CIA: All Foreign Governments | Hacker News Reader

CIA: All Foreign Governments

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44 pointsstefankuehnel63 comments

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CIA: The World Factbook

Just in case somebody does not know this ..

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/

Holy See (Vatican City)

Population growth rate 0% (2014 est.)

Turns out having a nearly all male population sworn to celibacy doesn't increase the population much.

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/holy-see-va...

Which puts it at 194/236 in terms of world population growth rankings:

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-grow...

United Arab Emirates Age structure 15-64 years: (male 5,840,920/female 2,314,683) more than 2 guys per women

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-arab...

Brutal, what happened here?

I think it's due to migrant labor. Many people travel from surrounding countries to work because the UAE is incredibly rich.

80% of the UAE's population and 90% of its labor force are migrants, and they are extremely heavily disproportionately disproportionately male.

That is actually a bit scary considering that, this supposedly means that the women either give birth to more male than female or that women don't give birth at all inside UAE, or that females are not staying in UAE.

Catch my drift ?

No. This is driven by a huge reliance on foreign migrant labor, which is overwhelmingly male.

> immigrants make up about 87.9% of the total population

The makeup of the native population probably isn't unbalanced-- rather, women aren't coming to the UAE to work.

Female infanticide.

A lot of people in the gulf countries are temporary migrant workers, actual saudi population is closer to 50/50

Not sure why the link is to this page specifically, but the CIA world factbook is an extremely good resource for dry geopolitical facts if you want to cite a more authoritative source than Wikipedia. There's also some occasional random nuggets of interesting trivia like this line from the page on The United States: "three food crops are generally acknowledged to be native to areas of what is now the United States: cranberries, pecans, and sunflowers"

The CIA also writes/edits Wikipedia articles on contentious topics, historical events, and persons. Both sources are good for uncontested stuff, but neither are good sources for anything contentious because of the authors.

Not corn?

That is native to lands farther south

I thought it was an announcement to them for a second there.

Why are people upvoting this?

Oh no, the cia. Boo hiss boo

That's not the point, I just don't understand what's interesting or noteworthy about a list of governments.

It's as if I posted some random Wikipedia article, such as "List of current UFC fighters", and for some mysterious reason it got to the frontpage.

It’s their version of “whoishiring”

To 'wikihole' for a day or two most likely.

The CIA does find some interesting tidbits, and their factbook is widely recognized as uniquely comprehensive.

I noticed Palestine is not there. I’m a bit short on time but I’m curious if an internet archive shows whether this change is recent. Does anyone have a moment to check?

I don’t think the CIA has ever recognized Palestine as a country.

I assume that public recognition is important to diplomacy and therefore left to the state department to decide.

The State Department (https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-ma...):

  QUESTION: Do Palestinians have a right to self-defense?
  MR PRICE: I’m – in – broadly speaking, Said, we believe in the concept of self-defense. We believe it applies to any state.
  [...]
  QUESTION: Do [you] regard Palestine as a state? [...] You don’t in the context of the ICC and the UN. So are you saying that you do not – if it applies to any state, are you saying the Palestinians don’t have a right to self-defense?
  MR PRICE: I was making a broader point not attached to Israel or the Palestinians in that case.
  QUESTION: So they do have a right to self-defense?
  MR PRICE: I’m not in a position to debate the legalities from up here.

Taiwan is also not listed. I'd be inclined to believe the list is only countries that the US officially recognizes.

Taiwan is listed. https://www.cia.gov/resources/world-leaders/foreign-governme...

Whoops, that scrolling header must've covered it up on my end. Disregard!

Looking at Wayback Machine snapshot from April 26, 2023.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230426020715/https://www.cia.g...

This is tough because it seems like they're just using javascript to populate this page. So when you click the P filter or the Next arrow, nothing happens.

However I don't think Palestine was listed then either because both the snapshot and current version say that there are 199 results.

Clicking the P works for me.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210119214901/https://www.cia.g...

Hah, apparently my adblocker is over-aggressive. Thanks

Page has only existed since 2021, and has never listed a “Palestine”

While the U.S. does not recognize the State of Palestine, it recognizes the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the legitimate representative entity for the Palestinian people; following the Oslo Accords, it recognized the Palestinian National Authority as the legitimate Palestinian government of the Palestinian territories.

Going back to the earliest archive.org capture of this site, Palestine is absent.

They're listed separately as West Bank and Gaza Strip

Because the US does not recognize Palestine as a state and will not do so until Palestine recognizes Israel as a state. This is the so-called, "two state solution" that the Abraham Accords held promise of bring to reality. One hopes that train can get back on track.

What utter hypocrisy. Does Israel recognize Palestine as a state? I think not.

Not surprising of course. The US has always been biased in Israels’ favor.

Near as I can tell, pretty much everyone (especially their neighboring countries) hates the Palestinians. They're basically the Roma/Travelers (but in one place) of the middle east.

Fair/equitable? Probably not. But good luck trying to guilt anyone out of changing their minds on the topic after they've spent awhile next to them.

If someone is going to pick a country to beat up on, hard to pick an easier target.

The US puppets in charge of those places may hate Palestinians. But the Arab populations do not.

Literally every neighboring country has been refusing to take Palestinian refugees. The last time Lebanon let a bunch in, they had a civil war.

The neighboring Arab countries seem to hate them at least as much, if not more, than anyone else.

They come up with other nominal reasons, but it's pretty clear when you look at the policies.

Why did that civil war happen? Was it part of the Cold War perhaps? Who did they fight in that civil war? How did it start?

If you’re gonna try to imply simply having Palestinians present caused that civil war, you should provide some actual facts to support it.

And once again, the leaders might screw them over to appease the US and Israel, but the Arab and Muslim communities overwhelmingly do support them.

The Palestinians caused it, specifically the PLO with Hezbollah - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_So...

And since I’ve never seen an actual credible cite for ‘ the Arab and Muslim communities overwhelmingly do support them.’ that has any actual action behind it (as compared to nice press releases with no corresponding action behind it except ‘stay away’), it’s your turn now.

Notably, the Muslim extremist group that Egypt’s gov’t keeps trying to suppress (the Muslim Brotherhood) was the originator of what is now Hamas. When the Egypt main branch declared they wouldn’t be terrorists anymore, Hamas said ‘no thanks’ and went even more extreme. Hamas has been running the Palestinian for awhile now, and the originator of the most recent attacks.

Which, considering your apparent complete lack of actual knowledge of the history in the area should be interesting.

It was a complex situation and trying to say Palestinians were the only cause of it is overly reductive. Israel played just as large of a role in that civil war too.

Also my turn for what? Answering something I never said? You said everyone hates them. I said the Arab and Muslim communities do support them. Go look up any polling on it. Their leaders might not, like I said, but that does not mean the communities don’t also.

The PLO actively destabilized Lebanon to turn it into their main staging area. Israel just ended up evicting them after they kept using it to attack them.

Those two are not the same thing.

How is the weather on the West Bank? I’m still waiting for those cites!

PLO had a right to operate out of Lebanon. They were using it to try and evict the Israelis from their land. I also never said they were the same thing, just that they shared equal responsibility for that civil war happening. Like I said, if Israel hadn’t stolen the land, the PLO wouldn’t exist or operate out of Lebanon. So they are as culpable.

Maybe try and comprehend instead of arguing strawmen.

TIL Iran has a 'Minister of Agricultural Jihad'. I assume they declare holy war on crickets or something.

It's almost as ridiculous as using czar in titles.

That was just a spate of authoritarianism envy.

Headline disease. Czar nabs top vetting job, slams snub.

Example: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/04/food-tsa...

Jihad as a broader term means to strive or struggle towards something, and it can refer to nearly any kind of pursuit, whether internal or external. To put another way, you could also roughly translate it as the Minister of the Agricultural Effort, albeit that would lose nuance.

As a broader term maybe, but you can't deny the religious connotation of the word, especially under a theocratic regime. Also I am not entirely sure if the broader sense of the word would be obvious to Iranians, who do not speak Arabic (except in the southwest). I wonder if anyone who speaks persian can confirm that that they use jihad for struggle/effort outside of religion.

Would Minister of the Agricultural Crusade work better?

I agree with the religious connotation, but I think it's hard to separate anything from religious context in a theocracy. If everything is done in the name of that one singular purpose, every institution becomes an end towards that goal. In that sense I agree, that's what I meant with the lost nuance, but I wouldn't really go so far as to singly connect it to the holy war concept.

It’s probably akin to our “czars” when we declare “war” on some unwanted thing.

In the US government:

1. “czar” is an informal title, not an official title (the “Drug Czar” is formally titled “Director of the Office National Drug Control Policy”)

2. The “czar" informal title has nothing to do with a “war” (this is a false generalization from the Drug Czar and the War on Drugs), but with the position of coordinating policy for the executive branch for an effort that cuts across multiple cabinet level agencies.

ITT: Americans with no clue about foreign languages

First, the word Jihad in Arabic doesn't mean holy war. It generally means to struggle or put effort to improve. Someone could say "jahid nafsak" to mean "stop your desires".

Based on [0] which links to [1] there was an agricultural initiative called jihad of construction to improve and develop the country. It was later merged 2ith the ministry of agriculture.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Agriculture_Jiha...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_of_Construction

What matters is what the word jihad means in Persian, not Arabic. Both of your links point out that jihad was added during/after the Islamic Revolution, when the country was swept by a wave of religious fervor. Unless a Persian speaker contradicts me, I think my point stands.

Your point being that the 'Ministry of Agricultural Jihad' has declared a holy war on crickets or something. Not a hill I would recommend to die on tbh.

Meh. I'm Turkish, I was raised as a muslim. My entire family are muslims. I am not going to let random people on an English language forum accuse me of being insensitive towards muslims. That's the hill I can die on I guess.

In Turkish, jihad (cihat) is only used for holy war. Nobody but the most demented religious zealot would suggest a ministry of agricultural jihad. Now, discussions on the subtleties of the meaning of the word jihad in Arabic are interesting, but they do not mean much because Iran isn't an Arab country. I do not speak Persian and I can't tell if jihad is used for 'struggle/effort' in that way in that language. We use other Arabic words like 'mücadele' for 'struggle' for example, but not jihad.

It means the same in Farsi. Meaning depends on context and it is not a religious context.

When the US declares a 'War on Poverty', do you also assume that the Pentagon deploys a three-star general to plan and carry out a shock-and-awe campaign against rural and inner-city communities?

When Canada appoints a 'Minister of Finance', does she have to be a Protestant clergymember? Does she lead prayer ceremonies? Does she sanctify wine and holy water? Does one of her duties involve feeding a congregation with only two loaves and five loonies?

> I assume they declare holy war on crickets or something.

No, that's the Mormons.

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