The first thing I thought when I saw this was "This HAS to be South Africa" -- YUP!

A friend of a friend lives in SA and they said it's like a whatever one step below total anarchy is.

Money that China is pumping into African countries is making it down to tangible things that average people can see and benefit from. People are finding it easier to secure loans in South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria financed by Chinese banks then via british or american banks.

I do give a nod to Bill Gates and his initiatives, but even his project fail when it comes to the one thing the average person needs most, capital investment.

On the chance your 'jokingly' isn't obvious, MLK, Ghandi and Mandela's causes ALL had support from those willing to use violence, aka better weapons would help.

Malcolm X would be the next most prominent figure beside MLK. Indian independence wasn't won with peaceful hunger strikes alone, and again lots of violence in South Africa.

Ghandi even bridged the gap to working alongside the effective army fighting for India's independence:
" I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier."

Speaking more to the point of America today, pretty much no civil war has been fought exclusively with civilians on one side, and the government, police, army and all other branches of the state united on the other. The reason being that if that kind of unity within the government against the civilian population exists, you ALREADY have tyranny.

In America, the example would be if a president or a particular political party decided to try for tyrannical over reach, would the American public be better equipped to resist that with or without guns? In civil war, guns give power to the majority of public opinion that would need to be there otherwise. In a nation with an unarmed public, whatever the majority of soldiers side with is likely gonna win. With an armed populace, the civilian opinion matters more.

I think it's an overall modest observation, and one that really doesn't in anyway make it obvious that the modest benefit is worth the costs. That is another matter, but you can't factually claim that there isn't a meaningful difference between an armed and unarmed population when facing civil war.

You can find whackjobs racists anywhere, and Bob's -always- up for fanning the race wars.

If you want to be "fair", remember how recent Apartheid was ended in South Africa. It was only officially ended a bit over twenty years ago. IOW, almost all voters in South Africa lived under it, and personally remember the oppression (which was as bad or worse than -anything- we experienced in the US). I think a certain degree of bitterness and retaliation is easy enough to understand.

I know this is titled "Science in America", but what he's talking about is a global problem.

The whole "vaccines cause autism" nonsense was started in the UK. The Australian government is still willfully sticking its head in the sand regarding climate change. Only 8% of people in South Africa and Egypt accept that there is scientific evidence for evolution.

That said, it's worst in America, both in terms of degree (the number of people that don't accept science) and impact (the people in charge of the world's biggest economy are spending money on the wrong things).

Thanks for referring me here, @eric3579.

It's all true. The bit about pretty much zero world history being taught in schools is correct, but in a way that just makes it all the MORE puzzling.

I teach high school level students English. I do a unit on "Local Heroes" where my students learn a little bit about significant people from native English speaking countries. To get the theme across, I start with a Thai guy named Phraya Phichai who is a very significant person in the province where I live. From there I talk about Elvis Presley or Amelia Earhart for the US, Lord Nelson for England, William Wallace for Scotland, Nelson Mandela for South Africa, etc. to demonstrate people who have a similar kind of significance to people from those states/countries.

After that unit, during oral testing I ask every student to name their favorite historical figure / hero other than the ones we covered. Single most common response: the King of Thailand (the one that just died last year was and still is extremely respected / revered by Thais). But the second most common response: Hitler. By a pretty wide margin. I'd say 30%+ say the King, and nearly 10% say Hitler. Random sports players, musicians, etc. make up most of the rest -- but none with a big chunk of the responses like those 2.

I used to be pretty shocked by all of that kind of stuff here (I've seen the shirts, chicken restaurant, nazi flags for sale, etc.) but I guess I'm pretty numb to it by now. No idea what the source of it is, because it really does seem quite strange that Hitler isn't covered in schools here, yet somehow people seem to learn broad strokes about him enough for him to be oddly "popular". Whatever the source of that is, it seems to filter out the stuff that should make him infamous as opposed to a general pop culture sort of famous.

You as in America, lol why would your though process even go there to think I meant you as a person, that makes no sense.

You’re not eroding support your making people numb with the constant assault. Like ads on tv or the internet, it’s such a constant barrage of them that you come to a point where you don't even notice them at all.

Take South Africa as a perfect example of why what your doing is the wrong approach. We have a president that can’t count, has been proven to steal money on many occasions, thinks taking a shower after sex cures aids. The list goes on and on. If our media didn't moan about every single footstep he took in the beginning those things would mean something to the public but they are so numb that they don't even register it anymore.

Yes, that article was pretty silly, repeatedly quoting the study claiming the UK has the most violence based on the fact that they consider an argument a violent crime even when there's been no injury, but compare it to other countries where no crime is reported unless there's hospitalization. Just note, in the year studied, the UK had a total of 921 murders, compared to 14,831 in the US that year...but yeah, the UK is the more violent country, far more violent than the US or South Africa.
WHAT?!?

Yep, you sure do end up with a lot of violent armed crimes in a country filled with guns.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

I knew it, South Africa is way more Mad Max than everybody suspects. Ha!
Pretty lax gun safety standards down there, it seems.

I'm not pleased to see this kind of hate-mongering xenophobic propaganda posted here.
I saw a tv 'news' piece about the neo-Nazi 'Democrat' party in Sweden just 2 days ago, I think the guy at :41 may have been part of the group being interviewed.

The producers also have terrible math skills it seem, as they claim Sweden has fewer rapes than S Africa, which they list as 53.2 out of 100000, or .0532%, but they also say out of 100000 women in Sweden, 25000 will be raped (25%, or 1 in 4). 25% is greater than .0532% , so how is South Africa the worst and Sweden the second worst when Sweden allegedly has 500 times more rapes per person?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Broadcasting_Corporation

Somewhere in South Africa. They probably cared not too.

Y'all sound like a bunch of Grannies.

As stated in the trailer, the robot is learning from everything around him.
Guess what ? He's in South Africa and everyone has an SA accent...

Being racist basically refers to being mean. I'm not being mean. I'm a humanist who cares about human rights.

What I said is true that the reason South Africa has so much more wealth than it's neighbors is because European folks built it, and now much of it has decayed.