Don’t look now, but there is another big election coming up in Iraq soon, on Sunday, 7 March to be exact. It’s the second nationwide election for that new democracy since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and of course it will determine whether Nouri al-Maliki gets to stay in charge as premier.

Come to think of it, maybe you did have some inkling that something like that was about to happen, from the recent disputes you may have heard about involving attempts by the current government to disallow certain religious/political groups from standing as candidates. But this article from the Ritzau news agency in the Danish Christian newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad deals instead with the results of a recent poll among eligible Iraqi voters undertaken for the government by the Iraqi National Media Center. A total of 63% across the sample stated to the pollsters that they intended to vote. This compares unfavorably with the 79.6% that we do know turned out to vote at that first free-and-fair national election, back in 2005. The poll’s results broke down further to show that Kurds and Shi’ites revealed themselves to be rather more ready to make it to the polls on 7 March than did Sunnis.

Whoever wrote this brief piece’s headline – whether it was the Ritzau agency or the Kristeligt Dagblad – clearly showed displeasure at this news by making it read “Only two out of three Iraqis want to vote.” But wait: Infoplease tells us that only 56.8% of American voters turned out to the polls even back in November, 2008 to either elect or try to stop Obama as president! In that light, 63% looks pretty good! Then again, you can still understand the tenor of that Danish reporting when you keep in mind that Danish voter participation is always pretty high: this Wikipedia article puts it at usually around 87%.

UPDATE: If you want further confirmation that things are really going rather OK in Iraq, here’s a guest blog-post, in English, on the Foreign Policy site from someone who definitely knows what he’s talking about. Hey, 63% – those Iraqis are simply getting more American every day, that’s all!

Here’s another entry in the series we seem to have fallen into lately of “Countries Tooting Their Own Horns.” We already have learned, from the Danish, that the Danish economy can be a “supermodel” for the rest of the world, and (from the Belgians) that Belgium is the most-globalized country. Now, as a current article in Die Welt puts it, Germany is the most-beloved state in the world!

Ah yes, we know – those cuddly Germans! But wait: looking beyond the headline, what this is really all about is a worldwide poll, undertaken yearly for the BBC World Service by the firm GlobeScan, asking respondents to react to a list of fifteen prominent countries by stating whether, in each case, they feel that country has a positive or a negative influence on world affairs. This year, for the first time, Germany was tops, with 61% positive and only 15% negative. Canada was second (57/14), the UK was third (58/19).

(OK, the UK was third even with a slightly-higher positive rating than Canada; obviously GlobeScan uses some ranking formula that combines the two inputs. The good thing about this poll is that the sample was a rather-large 13,575 people, from among 21 countries. The bad thing is that I can’t find any mention of it on the BBC World Service website or any affiliated BBC webpages.)

And the losers? In tenth place was China, at 39/40 – yes, despite those marvelous Summer Olympics. In eleventh place came the USA, with 43% evaluating its influence on world affairs as negative (40% positive). Keep in mind that this poll was conducted after Barack Obama was elected president last November 4 – but at least that negative rating for the Americans is down from the 48% that it was in last year’s poll. Then Russia at twelfth place (30/42). Israel is at fourteenth place (21/51), but at least the Jewish state beats out Pakistan (17/53).

As we near Barack Obama’s inauguration, it naturally becomes time to look back and assess George W. Bush’s eight-year tenure as American president. (Check that: it’s time first to gather up one’s courage and brace oneself, and then look back in anger.) One such assessment that I can recommend comes in a 17-minute video from the UK’s Guardian newspaper. The Guardian is well-known for its political positioning somewhat to the left, and thus for its long record of hostility to Bush. Still, that video presents discussion from not only Mike Tomasky, the Guardian’s American editor, but also a couple of personalities you might find more credible, namely David Plotz, editor at Slate (on-line) magazine and Adrian Wooldridge, American editor for The Economist. (The fourth and final panelist is Sarah Wildman, from the New York Times. A quick consultation reveals that she is mainly a travel writer there, occasionally contributing pieces on the arts.)

But what about, say, the Dutch? Fortunately, we can now discover their valedictory attitudes towards George W. Bush, and that even from the “People’s Newspaper,” De Volkskrant (Netherlanders give Bush a 4.7).

That’s right, as a final over-all grade ol’ George gets a 4.7, but keep in mind that is on the customary Dutch academic grading-scale of 0 (worst) to 10 (best), where you usually need a 6 to pass. This comes from a survey among 500 Dutch respondents over 18 conducted by the firm Synovate, which further reveals the curious paradox that, while 73% are willing to characterize the departing American president as “friendly,” 71% call him “untrustworthy.” When it comes to free association (i.e. what immediately comes to mind when you hear a word), most of the respondents think “Iraq” at the mention of his name. It further emerges that you are a better bet to dislike him the more educated and older you are, and the more to the left you are on the Dutch political spectrum (also if you are female). Of the various policies associated with his name, these Dutch judge approvingly only his reaction to the September 11 attacks. Everything else they disapprove of, especially his attitude towards climate change.

Finally, the survey-participants were asked what sort of going-away present they would be willing to give. Among the responses: a course in self-knowledge, a week spent among the poor, and “a kick in the ass.”

A great article-find for this day of the first Bush-Kerry debate! As the German newspaper Handelsblatt’s Gerald Seib puts it in the title of the latest contribution to his “American View” commentary series: How Can Anyone Vote for Bush? (more…)

As the American presidential campaign winds down to the last six weeks, with the first in the series of debates scheduled for next week, much attention and speculation surrounds the results of various polls seeking to track the horse-race. Then there is the other poll, that of the non-voters’ opinions, namely of those living on the European continent. Jean-Michel Demetz gives the run-down in the French news-magazine L’Express of results from the latest poll on trans-Atlantic attitudes commissioned by the German Marshall Fund of the United States together with Compagnia di San Paolo of Turin (Italy), and conducted in June, 2004. (Europeans Against American Leadership. Actually, Americans also figured under this poll’s sample of 11,000 respondents from 11 countries, which as we’ll see below makes for some interesting comparative results.) (more…)

The main Czech Daily Mladá fronta dnes today reports the results of a recent pan-European survey undertaken on behalf of Reader’s Digest (and conducted in nineteen countries) on the attitudes of European peoples towards each other and towards each other’s countries and cities. Given its location and function, the paper is obliged constantly to remind its readers that the Czech Republic (and, indeed, all of Central Europe) generally finishes rather low in all results (except for Prague, in the list of favorite European cities). But enough of that, it’s the results that are interesting – naming whoever needs to be named, without fear or favor – and they’re as follows (in order from the first-place on down, and with percentage results when available from the article): (more…)

Here we go! (Lost the thread? See the beginning of my previous post, i.e. of “Mon Sep 08, 2003,” as the peculiar pMachine software formatting puts it.) Plenty, plenty of commentary on Bush’s Sunday speech in the French press – let me try to cover as much as I can, in the time I’ve allotted myself (and it’s a generous slice, you can be sure, dear reader!) to write this.

Why not start with Le Figaro? My reflexive instinct is rather to start with Le Monde (“France’s New York Times,” and all that), but Tuesday’s print edition of Le Figaro irresistibly draws me with its big front-page, above-the-fold headline above the standard picture of Bush addressing the nation in the Oval Office: Qui veut aider Bush? – “Who Wants to Help Bush?” (more…)

Foreign reactions to President Bush’s speech to the nation of yesterday evening, requesting $87 billion more from Congress for Iraq and Afghanistan, are trickling in. Sure, they all report the speech, and it’s true that the subtle ins and outs of what they report, and how they report it, can be interesting and valuable in deciphering the trans-Atlantic point-of-view, but I prefer the “Analysis” or “Commentary” articles, and those aren’t there yet. I’ll check again tomorrow whether there is enough such material to report and comment on, from a major country (i.e. France or Germany – or the UK, if the commentary there is interesting enough to make it worth ducking the cat-calls and flying objects coming my way for “copping-out” with the English-language press).

Today, though, we prep that issue with some background, namely a recent survey on European attitudes towards the US, reported in L’Express in an article entitled Les Européens jugent l’Amérique (which of course means “(The) Europeans Judge America). (more…)