this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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These small island countries that consistently echo Washington’s unpopular votes in the UN are essentially unofficial US colonies, and mostly use the US dollar or Australian dollar as their currencies. Together, the six have a combined population of just over 1 million people, making them some of the smallest nations on Earth.
(I should note that Malawi is actually pretty close to the median size of a UN member nation — driving from one end of the country to the other could take you a whole day.)
(Another thing to note, for the heck of it, is that the combined populations of Paraguay, Malawi, and Papua New Guinea is about 39 million people. Just over half of these would live in Malawi, and about two-thirds of the remainder would live in Papua New Guinea.)
Fair enough, clearly I don't know enough about the nations of Malawi and Paraguay haha
Off the top of my head all I can say about Paraguay is 1) Basically everybody speaks an Indigenous language there 2) Their first leader banned white people from marrying each other 3) The flag has a different design on the front and back, and also the national anthem is pretty neat IMO 4) A huge but unknown percentage of the country's population died when they were invaded by Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in the 19th century; when Rutherford B. Hayes arbitrated a boundary dispute in Paraguay's favor after the war, the country named one of its administrative divisions after him.
Off the top of my head all I can say about Malawi is 1) formerly known as Nyasaland, the country gets its current name from the Chichewa word for "Flames", because when the sun rises over Lake Malawi, which dominates the country's eastern border and has some border weirdness, the waters supposedly look red like flames. 2) Malawi's flag represents this fact, being essentially a stylized representation of a view of Lake Malawi at sunrise from Malawi's side of the coast, coupled with pan-African symbolism. 3) Malawi was led by Bingu wa Mutharika from 2004 to 2012, and he changed the flag to have a full sun instead of a rising sun, in order to represent the country's progress since independence. The flag was changed back to the original rising sun version shortly after Mutharika died of a heart attack.