Spotlight on:

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

The Anablephobia of Straight Arm Salute is a colossal, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its punitive income tax rates. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 8.634 billion are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Education, and the Environment. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 56%. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising fourteen-year-old boys selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.

Corporations are either above the law or corrupting it, Straight Arm Salute is notorious for its citizens' infidelity, jails have become colloquially known as 'vampire houses', and teenage fathers are forced to join the army. Crime -- especially youth-related -- is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Straight Arm Salute's national animal is the American Bald Eagle, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the American Dollar.

Straight Arm Salute is ranked 4th in the region and 15,596th in the world for Most Armed.