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Comment by whoaisme | Hacker News Reader

I live in the US and I travel a lot, so I guess you can cite me as well when I say the idea that Tunisia is anything like the West is Lloyd thinking he has a chance with Mary. I mean it's really nice that your nation is stumbling toward a functioning democracy and all it took was a guy on fire and bunch of assassinations but get real lol

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Nobody said Tunisia is anything like the West. He claimed that it is "as safe as any Western Country". If we go by homicide rate, Tunisia's is lower than the US.

It seems incorrect to use US homicide rate as an argument when talking about being "as safe as any Western Country". US is an outlier in that regard [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

Really depends which metric you're looking at when measuring safety to be honnest. Granted US have some of the richest and safest places in the world, they also have plenty of other places straight from a 3rd world country. The US approach to health is terrible compared to many other countries. Homicide rate is much higher. If you think USA is politically safe, January 6th would like a word with you.

great! it's 1:30 am here and I'm up for a flame war. So I will argue that Tunisia is safer than USA because 1) guns are illegal 2) police is not racist. BTW I traveled to USA, did you travel to Tunisia ?

I know nothing about Tunisia, but worth noting that safety in the USA is extremely varied, depending on where you live, what color your skin is. We have some of the most dangerous places in the world in the USA, and some of the safest. It's a big, weird country.

Do your school have shooting drills?

> guns are illegal

Yeah that worked for Brazil and other countries.

> police is not racist

Sure they are. You are likely to get away without a ticket, an accident or even an arrest if you correlate with the guys. It just happens that the police has a bunch from everywhere. Let's not pretend that Tunisia's police is not as corrupt as it can be.

> Yeah that worked for Brazil and other countries.

Hello from Australia, where guns are very restricted. It works well, thank you. In fact it works well in more counties than it doesn't.

You're assuming causation, but a careful look makes the situation much more muddied. In Australia, for instance, violent crime was on the downwards trend (like in the developed world generally) before strict gun laws. It continued on that trend after implementation.

It's corrupt, maybe sometimes regionalist (which I'm not sure I agree with) but not racist. Like someone is not treated differently because his skin is dark for example. They are generally not polite with anybody regardless of their "race".

Well yes, a police being unfriendly to anyone is probably better than a police being unfriendly only to certain skin colors or status. I remember travelling in Morocco (and also western sahara), where the police was very friendly with me. But I was a western tourist and the police was ordered by the king to be very friendly to tourists. From the locals I heard different stories.

Same in Tunisia, and honestly I'm quite for it. In the Philippines, the police doesn't care about the tourists. The locals sees that and as a result tourists get mugged a "lot". I had my phone stolen and the police seemed to "enjoy it".

A tourist is very unlikely to be mugged in Tunisia (comparing to a Tunisian person) because the police is more reactive when it comes to tourists.

As a result you have a country of 11.5 million and 9.5 million tourists in 2019 despite all the crap that the country is going through.

So do you think the police treats tourists worse in Philippines, or all equally bad? (except the local powerclique)

In either way, I rather have a police treating all people with respect.

How does Tunisia compare with say Alabama or Mississippi?

edit: looks like my question hit a nerve with some people?

My experience of living in the south after growing up elsewhere was absolutely a feeling of being sidelined from the full opportunity previously known to me. Its a bit like being in a hole. Everything is cheaper, including wages. Meaning its harder to leave than to enter.

I think the bigger problem is people just not taking you or natives there seriously. I could write a book on all the shenanigans faculty try to pull on people who they think haven't been to "real" R1 universities elsewhere, for example, and think they can get away with.

NB: I live in Louisiana and my brother works for an international NGO but had based himself in Tunisia. He was supposed to fly back there Monday but delayed his flight a week. My friend was supposed to visit Yassine Ayari and she ended up arriving at his house right after he was arrested.

Better!

Life expectancy at birth (in years):

Alabama: 75.1

Mississippi: 74.6

Tunisia: 76.7

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