million people would love to permanently move to another country.

The United States ranked first as the top destination where adults wanted to relocate permanently:

Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, name the United States as their desired future residence. With an additional estimated 45 million saying they would like to move to Canada, Northern America is one of the two most desired regions.

The remaining top desired destination companies are predominantly European. Forty-five million adults would like to move to the United Kingdom or France, thirty-five million would like to move to Spain, and twenty-five million would like to move to Germany.

For the rest of the world, thirty million name Saudi Arabia and twenty-five million name Australia as their ideal home.

So what would happen if people could actually move wherever they wanted?

Singapore’s adult population would swell from about 3.6 million people to as high as 13 million. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the other hand, would lose 60 percent of its adult population.

Education in the Arab World

The Economist gives a harsh view of education in the Arab World:

On evolution:

According to surveys, barely a third of Egyptian adults have ever heard of Charles Darwin and just 8% think there is any evidence to back his famous theory. Teachers, who might be expected to know better, seem equally sceptical. In a survey of nine Egyptian state schools, where Darwin’s ideas do form part of the curriculum for 15-year-olds, not one of more than 30 science teachers interviewed believed them to be true. At a private university in the United Arab Emirates, only 15% of the faculty thought there was good evidence to support evolution.

The strength of religious belief among Arabs partly explains their reluctance to accept the facts of evolution. Until recent reforms, state primary schools in Saudi Arabia devoted 31% of classroom time to religion, compared with just 20% for mathematics and science. A quarter of the kingdom’s university students devote the main part of their degree course to Islamic studies, more than in engineering, medicine and science put together. And despite changes to Saudi curriculums, religious study remains obligatory every year from primary school through to university.

Comparing educational systems:

The most rigorous comparative study of education systems, a survey called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that comes out every four years, revealed in its latest report, in 2007, that out of 48 countries tested, all 12 participating Arab countries fell below the average. More disturbingly, less than 1% of students aged 12-13 in ten Arab countries reached an advanced benchmark in science, compared with 32% in Singapore and 10% in the United States. Only one Arab country, Jordan, scored above the international average, with 5% of its 13-year-olds reaching the advanced category.

Comparing universities:

A listing of the world’s top 500 universities, compiled annually by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, includes three South African and six Israeli universities, but not a single Arab one. The Swiss-based World Economic Forum ranks Egypt a modest 70th out of 133 countries in competitiveness, but in terms of the quality of its primary education system and its mathematics-and-science teaching, it slumps to 124th. Libya, despite an income of $16,000 a head, ranks an even more dismal 128th in the quality of its higher education, lower than dirt-poor Burkina Faso, with an average income of $577.

The situation today:

Arab countries now spend as much or more on education, as a share of GDP, than the world average. They have made great strides in eradicating illiteracy, boosting university enrollment and reducing gaps in education between the sexes.

Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil

The Associated Press reports:

There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

“We are among the economically vulnerable countries,” [Saudi delegation Mohammad S.] Al Sabban told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the talks ahead of negotiations in Copenhagen in December for a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Saudi Arabia, which sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, is seeing economic growth slide because of fallout from the global meltdown, but experts still expect the country, flush with cash from oil’s earlier price spike last year, to be better able than other nations to cope with the current crisis.

Al Sabban accused Western nations of pursuing an agenda against oil producers, under the guise of protecting the planet.

Saudi Arabia has a ‘free market economy?’

Below is an expert from the “Economy and Global Trade” section of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC. It begins as follows:

Saudi Arabia’s free market economy has undergone remarkable changes in a relatively short period of time. It has evolved from a basic agricultural society into a regional and global economic power with a modern infrastructure.

Two paragraphs later, the website writes:

The government has an essential role in industrial and economic development. The Ministry of Economy and Planning formulates economic and social development plans that set long-term economic goals. Additional sectors of the economy are overseen by individual ministries, such as agriculture, energy, transportation, communications and finance.

Perhaps I’m a little naive, but if a country has a “Ministry of Economy and Planning” that implements the government’s “essential role in industrial and economic development,” could it really have a free market economy?

A Map of the Internet’s Black Holes

Frank Jacobs writes:

The series of tubes famously dubbed the ‘internets’ by president G.W. Bush* constitute a world wide web of interconnectedness. But, as this map demonstrates, there are some black holes in that web. They represent the 15 countries that limit or prohibit their citizens’ access to internet as a way of censoring the free flow of information.

Perhaps most notorious among those countries is China, with its Great Firewall (and its insistence on self-censorship by non-Chinese companies operating within the Middle Kingdom). Other countries also maintain firewalls, notably Saudi Arabia, while less-developed nations might just not allow their citizens to own computers.

* : it was Alaska Senator Ted Stevens who called the internet ‘a series of tubes’. George W. Bush referred to the world wide web as ‘the internets’ both in the 2000 and the 2004 presidential election campaigns.

The above map was created by Reporters Without Borders.  Below is the list of the 15 internet-restricting nations and their press freedom ranking. “Internet censorship,” Frank Jabobs writes,”i s a strong indicator of press censorship in general:”

1. Maldives (144)
2. Tunisia (148)
3. Belarus (151)
4. Libya (152)
5. Syria (153)
6. Vietnam (155)
7. Uzbekistan (158)
8. Nepal (159)
9. Saudi Arabia (161)
10. Iran (162)
11. China (163)
12. Myanmar/Burma (164)
13. Cuba (165)
14. Turkmenistan (167)
15. North Korea (168 and very last on the list)

Guantánamo’s Numerical Rhetoric

The New York Times reports, “an unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.”

These findings, of course, strengthen arguments made by critics who “have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the prison by January.”

But there is little value in numbers alone. They must be compared to something to hold significance. One in seven means little without comparison.

A 2002 “report based on the largest study ever conducted of the relapse into criminal behavior in the United States” found that “Sixty-seven percent of former inmates released from state prison in 1994 were charged with at least one serious new crime within the following three years, the U.S. Justice Department report shows.” Mind you these people have motivations unlike those in Guantánamo. But it does show that one in seven may not actually be so frightening.

But there are better comparisons to be made. Saudi Arabia, for instance, treats its Guantánamo equivalent as a rehabilitation center.

“The goal of the rehab program is to give the “students” a stable social network that doesn’t rely on terrorist organizations. Detainees eat and cook communally and live in rooms with fellow prisoners. Family members visit regularly, and detainees can phone them whenever they want. They can even request furlough for weddings and funerals. Families also receive generous stipends, since prisoners can’t earn money.”

Don’t count on that approach under American supervision. But Saudi Arabia doesn’t act alone. Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Sinagpore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and now Iraq have similar programs. Interestingly, each of these countries, with the exception of Singapore, is a majority Muslim state.

“So, does rehab work? Recidivism figures come from the local governments [in Saudi Arabia], so they aren’t particularly reliable. The Saudis claim that, since 2003, they have converted and released 1,400 participants; as of 2008, only 35 of them—or 2 percent—had been rearrested.”

So are the detainees really too bad to rehabilitate or are our techniques inferior to the Saudis? I don’t know.