TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #15
Twitter’s new look horrifies the world…Macron heads to America…Bannon & Brazil…fallout from votes in Sweden, Malaysia…corrida and taureaux piscine…the World Cup + our cartoon.
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, explores how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world.
This week coming to you again from Paris….as good a spot as any to watch the world watching America….and itself.
How others see America
First, there’s Twitter
Twitter’s travails continue to resonate far beyond America’s frontiers. The sudden resignation of the head of Twitter France was one immediate fallout. The website L’Informaticien quoted Damien Viel as saying, "It's finished. Pride, honor and mission accomplished. Farewell #twitterfrance. What an adventure! What a team! What encounters! Thank you all for these 7 incredible and intense years.”
The French daily Le Monde was especially horrified that Elon Musk has invited back onto Twitter Donald Trump and a large number of those who had been banished for violating common decency, as the paper put it after a “consultation on Twitter, a method of uncertain representativeness. A narrow majority (51.8%) of the 15 million voters approved the return of Trump.”
The Munich daily Süddeutsch Zeitung points out that in Musk’s Twitter poll he used as justification for his unheralded blanket amnesty, “more than 700,000 votes were received within the first 45 minutes. On Thursday evening there were more than three million. Such surveys are not representative. It is unclear whether and how many votes were cast from automated accounts.”
And Twitter even found its way into the cartoon world through the brush of French cartoonist Adene [ Anne Derenne ] on the front page of Le Monde, some workers leaving, many just dialing out….
The Brussels daily Le Soir focused on the views of European regulators who seemed ill-disposed to grant Twitter any slack: “‘We are concerned about the decision to have fewer and fewer people working in the company,’ said EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said….When we discuss hate speech, I'm sure we need human resources,’ he added.”
None of that will be helped by Twitter’s decision to shutter its Brussels office, as correspondents Javier Espinoza in Brussels, Ian Johnston and Cristina Criddle in London wrote in the Financial Times, “sparking concerns among EU officials about whether the social media platform will abide by the bloc’s stringent new rules on policing online content….symptomatic of a global trend from India to France where local Twitter executives who had key positions to deal with government officials abruptly left the organization in recent weeks in the widespread cuts. This has led to growing concern over whether the company has the personnel to ensure compliance with local laws designed to police online content, potentially opening the company up to lawsuits and regulatory action.”
Off to Washington
French President Emmanuel Macron, incidentally, will be headed this week to Washington for a visit that will include the first White House State Dinner hosted by President Joe Biden—the second for Macron as President Trump also hosted him for one of the two held during Trump’s presidency. Indeed, he will have been the guest of honor at two of the three White House State Dinners held in the past six years. Ironically, the third was for the prime minister of Australia—quite an irony considering the contretemps over the sale of French vs American submarines to Australia earlier in the Biden presidency.
Biden and Macron will have lots to talk about—togetherness on the war in Ukraine, climate, and several more contentious issues. As an Élysée briefer told a group of us on Friday, Macron will also broach the “gap between Europe and the United States; not only because energy prices are significantly higher in Europe, but also because the United States is now taking steps to invest in [America’s] industry which, in some way, increases the risk of a mismatch between Europe and the United States. This is the whole debate on the Inflation Reduction Act,” whose subsidies in particular have become a major thorn in the side of France and much of Europe. The visit will wind up in New Orleans where Macron “will showcase all [our] ties…since we are the ‘oldest ally,’ but we also have a cultural and social imprint in the United States.” But he’ll already have been well-prepared for his visit…the featured entertainer? New Orleans jazz great Jon Batiste!
Bannon, Bolsinaro, Brazil
In Brazil, it seems America’s far-right is digging in. Newspapers and websites across the country leaped on a Washington Post story saying, as Brazil 247 observed: “Former US President Donald Trump reportedly advised the Bolsonaro family to question the result of the presidential election in Brazil….According to the report, the advice was given in a meeting with federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (PL-SP), son of Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
Jornal Extra, published in Maceió on Brazil’s far northeast coast, elaborated that “the meeting with Trump took place at ‘Mar-a-Lago,’ a luxury resort that belongs to the Republican in Palm Beach, Florida, after the victory of Luiz Inácio da Silva (PT) at the polls. Steve Bannon…confirmed that he spoke with Eduardo Bolsonaro in the state of Arizona.
How Others See the World
In Brazil, a challenge to democracy?
Not surprisingly, Brazil’s neighbors are somewhat concerned about potential unrest that could be triggered in South America’s largest country, especially since it had managed to shed from politics the military that seized power in a coup in 1964, then retired from politics in 1985. Sandra Borda, writing in Bogota’s, Cambio, reported: “After three weeks of silence and ambiguity, the lawyer Marcelo Bessa, on behalf of Jair Bolsonaro and his party, challenged the result of the last elections before the electoral court and requested that all the votes be annulled that have been done through the electronic voting machines. (Brazil has used these machines since 1996)….They say, Bolsonaro would win with 51% of the votes….The story is very similar to what happened in the United States after the presidential election, and the objective seems to be the same: to cover the electoral results with a cloak of doubt….In the case of Brazil, the issue is even more worrying because of the role that the military has played in the past (the shadow of the dictatorship has not completely faded).” Much of this was heralded in Andelman Unleashed’s report on the outcome of the elections.
Israel shifts more right
The Israeli election we chronicled last month has now left, as James Shotter reports in the Financial Times, “The extreme-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir … set to be Israel’s new national security minister after his Jewish Power party reached an agreement with the Likud grouping of the prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The deal will give Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist previously convicted of incitement to racism, a seat in the prospective government’s cabinet, as well as making him responsible for the police. ‘We took an important step tonight towards establishing a fully rightwing government,’ Ben-Gvir said.”
In Malaysia, a challenge to stability
Similar disquiet on the other side of the world in another national election we’ve been following. In Malaysia, a hung parliament, with no single party achieving a majority for the first time in that nation’s history has led to King Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah stepping in to choose a party leader to form some sort of coalition government. Shannon Teoh reports for The Straits Times in neighboring Singapore, which is watching closely developments just to their north, that “Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will technically have full discretion to pick a Cabinet for the first time, but the extraordinary circumstances which led to Malaysia’s multi-coalition government mean the decision will be fraught with potential landmines.”
In Sweden, the far-right flexes its muscles
Another fraught election, which brought to power in Sweden a unique right-wing coalition that has Anne-Françoise Hivert of Le Monde reporting from Malmö, “One month after taking office, the liberal-conservative government, supported by the far-right, is struggling to deliver on its commitments. The leader of the moderate right Liberal Party described the Swedish Democrats as ‘brown sadness’—a reference to the party's neo-Nazi roots—and insisted that [only] his participation in the coalition agreement presented on October 14 had prevented it from including ‘a load of crazy stuff.’”
Indeed the first tangible consequences appeared this week when Hivert reported that a Russian dissident journalist, Elisabeth (Liza) Alexandrova-Zorina, had her “application for residency on family grounds rejected and that she had four weeks, starting from November 8, to say goodbye to her husband and 14-month-old son [Maximilian] before permanently leaving Sweden….[having] been denied sanctuary….
“Her case is becoming symbolic in Sweden, where it embodies the effects of an already restrictive migration policy, which the right and the far right, in power since October 18, want to tighten further.” As Andelman Unleashed explained after the election, the far-right Swedish Democrats have demonstrated considerable sympathy for Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.
Corrida lives….and then there’s taureaux piscine
Following the progress of one French law through to its ultimate demise of a sword through its heart, Hugh Schofield & Alexandra Fouché reported on The BBC, “A left-wing MP who put forward a bill to ban bullfighting in France has pulled the proposal after some 500 amendments were tabled. Aymeric Caron of [far-left] France Unbowed [party] blamed ‘parliamentary obstruction’ and vowed it would soon be abolished in France….Imported from Spain in the 19th Century, the ‘corrida’ remains popular across large parts of southern France….The Élysée Palace was wary of a ban, believing it would exacerbate tensions between city and country, Paris and the regions.”
But what about taureaux piscine? I was introduced to this in December 1984 when the great New Yorker satirist Calvin Trillin delved deeply into this sport that he uncovered in the south of France. Translated literally, as “bulls swimming pool,” Trillin observed, “It is the only sport I have ever encountered that has only one rule: If you and the bull are in the pool at the same time, you win. If you do it again, you win again….How could anyone fail to be engaged by it?”
The aim is to drive the bull into a very shallow swimming pool in the center of the bull-fighting arena without any armaments save your wits and a fast pair of legs. No harm comes to the bull. So I emailed Assemblyman Caron to see if he might be persuaded to grant taureaux piscine an exemption? But, clearly preoccupied with the 500 amendments to his own bill, he never did respond. Already there are schedules for the next season. So that’s where I’ll be, at the Arènes de Lunel—Francis San Juan. Stay tuned!
And finally there’s Rayma … and soccer …..
Much of the world is riveted on the World Cup that’s unspooling in Qatar—the matches, certainly, but especially the utterly undemocratic hold of government over the society in this deeply Islamic autocracy. So, while British football circles were frustrated that the English team failed to beat the American team (a 0-0 tie!) and the host country failed to win a single match on its home turf, Andrew England in Riyadh and Jim Packard in London reported in the Financial Times, Qatar was launching a “review of its investments in London after the city’s transport authority banned the Gulf State’s advertisements on the UK capital’s buses, taxis and underground system. The move by Transport for London was prompted by concerns about Qatar’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights and its treatment of migrant workers. It has infuriated Doha, which has become increasingly angered by criticism at it as host of the football World Cup.”
Not surprisingly, cartoonists have taken up the cry against Qatar’s abuses, including the extraordinary Venezuelan cartoonist Rayma Suprani, who signs her images simply Rayma, and is a member of the great Cartooning for Peace collective. The football becomes a burka.
For 19 years, Rayma drew for the newspaper El Universal until, in September 2014, she was abruptly fired for publishing a cartoon that “portrayed strongman Hugo Chavez’s signature and criticized Venezuela’s health system.” She has often been threatened for her striking and strident artistry and devotes considerable energy to her work for Freedom House and the Oslo Freedom Forum. Here’s how she imagines herself:
Awesome coverage and depressing
Thanks David, sadly not a lot of good global news! Seems fascism has become rooted in the European politics yet again, none of which is good for the denizens of this spinning rock!