Alright you privileged shitlords, I know for a fact that you cannot name every country off the top of your heads. In fact, I bet around quarter of the countries on Earth are completely unknown to you.

So I'll be doing a weekly (if I don't forget) series of threads in Serious, providing information about countries you've never heard of, and I've never given a shit about.

We'll kick it off with a wasteland called Mauritania.

As you can probably tell from the crescent on their flag, Mauritania loves the Prophet (peace and blowjobs be upon him).

Here's their official website! Be sure to comment and subscribe! http://www.mauritania.mr/
(I'm pretty sure this is the only website in Mauritania)

This is their national anthem, translated into English:

Mauritania gained independence from France in 1960. You would think they'd be all hip and anti-colonial, but no. Like all Arabic-speaking countries that are not populated by Arabs, destruction of ancient traditions and cultures is cool if you're doing it for Islam (really guys Arabs are our friends they're totally uplifting us guys! Aloha Snackbar!)

Mauritania's government is supposed to be a democracy, but like most African democracies, it's actually not one.

Fun fact: in Mauritania, slavery was finally made illegal in 2007.

This isn't like some Alabama type deal where slavery was technically legal for a long time but never happened in practice, either, these motherfuckers love them some slavery.

This godforsaken patch of earth has a population of 3,537,368 unfortunate souls, with a population density of 8.2/sq mi (or 3.2/km2 for you communists).

It covers 397,954 sqare miles, and every inch of it sucks. To give you an idea of how shitty living here is, 0.03% of the area of this country is water.

Yes, that is less than a third of a tenth of a percent (holy fuck). I get thirsty just thinking about it.

This is their capital

Here are some pictures of Mauritania:

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Mauritania

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

Mauritania Listeni/mɔːrɪˈteɪniə/ (Arabic: موريتانيا‎ Mūrītānyā; Berber: Muritanya or Agawej; Wolof: Gànnaar; Soninke: Murutaane; Pulaar: Moritani), officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in the Maghreb region of western North Africa.[7][8][9] It is the eleventh largest country in Africa, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, by Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest.

The country derives its name from the ancient Berber Kingdom of Mauretania, which existed from the 3rd century BC to the 7th century AD, in the far north of modern-day Morocco. Ninety percent of Mauritania's land is within the Sahara Desert and subsequently the population is concentrated in the south, where precipitation is slightly higher than the rest of the country. The capital and largest city of Mauritania is Nouakchott, located on the Atlantic coast, which is home to around one-third of the country's 3.5 million people. The government of Mauritania was overthrown on 6 August 2008, in a military coup d'état led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. On 16 April 2009, General Aziz resigned from the military to run for president in the 19 July elections, which he won.[10]

About 20% of Mauritanians live on less than US$1.25 per day.[11] Slavery in Mauritania has been called a major human rights issue, with over 150,000 people[12] – proportionally the highest for any country – being enslaved against their will, especially enemies of the government.[13] Higher estimates suggest 10% to 20% of the population (340,000 to 680,000 people) is enslaved.[14] Additional human rights concerns in Mauritania include female genital mutilation[15] and child labour.

As you can see, Mauritania pretty much sucks. You've got rampant (and socially accepted) slavery, poverty and corruption all wrapped up in an inhospitable desert. And that's not even touching on the ethnic tensions between the Moorish native peoples and the Sub-Saharan (black) migrants in recent years.

So what do you think? Is there anything we, as Westerners, can do to help end slavery in Mauritania? Should we, if we can?

Sorry Lemy, this belongs in the Flood.

I don't see why, but I'll gladly change whatever the offending content is that pushes this into the land of the shitpost.

If it's the humor, though, I don't see why every thread in Serious should have to be lifeless and emotionless.

Wow, I feel bad for the people who live there

Wow, I feel bad for the people who live there

Should we feel bad, though?

If you want to look at it from a collective standpoint, they're probably a lot better off than they were 500 years ago. Yeah, their country sucks, but it's not getting any worse. I mean, they went from having no democracy, to being a pretend democracy, pretty fast. That's not quite as bad.

I'm really tired so that probably sounds retarded.

For every shitty country out there, Islam has tainted the soil.

YouTube

YouTube

upbooted for Pat Condell

Isn't this the country that's been fighting Morocco for the Western Sahara for a couple of centuries?

They don't seem to be winning, if they are.