kim-jong-il
Dude Who Looks Like Kim Jong Il Incredibly Not Kim Jong Il's Son
Hamilton Nolan · 06/12/09 08:34AMGet Your North Korean Propaganda Goodies From CafePress While They're Hot
The Cajun Boy · 06/09/09 02:58AMNorth Korea Fires More Rockets, Blames U.S.
The Cajun Boy · 05/26/09 09:59PM"North Korea defied international condemnation of its latest nuclear test by firing three short-range missiles off its coast on Tuesday and major powers considered tougher action against the isolated communist state...Pyongyang said the United States was the aggressor, its usual justification for making nuclear arms." [Reuters]
North Korea Launches Crazy Music Missile
Hamilton Nolan · 04/05/09 09:00AMWhich Foreign Dignitaries Did Sarah Palin Actually Meet?
Moe · 09/23/08 07:38PMSarah Palin increased her foreign policy experience by 475% today and the media wasn't allowed to hear any of it! Because Sarah Palin doesn't really speak to the media much/ever, so they have to follow her around and ask the photographers dispatched to capture the photo ops what they heard her say, as if she is just like her new pal Henry Kissinger and she is engaging in top-secret high-level diplomatic negotiations. Except… at the end of the meetings the ensuing media accounts don't have anything to write about, because nothing actually transpired, so the poor journalists are left to write about how she lipsynched that she "had a good time" meeting the emperor of Tokyo or whatever. So what's a bigger waste of time than following Sarah Palin around while she says nothing about meaningless meetings with foreign dignitaries? Making up fictional event-free meetings with foreign dignitaries for the sake of a pointless quiz to see if you can tell which ones actually (pointlessly) happened!Three of these meetings actually happened, according to the Times website. Three just happened the way I imagined they would were I a reporter assigned to watch various other foreign dignitaries harmlessly shaking hands and exchanging niceties with Sarah Palin before being ushered off to exchange more niceties and possibly a game recipe or two. Guess which is which! 1. Talking Georgia With Kissinger
Getting Your (Random Ass) Media Outlet Into North Korea
Moe · 09/11/08 02:08PMIt is not easy to get news out of the North Koreans. It took the CIA to basically break the story of Kim Jong-Il's stroke; as an expert pointed out in today's Washington Post: "We don't know diddly about what is going on inside that closed country."* But it turns out Kim Jong-Il likes publicity! "I know I'm an object of criticism in the world," he told Madeline Albright one time. "But if I'm being talked about, I must be doing the right things." (Hey, think we've identified Spencer Pratt's PR role model??) Anyway, every year the hermit kingdom invites a few journalists to bask in its glorious spectacle of self-reliance, and every year we read the resulting works of journalism and think "Well who in the name of Engels let that guy in?" After the jump, find out how the likes of Parade, Vice and a random graphic novelist infiltrated the Stalinist hermit state.
Is There Money In International News? (No.)
Moe · 09/09/08 01:58PMRuh-roh, Kim Jong-Il is sick, what happens when he dies? Hell if we know!! And will we truly know tomorrow or whenever this guy gets back to the executive assistant charged with Explainer-ing it for Slate? Not really! As literary Tumblrer Keith Gessen pointed out while trying to make sense of the whole Ossetia mess, you know there's a redundant "inadequacy" to the international news in our dying newspapers when even bloggers with the attention spans of Piper Palin feel it. But isn't that because our dying newspapers have mostly killed their foreign bureaus because there's no money in it?Yes! Which is why, as readers, we are happy these guys from Boston have founded the Politico of international news. (It is already poaching people from Politico.) And those newsroom cutbacks may enable Global News Enterprises LLC.* to put together a pretty strong team. From an announcement in March:
Nick Douglas · 10/05/07 08:18AM
Weekend Giuliani Update: These are Warning Signs, People
Liutrain · 03/24/07 04:23PM
We know now that incest-taboo-defying bigamist terrorism opportunist Rudy Giuliani likes the ladies to be as maritally ambiguous as he is. Likewise, political and historical specificities aside, we have long known that non-traditional authoritarian family lives always portend the end of civil society as such. After the jump, the Post and Daily News update us on how our freedom will die.
'Time' Person of the Year: Everybody Drink
Chris Mohney · 11/29/06 12:10PMIn the phlegmatic "race" for Time's "Person of the Year," there are multiple conflicting agendas and predictions. In particular, it's instructive to observe odds versus betting behavior on Sportsbook.com, which puts Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a 7-1 favorite. However, Schmidt has so far drawn less than 1% of votes in our own reader poll, which currently has Stephen Colbert as the favorite (insert indulgent eye-roll here). Bettors aren't interested in the sure thing though, as where's the fun (or big payoff) in that? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has drawn the most bets, taking in almost a third of total wagers so far (he's at 4% in our poll). Kim Jong-Il, at 10-1 against, has drawn 17.8% of wagers (he's at 1.5% hereabouts). For its part, Chrysler is wagering millions to be the POTY's sole corporate sponsor, a bet with long odds and little obvious payoff.