[Wildwell]

You know you've got problems when your best friend starts to hate you. Of course holding people of a certain nationality responsible for the actions of their government are one of the dumbest human traits there is. Even worse is disliking people because of where they come from - something I berate certain people on here for – but we are ALL guilty of it because of culture, urban myth and propagda – or just plain, nasty horrible stereotyping.. After all, ordinary citizens just want to go about their business and really don't have any control or say over much of what their governments do, they just want to do their thing and in general get on with people.

Often the stereotype is people in China, Russia, the Middle East, South America or even France have an ardent hate for the US. But the people or a country that is supposed to be on 'your side' is starting to hate everything you do - you know you have serious problems.

This article may come as a shock to some people, it did me. Whereas I know the US is not exactly flavour of the month, I wasn't aware that it was getting to the stage of abuse of people. That is a form of racism, certainly bigotry and ignorance. This is the whole route of the problem of life on earth - the 'mob culture' where nations, religions or groups of people are boxed, then set about much like witches were hunted in the middle ages. Nothing has changed at all. But what can be done to getting people to think 'bigger' and stop the tribal fighting?

I can't help feeling sorry for this lady. I don't like being attacked because of where I come from, so I can sympathise. What makes it worse; it's not people from a backward Middle East country. Its people from a supposedly sophisticated, first world, wealthy and friendly nation behave like this. It gives little hope for the future doesn't it? But America does have a very serious PR problem, what can be done to change it? What on earth can be done to lift the world to a little more sophistication or are we bound to stupid monkey status? Reading this article everyone’s doomer status should go up.

'As a US citizen living in London, Christian Cox says she is shocked at the amount of abuse she receives because of her nationality.

She says the level of anti-Americanism she has experienced "feels like a kind of racism".

"I don't want anyone to feel sorry for Americans, or me, I just want people to realise that we are dealing with hatred too," she says.

Typical British pub banter is one thing, says Christian Cox, but the "pure hatred" she says is directed at her for being American is really starting to wear her down.

The former model moved to London a year ago, where she is setting up her own business, and has been surprised at how some people have reacted to her nationality.

Ms Cox, 29, says she has been called, among other things, "terrorist", "scum", "low life", and feels that she is constantly being held to account for the actions of President Bush and for US foreign policy. '

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4881474.stm

[rogerhb]

"I don't want anyone to feel sorry for Americans, or me, I just want people to realise that we are dealing with hatred too," she says.

Perhaps we don't like the way you (or your gubmint) are dealing with it.

[Wildwell]

If you want to know what the problem is people see America as crafty, arrogant and exploitative. But I think we have to acknowledge that Britain is seen in the same way thanks to the behaviour of the establishment.

In other words, globalisation and multiculturism is never going to work under the present model.

We’re going to have to go for small is beautiful or give up the idea of all getting along forever, erect some very large walls (yes I did see the US immigration thread) and all sign a neutrality pact. What a sad state of affairs it is, but it is driven by fear. I blame the exploitative nature of governments and corporations for it – the rich tried to line their pockets once again and upset the status quo. When are we ever going to learn that never works?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')That is why they hate us HISTORY DOES COUNT. History never ends.

[Kingcoal]

The top dog is always hated. Machiavelli tells us to be more feared than hated. I'm 42 and I can't really remember a time when the US was not despised.

What EU citizens dislike about the current regime in America is the unilateralism. Face it, European and American interests are fairly similar. We are rich countries, super rich by the standards of the rest of the world. We mull about deciding whether to get high speed internet access or what cell phone to buy while most of the world's citizens don't have electricity and have never made a phone call.

Unfortunately, we Democrats have lost the last two elections. What Europeans have to understand is that those of us in the Blue States did not vote for this maddening administration. Look at a map of the electoral votes in the last two elections and you'll see blue and red. Where you see blue, you see real Americans, intelligent, free, independent and most of all, cultured. In red, you'll see the other America; uninformed, insulated, stupidly arrogant and most of all, uncultured.

Please remember that those of us who are Democrats voted for Al Gore and John Kerry. I can only speculate how much better things would be now had Gore won. Saddam Hussein would have still been in power, but so what? 9/11 might not have even happened. The US would still have a budget surplus and we would now be talking about real problems such as Peak Oil.

Instead, the US is now literally bankrupt, a fortune squandered on nation building in Iraq and a reputation as an arrogant, idiotic despotic world ruler. A message to my fellow Republican Americans: it can't last.

[lorenzo]

I have this idea.

A few days ago, on the highly influential tv-programme "Cultures et Dépendances" (France 3), there was a panel member, Anne Nivat, who had created a marvellous project.

The project was very simple: she interviewed 1000 ordinary people from all over the islamic world, in-depth, and asked them what they think of Europe. It was no ordinary journalism because the researcher worked like an ethnographer, staying with the families, in their homes, just listening - for years on end.

The publication (entitled: "Islamistes, comment ils nous voient", éd. Fayard) caused quite a stir, simply because they showed the deep cultural divide, and most importantly because it showed the interviews in full, word for word. The devil's in the detail here, the words used by the interviewed people make it real. No censorship, no interpretation, just raw words and thoughts.

This is not a new technique, but it is refreshing in our present media landscape. Because here we always get an analyst's view, a professor's view, a journalist's view, a politician's view, or we get polls, quick quotes, more polls, etc... we never get the immediate, uncensored view of the people in question, expressed in their own words.

>>>They are always talked about, never listened to.

Our mediocre media bombard us with clichés -- all muslims are terrorists --, and perpetually ban Reality and Real Thoughts to enter our information streams. We know nothing about people in the islamic world. They know nothing about us.

We have never had so much information about Others, but we have never understood them so badly.

In the U.S. this situation is prototypically worse, even disastrous. Americans know nothing about the world (hence their surprise when encountering virulent anti-Americanism in some places, or their surprise to find it absent in others). I don't blame them, because where would they get the information? Their entire life-world is totally censored: receiving real information about the outside world is absolutely taboo in the U.S.



Now here's the idea: why don't we do something similar for the U.S.?

>get a team together of 10 ethnographers who each travel to 10 countries over the course of one year, to do in-depth interviews with ordinary people
>I say ethnographers, so NO journalists, politicians, professors, analysts, former CIA media freaks, NGO people, etc... ethnographers only
>ok: 36500 interviews from 100 countries
>publish these interviews in a newspaper format; one newspaper *each day*, with 100 interviews
>keep it raw and uncensored, the pure words of these ordinary people from all over the world as they express *their* view on "America" and "Americans"
>I'm sure such a newspaper would sell like hell, Americans are really keen to know what the world *really* thinks about them.

Anyone want to invest in this? I figure we'd need about a million dollars to get this going, but I'm confident that we'de make a profit pretty quickly.

Anyway, for those who're interested in the collection of pure raw words expressed by muslims, collected by Anne Nivat, check:

http://cultureetdependances.france3.fr/

[LX1]

you europeans hating on americans just for the fact that they're american makes you no better than what you hate most as you like to say 'stupid american' redneck white trash on his porch with a beer and shotgun talking about howhe hates niggers(exept he's probably not as whiney and doesnt cry as much as you guys)

you guys are euro-trash, grow up.

[LX1]

and anyone who cares what euro-trash thinks about them needs to wake up. dont worry about what these losers think, live your life, be as good a person as you can be, follow your dreams and pursue happyness...what happens happens, these ignorant euro-trash losers are worthless, just ignore them.

this is not directed twords good europeans, just euro-trash.