TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #65
Biden-Xi and their de-risking summit…Gaza continues to bisect the world…new global fears about Trump…Taylor Swift’s sad tribute in Rio…and Egyptian cartoonist Sherif Arafa’s view of the war.
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, continues on its 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. Coming to you today, still, from Paris …..
How others see America
Not surprising that the extraordinary Taiwanese cartoonist, Stellina Chen, saw both Joe Biden and Xi Jinping playing with dynamite during their precedent-breaking sit-down in California that did indeed seem to halt the downward spiral marked the year since they last met. This particular item, featured by Cartooning for Peace collective, also appeared on the front page of the leading French daily Le Monde beneath the package, “A dialogue marked by mistrust.” Not exactly a walk in the park.
Still, while a lot of the world focused, with surprise, on Biden’s quick, extemporaneous dig at Xi as “a dictator,” the South China Morning Post [SCMP] focused on Xi proclaiming, “No matter how the international situation evolves, China’s resolve to foster a market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environment will not change.”
All this just as Europe was sounding its own alarm. With exquisite timing, as the SCMP‘s Finbarr Bermingham reported from Brussels:
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has warned the EU’s 27 member states to get moving with de-risking economic ties with China or prepare for their businesses to be steamrollered by unfair Chinese competition. During two pointed speeches in Berlin on Thursday, von der Leyen painted a bleak picture of bilateral relations, with few notes of optimism, as she prepares to travel to Beijing next month for the EU-China Summit.
In an address to conservative lawmakers at the German Bundestag, she tried to drum up support for her de-risking agenda, suggesting European businesses in China will eventually run into trouble if governments do not take action.
“Entire industries and value chains for which China used to rely on the rest of the world are being increasingly relocated domestically. Many European investors like to call this ‘in China for China’. However, this only works until European companies are squeezed out by Chinese competition or get caught up in political turmoil,” von der Leyen said.
Indeed many countries observing from the sidelines had their own views of the stakes of this potentially epiphanal summit….as Matthias von Hein observed for Germany’s DW, “The US and China are engaged in an economic battle. The threat of a new Cold War is looming, and so are fears of military confrontation. Germany is torn between its most important ally and its biggest trading partner,” while he added:
Many of the products that Germany needs for its climate protection efforts and energy transition are made in China. Whether it's photovoltaic cells, battery technology or electromobility — hardly anything in the field of renewable energies would work without Chinese preliminary or end products….A key component of the strategy is to reduce Germany's dependence on China under the label "de-risking." The idea is to make sure that German companies become more involved in other countries and regions, in order to spread and thus reduce risks.
Meanwhile, here’s how People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, in a surprisingly anodyne treatment, observed simply, “Xi calls for unity to achieve better Asia-Pacific cooperation.” Then it adds that the “world looks forward to seeing ‘San Francisco vision’ translated into reality,” while to implement that, “Xi says sustainable development is the ‘golden key’ to fixing current global problems.”
Sliding right past the clear implication: it's China that holds that very key and the world should beat a path to its door.
Before they all headed home, though, as Singapore’s Straits Times observed:
Pacific Rim leaders showed divisions over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza [since] the 21 Apec members, which include Russia and Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, went into the meetings divided over Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza, that is how they left them.
Meanwhile, the greatest danger to the world in 2024?
The Economist of London believes it’s Donald Trump.
“A shadow looms over the world,” the magazine begins, while continuing that in the 38 years it’s been looking at the world in the next year, “no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probability is beginning to sink in.” Then its analysis continues:
This is a perilous moment for a man like Mr Trump to be back knocking on the door of the Oval Office. Democracy is in trouble at home. Mr Trump’s claim to have won the election in 2020 was more than a lie: it was a cynical bet that he could manipulate and intimidate his compatriots, and it has worked. America also faces growing hostility abroad, challenged by Russia in Ukraine, by Iran and its allied militias in the Middle East and by China across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. Those three countries loosely co-ordinate their efforts and share a vision of a new international order in which might is right and autocrats are secure.
Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair.
Sirius POTUS and Laura Coates
On Tuesday, Andelman Unleashed talked global affairs, America’s vicissitudes and consequences with Alice Stewart on the incomparable Laura Coates Show on Sirius POTUS channel….if you missed it, here’s your (second) chance…just click the arrow and play!
Elections: New leaders in Liberia and Spain … Argentines vote
On Monday, Andelman Unleashed, true to its mission, explores the will of the Argentine people who go the polls on Sunday to elect their new president. And we’ll examine how Spain came full circle and avoided another trip to the ballot box….while a peaceful transition may be underway in Liberia.
Liberia is where incumbent president (and soccer legend) George Weah conceded defeat to his 78-year-old challenger Joseph Boakai, a reverse from their 2017 contest, saying as France 24 reported, it was "time to put national interest above personal interest," or as the Daily Observer in Monrovia put it, “marking a historic moment in Liberia's political landscape.”
Two days before Argentines went to vote, the great Argentine paper El País dropped its own bombshell of sorts.
Mexico correspondent Elias Camhaji reported:
The story behind Milei's plagiarism of three Mexican scientists
The Argentine presidential candidate copied entire fragments of an article that came out six years before his book 'Pandenomics', according to court documents to which EL PAÍS has had access.
El País called it: “The most uncertain election in 40 years of democracy,” that’s taking place amid an “economy that suffocates the Argentine voter.”
How others see the World
And then there’s Gaza….where one hand giveth….
As Germany’s DW [Deutsche Welle] reported, “Israel has announced that it will let two fuel trucks enter Gaza per day for "minimal" operation of water and sewage systems…Gaza's border authorities said 17,000 liters of fuel had been delivered to the enclave on Friday.Telecommunications providers said networks were "partially restored…” And Israeli forces continue to hunt for the smoking gun in the leading Gaza hospital, Al-Shifa, as this Jerusalem Post photo demonstrates …
…the other taketh away…
The stakes for Jews continue to mount as anti-Semitism grows increasingly virulent far beyond the Arab world. The Munich daily, Süddeutsche Zeitung, has uncovered a particularly egregious example at the heart of the renowned Kassel art show, Documenta:
There is, especially in Germany, this touching intention to learn from the past. You can find it in phrases like "Never again" or "Solidarity with Israel is German raison d'être" or: "It is our goal to address the failings on the subject of anti-Semitism at Documenta Fifteen."
Now, after a year and a half of processing, a BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] signatory sits on the search committee for the Kassel art show. A quick reminder of the anti-Semitism of summer 2022:
After the Documenta management named the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa as curators of Documenta fifteen, allegations were made at the beginning of 2022 that members of the curator collective were close to the Israel boycott movement BDS, which is classified as anti-Semitic in Germany. Warnings, including those from the Central Council of Jews, were dismissed; the management guaranteed a Documenta without anti-Semitism….
A few weeks later, a nine by twelve meter picture of a Jew with bloodshot eyes, vampire fangs and SS runes was prominently displayed in the middle of Kassel.
Nath Paresh, an Indian-born cartoonist drawing for the Dubai daily Khaleej Times, offered his own view for the front page of the weekend edition of Le Monde of the stakes for Biden from afar….
The body language says it all ….
Perhaps the most important meeting on the sidelines of the APEC conference that went largely unnoticed—beyond Asia—was between Xi and Philippines president Ferdinand (Bongbong) Marcos Jr. As Nikkei Asia reported:
Marcos Jr. sought to cool tensions over the South China Sea at a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in San Francisco on Friday. "Essentially, we tried to come up with mechanisms to lower the tensions in [the] South China Sea," Marcos said following the summit he initiated with Xi….He noted that the maritime dispute with China "should not be the defining element of our relationship," but added that "problems remain" and the two sides need to keep communicating.
"I do not think anybody wants to go to war," Marcos said.
Beijing claims sovereignty over most of the resource-rich South China Sea, including parts of the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. On Friday, a Chinese coast guard ship fired a water cannon on a Philippine motorboat that was attempting to resupply a small military contingent on a grounded World War II warship at Ayungin Shoal in the waterway.
But really, just look at the two of them….Xi, dominant, perhaps just a trifle condescending, Marcos every inch the supplicant.
And then there’s Taylor Swift…
Tragedy on the Rio de Janeiro leg of Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour. A 23-year-old fan, Ana Benevides, as the daily O Globo reported, “fell ill due to the heat and died,” as temperatures in the Nilton Santos stadium soared past 100 degrees. “Comments also criticized the ban on water bottles….which resulted in mountains of them [seized by security] being accumulated at the entrances to Nilton Santos.”
“On her social networks,” O Globo continued, “Taylor Swift lamented Ana's death, in a long text, in which she stated that she feels ‘deeply this loss’ and that she is ‘heartbroken’"….and began repeatedly demanding that water be handed out to her audience.
Late Saturday, writing from her dressing room, Taylor Swift postponed her concert, citing the heat and the menace it posed to all those she cares about.
Finally, there’s Sherif….
The Egyptian cartoonist Sherif Arafa, one of three Egyptians who are members of the collective Cartooning for Peace, imagines the horrors of a Palestinian family in Gaza trapped in the middle….
Sherif Arafa, is an Egyptian editorial cartoonist who also describes himself as a self-help author and speaker, 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 career as a dentist “to share [my] vision, help develop open-mindedness, tolerance and criticize extremism in books and drawings.”
Here’s how Sherif imagines himself:
Much appreciate Professor Rotberg pointing this out ... this is indeed a frightening and tangible moment that The Economist has identified. Delighted to provide this service of trolling the great media of the world for the 'gems' that are truly must-reads!
ha!
you are probably right ... absolutism does indeed seem to be the political system of choice for nigh on half the planet ! ;-((