Peace and Love to all Mankind ....

The Global Peace Index was published this week ... apparently the brainchild of an Aussie entrepreneur/philanthropist and conducted by the Economist's Intelligence Unit ... with the support of the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the former US president Jimmy Carter.

It ranked countries on 24 different indicators assessing a coutry's level of violence and danger .... but takes into consideration street violence, numbers of prisoners and organised crime as well as general warmongering, military spending and intercontinental meddling ....

Unsurprisingly the Scandinavians did rather well .... Norway comes top of the table with its peace-loving neighbours Denmark, Sweden and Finland all in the top seven (what is it with the scandinavians coming top of eveything?) ..... New Zealand is second (surely too far away from anywhere and too full of sheep to cause anyone any problems?) ... the Irish were fourth (amazingly given recent history) .... one place above Japan (having an elvis-impersonator head of state clearly makes for more love less war) ...

Equally predictable the bottom 5 .....
121 Iraq
120 Sudan
119 Israel (interestingly Palestine isnt on the list)
118 Russia
117 Nigeria (there are some great nigerian blogs ranting against this!)

But the list also throws up some suprises .... the UK is ranked at 49 - way way below most other euro nations including the Baltic states ..... China comes in at 60 just below Libya and Cuba ... whereas the US barely makes the top 100 (96) just one spot better than Iran .... India and Pakistan fare dismally at 109 and 115 respectively .... and Somalia not really being a country doesn't even feature on the list ...

The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying "Compiling and maintaining an index of which countries are the most peaceful and publishing the results will undoubtedly make the factors and qualities that contribute to that status better known and will encourage people to foster them in their own countries,".

We can but hope.