Good catch.

I hope you don't have the Portugese all over your for that one; they're on the poor end of the pre-expansion EU, but isn't calling them Third World a bit much, especially when they've been in NATO for decades? That makes them more First World than anything.

Originally the post read "...Greece, and Portugal," but then I decided that the Greeks have a low-grade First World economy married to a normally-corrupt Third World government.

Portugal is, technically, a First World economy (though with its negative GDP growth rate and its low per-capita GDP at PPP, it will soon be surpassed by South Korea and even the Czech R., and it has already been far surpassed by Taiwan).

Brazil tests rockets that make it into space and they're third world? Portugal? South Africa's developed too. Somehow in my gut I feel like if there's a solid, stable democratic institution then its hard to call a nation third world.

The Soviet Union tested rockets that made it into space, and Russia today is a Third World country. And if I didn't make it clear: Portugal's inclusion was a *joke*. Portugal's poverty is a joking matter in W. Europe, kind of like, oh, the Arkansan joke that "Thank God for Mississippi, 'cause if it weren't for them, we'd be last in every category."

My general guideline is that anybody with a GDP at PPP per cap of between, oh, 3 or 4 thousand USD and about 10,000 USD is "Third World." South Africa--I just checked--has a per cap of 10,700USD, but let's be frank: If we included Lesotho and Swaziland, or if we looked at the ... rather astounding income and ownership disparities therein, then, yes, South Africa is Third World.

We should remember that originally the First/Third division included a Second World for the Communist countries. Indeed, the connotations of First World="rich," Third World = "poor" were not the defining terms: It was a mixture of historical circumstances (colonial v. postcolonial v. Communist) and ideological/economic systems (capitalist v. Communist v. non-aligned). So it's not just a question of solid + stable + democratic.

(What happens to those countries that are poorer than my cutoff? Those fall into the Fourth and Fifth Worlds. Sorry, Sudan.)

Yeah! nothing beats feeling superior and letting them know how you feel!

Sorry Sudan, he said it; his (their) compassion comes through loud and clear.

Get a life. You know what I meant. The game of classifying states into these artificial divisions is more than a little pointless anyway, and it's clear that if any state is a failed state--part of the Fifth World--it's going to be a place like Sudan. There's no way you can deduce from that statement what I think about the Sudan.

You could have picked from 100 other countries to make your point. You chose Sudan, it speaks volumes.