TWTW: The World This Week #97 + Elections 2024: Iran, then France & America

Help...someone save America...Iran chooses (more of the same?)...And then along comes France...Russia indicted...Debut Le Tour (de France)...Cartoonist Sherif on democracy rising?

In this weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, we combine our mission to explore how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world with our reporting on campaigns leading up to perhaps the most epiphanal elections of all those we are examining worldwide [until America's in November!]

How others see America

Help…someone save US

At home and abroad, the world is sending forth a clarion call. It's time, probably well past time, for Joe Biden to step aside and let another, younger challenger take on what is increasingly looking like a dramatic challenge to democracy itself in America and the world. The Editorial Board of The New York Times led off with that call at home. Abroad, The Economist of London led the way:

The magazine's unsigned editorial was even more direct:

In November 2022 The Economist said that, after a lifetime of public service, Joe Biden should not seek re-election as president. In January this year we put our concerns on the cover. But even those worried about his age were not prepared for Thursday's debate against Donald Trump. Over 90 agonizing minutes, Mr Biden was befuddled and incoherent—too infirm, frankly, to cope with another four years in the world’s hardest job.

Mr Biden says he is standing again to help ordinary Americans and to save democracy from Mr Trump’s vengeful demagoguery. And the former president’s scowling, evasive and truth-defying appearance on the debate stage did nothing to diminish the urgency of those two aims. Yet if Mr Biden really cares about his mission, then his last and greatest public service should be to stand aside for another Democratic nominee.

London's Financial Times weighed in similarly:

The presidential debate that played out on TV screens on Thursday night was a sad spectacle for America, and for the world. The shining city on a hill of freedom and democracy is looking tattered and rundown….The president faces an agonizing choice. But to stand aside now would be a dignified and statesmanlike move — and might yet prove the best way of achieving his broad political goal of preserving US democracy.

Across the channel, the French daily Le Monde took up the challenge, noting that "Democracy will be at stake at the ballot box on November 5" which should " should force the current American president and Democratic candidate to do some much-needed soul-searching after his catastrophic performance in the debate."  As the paper continued:

Because of the painful spectacle offered by a frail and failing Biden, confused at times to the point of incoherence, the presidential campaign will henceforth revolve exclusively around his age, eclipsing the real danger represented by Trump.

After the debate, the essential question arose as to whether or not Biden should remain the candidate, and the answer is no. His withdrawal would be a leap into the unknown, even if there is no shortage of Democratic talent, but the truth must be told. This applies to the incumbent president's entourage, which has so far silenced the most legitimate questions. To the Democratic Party, loyal to the point of blindness, which could be swept aside in Congress in the event of a presidential debacle….There is no shortage of imperatives for everyone within democracies to place the common interest above personal considerations.

In the Milan-based Italian daily Corriere della Sera, lead columnist Massimo Gaggi asked: on page one:

Who can convince a president still determined to go all the way in the duel with Donald Trump and take a step back? 

And there is still time, 130 days until the vote and less than two months before the Democratic convention to find, train and make public opinion aware in an immense country—from the arctic lands of Alaska to Florida which borders the Tropic of Cancer—an alternative candidate capable of bringing together the different souls of the progressive front and beating the populist leader who has taken over the conservative party.

In Singapore, Straits Times columnist Jeremy Au Yong, while not going all the way to demanding Biden withdraw, expressed a growing global fear over the outcome of the choice Americans (and the world) are facing. He begins with his description of the debate:

An ill-tempered, often off-tangent, lie-filled contest between the two least popular candidates to ever contest a US presidency. Both men emerged after the 90 minutes having exacerbated instead of diminished everyone’s misgivings about them.

The general concern had been that one candidate does not have the temperament or ethics befitting the Oval Office while the other does not have the vigour. Both concerns, on evidence of the debate, appear well founded.

The paper's US bureau chief, Bhagyashree Garekar, was even more direct in her description:

Shuffling onto the debate stage like an aged man who needed a cane, Mr Biden had a rough start to the night, speaking with a hoarse voice—his aides said he had been nursing a cold—and offering lacklustre delivery. Within the first 10 minutes, he had lost his train of thought while answering a question. To his supporters’ dismay, he could not articulate his position well, even on a topic like abortion, thought to be a winning issue for the Democrats.

On the other side, People's Daily, the organ of the Chinese Communist Party reported pretty directly:

During the debate, Biden made several verbal slips, and his speech was at times unclear. According to U.S. media reports, some Democrats were disappointed with Biden's performance. Although Trump spoke for a longer time than Biden, he failed to answer some of the questions directly, and his statements contained many exaggerations and falsehoods. Many television viewers took to social media to complain, describing the debate as a "disaster," a "train wreck," and a "waste of time," expressing concerns about America's future.

Not surprisingly, Pravda in Moscow was even more direct and it’s clear whose side the Kremlin has taken:

You can't expect a half-dead man to do anything that could sway voters or make Trump feel like a loser. Trump has arguments that Biden will not be able to answer, not because he is stupid or does not understand something, but simply due to his age and illness, the diagnosis of which is not announced, and is not able to analyze the situation of today. He lacks any memory. And the Democrats, by presenting Biden in this light, are simply mocking a sick man.

Meanwhile, Pravda columnist Dmitri Plotkin was even more direct:

Elections 2024

Iran chooses…much of the same

There'll be a runoff on Friday for the next president of Iran and the stakes could not be higher, or perhaps never less in doubt….as London's Guardian reported:

The reformist lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian secured a narrow lead over the hardline former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili but failed to secure more than 50% of the votes. Turnout may end up as low as 40%, a record low for an Iranian presidential election since the revolution in 1979.

The scale of the boycott is a rebuff for the regime, which had repeatedly urged Iranians to show their commitment to the Islamic regime by voting. The initial results showed Pezeshkian received 10.45m votes, Jalili 9.47m and the other leading conservative Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf 3.38m. A fourth candidate, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a former justice minister who ran a wildcard campaign, won only 206,000. A total of 24,735,185 people voted.

The runoff … will offer a straight ideological choice between Pezeshkian and Jalili.  Unless Pezeshkian can galvanise more voters to turn out, on the basis that the first round proved that he has a viable chance of winning and can change Iran, the reformist is likely to lose a runoff. The bulk, but not all, of the Ghalibaf votes are predicted to switch to Jalili.

Of course, then there's the question of whether the 60% of voters who sat on their hands in the first round would believe that any of their votes for Pezeshkian would even be counted—or whether the fix is already in.

And then there's France

The first round of an election that could set the course of France and much of Europe for years is being run on Sunday and seems to be turning into a battle of the extremes. We'll leave, exceptionally, til Monday for Andelman Unleashed to explore all aspects of the race when we finally know the outcome—which seems to be in little doubt. As Le Monde suggested in its banner headline Saturday:

The Legislative (elections): The challenge of the Republican Front

Nearly everyone from the center through the far left is urging folks, as the cardboard sign carried by a tattooed demonstrator pleads: "to the ballot boxes, citizens. Fascism is at our doors."

Indeed, it is a complex equation who will hold the real power in the new National Assembly, that will only really be decided at the runoff. As an example of the chaos, there are 12 candidates on the ballot to fill the one parliamentary seat for our district in the 7^th arrondissement on Paris's left-bank. The top two will contest the runoff next Sunday. In some cases, of course, a candidate may win the 50%+1  of the votes in the first round to win outright. And after Round 2, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) could win an outright majority in the national assembly. Far more likely: there'll be chaos.

How others see the World

And then there's what’s beyond France

In many respects, though, the stakes may be even higher outside of France,. As Andelman Unleashed SubStack colleagues David Carretta and Christian Spillmann, in their indispensable La Matinale Européenne, observed from their perch at European Union headquarters in Brussels, at stake may be the very leadership of the EU:

The fifty “bastards”, Ursula von der Leyen’s nightmare

Fifty. Around fifty votes could be missing to ensure the inauguration of Ursula von der Leyen on July 18 in the European Parliament. The calculations of the European People's Party, its political family, were confirmed to us in Parliament. The nightmare begins again. In 2019, pulled out of the hat by Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen [UvdL] was inaugurated as President of the Commission with only a 9-vote majority. Five years later, EPP candidate for a second term, she will have to lead a difficult campaign to rally votes.

[ And Macron will hardly be in any position to pull the rabbit out of the hat this time ]

No champagne at the summit for Ursula. EU leaders agreed to propose her reappointment for a second term, but the numbers don't add up. She needs the support of 361 of the 720 MEPs to be invested in the vote scheduled for July 18 and this majority is not assured. The three groups in her coalition, the People's Party, the Socialists and the Liberals have 399 elected representatives, but around 50 will be missing in the vote, according to estimates made by the EPP….Ursula has 18 days to convince the reluctant and rally support.

And taking over control Monday of the EU for a rotating six month period? Hungary and its pro-Putin leader Viktor Orban—hardly any friend of UvdL.

More crimes from Putin

The International Criminal Court continues its probe of Putin's war crimes and those of his associates, as Germany's DW reports:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague said it is seeking the arrest of former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and current military Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The charges pertain to alleged crimes committed during Russia's war in Ukraine. 

The court said there were "reasonable grounds to believe that the two suspects bear responsibility for missile strikes carried out by the Russian armed forces against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure from at least 10 October 2022 until at least 9 March 2023." 

The Russian Security Council dismissed the arrest warrants as pointless in its initial response on Tuesday, describing them as "a shaking of the air," an idiom for an action with no real impact, "as the ICC's jurisdiction does not extend to Russia, and was adopted as part of the West's hybrid war against our country," the press service of the Russian Security Council said. It described the decision as "null and void." 

Journos under fire

As Le Monde reported this week:

Israeli bombings on Gaza have killed 108 journalists since October 7. An investigation by the Forbidden Stories platform and 12 international media outlets, including Le Monde, suggests that some of these strikes were deliberate….

Our investigation shows that at least 18 Gazan journalists were targeted by drone strikes: 6 were killed and 12 injured. The experts surveyed by the media participating in this collaborative investigation agree that the drones in service with the Israeli army have the technological capabilities to identify their target extremely precisely, to hit it surgically and to cancel a strike in real time in the event that civilians are located near the target. So how can we explain that so many journalists, some of whom were identifiable as such, were victims of these shots?

Emad Ghabboun, injured during the January 22 attack, is convinced he was deliberately targeted. “It was a missile fired from a drone that directly targeted us. I was sending images for Al-Jazeera. We were reporting on the famine in the northern Gaza Strip. Their goal is to prevent us from transmitting these images to the world.

The press vest now puts us in danger.

Unleashed Sports

The Great Departure

Saturday was the day—the debut of the 2024 Tour de France [La Grande Boucle / The Great Loop], the world's greatest bicycle race and perhaps the greatest single test of human endurance.

This year the first day, traditionally raced in a neighboring country, started in Florence, passing through San Remo and winding up in Rimini overlooking the Adriatic. Indeed, half of the first week will be in Italy before the race returns to France.

The winner of the first leg, as Cycling reported, marked the rare stage victory of a French star:

Romain Bardet, who can't have expected his final Tour de France to begin this way when he announced his retirement recently. He’s been one of the great French riders of his generation, and this is one of the best moments of his career.

For Bardet—who held off a charging peloton in the final, thrilling moments of the sprint finish—it was a punishing day, several tough climbs but above all temperatures hovering at 95 degrees (feeling like 101). Indeed, it's rare that an opening stage of this three-week marathon across France, and this year northern Italy, is quite as punishing as this.

For the first time, the Tour will not be ending in a grand sprint up the Champs-Elysées in Paris. That's where the Olympics will have taken over. Instead, the Tour will be finishing at the other end of the country—the final stage debuting in Monaco and winding up in Nice on the French Riviera, overlooking the Mediterranean. Stand by.

And don't forget the Olympics….

In case you wondered where you might snag authentic Olympic merchandise, the mystery has been solved. The nearly 11,000 square foot Olympics boutique, the largest ever, opened its doors last Thursday.

And Geoffrey Branger was there for Europe 1:

On the shelves, there is a choice with almost 1,000 items available for sale. "We estimate that there will be 10,000 people every day," confided, Edouard Bardon, license and retail director Paris 2024. "A must-have product is the plush mascot. It is already the product that sells the most. There are also the French team outfits worn by the athletes  and of course the small products that remind us of Paris, like the Eiffel Tower."

But more—"from goodies to giant stuffed animals."

From 5 euros ($5.50) for a bracelet or a pen, to 800 euros ($865) for a giant soft toy, there is something for all budgets. A French Olympic team t-shirt costs, for example, €45. As soon as the doors open, dozens of customers come to buy souvenirs, like Ryan, an American who comes out with his arms full. “I took sweaters, t-shirts, and also small accessories for my family. There are too many things but it’s magnificent,” he explains. 

Of course, it may be the flagship and the largest, but some 150 others are opening across France to milk tourists of every dime the organizers can imagine. Not surprisingly, this flagship is on the Champs-Elysées just feet from where the Tour would have finished, and just around the corner from the Grand Palais, where we have tickets to watch Olympic taekwondo.

Finally, there’s …. Sherif Arafa

The great Egyptian cartoonist Sherif Arafa imagines the spirit of France, blindfolded and mounting the stairs toward "enlightenment." However, her next step will take her onto a chute created by the "extreme right."

Sherif Arafa, who Andelman Unleashed last published in November 18, contemplating the bright prospects that might lie ahead in the year 2024, is also a self-help author and speaker. Arafa holds an MBA in human resources, a master's degree in applied positive psychology, and a bachelor's degree in oral and dental surgery. He left his profession as a dentist to share his vision, help develop open-mindedness, tolerance and criticize extremism in his books and drawings. He is a member of the global Paris-based collective Cartooning for Peace. 

Here’s how Sherif Arafa imagines himself: