TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #8
The world begins to focus on US elections…and looks at a flailing Russian leader...a world without Dijon? Two Nobel laureates and one dissonant view. And an African cartoonist unmasks Putin.
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.
In step with our pledge to cover every national election everywhere in the world this year, we begin now with our coverage of the American contests on November 8. Since an inordinate amount of ink is being expended to chronicle races in the U.S., Andelman Unleashed will instead examine what the rest of the world is learning about America’s intricate and deeply polarized process.
How Others See America
One-month to go on the hustings
The world is beginning to wake up to the challenges to America’s stability and the stakes for democracy, war and peace and economic challenges around the globe posed by the mid-terms in the United States. The Straits-Times of Singapore headlines a report from its US Bureau Chief Nirmal Ghosh, “Deep divisions, high stakes: The US gears up for midterm elections.”
Ghosh then goes on to explain, “The midterm elections, in which the Democrats and Republicans will vie for control of Congress, is shaping up to be determined largely by voters' concerns over the economy and the cost of living. Inflation worries favor Republicans.” Ghosh also believes “Democrats are slightly favoured to win the Senate, and Republicans are slightly favoured to win the House.” But he adds, “The Democrats losing the majority they currently hold in the House while hanging on to their razor-thin Senate majority will have implications for President Joe Biden's administration.”
In London, The Guardian points out that “this year’s midterms on 8 November will be voters’ first opportunity to render a national verdict on the presidency of Joe Biden. But his name will not be on the ballot and other factors can come into play such as specific candidates, local dynamics, or national issues.” The paper goes on to note, “there are some unusual variables this time: the spectre of Donald Trump, extreme Republican candidates and a supreme court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion could galvanise Democratic turnout.” And their Washington-based analysts Lauren Gambino and David Smith ask, “Could unexpected Democratic gains foil a midterm Republican victory?”
In Italy, which still does not have a new government or prime minister officially, two weeks after a neo-Fascist woman candidate, Giorgia Meloni, vaulted to victory in their elections, Leonardo Pini of the Turin-based daily La Stampa zeros in on the Senate campaign of Herschel Walker: “The race to the Midterm for the Republican party is still complicated. After investigations involving Trumpian candidates who attempted to subvert the 2020 presidential election result, another scandal engulfs the campaign of Herschel Walker, vying for a seat in the Senate in Georgia.”
La Stampa’s Pini concludes with a typically Italian coda: “Who knows if he will be able to clean up his image or if, as Francis Bacon said, he will end up like the bad man who looks even worse than he is when he pretends to be a saint. “
From Moscow, Kremlin-controlled RT (Russia Today) reports with at least a degree of schadenfreude, “Democrats have slipped from a seven-point lead to a three-point deficit heading into congressional elections…. Rising concerns over the issues that voters consider most important appear to be hurting Democrats because the party’s leader, President Joe Biden, is struggling in those categories. For instance, 82% of Americans see inflation as “very important” or “extremely important” heading into the midterms, and Biden has an approval rating of only 30% on the issue.”
“It is hard to believe that 30 years after Francis Fukuyama declared the victory of Western democratic system and celebrated the ‘end of history,’ 67 percent of Americans now pessimistically believe that democracy is in danger of collapse,” Xin Ping, a commentator for Chinese news agency Xinhua writing in the state-controlled Global Times, a publication of People’s Daily asks, “Is US democracy heading towards a dead-end?”
Answering the question, Xin begins, “Acknowledging that democracy is under threat, both parties tell voters the only solution is to defeat and eliminate their rival. The US is trapped in an unprecedented dilemma where its people define democracy in fundamentally different and incompatible ways, and social values and common sense gradually disappear.”
USA where the battle over abortions rages
The Rome daily La Republicca goes state-by-state to examine “where is the battle for abortion” in America. “An Ohio judge indefinitely blocked the law banning abortion rights starting in the sixth week on Friday,” the paper begins.
“Earlier in the day, another judge in Arizona stopped an 1864 anti-abortion law that was reintroduced last month. Not a week goes by in the United States in which a court, of any level, does not intervene for or against the right to terminate a pregnancy.”
How Others See the World
Putin’s war continues to … collapse
With a virtually united voice, media in much of the world seems to be taking a certain comfort in Vladimir Putin’s catastrophic loss of a large stretch of the $4 billion bridge linking Crimea with mainland Russia. Nairobi’s The Star reports “the key connector to the occupied peninsula….is also a pivotal symbol of Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The blast killed three people, Russian investigators said.”
Five writers for the leading German news weekly Der Spiegel ask “Is Putin Serious? Berlin and Washington Play Out Nuclear Scenarios.” Then they elaborate, “The bleaker things look on the battlefield in Ukraine, the more often Russia talks about nuclear bombs. Western governments still think it’s a bluff, but they are nonetheless examining possible scenarios….The West is dealing with a Kremlin ruler who is no longer fighting just for prestige and spheres of influence, but for his sheer survival. Putin will have to fear for his hold on power if he loses the war in Ukraine.”
Der Spiegel begins its exhaustive account with an anecdote: “Is this what a victorious army looks like? ‘Hooray,’ cries a lone voice, sounding as though the man is trying to muster up some courage on this depressingly gray October day. The smell of alcohol lingers over the crowd at just before 11 a.m. outside the draft office in Balashikha, a drab suburb east of Moscow. ‘Louder!’ slurs a man, followed up by a rather lackadaisical reply. ‘My God,’ groans a young reservist. ‘Where am I?’ But most of the men remain silent as they wait to be sent to war. Or they try to comfort their crying wives and mothers. Scenes like the one in Balashikha are currently playing out in hundreds of different places in Russia.”
On the front page of London’s Sunday Times, Mark Galeotti writes: “The bridge blast really matters [since] losing Crimea could finish Putin off. The attack on the Crimean crossing is a direct assault on the Russian president’s authority…. If it was a Ukrainian attack, then it is yet another example of Kyiv’s ability to defy expectations. The bridge was protected by multi-layered defences that should have made any such operation impossible.”
….and then mustard disappears in Dijon?
Quelle horreur! What next? Le Monde in Paris is transfixed by the prospects of supplies of Dijon mustard simply drying up. “Empty mustard shelves, rationed gasoline or oil, water that is becoming scarce, as for energy….The anxiety of running out is spreading as quickly as shortages. To remedy this, some stockpile, while others opt for new ways of consuming. What is the connection between the war in Ukraine and the shortage of Dijon mustard?” writer Maroussia Dubreuil wonders, “Before finding other ways to spice up our dishes….the Worcestershire sauce was mixed with vinegar, the horseradish diluted in cream, the tomatoes spread with tapenade… We even tried a preparation based on grated turnips and chewed on wasabi for the ‘nose-inducing’ effect. Finally, it was by understanding that this culinary hustle and bustle resulted from the severe droughts of the summer of 2021 in Canada that we replaced the mustard rabbit with the wine rabbit to drown the extent of our ignorance. The country of the caribou was therefore the world's leading grower and exporter of mustard seeds… from Dijon! ….‘When I saw the empty shelves, I still thought of my stay in Craiova, Romania, in 1976. People were queuing for nothing, it was terrible,’ says Michelle Dubois, a young retiree from the manufacturing industry.” Incidentally, Debreuil found one Frenchman who stocked up with six jars of Dijon when he was vacationing in Ireland. Just in case.
Expel Russia from the U.N.?
That’s what Oleksandra Matviichuk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last week, believes is an essential step to be taken against Vladimir Putin and Russia—only one of a host of outcomes she hopes for her country Ukraine and her nation’s invader, much of which she detailed in her in-depth conversation with Andelman Unleashed before her organization, Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties; Memorial, the largest human rights organization in Russia; and Ales Bialiatki, a democracy and human rights advocate in Belarus were all tapped to share the 2022 Nobel.
A different perspective on another Nobel laureate
Last week, Annie Ernaux, the 82-year-old French author became the first French woman and 17th woman among the 119 winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature—a recognition of her accomplished mining of her own rich and occasionally outrageous life to profile French society of the 1940s. One dissonant note is sounded by the Jerusalem Post, however, which observes “Ernaux has called to boycott Israeli cultural events, release terrorists and called Israel apartheid.”
The Post continues, “Ernaux called Israel an ‘apartheid state’ in a letter ignoring Palestinian violence.” The paper lists a number of similar open letters that Ernaux had signed over the years including one that charged: "To frame this as a war between two equal sides is false and misleading. Israel is the colonizing power. Palestine is colonized. This is not a conflict: this is apartheid."
And then there's Meddy….
…with a view of Vladimir Putin and his territorial and electoral machinations in eastern and southern Ukraine. The extraordinary Tanzanian cartoonist draws for Cartooning for Peace.
Mohamed Jumanne, who publishes under the penname of Meddy, is often found on the front page of the French daily Le Monde, as is the case this week when a clearly wounded Putin, stripped to the waste in his heroic fashion decides it would opportunely use a saw, manipulated through the ballot box, to slice off a chunk of Ukraine. We know how well that’s turning out for him.