No real point to this point, per se, as there isn’t anything big headlining the news, but I have noticed that the Israel/Palestine/general Mideast news has simmered down, which gives me a perfect opportunity to discuss how little I know about the world other than the Middle East (where even my knowledge and understanding rates somewhere around abyssmal). The point, I guess, is that one of the things that is really weird about our current foreign policy debate is how much time is spent on what, from a numbers perspective, is such an insignificant portion of the world. I know next to nothing about India, China, Indonesia, etc., and other large population centers, and our foreign policy debates almost always exclude them (except for the case of China, and when they are mentioned it is virtually certain it will be done in a belligerent manner).
In fact, other than Larison, there are very few blogs which even discuss these countries. I just find that odd, considering their size and the likelihood that they will be global powerhouses in the future.
Like I said, no real point to this post, just something I was thinking about this morning while doing other things.
Rook
Go read the Agonist. Sean Paul Kelly was traveling through Asia and is currently in India. There are many posts about other areas besides the Middle East.
Comrade Darkness
Yes, the news is unbalanced on many dimensions.
I’d suggest a subscription to The Economist. They cover issues around the globe, of course with an eye toward the economic impact, but how much and what they cover is pretty broad, nonetheless.
jnfr
On the occasions we catch the BBC news, I’m always amazed by how much more of the world they cover. Our journalists have a very narrow view of what is worth covering.
Svensker
When you figure out the answer as to why we know so much about the Middle East, then you’ll know why the Middle East is such a mess.
norbizness
I personally have no idea why American media coverage of a single military action by Israel or rocket fire from Hamas not only outstrips not only all other worldwide conflicts combined, but also the things going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, which oh by the way is currently undergoing its final implosion. Is it our ‘one thing at a time’ policy that allows us to make room for the fluff pieces and entertainer interviews?
Thank god for the BBC News webpage, which at least, you know, covers Africa n’ shit.
Media Browski
Read the Economist; it was suggested to me in college by an Int. Rel. prof when I made noises like you are now.
I see other people agree.
So read The Economist.
Stuck
Same here. But I can see West Texas from my front porch, so I have an idea what Hell is like.
Media Browski
@jnfr: BBC USA’s news is next to awesome, if one can pull oneself away from the evening screamfest on MSNBC.
Bootlegger
I heard on NPR that the Chinese government is seriously worried about civil unrest if their current economic decline continues. Also heard on NPR that India is uncovering a bunch of Madoff-types that ripped off a bunch of people and of course they will also experience a drop off in trade with the West. One speculation is that India will build from within and come out of this stronger than before.
rts
Read Jim Fallows’ blog at the Atlantic. He spent the past couple years in China and has written many insightful posts that touch upon Chinese culture and politics.
Bootlegger
@Media Browski: The Economist is great for small bits of news, it is comprehensive but doesn’t go into much depth other than a few stories. NPR and the BBC do great in-depth news from around the world. In fact, PRI and the BBC produce "The World" which is heard daily on most public radio stations.
Eric
How about South America? when was the last time you read a story about South America that didn’t include Hugo Chavez? I can name Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense off the top of my head (Matan Vilnai), but I have literally no idea who the President of Brazil is. Hell, I don’t know if Brazil even has a president…chancellor? Prime minister? No idea.
Dave
BBC News is a great online resource.
Our collective ignorance of Asia is stunning, considering how many potential flashpoints exist there. And it’s not only India/Pakistan, North/South Korea and China’s emergence as a global power. Check out the turmoil in the region surrounding the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. As oil dries up, you could easily see something break out over that area.
joe from Lowell
Ceylon has a new name.
And one of those South American countries is getting all mouthy. I don’t remember which one, though.
alexinoki
The Economist. Hands down.
I started reading this a couple years ago, and at this point I can run rings around my other friends (who happen to be college educated) when it comes to discussion about foreign policy or other nations in general. Except for my one friend, who is like crazy into world history. Eastern Europe in particular for some reason…
But be ready to do some reading. This isn’t like reading Newsweek or Times where every other page is a full page image with a caption. The economic and business sections tend to fly over my head a bit, but the more "newsy" stuff is excellent.
Josh Hueco
I love the BBC online for its world news coverage. I figure its vast purview of world events is a legacy from the days when the UK was a bona fide global empire and wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
I’ve always wondered if our, as Americans, stunted knowledge of the world is a product of our refusal to see ourselves as an empire, even though our military and economic reach rivals the UK’s at its peak.
Dave
@Bootlegger:
China has more than that to worry about. They only have a limited time to modernize their economy. I read somewhere that if they have not fully achieved that goal within 20 years, they are going to be swamped by the health care costs of caring for the elderly and even basic care and won’t have the infrastructure to handle it.
ksmiami
I loved living and working in Hong Kong and travelling in China. I actually think that the improvement in economic conditions has made it worse for the Chinese in terms of political freedom, but the country is more about gradually loosening controls than in pursuing the Russian economic wild west mode. James Fallows has some great coverage of China on his blog. The South China morning post out of Hong Kong is easy to understand too.
I’m Audi
Bootlegger
@Dave: For sure Dave, and these are some other sources of potential civil unrest, and when your population is numbered over a billion, a "small" number of angry citizens is going to be awfully destructive.
Comrade Darkness
Christian Science Monitor traditionally does a better job. They are only online now. A glance at their World section shows mostly the typical topics, but some on the margins are broader.
The Grand Panjandrum
What others have written. Watch BBC News. Read The Economist. Read the Agonist. You have to make time to keep informed on things going on outside of the USA.
The rest of the world is a fascinating place if you take the time to find out about it.
DougJ
This just proves that Larison hates America.
Why doesn’t he just come out and write “Islam is the light” in all his posts?
The Other Steve
BBC and Economist have podcasts!
Although with your lack of any knowledge of foreign countries, I believe that does qualify you for a position on the Heritage Foundation thinking deep thoughts about foreign affairs.
You might want to keep that in mind. Or possibly a run for Congress.
El Cid
Besides reading the BBC News webpage, one could also listen to the best news show on radio/TV on the planet: BBC’s NewsHour.
Also, read foreign newspapers. If you can read another language, read newspapers in that language.
Regularly look at not just Al Jazeera but publications like The Times of India or Asia Times or the Mail & Guardian of South Africa. Something on a continent other than North America and Europe (depending on where you put Mexico).
The Other Steve
Podcasts! Get your BBC podcasts!
here
Media Browski
@Bootlegger: Oh, I know! I watch that too when I’m not yelling back at Chris Matthews!
Dave
Also, look for blogs from around the world. In some ways it’s even better than the news because you get a direct window into how people think and feel 10,000 miles away.
When you do that, at least for me, you can feel the true potential of the Internet. If I can read someone’s blog in India or Kenya or Colombia, and we can communicate and learn about each other and realize that we aren’t all that different, then that bodes well for the future.
Josh Hueco
You can also sign up for daily e-mail briefings from BBC, Deutsche Welle (which tends to be more Eurocentric), etc., if you prefer to read your news instead of listen.
Media Browski
@Comrade Darkness: And I have to agree there too. When I started working in the DC lobbying ("issues advocacy") world, an old press guy told me to read CSM if I wanted to be ahead of the game.
I do, and am. Sort of.
The Other Steve
The Economist does run news out of Eastern Europe, but their opinion pieces are distorted. They take the viewpoint of Western Oligarchs who are upset the Russians won’t play their reindeer games.
I’d suggest RIA Novosti in addition to the Economist. Also news out of Poland and Ukraine to balance the Russian state version. Somewhere in the middle of all that is the truth.
sarah
ditto BBC and The Economist. Like Browski said, it’s like night and day flipping from BBC America’s world news coverage and the ranty talking heads on cable news.
Global Voices Online is a great feed to have in your reader for reference. I go to it when I’m feeling internationally deficient. The moderators there cull personal and more well know blogs from around those countries. It’s a really high volume RSS feed but I keep in in and like when the Mumbai attack happened I did a search there to gauge reaction on the ground and in other countries.
I also read Al Jazera English, their Focus section which covers interesting or impactful events around the world with an obvious not-in-America perspective.
Now I’m curious to see where other people get their news.
Nancy Darling
We need to pay attention to our southern neighbors. Check out the Martinez/Welch discussion on bloggingheads.tv
Sebastien
Well, somehow, ignorance is bliss, for that means you won’t hear a word of tonight’s appearance of Nicolas Sarkozy, AKA Napoleon the Shorter, on prime time news to explain
how stupid we are to have elected him president of such a sorry mess of a countryhis next bold moves to lead us out of the crisis AND our renowned social conservatism.Note: "social conservatism", in the barbaric French understanding of the words, means that we don’t want to lose whatever social advantages we still hold for the elusive ponies of no-more-exactly-impressive globalization.
Hawes
I just started teaching a Comparative Government course this year (Britain, Mexico, Russia, China, Nigeria, Iran), and the course filled up nicely. Kids seemed interested in the countries.
My favorite source, and it’s tough to find outside libraries, is Current History. They devote each monthly issue to a region or issue, and then they have scholars write about some of the issues involved.
From December’s Table of Contents on the Middle East:
"Iraq: Are We There Yet?" by Judith Yaphe
"The Roots of Failure in Afghanistan" by Thomas Barfield
"After Mubarak, Mubarak?" by Samer Shehata
"Iran in Search of Itself" by Mahmood Sariolghalam
"Women in the Middle East: Progress and Backlash" by Nikki Keddie
Great stuff.
BTW, on China, their foreign policy model is based almost exclusively on trade relations and has yielded impressive results in – among other places – Latin America.
alexinoki
@The Other Steve: That’s a given, The Economist is still, at heart, a British rag after all.
Dave
@Sebastien:
Hey, at least you guys aren’t afraid to put feet on the streets when it’s called for. BushCheney wiped their ass with the Constitution for eight years and we all sat on our hands and did jack-shit.
Comrade Darkness
You know what’s really annoying? It’s night and day flipping on CNN’s international channel, the one they broadcast to the rest of the world. It’s not that they don’t realize the rest of the world exists, it’s that they believe in their sulfurous little hearts that Americans are f*cktards and deserve to be droned at with crap.
"@The Other Steve: That’s a given, The Economist is still, at heart, a British rag after all."
And it does have an editorial bent. But it is so transparent about it that it’s easy to just breeze around it while reading.
Fwiffo
Yes, this is an actual news organization (ABC) breaking this story. It is not The Onion.
We’re fucking doomed.
Sebastien
@Dave:
That’s the French temper: always have something to protest about. Though I must precise that strikes are mostly done by those of public services, where unions are stronger and the threat to their perks more acute. Trouble is, these strikes almost always hit our public transportation system and thus ends up hurting other working people, mostly in the private sector. The Right has been playing the antagonism it creates for year.
Dave
@sarah:
I just added Global Voices Online to my feed. I go in there and find this story about the CIA station chief in Algeria being accused of multiple rapes.
WTF?? That’s a story with huge implications considering AQ and other radical groups are growing in areas like North Africa. And we have heard nothing about this here. Talk about eye-opening…
Patrick
Globalvoicesonline.org has lots of bloggers in other countries, plus a team of people that actually translate them. It’s organized by subject, region or country.
sgwhiteinfla
If anybody can see it Dick Durbin is kicking a whole lotta ass on the floor of the Senate right now on CSPAN. It seems Obama has given him his nuts back.
Jay
Here’s something about the rest of the world: I was reading this brief history of Guantanamo Naval Base from GlobalSecurity.org and I wondered if Gitmo was on Google Maps. It is. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is on Google Maps, but for most of the Bush administration the vp’s home at the Naval Observatory was not.
In the satellite view, right on the coast and due east of the main base on Windward, one can plainly see a five pointed building with double fences and what looks to be the roofs of "kennels".
Amazing.
R-Jud
@Comrade Darkness:
This sort of transparency is common to most other papers and magazines from the UK. There’s no pretense to objectivity, which I find oddly refreshing.
This is a great thread, BTW. I’ve bookmarked Global Voices Online, as suggested by Sarah above. Thanks!
Comrade Darkness
I saw that story days ago. Hm, trying to remember where. Honestly may have been the bloomberg feed…. No, I think it was washingtonpost.com. Somewhere major news brand, anyway. At least.
p.a.
BBC online,
http://www.glimpseabroad.org/
CIA website has basic inf on every nation.
Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations is not usually political, and he’s not always hobnobbing with the elites.
PeakVT
Perhaps everybody else just flips over to Telemundo for news, but this incurably monolingual American finds coverage of Mexico in the English-language press to be rather poor. Which is amazing, given the number of problems in that country – problems that leak over the border quite frequently.
I listen to BBC World Service a lot, and while I appreciate its global coverage, its US coverage is getting worse at the same time it is (or seems to be) devoting more time to US news. Some show had the Doughy Pantload on recently, for crying out loud.
John PM
I feel smarter for having read this post and the comments. I definitely have to expand my reading list of current events. I agree with those who recommended Jim Fallows on The Atlantic re: China. My wife’s best friend worked in China for two years, so we also gained a lot of insight from her experiences.
My biggest fear is that while the United States continues to spend an inordinate amount of attention on the Middle East, something bad happens between India, Pakistan and China. When this is reported, many Americans will start saying "WTF is this all about?" right before the bombs start flying. Honestly, any American who just follows American news sources would only know the following things: Pakistan is where Osama Bin Laden is hiding out; India is where you have to call to get your cable fixed and wasn’t there recently a terrorist bombing in the city where "Slumdog Millionaire" was set; and China manufactures everything it sells in the United States out of lead.
Mike P
The Foreign Policy magazine blogs are quite good and though he doesn’t post much anymore, Gregory Djerejian’s Belgravia Dispatch is money. Steve Clemons has good info as well.
As someone mentioned, Fallows is great on China.
sarah
@p.a.: thanks for the suggestion of Glimpse. From their website:
Bootlegger
NPR, PRI, your local public radio has the best news coverage from around the world and you can listen to it in your car. I got satellite radio just so I can have it 24-7.
Nancy Darling
I just e-mailed my Senators (Arkansas) and I called them yesterday regarding our economic recovery. I sent them a copy of a newsletter I write for Planet Home (a local environmental/educational group here in Carroll County Arkansas). Here is an excerpt:
So, let us begin. I am reminded of the USC (my alma mater)/Notre Dame football game of 1974. SC was losing 24-0, but scored a touch down at the end of the first half. After half time, SC came roaring out on the field and Anthony Davis returned the opening kick for a 102 yard touch down. I am told that the only thing Coach John McKay said to them in the locker room was, "Gentlemen, if you go out and block and tackle, Mr. Davis will carry the ball, and we’ll go on from there". The final score was 55-24. Ladies and gentlemen, if we go out and block and tackle, President Obama will carry the ball, and we’ll go on from there.
I closed my e-mail to them by telling them to get off their a**es and go out and do some blocking and tackling.
John, you have the smartest and funniest commenters of all the blogs I read. They make me laugh out loud and think at the same time. I would love to adopt all (or most) of them and bring them to Berryville, AR to live next door to me!
Also, John, skip the goat. You don’t want a tyrant out in your pasture demanding to be milked twice a day. I bought 23 acres here two and a half years ago. So far my only live stock is a big old yeller dog named Mijo, Max, the cat, and my neighbor’s 4 mules that I pasture in exchange for lawn mowing and general guardian angel duties. I thought about getting chickens but a neighbor .2 mile away has wonderful organic eggs and the Little Portion Monastery here in Carrol County raises TRULY free range organic chicken for sale. There are also several grass fed beef operations within 20 miles. My garden is mulched and waiting for spring. I am thinking of adding some space and growing fresh veggies to donate to the food pantries. I think they’ll need it. Our Chevrolet dealer closed a couple of months ago (50 jobs) and other businesses are hurting.
President Obama (God, I love typing that) needs 50 million of us flying wing for him. I am proud to be one of them.
TIKKUN OLAM
jibeaux
You know, I really like the Beeb, but their style of reporting is really different. Sometimes it could be characterized as "antagonize for the sake of antagonize". I remember a story they were doing on a controversial policy that involved screening embryos for the deaf gene before implanting, I believe it was, something like that. They interviewed a government lady and basically argued with her the entire time about who was she to decide that deaf babies shouldn’t be born, aren’t you playing God, deafness wasn’t that bad of a handicap, etc. Then a different interviewer interviewed a deaf activist for the other side of the story and she argued with him the entire time about how deafness was in fact a profound handicap and why shouldn’t people be able to choose a non deaf child, and so on. It was like extreme devil’s advocate.
horatius
If you want to be educated, I can give you lessons on India’s 4000 year old history Mr. Cole. And guess what, it’s full of intrigue. There’s never a dull moment when it comes to India, or China for that matter.
Josh Hueco
@jibeaux:
I think what you described is how the press is supposed to behave.
jibeaux
@Josh Hueco:
No, I know what you mean about challenging the interviewees and our media’s failure to do this, but this was seriously uncomfortable. They could have had both of them on to argue with each other if they wanted. As it was, it just seemed like they were saying "you are so wrong" / now to the other side / "also you are wrong". I think it would have been more appropriate for the interviewers to say "well, what about this? How would you respond to this? What do you say when people raise the ethical issue of x?" rather than sounding like they’d spent their entire lives researching deafness and in vitro fertilizations and had some serious opinions on the matter…
AlphaLiberal
Spend some time with Google Earth. It shows lots of beauty around the world, pics of people and places, links to all sorts of resources on culture, etc.
Zifnab
@Bootlegger: Ditto that. You can hate on them for being the "Nice Polite Republicans", and they do have any unhealthy concentration of AEI wankers on periodically, but they still do some of the best journalistic coverage available in the US.
former capitalist
@Nancy Darling: My in-laws live in Lampe,Mo, just up the road. Next time we’re down visiting, we should have a beer.
TCG
About the Billions of other people on the globe, this presentation uses cool graphics to sum up the dynamics
Bootlegger
@Zifnab: Sure, they put the Right on, but this way I can hear their ideas without having to watch their Faux News or read their Blahgs. Understanding the world, I’m sure you agree, means hearing from all of it, not just that which makes us comfortable. NPR did a story on Zimbabwe and had one of their asshat dictator’s "ministers" on and it was very enlightening to hear what a real dictator sounds like. Similarly, they did a series on Chavez and it too enlightened me to exactly how undemocratic and narcissistic that dude is.
So-called "media watchdogs" almost always find NPR to be the only fair-and-balanced news operation in the country, and I appreciate that.
Nancy Darling
@former capitalist: If I can drink a margarita instead, you’re on. I couldn’t find Lampe, MO in my atlas. Said atlas is 48 years old as I have been waiting for the world to stop changing names, borders, etc. to buy a new one.
former capitalist
It’s just up the road on the MO side of the line, just southwest of, I’m sorry to say, Branson. Margaritas, muy bueno!
pseudonymous in nc
Yeah, the BBC news (and especially the World Service radio) is a good primer on what’s judged to be important on a global basis. We got sat-rad for the World Service. The BBC Washington bureau is weirdly Village, though.
Yep: even putting aside the shit that’s clearly aimed at business execs in expensive hotels (the golf show, the yachting show, the ‘hotels in Dubai you might not know’ show). And as noted, it’s an editorial decision to make the domestic feed so dumb. The one hour of simulcasting they did at lunchtime got shunted aside, perhaps because it was making everyone uncomfortable.
Anyway, Michael Wood’s series on India has been showing on our local PBS (made by the BBC as part of a big India/Pakistan series covering 60 years since partition and independence); Ted Koppel’s Discovery four-parter on China was also pretty good.
Bootlegger
@TCG: That is way too fuckin’ cool! I’ve already posted it for my graduate stats class to look at, thanks for the link.
Nazgul35
John,
You might be interested in McClatchy’s website, where they have people blogging from around the world.
A very interesting insight into what is going on in those "other" places.
DirkReinecke
Well, John, interestingly you have even have readers in Africa. Me.
So here is the South African* news update;
The leading party that looks like it will win the elections coming in April is the African National Congress. It’s leader faces quite a few corruption charges and there is currently agitation that a "political solution" be found for his difficulties.
There are also heavy rains across the Gauteng region, leading to quite a few road accidents.
The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has not managed to spread into South Africa to any great extent.
For more news consult the independent newspapers at http://www.iol.co.za
*South Africa is a country, not the name for the region**. South Africa has 9 provinces, Western Cape, Northern Cape, Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Freestate, North West, Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga.
**The countries in the region are South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland.
SGEW
Comments and additions to th’ pile:
Yes, The Economist is, indeed, probably the best newsweekly evah (and their online presence, while understated, is quite superb). Nerd rappers have even made a song about it. However, you should always take their American political coverage with a very large heaping of salt – their political predictions have proven to be woefully fallible in the past (endorsement of W. in 2000, anyone?*). But if you want to know what’s going on in Burkina Faso, they’re usually the go-to source.
Despite his flaws, Yglesias tries to keep up with world events. He’s pretty much the only American blogger who occasionally pays attention to Somalia, for instance (besides making pirate jokes). Attackerman keeps his finger in the pie too, sometimes.
Djerejian’s the best, natch. But he’s become our J.D. Salinger, I’m afraid. Le sigh.
And anyone else really like the new Foreign Policy blogs? I haven’t really formed a strong opinion yet, but it looks like it might become one of the best out there. I just hope their editorial slant doesn’t begin to skew the whole enterprise.
Other than that, ditto above comments.
*Not that this should automatically disqualify someone’s current political analysis, of course (cough cough ahem).
Throwin Stones
I agree with BBC, NPR, McClatchy, and the Economist.
For some worldwide perspective of the US, this site is pretty good.
SLKRR
One of my wife’s biggest complaints when we were living in the States was about how sucky and tunnel-visioned the network "world news" was. First, it was only half an hour (22 minutes sans commercials) – and at least half that time was just American news anyway. If they covered anything going on overseas it was as briefly and as superficially as possible and always with regard to how it would affect Americans – because we all know that’s all that really counts.
Don’t get me wrong, the news programs here in Brazil have their problems, but they are light-years ahead of their American counterparts. Not only do they cover world news better than US networks do, they cover American news better, too. It was quite educational watching the US election season as covered by CNN and as covered by Globo. Globo had better reporting, more in-depth analysis, and far less time wasted on pundit wankery. (For the record, Globo is considered to be on the right of the political spectrum here, but they are still to the left of all non-Kucinich Democrats.)
Oh, and Eric (post #12), the answer is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
wilfred
The West and the rest. India has a population of nearly one billion, a booming economy, staggering possibilities and nuclear weapons. But it’s not on the UN Security Council and never will be. Neither will Brazil, or any other country where wogs of some racial, religous or cultural persuasion predominate.
It’s a big world out here.
Surabaya Stew
"India, China, Indonesia" are actually great places to start, since these are the second-largest, largest, and 4th largest countries in the world. Being big automatically places them in the same league as us when it comes to so many issues. Reading foreign media is a good place to start, but there is no substitution for actually going to one of these countries and getting a feel for things. At some point, one has to pick a place in the world and go there.
As my screen name indicates, my chosen country of attachment is Indonesia; having been there 9 times in the past 7 years. No blog, newspaper, book, or any other media is as useful than a network of friends and local associates when it comes to getting a handle on how Indonesia is evolving and where it has come from. Nor could I have planned that Indonesia would be a major focus in my life when I started visiting; things just turned out that way. Of course, Indonesia doesn’t come up often as a topic of discussion, which is a damn shame since it has so much to offer, including 240 million potential friends.
andy in nz
Have to say that I get to watch "The NEWSHOUR with Jim Lehrer" on my TV and the international version of "The Daily Show" everyday, and that’s all I need as far as US centric news goes.
Our local TV news uses feeds from ABC, CNN, NBC et al and I find the analysis as shallow as bird bath. But then so is the reporting about my own country by ourselves.
It has been very interesting watching the reaction of the establishment media to President Obama.
Lastly the Obama foreign policy toward natural allies (Australia, NZ, UK) has been surprisingly mute. Please can you rid us of the Bush appointed crony ambassador down here he is a dick!
Cheers from New Zealand!
Stuck
We’ll get right on it andy in NZ. I hear there’s an Ambassadorship available in Bumfuck, Egypt. A perfect place for teh Bushie. :-)