[lbo-talk] loved, unloved countries

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Wed Mar 7 11:12:31 PST 2007


On 3/7/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> <http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/325.php?
> nid=&id=&pnt=325&lb=hmpg1>
>
> Israel and Iran Share Most Negative Ratings in Global Poll
>
> A majority of people polled for the BBC World Service across 27
> countries believe Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in
> the world with almost as many saying the same about North Korea and
> the United States.
>
> Respondents were asked to rate 12 countries – Britain, Canada, China,
> France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the USA,
> Venezuela – and the European Union, as having a positive or negative
> influence.

This is unfair, for citizens of Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Israel were _excluded_ from the pool of respondents, whereas those of all other countries that were rated in the poll except Japan also participated as respondents. With Iraq gone, have Israel and Venezuela gotten added to the Axis of Evil?

On 3/7/07, "tfast" <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
> Yah this hit the news in Canada yesterday afternoon. If only because
> Canada scored best loved in the world.
> But here is the great thing when the pollster was asked
> why is Canada ranked number 1 it turned out to be
> almost entirely due to ignorance. No one polled knew
> really anything about Canada. Ignorance is Bliss!
> We're # 1 We're #1. Try and stay out of news!

Japan comes in second, with 54% positive and 20% negative, despite non-participation of the Japanese as respondents. I attribute it to "honorary white privilege," which is often better than white privilege, in that it give you all the privileges of white folks but others don't hate you as much for that. But those who know Japan better, the Koreans and the Chinese, hate it. :->

On 3/7/07, Andy F <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Antiwar.com highlighted the following:
>
> > Iran
>
> [...]
>
> > Countries in Western Europe and North America have the largest
> > majorities expressing a negative view of Iran, though some have seen
> > dramatic movements in opinion over the past year. Negative views
> > among Americans have dropped sharply (81% to 63%) [!!!] while negative
> > views in France have jumped 18 points (68% to 86%). Large majorities
> > in Italy (84%), Germany (78%), Portugal (77%), Canada (76%), and
> > Great Britain (76%) have negative views of Iran's influence in the
> > world. Widespread negative views are also found in Australia (75%),
> > South Korea (69%) and Brazil (69%).

Iran's viewed positively by Egyptians, Indonesians, UAE citizens, and Indians, though negatively by Turks, so it looks like a majority of Muslims have a favorable view of Iran. The Lebanese opinion is split, probably along the sectarian line. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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