US President Barack Obama’s popularity has boosted the US’ image abroad even though deep suspicions about the US persist in the Muslim world, according to a poll released on Thursday.
The survey of two dozen nations conducted earlier this year by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that positive public attitudes toward the US have surged in many parts of the world since Obama’s election.
Positive opinions about the US have returned to higher levels not seen since before former US president George W. Bush took office in 2001. The Bush presidency marked a steep decline in US popularity overseas, notably after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, because of a perception that the post Sept. 11, 2001, efforts to combat terrorism were targeted at Muslims.
“The image of the US has improved markedly in most parts of the world, reflecting global confidence in Barack Obama,” the center said in its annual Pew Global Attitudes Report.
The only exception was Israel, where attitudes toward the US have dipped since Bush left office.
The improvements “are being driven much more by personal confidence in Obama than by opinions about his specific policies,” Pew reported.
At the same time, several specific administration policies drew near universal acclaim, including Obama’s pledge to close the Navy-run detention facility for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the US timeline for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, the survey found.
The Pew report found that in 21 of the countries surveyed, an average of 71 percent of respondents had at least some confidence in the US president’s handling of world affairs. Lat year, when Bush was in the White House, the figure in those countries was only 17 percent.
The center said the most profound shifts came in Western Europe, notably in France and Germany, where confidence in Obama exceeds that for French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In addition, US favorability rose by at least 10 percentage points in 11 countries over last year, including in Latin America, Africa and Asia — largely as a result of Obama’s election, the center said.
Still, the poll registered continuing levels of profound distrust about US influence and motives among Muslims, particularly in Turkey, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories. There, the report said, “animosity toward the [US] ... continues to run deep and unabated.”
Attitudes toward the US also rose slightly in US allies Egypt and Jordan and registered some improvement after Obama’s much-heralded speech to the Muslim world delivered in Cairo on June 4. But Palestinians appeared unmoved and Israelis were unimpressed, according to the findings.
The poll, which surveyed nearly 27,000 people, also found that while the US image abroad has largely improved, foreign populations are still concerned about what they see as unilateralism on the part of the US and the economic and cultural influence that the US exerts across the world.
Also, huge majorities see global warming as a serious problem.
The polling was conducted from May 19 to June 14, interviewing adults face to face in 18 countries and by telephone in the other seven.
The number interviewed in each country ranged from 700 in Japan to 3,169 in China. All samples were national except for China, Pakistan, India and Brazil, where the samples were mostly urban. The margins of sampling error were plus or minus 3 or 4 percentage points in every country but China and India, where it was 2 points.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS