Funny you talk about geospacial location, I'm interested in GIS and didn't find a lot of threads about it here.
PS: I upvoted your replies because I want you to share your thoughts. Keep 'em coming :)
>>So Algeria, then. I must confess, I'm not really sure how to find Algerian news - is there even a free press there?
Have you tried Google? I think you'll most likely stumble on elwatan.com, liberte-algerie.com, lesoirdalgerie.com [in French].
As to whether there's free press or not.. By "free press", do you mean a country where journalists aren't harrassed by the Government, spied on, stopped in airports, have their laptops seized, etc?
Yeah, they mostly don't do that here. They're more vile than that: exerting pressure on advertisers not to advertise in certain news-papers to stress them financially. They rarely prosecute journalists, and when they do, other journalists write about it and the abuse.
I invite you to read our news-papers and make an opinion for yourself. An example would be and exchange between Le Monde and Liberté where they exchanged their cartoonists for a period of time (Plantu & Dilem). Plantu said Le Monde would never green light some of Dilem's cartoons that Liberté greenlighted because they're so politically incorrect (dark humor after tragedy, etc). Yes, he went to jail many times at one point. But he did them anyways and stayed. That's the price he paid for it to be normal.
There's also Le Matin's first man who was emprisoned after publishing a book where he talked about details on the private lives. He was sued for defamation and jailed.
It's not perfect, but we're making progress here. It's frustrating because it's not fast and I'd like the country to be much better. Same as everyone, I suppose.
Also, people here can go on forever about corruption, but don't care much what the politicians do with their lives. The newspapers don't publish names of people who aren't public figures who've done something bad not to embarrass their families. You don't have to pay for what your family members did. They'd just publish initials and age.
>I agree with you that the situation in America is ridiculous, but do you really think Algeria of all places is less sexually repressed and prurient?
That was the point. You expect more from people who have a lot.
When we look at the U.S. from here, it's amazing how a country that was born yesterday has done so much in so little time. This is something I'm actively trying to understand. This is why I study it, its structures and politics, how things work, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a perfect country work. I'm more amazed when there's a big country with so much problems and brokenness somehow still manage to work! That is the the thing.
How can a system that has a lot of problems still manage to function and make the citizen's average quality of life above average.
Still learning.
> That was the point. You expect more from people who have a lot.
Do you really though? This seems awfully naive and idealistic. Humans are mostly the same everywhere. As much as Americans have, we're still very sexually repressed, and having a free-ish market for journalism, scandalous news generates a lot of clicks.