Friday, June 25, 2004

Posted here Friday, June 25, 2004 at 9:18:29 AM     View revision..? Important from http://scoop.agonist.org today. The Coalition Provisional Authority has commissioned a poll which shows the majority of Iraqis back the government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The initial survey showed that 68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders, with 73 percent who support Allawi, 84 percent who back President Ghazi Yawar and two-thirds who are in favor of the new Cabinet. Also, four out of five Iraqis believe the new government will improve the country's situation, while 10 percent anticipate the situation to remain the same and 7 percent expect a decline. Seventy percent of Iraqis support the new army, while 82 percent support the police. The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, drew from information from more than 1,000 personal interviews conducted between June 9-19 within the communities of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Diwaniyiah, Al Hillah and Baqubah.   ********

Posted here Friday, June 25, 2004 at 7:26:34 AM     Here it is,  so simple,  a la traditional Osama-type goals: a ramp up in the "eye-for-an-eye/war of civilizations" thing. The western tradition on the Greek side is based on the shift from revenge to justice (laid out culturally in the Orestia cycle of plays, which ends with Athena admonishing the Greeks to hold on to this shift). An eye for an eye justified continual defense of land and population through violence. The choice for the future is between those who can organize around compassion and justice vs those who will organize around absolutist belief  and violence. It is not yet clear which is biologically, socially and psychologically more likely to be successful. And someone once wrote, "history is a judge, but a bad one."   ********