Re: Guest Post - Can't tell the players without a scorecard.

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Le Monde really is a good paper. Also it helps when you can expect your audience to automatically grasp references like "une sainte alliance contre-revolutionnaire."

And the insane US centric-ness of all US mainstream foreign policy reporting is so aggravating, and just reinforces the already insane tendency to think that we're both responsible for and capable of altering everything that happens everywhere and that everyone is constantly thinking about us. Or I guess exactly what lw said, I'm not exactly adding value here.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 9:57 AM
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Next, for another lively discussion starter, I will suggest a chinese post about the maintenance schedules of PRC fighter jet engines.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 11:03 AM
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Be the change, etc.


Posted by: RH | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 11:12 AM
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It's going to be impossible for an American paper to write articles on foreign developments from anything but an American perspective. This doesn't mean that an American paper can't publish longer articles on a wider range of foreign subjects in greater detail though.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 11:13 AM
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Also it helps when you can expect your audience to automatically grasp references like "une sainte alliance contre-revolutionnaire."

STAND TALL POUR UN CORDON SANITAIRE


Posted by: OPINIONATED FREEDOM FRIES | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 12:01 PM
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'gently deposed'??? I think there are probably a few people in torture chambers (not to mention thousands in the morgues) who would disagree with that.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 12:21 PM
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4: I suppose one could, optionally, read Halford's comment as a complaint that the American perspective is so goddam stupid. Certainly a non-stupid American perspective would alleviate the problem he identifies.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 1:14 PM
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6. Morsi is alive, I think is the meaning.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 1:30 PM
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7 -- stupid yes, but in a specific sense of thinking that the US can and does actually control everything that happens worldwide and that political actors in other countries are primarily thinking about the United States when deciding on their internal policy. On this reading the "Arab Spring" is primarily about people being pro- or anti-American.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 1:51 PM
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I was amused by the way the US Government flipped out at the UN for inviting Iran to the peace talks on Syria. Because, you know, when you are negotiating peace, is it really necessary to include all the belligerents?


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 1:57 PM
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US reporting on the rest of the world also tends to focus too much on whether stuff happening overseas is consistent with our values, instead of simply trying to explain what is happening and why it is happening.

Anyway, how is the reliability of Chinese jet engines these days. Do they have FADECs now? (Seriously, how hard can it be to reverse-engineer a FADEC?)


Posted by: torrey pine | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 5:39 PM
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The US has taken more than 70 years without being able to reverse engineer the alien ship that crashed at Roswell.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 6:17 PM
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12: That leaves two possibilities: companies actually have reverse-engineered the technology, and we are using it, or the story is just a bunch of horse shit.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 6:21 PM
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Josh Keating at Slate has been doing occasional posts reporting American current events in the style of American reporting on foreign events. They're quite good.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 8:07 PM
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You're from New Mexico. You've seen the aliens.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 8:17 PM
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14: Josh Keating at Slate also posted an article about ConferenceCall.biz, which anyone who has ever been on a conference call must click on. (Did one of you post it at the other place?)


Posted by: k-sky | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 8:27 PM
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Here is the conference call article.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 8:35 PM
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16: I wouldn't have thought a Tim Curry reggae song captured the existential despair of conference calls but, okay, I will roll with you on this.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 8:41 PM
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16: Yep, teo brings an exciting new meme to the internet: the Curry Roll.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 11:51 PM
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Hey, that was k-sky, not me!


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-24-14 11:59 PM
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You're from New Mexico. You've seen the aliens.

Yeah, they're selling coke on the streets.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 01-25-14 1:49 AM
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20: Oops. I blame Obama.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 01-25-14 3:55 AM
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