With the release of the UN's global ranking of countries, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/c ... 1/04/content_14034885.htm, and its available on other sites, the following may be worth thinking about.

What county am I talking about that offered the following to its people ?

1. There is no electricity bill; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at zero percent interest by law.
3. Having a home considered a human right.
4. All newlyweds receive U.S.$50,000 by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
5. Education and medical treatments are free.
6. Should anyone want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kickstart their farms are all for free.
7. If anyone cannot find the education or medical facilities they need, the government funds them to go abroad, for it is not only paid for, but they get a U.S.$2,300/month for accommodation and car allowance.
8. If a anyone buys a car, the government subsidizes 50 percent of the price.
9. The price of petrol is $0.14 per liter.
10.There is has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion.
11. If a anyone is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession, as if he or she is unemployed, until employment is found.
12. A portion of every oil sale is credited directly to the bank accounts of all citizens.
13. A mother who gives birth to a child receive U.S.$5,000.
14. 40 loaves of bread cost $0.15.
15. 25 percent of all people have a university degree.

Sounds like a country that actually treated its people honestly ?

So where is this utopia ?

I am fairly certain that this was on QI.

Wasn't it a small island somewhere, or a place between borders?

16. The government mass murders citizens who do not believe they live in a utopia.
17. There are no democratic elections, political opponents are assassinated along with journalists who support them.
18. The internet and all communications are owned and controlled by the government.
18. So many people are happy they wage a civil war and kill their leader as retribution for his crimes against humanity.

There is no such thing as utopia.

Quote from flymike91 :

16. The government mass murders citizens who do not believe they live in a utopia.
17. There are no democratic elections, political opponents are assassinated along with journalists who support them.
18. The internet and all communications are owned and controlled by the government.
18. So many people are happy they wage a civil war and kill their leader as retribution for his crimes against humanity.

There is no such thing as utopia.

this is utopia though, every man and women has their own, some just haven't found or noticed yet. Frankly we all live a charmed life ( some more so at times then others ) but our perspective on others is dim/crooked at best.


Each to their own i guess.

Brunei?

its Libya.

19. Their leader wanted to share the wealth by introducing a gold currency (which is arguably worth more than a bit of paper in an economic collapse).
20. Their leader wanted to start selling oil in the new currency, rather than in USD.

19 and 20 obviously have nothing to do with the NATO intervention. The NATO intervention was due to the completely true points 16-18. Keep watching your television for more unbiased representations of said country's living conditions and quality of life. Also just forget about Saddam planning to sell oil for Euros rather than USDs in 2000. It IS just a coincidence that his dictatorship happened to be the most evil in the world at the time, just as the Gaddafi dictatorship was obviously the most evil of recent times (and thus worthy of intervention), what with their free electricity and cheap bread.

Quote from flymike91 :

its Libya.

I think it's Libya too.

I'm waiting for the "THIS IS SPARTA" reply :hide:

It is Libya, just found the forum Racer got that list from

Without doing research and just popping off an answer off of the top of my head I'm going to guess Norway. I know they are a pretty heavy welfare state. That and for some reason this would seem like a thing that they would do. They give a christmas tree to the UK every christmas to thank them for helping out in WWII remember

I'd say Libya, but that would just be following the crowd

Utopia? Maybe. I always look to "The Matrix" when "Utopia" is brought up. The human mind hates what we would commonly call a utopia. It rejects it. Sure, the matrix is just a movie, but ignore the action that comes with that story and look at it's meanings. In the "original" Matrix almost all of human kind died because it rejected programming that would never give the human mind pain, hate, negative feelings, or anything of the sort.

Movie? Yes. Reality? Maybe. That's for you to decide. George Orwell's vision of 1984 looks like a Utopia too doesn't it?

Edit: Not Norway more than likely. Turns out it was at the top of the UN list. That would be too obvious now wouldn't it?

Quote from flymike91 :

16. The government mass murders citizens who do not believe they live in a utopia.
17. ...political opponents are assassinated along with journalists who support them.
18. The internet and all communications are owned and controlled by the government.

Says who?

Quote from flymike91 :

18. So many people are happy they wage a civil war and kill their leader as retribution for his crimes against humanity.

"People", one day, just stood up and killed their leader? Just like that?

Quote from sermilan :

"People", one day, just stood up and killed their leader? Just like that?

Quote from flymike91 :

its Libya.

Quote from hrtburnout :

I think it's Libya too.

Quote from Xaid0n :

It is Libya, just found the forum Racer got that list from

Yup, you guys got it right... I saw it like a week ago...

whatever you think of Libya, Gaddafi could have avoided destroying his country with civil war if he had abdicated his power as other leaders have as a result of the Arab Spring.

I hope there isn't going to be some revisionist movement where he is painted as a saint. He was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing as well as the 1989 Berlin bombing. Gaddafi sponsored terrorism against Israel and the West and most likely is responsible for the death of a citizen from each country represented on this forum.

I don't think that NATO or the United States should have been involved in the civil war, but the allegations that NATO went in to prevent Gaddafi from switching Africa to a gold standard is far-fetched. First of all Gaddafi was distrusted by most other arab and african nations so any attempt by him to change the economic system would have been seen as a personal quest for power and dominance. On the other hand I can see why the UN would be worried about a state sponsor of terror against Israel, Europe and the US having more money and control over the economic system in Africa.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

With the release of the UN's global ranking of countries, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/c ... 1/04/content_14034885.htm, and its available on other sites, the following may be worth thinking about.

What county am I talking about that offered the following to its people ?

1. There is no electricity bill; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at zero percent interest by law.
3. Having a home considered a human right.
4. All newlyweds receive U.S.$50,000 by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
5. Education and medical treatments are free.
6. Should anyone want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kickstart their farms are all for free.
7. If anyone cannot find the education or medical facilities they need, the government funds them to go abroad, for it is not only paid for, but they get a U.S.$2,300/month for accommodation and car allowance.
8. If a anyone buys a car, the government subsidizes 50 percent of the price.
9. The price of petrol is $0.14 per liter.
10.There is has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion.
11. If a anyone is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession, as if he or she is unemployed, until employment is found.
12. A portion of every oil sale is credited directly to the bank accounts of all citizens.
13. A mother who gives birth to a child receive U.S.$5,000.
14. 40 loaves of bread cost $0.15.
15. 25 percent of all people have a university degree.

Sounds like a country that actually treated its people honestly ?

So where is this utopia ?

Sounds a bit like Bob Dylan...?

Quote from flymike91 :

16. The government mass murders citizens who do not believe they live in a utopia.
17. There are no democratic elections, political opponents are assassinated along with journalists who support them.
18. The internet and all communications are owned and controlled by the government.
18. So many people are happy they wage a civil war and kill their leader as retribution for his crimes against humanity.

That's definitely Johnny Cash.

I thought it was the SIMS game

Quote from flymike91 :

He was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing

There are few events so plastered in stinky shit as the Lockerbie disaster.

Quote from sermilan :

"People", one day, just stood up and killed their leader? Just like that?

They destroyed their paradise with rage

Is it Middlesbrough?

Quote from AndRand :

They destroyed their paradise with rage

I thought it was Al Qaeda with their NATO allies, which seems a bit odd as I had thought that the whole war on terror thing was about fighting Al Qaeda.

While I've been saying for years the whole thing is a scam its great to see that confirmed in fact, at least it makes it more difficult for the idiots to claim ( S14, looking at you - ROFL ! ) that its a conspiracy theory.
Here's the Al Qaeda flag flying over the courthouse in Benghazi, and the whole article is worth reading http://theintelhub.com/2011/11 ... igh-and-proud-over-libya/
"So what in the world are we supposed to think about all this?

We were told that we had to invade Afghanistan because they were harboring “al-Qaeda” leaders.

We were told that it was necessary for us to stay in Iraq for so long so that “al-Qaeda” would not take over.

But now we have helped al-Qaeda take over Libya.

It isn’t as if the governments of the western world did not know what was going on in Libya.

According to the Telegraph, the leader of the Libyan rebels was very open about the fact that his “troops” included significant numbers of al-Qaeda fighters that were firing bullets at U.S. soldiers in Iraq…."

And regarding Lockerbie, here's an article from the Guardian, a prime source of conspiracy theories !, from 2004. It would be great if people could actually pay attention...........
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/mar/31/lockerbie.libya

And thanks too all of you who are

Hopefully the answers to your questions will be discovered before next November, but I suspect this new Libyan government will have already fallen by then and Obama will have to decide whether to convince the UN to go back into Libya to clean up the mess (that may be the whole point). I don't think Al-Qaeda has taken over Libya yet, they are more likely the most prominent of several groups who are going to be fighting over whats left. You may not believe it but that story about the Al-Qaeda flag was reported by omfg Fox news last week so it's not such a secret.

Personally, I think Obama is somewhat innocent, just such an inexperienced child when it comes to foreign policy that he thought the US should be on the "good guys" side of the Arab Spring. Notice that Clinton is cutting ties with Obama, his ideology about where the US stands in the world being such that it makes her job as secretary of state demeaning by any standard.

In short Gaddafi was bad and was directly responsible for the deaths of many people outside of Libya, especially in SE Asia and Israel. He may have given his people cash, but never the freedom that comes along with political efficacy. The new Libya may not be organized enough for years to become a serious state sponsor of terror on the level of Gaddafi.

*PS I don't understand what you mean by "we"

Under US law it's treason to aid a terrorist organisation like Al Queda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act

Yet, somehow, their your allies now.

This may make sense to you but certainly not to the rest of the world.

Or is this yet another double standard.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news ... /01/eu-arms-exports-libya

You think Obama knew that he was supporting Al Qaeda? We should put him on trial for war crimes! Impeach!

On the other hand if you have a more than a little faith, the provisional government may hold fair democratic elections and cast their votes for non-secular representatives who can fulfill points 1-15 of your first post without being a state sponsor of terror, a monarchy, or a failed state. I would be very happy to see that happen for them, but the fatal flaw of countries that are predominantly Muslim is that they cannot separate religious ideology from political ideology.