@ Duke: so basically people who hate England have been whupped up good - they're just bad losers , but since 1776 and all that I think the US don't really count. The UK just bites the pillow in that relationship nowadays.

If anyone has a real and justified grievance against England it has to be Ireland. Our track record there has been appalling.

As for France, all Englishmen have to hate the French, it's a condition of nationality

I think the US comes the top of many lists not because of "jealousy", "hating freedom" etc but more out of long weariness of being forced to live under US puppet governments. Despite the recent rhetoric of "bringing democracy to the world" so much of past US foreign policy has depended on installing and propping up some of the world's nastiest dictators and juntas. The Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, the Taleban (yes, when the Soviets were in Afghanistan), Noriega, and just about every Latin American government throughout the 60s and 70s all benefited from US patronage. Couple this with the tendency to only care about "human rights and good governance" when they're being breached by enemies, but not by friends (eg Saudi Arabia or Iraq -- who was the worst? Who cares, who was America's ally???) There's a sense that a bad government only becomes bad at the point they fall out with the US - even non-governmental forces such as Al Qaeda. SO much of the world's trouble is now caused by monsters created by the US who subsequently slipped the leash and went off on their own and started biting the hand that fed them. And the solution? Usually to go in there with guns and mouths blazing to set up a new set of puppets in a vicious cycle that experience warns us will go on indefinitely. US foreign policy has no values, only interests.

It does seem with the exception of a few "built up" hate figures (eg Iran, N Korea) all the "most hated" seem to have in common one particular characteristic: a never-ending willingness to interfere in the internal matters of other countries. Coincidence, eh?