Color me green
I found out that 87 nations of the world have some green color in their national flag

Jeesh daram
January 21, 2007
iranian.com

For decades historians and economist and political scientists have been trying to pinpoint the cause(s) of what makes some nations of the world successful in many ways and others to be struggling. One thing we know is that being a rich country does not guarantee democracy or economic success, take Iran or Saudi Arabia or Iraq as prime examples. So if wealth of a nation does not bring democracy and happiness then what does?

Some believe that theocracy is the cause of a national failure while others blame geographic location and some blame foreign interference as the cause of their misery.

Regardless of how true or false any of the above factors might be however none of those reasons can be taken as one major common denominator that would make such nations of the world to be categorized either as a success or failures.

Well, in my humble geopolitical laboratory which is located in the corner of my bathroom I spent substantial part of my life pondering and trying to find the “one” common denominator that makes independent nations of the world either success stories or failures.

Before I reveal what that common denominator is, let’s take a look at the nations of the world and separate them into two loosely defined categories:

• Good
• Mediocre

• “Good” to be defined as a country that its people enjoy a great degree of liberty, economic success, freedom of expression, speech and idea, having the freedom to travel and alliance with similar countries that are enjoying success. High relative GDP, mostly having high per capita income. A place that people would want to live in and migrate to.
• “Mediocre” to be defined as a country that is generally governed by a despotic or an unelected rule, a corrupt government, oppressed people, third world status, mostly viewed by other countries as radical, lack of freedom for its people to travel extensively, poverty among the people despite the fact that the territory might be rich in many resources. Having low GDP, and low per capita income. A country that its people prefer to emigrate.

Given the above definitions now let me remind you that there are 193 countries in the world today (Taiwan not included.) In my research I found out that the one common factor that all “Mediocre” countries of the world share with each other is having the color “green” in their national flag! Or expressed in another way, no successful country with today’s standards has any green color in its national flag.

We hear that in the case of Middle East green represents Islam but this is as false as if we say the color red represents wine or the blood of Jesus, which although a popular belief but most likely only a false assumption.

I found out that 87 nations of the world have some green color in their national flag (please see the list.) That means 45% of the nations are among the “B” category above and Islam or Christianity have nothing to do with it. The common factor is the green color in their flags. I did however find three deviations or aberrations from my theory and those are Brazil, Ireland and Italy. The only three countries that one might not want to place in the “B” category, but the rest are well within the guidelines. On the other hand most (but not all) successful economies or nations have the variation of color “blue” in their flag.

Conclusion
One may wonder if a nation in “B” group wants to break away from the stigma of that category is to get rid of the “green” in their flag and replace it with “blue”? Isn’t that interesting that just about all Middle Eastern countries have green in their flag but Israel does not and she has blue instead? While many European nations have color blue in their flags but only two have the color green (Ireland and Italy).

So my one word of caution to those ethnicities that aspire to have their own nation state is –pick the color “green” in your flag and your freedom and economy will go down the drain, choose “blue” and you have a chance to flourish. Comment