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Comment by Karishma1234 | Hacker News Reader

Western media does not get the eastern world. A BBC journalist said it is stupid and oppressive to ban cow slaughter in India. So I asked him if it is oppressive for USA to ban Cat and Dog meet when many people want to eat them. He was deeply offended.

Just about last week NYTimes published a piece where they called a certain two penny politician "Prime minister material" so I asked my friend why would NYT publish such inaccurate description. Her response was "he has such amazing english and Oxbridge accent".

Indians worship Shiva-Lingam (a complex idol that looks like a penis.) So a Berkley student/researcher. said Indians worship Penis which is weird and is symbol of patriarchy. I asked her if worshiping a cross makes Christians a cult of torture and worshipping a zombie corpse (jesus) makes them necrophillic.

Western media has a very different outlook (white man's burden) and will never truly comprehend the eastern culture.

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I couldn't agree more. It's also quite insulting then they think their opinions are of some universal truth even when presented with evidence. I have seen Americans with superiority complex when faced with an unfamiliar surrounding. They seems to go around talking about how everyone is doing everything wrong and their own culture is without fault. The majority of Europeans I have met seem a lot more willing to accept other cultures. Europeans often have to learn a second language that isn't English and frequently travel to neighboring countries. I think the simple understanding that there is a world outside theirs from a young age makes a world of difference is separating their perceived negative emotions and facts.

I am going to get serverely down-voted for this, but look at seanmcdirmid as an example. He almost exclusively posts on Chinese articles on Hacker News. His past comments always paints an entire country as negative. He likes to state his opinions are facts and when saying something mildly racist, he ends is posts with "my wife is chinese". Like that makes any difference, its the equivalent of those saying they aren't racist cause their neighbors are black. I have no doubt his experience in China has largely been negative, but with his attitude I am not surprised.

I live in Cambodia and I see this all the time from tourists and expats. It's actually stunning how nearly all of them parrot the same stereotypes about the country, even though they've barely spent any time here and have only read secondhand information from racists who came here before them. A mild but classic stereotype is something about Asians and "saving face", as if avoiding embarrassment whenever possible isn't a shared tendency of everyone all over the world. Another favorite is complaining about a "foreigner tax" (raising the price for foreigners), when in fact that is actually quite rare and is only perceived to happen because touristy spots and expat bubbles have higher rents and thus higher prices. This is not even getting into the more malicious variety of shitheads and degenerates that come solely to exploit the country, all while endlessly complaining about and stereotyping the people here.

I just saw a episode about Angkor Wat on Travel channel where the narrator totally misrepresented the purpose of temple and shiva-lingam. He made the Khmer look like some kind of savages beating slaves to build a the temple to gain supernatural powers from the lingam. In reality the Angkor Wat was a Vishnu and later a Buddhist temple not so much of Shiva temple.

Foreigner tax can be seen as discount for locals. This is a common practice in USA too where locals get discounts and often free entry into the places like Botanical gardens, public parks and so on. Hunting licenses in your home state are around 10x cheaper than another other state in USA. All the H1b, Gc petitions can be seen as a "foreigner tax". US government forces H1Bs to pay social security but does not allow them to benefit from it. That is far more significant tax than what Cambodia might charge the occasional tourist.

Yes, entrance to Angkor Wat could be considered a valid example of a foreigner tax (for those that don't know, entrance is free for Cambodian citizens). But I was more referring to drunken old men who think that their pineapple was overpriced by 25 cents.

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