Dragonlich

Going back to my post: I just realized that the US is featured *very* often in the (Dutch) news media. Much more than any other country. I think that fact in itself is a cause of many anti-US sentiments. After all, the US is doing what many other countries are doing, but we simply don't hear about it.

If the US president gets elected, we have day-long election specials here (including all the minor election problems); if the French president gets elected, we get a small news item about the final outcome. If the US president says something stupid, we hear about it; if the German prime-minister does the same, we don't. If US police officers or soldiers abuse prisoners, we hear about it for weeks on end; if Spanish, Iranian or Indonesian officials do the same, nobody will know.

Basically, the US is in the news a lot, and a lot of the news is negative *and* out of context. Given this, I find it understandable that, for example, many Muslims "hate" the US - they usually watch rather, er, biased news reports. Propaganda, pure and simple.