24 Jul 2014 vicious   » (Master)

News …

Interesting reading and comparison of news regarding Ukraine and Gaza. So apparently according to Russian media, people in the west have bad opinion of Russia only because the west has had a long lived fascist hatred of Russians. According to Israeli media, the rest of the world (except US) has a low opinion of Israel only because they are all anti-Semite.  It can’t be because anything we do or say, because we are perfect: even our farts do not smell [citation needed].

Rather interestingly [1], fewer (almost by half) Russians view Israel negatively percentagewise than do Americans.  So Americans are almost twice as anti-Semitic as Russians (this might be news to Jews living in Russia).

If negative opinion of a country was purely based on racism, then it means that racists are able to distinguish between for example North and South Koreans. Also South Koreans are really really racist, and they really really irrationally hate the North Koreans. Essentially as much as Egyptians irrationally hate Israelis. By the way notice that the survey asked if the country (not its people) has a positive influence on the world, but we are assuming I guess (at least in Russian and Israeli media) that nobody can tell the difference between the country and its citizens.

Also the French and the Germans seem to really really love each other. I mean … get a room you two. I mean the French and the Germans have always liked each other. Good thing the survey did not ask about Belgians, because those guys are terrible, we all hate the Belgians.

An interesting piece of information from that study is that Nigerians pretty much have a positive view of the world. Most countries they overwhelmingly love. And even Israel and North Korea manage to get over half of Nigerians to like them. They aren’t too crazy about Iranians and Pakistanis, but it’s not too bad either.

It must be wonderful to live in the world of simple explanations that always seem to indicate that the group you belong to is somehow superior to others, and others simply hate you because you are so good. I think we had a word for that …

[1] http://www.globescan.com/images/images/pressreleases/bbc2012_country_ratings/2012_bbc_country%20rating%20final%20080512.pdf


Syndicated 2014-07-24 16:29:27 from The Spectre of Math

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