TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #29
Europe starts to worry about US elections….what’s up with Xi….Lavrov’s turn in standup…jeans in parliament…the hated durian…Finally, Spanish cartoonist Kap on censorship of Roald Dahl.
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.
How others see America
The campaign’s approaching in America…and Europe’s watching
“In the United States, the presidential election is approaching. That doesn't bode well for Ukraine—but it doesn't bode well for Germany either.” That was the view of Stefan Kornelius, head of the politics department of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The leadership in Washington feels the hot breath of the Republicans, who are counting on the voters' aloofness from the world,” he continued.
“Germans are well served with the restrained interventionism, the value—and alliance-based hegemon—understanding of a Joe Biden,” Kornelius continued. “Of course, they don't make it easy for this president, who is practically begging for a bit of his leadership role in the fight against revisionist Russia to be taken away from him. Joe Biden's wish should be taken seriously—if only because there is no ocean between Germany and world crises.
Kornelius was reacting to a sudden, lightning visit of Chancellor Olaf Scholtz to Biden in Washington on Thursday, which Süddeutsche’s Washington correspondent Peter Burghardt pointed out couldn’t “wait until April, when a slot for a state reception was said to have been free.” But the message, Burghardt observed, was clear and, uncharacteristically, delivered in the Oval office to reporters in English: “It is very important at this time ‘that we get the message across that we will do this for as long as it takes and as necessary.’ He appreciates ‘the very good cooperation between our governments,’ for him ‘a consistent partnership that is really in very good shape today—thanks to your leadership.’”
And then there’s CPAC
The Washington correspondent of The Times of London is following as “White House hopefuls put their case to Republican Cpac [sic] conference.”
“Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, did not mention Trump by name,” correspondent Alistair Dawber reported. “To a muted response she repeated a previous pledge that elected politicians in Washington, including the president, should face ‘mental competency tests.’ …. Her 15- minute speech [was] to a hall that was about half full.” She was followed by “Mike Pompeo, speaking less than an hour after Haley, but taking almost 25 minutes to make his address, he sought to burnish his own foreign policy credentials, saying that he had been tough during his first meeting with Kim Jong-un.”
Dawber concluded with a pointed observation: “In a YouGov poll just 3 per cent of respondents said that Pompeo was their preferred Republican candidate. Haley, the only woman expected to stand for the Republican nomination, fairs a little better at 8 per cent.”
How others see the World
What’s up with Xi and China?
There will be no war with the United States. A Chinese military invasion of Taiwan is not in the cards. Putin made a huge error. Xi Jinping has already “lost the game.” Frédéric Lemaître, Beijing correspondent of the French daily Le Monde managed to persuade “one of China's most recognized specialists in international relations” to spell out China’s view of the world, in utter anonymity of course:
"’There will be no war with the United States because our leaders, who are among the richest men in the country, have put their money there, some of their relatives, including their mistresses,’” the official tells Lemaître, “’and they will never have the courage to give up these benefits.’" As for Xi, “'He’s like Trump. He thinks he knows everything and doesn't need anyone.’” China won’t invade, but Lemaître’s interlocutor laments, “‘the risk is not zero, because Xi Jinping wants to be ‘bigger than Mao and take back Taiwan.’”
Vladimir Putin, “‘made an error of analysis by underestimating this one….After the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, he believed he could afford to invade Ukraine. He tried his luck and he lost. Neutral countries like Finland and Sweden will join NATO. This is a setback for Russia’….But if Putin fails, his successor could be closer to the United States, and China would find itself isolated. Domestically, “’The Chinese dream is meaningless for the 900 million people who live on less than 2,000 yuan [about $300] a month.’” As for the future of China, “’We are going back to the Cultural Revolution,’ he concludes. This individual represents only himself. Nevertheless, his speech is indicative of the increasing frustration of the intellectual elite,” Lemaître concludes in Le Monde.
Lavrov has a future in StandUp ?
“Traveling to India, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sparked hilarity on Friday March 3 by making remarks denying his country's responsibility for the origin of the war in Ukraine,” France Inter reported from New Delhi.
"’You know, the war that we are trying to stop was launched against us using Ukrainians,’ declared the head of Russian diplomacy at the ‘Dialogue of Raisina’ forum on the sidelines of the G20. These few words caused many laughs in the room, briefly interrupting his speech.”
Two sessions in Beijing
Hardly surprising that Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post is keeping a close eye on the critical annual meetings of China’s legislature and the political advisory body of the communist party, now getting underway in Beijing.
Called “The Two Sessions,” correspondent Laura Zhou pointed out, “Under President Xi Jinping, fostering relationships with neighbouring countries has been a centrepiece of Chinese diplomacy. But the US has ramped up efforts to strengthen ties with Asian allies and partners to counter China’s influence.”
“The foreign minister rolled out the red carpet for his Singaporean counterpart Vivian Balakrishnan in Beijing late last month,” Zhou continued, “before flying to Jakarta to deepen ties with Indonesia and Asean, en route to India for the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting and a bilateral meeting with Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Policymakers in Beijing have long been aware of the importance of a stable and peaceful neighbourhood.”
Costumed like the revolution?
French members of parliament of the far-left France Insoumis (Rebellious) party, in the words of Le Monde, “By refusing to wear a suit and tie, the "rebellious" elected members of the National Assembly have revived a debate that dates back to 1789: should the representatives of the people wear a uniform like the white coats of 1795 or the French jacket of 1799, opt for a bourgeois costume, as under the Third Republic, or dress like their voters?”
Parliamentary correspondent Anne Chemin continued, as only the French are able: “The matter is serious: on July 21, 2022, the deputy Les Républicains (LR) [center-right] Eric Ciotti wishes to draw the attention of the president of the Palais-Bourbon [parliament] to a ‘subject of importance.’ Since the beginning of the legislative session, he has been outraged, to see that the ‘looseness in dress’ of certain deputies has become ‘greatly amplified.’ No one can, according to him, rejoice in such sorry sloppiness: by ignoring the tie and the suit, the deputies of La France Insoumise (LFI) are seriously undermining the institution.”
Chemin’s account take us back in exquisite detail through the dress habits of parliamentarians from the French Revolution, through the fearsome ‘Directoire’ and on through a succession of republics beginning with Napoleon, concluding:
“Today it is the traditional model of the suit and tie that fuels controversy. Since their arrival at the Palais-Bourbon in 2017, the deputies of La France Insoumise have made this tradition of dress a casus belli. ‘Wearing jeans or a shirt without a tie is a way of displaying our closeness to our constituents and of proclaiming that the other deputies form a separate caste.’”
Vive la France.
And then, there’s the durian
The single smelliest fruit known to mankind, the durian is banned entirely from the cabins of many airlines, even hotels and public transport in Thailand, Japan, and Hong Kong.
But Arlina Arshad, the intrepid Indonesia correspondent for the Singapore daily Straits Times has found the “Indonesian ‘Queen of Slay’ [to] show how to eat durian, nasi padang, with style and finesse.” As Arshad writes in her Letter from Jakarta, “With her hair cascading in soft waves and framing her impeccably made-up face, Indonesian celebrity chef Vindy Lee smiled at the camera and talked spoons. Dinner spoon, soup spoon, dessert spoon, cake spoon, teaspoon, she rattled off their uses. She then introduced an even smaller spoon, the demitasse, to stir espresso or specialty coffee with. She finally picked up the star of the day—a flat ice cream spoon—from the neat row of sparkling silverware she had laid out in front of her.”
“‘Today, we are going to enjoy the king of fruits, that is the durian,’ Vindy Lee declared, scooping the mushy flesh cleanly off a soup plate—bite-size scoops only, please—as she tackled the tropical fruit with her tool of choice.” Arshad points out that she is well “known to her nearly one million followers on TikTok, 374,000 on Facebook and 256,000 on Instagram.” So how did this all begin?
“It all started on New Year’s Day in 2022 after she posted a video on TikTok showing how to properly hold a champagne flute by the stem near the base.”
Finally, there’s …. Kap
The extraordinary Spanish cartoonist, Kap, is horrified by the censorship now underway in Great Britain of all places, where works of the great British children’s book author Roald Dahl were ‘expurgated’ by his publisher, Penguin Random House. So, Kap imagines this nasty-looking black marketeer baring his wares seductively to a little British girl, whispering “PSST! First editions of Roald Dahl!....very forbidden.” Eventually, bowing to outrage from ‘free-thinkers’ the publisher said they will publish unexpurgated editions, but carefully labeled as such, of course.
Jaume Capdevila, who draws under the name of Kap, is a Spanish cartoonist best known for his cartoons that appear in La Vanguardia and in El Mundo Deportivo as well as this one published on the front page of Paris’s Le Monde. His cartoons appear also in the pages of other Spanish and international magazines including Siné Mensuel and Courrier International. He has published ten collections of his work in book form. And he is also an expert on the satirical Spanish press of the 19th and 20th centuries, and author of a host of works about the history of Spanish cartoons and satire. He is featured by the extraordinary collective Cartooning for Peace.
Here's how Kap sees himself: