This represents the debut of a new weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, exploring how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States and how they are viewing the rest of the world.
How Others See America
Liz Cheney and the Republican future
The leading French centrist daily Le Monde dispatched its distinguished San Francisco correspondent Corinne Lesnes deep into the interior of Wyoming where she discovered the Thoman family on their ranch—"50 kilometers from Green River, on the arid plateaus of western Wyoming… three generations of women running the family ranch,” ranging from Mickey, “the family leader at 93,” one of the first women inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame, to Taylor, age 13.
But for each of them: “one thing is certain: Trump critic Liz Cheney has lost their support,” and this in the state that was the first to grant women the right to vote. Cheney’s problem is simple, they told Lesnes: “‘She got into this conflict with Trump. She lost all her power…..She says a lot of good things about Wyoming, but her interests are not ours. She does not represent who we are.’”
The center-right daily, Le Figaro, suggests that Cheney’s “nuisance power could try to block the way” for Trump, and recalls how Ross Perot “contributed to the defeat of George H. [sic] Bush by Bill Clinton” in 1992. The risk, Le Figaro points out is that “she keeps the label of traitor to the conservative cause pinned to her back, ready to help Joe Biden be reelected rather than helping her own camp.”
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle warns that “Election conspiracy theorist [Harriet] Hageman’s rout of Cheney was…a testament to Trump’s grip over the [Republican] party’s fortunes and an achievement in his campaign to oust Republicans who backed impeaching him after the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.” Then it concludes “Trump basked in Cheney’s loss.”
Incidentally, one would think that the entire Francophone world would love to know what was in that Trump / Mar-a-Lago dossier labeled simply “president of France.” But Le Monde dismissed this entire episode with a line in their page one story:
La police fédérale a également saisi des documents concernant le «president de la France ». Contacté par l’agence Reuters, l’Elysée n’a pas souhaité faire de commentaire sur ces « informations » qui auraient été en possession de Donald Trump.
[ The FBI equally seized some documents concerning the “president of France.” Contacted by the Reuters news agency, the Elysée did not want to make any comment on these “informations” that could have been in the possession of Donald Trump. ]
America, Taiwan, and its neighbors
In the wake of the ill-conceived missions to Taiwan of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, followed by the delegation led by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), the Japan Times headlined: “U.S. and Japan defense chiefs vow cooperation in 'any situation' amid Taiwan concerns.” Japan’s new Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “’strongly condemned’ Beijing’s decision to lob five ballistic missiles into Japan’s claimed exclusive economic zone…vowing ‘seamless’ cooperation, including at the ministerial level, in responding to challenges. The launches—which were part of China’s large-scale military exercises around Taiwan earlier this month after a visit to the island by…Pelosi—were characterized by Hamada’s predecessor, then-Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, as an ‘intentional show of force’ by Beijing. China considers democratically ruled Taiwan to be an integral part of its territory that must be brought back into the fold, by force if necessary. Some experts have said the massive Chinese exercises were intended to serve as a check on both the U.S. and Japan from defending Taipei in the event of a conflict. Senior Japanese officials, including late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have said that a Chinese attack on democratic Taiwan—a key semiconductor-maker that sits astride crucial shipping lanes that provide Japan with much of its energy—would also represent an emergency for Tokyo.”
Alex Low, a columnist for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, observed, “People nowadays argue endlessly about whether the increasingly bitter rivalry between the US and China amounts to a new Cold War. There are of course similarities and differences, and we can all cherry-pick. But the U.S. idea of a series of island chains of defense against China, which is actually a misnomer, is a direct legacy of the Cold War. Containment is a much better descriptor. You DEFEND your own home. But if you are using my home—while risking its destruction—as a buffer against an enemy, that’s anything but “defense.”
The Holocaust Revisited
I learned first-hand a half century ago during one of my earliest visits as a reporter to Germany that most there are in a host of ways still obsessed, still trying gamely to rid themselves and their ancestors of the stain of the Holocaust. So, when Marc Pitzke, correspondent for the Hamburg-based Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news weekly and the largest-circulation such magazine in Europe, stumbled upon “a school district in Tennessee [that] recently removed Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust comic »Maus« from its curriculum,” he took this as a metaphor of something deep in the American spirit today, so “in an interview, the artist discussed his view of the controversy and why he fears American democracy is facing dark years ahead.”
Pitzke continues: “In ‘Maus,’ Spiegelman tells the story of his parents, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. In the graphic novel, he depicts Jews as mice, Germans as cats and emblazoned the cover with a swastika. The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992—and it continues to agitate the guardians of America’s morals today. It’s not an isolated case. In the United States, particularly in the conservative Southern states, a growing number of books dealing with anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, or LGBTQ concerns are being banned from schools. But the censorship is also having an unintended side effect: After the ban in Tennessee, ‘Maus’ climbed to No. 1 on several American bestseller lists.”
How Others See the World
The Iran nuclear agreement
Seen from Israel, hope springs eternal that somehow the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] which has been on life support since President Trump withdrew from its provisions, will not be renewed. So, the daily Ha’aretz observed in a commentary from its analyst Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, that Iran continues to “view the nuclear file through the eyes of North Korea….Pyongyang and Tehran have both developed a nuclear capability as a result of looking at the experiences of others. We shouldn’t expect them to willingly denuclearize….North Korea will never agree to any type of disarmament that includes foreign supervision. Iran may ultimately agree to a new nuclear deal and the curtailment of its military nuclear program. But most assuredly it will continue to prepare for the opportunity to advance on the threshold spectrum and get closer to the so-called ‘breakout’—where capability is converted to a device. You can’t really denuclearize a state unless it willingly acquiesces. Only three times in history did a country do that voluntarily: post-apartheid South Africa; post-Soviet Union Ukraine; and post-Soviet Union Kazakhstan. Don’t expect North Korea and Iran to follow suit.”
Europe facing a long, cold winter after a torrid summer
German industries could face collapse if supplies of Russian natural gas are cut. “Because of the gas bottlenecks, entire industries are in danger of permanently collapsing: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry,” Yasmin Fahimi, the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB), told the daily Bild am Sonntag. “Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germany.”
On the other hand, 75% of Germany’s total natural gas storage capacity was filled two weeks earlier than planned, part of the government’s determined effort to make it safely through the winter. Klaus Müller, head of the German Federal Network Agency, told the newspaper Frankfürter Allgemeine Zeitung that “Berlin’s next goals are to [reach] 85% by October 1 and 95% by November. We have reached the first intermediate goal ahead of schedule. This is nice. Now the main thing is not to stop.”
By contrast, a torrid summer is currently gripping much of Europe, particularly southern Europe. After vast forest fires across France, there is a broader and more endemic problem. Le Monde points out a phenomenon often largely ignored in America: “Climatic disasters on the shores of the Mediterranean, consequences of the accelerated warming of the sea, storms in Corsica and Italy, drought and fires in Spain and Algeria….While warming does not explain all these phenomena, it is on average faster in the Mediterranean basin than in the rest of the world.”
Le Monde continues: “It was more than 48 °C [118 °F], Thursday, August 18 in El Tarf, Guelma and Souk Ahras, three cities in Algeria plagued by fires with an already heavy toll. They caused the death of 38 people, injured more than 200, led to the evacuation of hundreds of families and a hospital. Some 1,700 firefighters are mobilized there to try to put out 84 forest fires. Meanwhile, a little further north, Corsica suffered violent storms, which killed at least five people and injured 20 others, including four very seriously. The majority of them were victims of exceptional gusts of wind—up to 224 kilometers per hour [140 mph] on the west coast of the island—which tore down trees and roofs, caused power cuts for 35,000 inhabitants, littered the roads with tree branches, broke the moorings of boats…..Extreme storms on one side, drought on the other: the shores of the Mediterranean are experiencing two facets of the same scourge: climate change. However, this is, on average, even faster than in the rest of the world. In the Mediterranean basin, the average temperature has increased by 0.036°C per year between 1993 and 2020, or almost 1°C in total, according to data from Copernicus, the European Earth observation program.”
In Moscow…a transformation to the roots
For 14 years, Christian Esch, Moscow correspondent for Der Spiegel, has called the Russian capital home. Now, he writes, “even those familiar have become partly unrecognizable.” Why? “Moscow has become a distant place. Direct flights from Germany are no longer available. My Aeroflot flight from Antalya [Turkey] to Sheremetyevo [Moscow] took a five-hour detour to the Kazakh border to avoid the airspace over southern Russia. Moscow is now a long-haul flight.”
In Moscow, his favorite radio station, Echo Moscow, “the forum of liberal, opposition-minded Moscow” is gone. On its frequency of 91.2 was “Radio Sputnik, a propaganda station of Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today), a state media group….A young female voice explains why excessive compassion for civilians in Ukraine is inappropriate. ‘I also feel sorry for dogs and cats and horses and birds’ she says in a coquettish tone. ‘But with such an attitude, one shouldn’t have started the whole thing.’” This lack of empathy, he concludes is “reflective of Russian society writ large…..There's something bad that runs deep in people. It's about the younger brother Ukraine, who is viewed as a traitor because he wants to live better than you do.”
This is an issue he is striving gamely to help his readers across Germany understand since it is “also difficult for me to describe the relationship of Russians to Ukrainians because it is changing. Each generation of Russians has its own Ukraine. To the elderly, Ukraine is just a region where people speak a funny peasant dialect and like to eat bacon. Over time, they came to accept that there is a separate state for bacon eaters. But they could not see it as a foreign country.”
And finally….
No kisses for Netflix in Hungary
Hungary’s media regulator, the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH), has opened a probe of Netflix for violations of the nation’s “child protection law.” Seems a scene in the children’s series “Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous,” depicts one girl cartoon character confessing her love for another, then kisses her.
That seems to transgress the prohibition against showing to minors any depiction of homosexual or transgender individuals. The European Commission has said it’s taking Hungary to the EU’s highest court, charging the law violates EU media freedom laws and fundamental rights. There have already been substantial protests within Hungary over the law and the Viktor Orbán administration’s treatment of LGBTQ individuals.
As the pro-Orbán Budapest Times headlined “Orbán: Pillars of Western civilization starting to crack,” the paper continued, quoting the autocratic prime minister “the coming decade would be defined by threats, uncertainty, and war, but Hungry could be ‘a local exception’ to a global recession.”
Clearly, the Biden administration doesn’t think much of Orbán. On Thursday, in conveying his best wishes to the people of Hungary on their national day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken carefully avoided any mention of Orbán or his leadership:
Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State
On behalf of the United States of America, I wish the people of Hungary a happy Saint Stephen’s Day, as you celebrate the foundation of your nation more than a millennium ago.
Our nations are connected in so many ways, including the commitments we share to the principles and values that underpin the Transatlantic family of nations. We look forward to continuing our work advancing our collective security and mutual interests. It is my hope that the bonds that tie us together only strengthen in the year ahead.
Under the stewardship of Orbán, however, Hungary remains a singular, indeed pariah nation in Europe.