TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #85

Horrors expand in Gaza with consequences … Putin’s victories … NATO @ 75 … UvdL & Truss on hot seats … speed dating in China … and cartoonist Dilem imagines an Olympian truce?

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 this week from Paris.

Israel, America & beyond

The horror of the world’s attention has been focused on the death of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen. This has been a devastating war for humanitarian workers, for the people of Gaza and Israel, but especially and all too often less heralded, for the most innocent—the children. As Le Monde observed on its front page….

In Gaza, a devastating war for the children…nearly half of all Palestinians killed in the enclave since October 7 are children….More children have been killed here in six months than in four years of all other conflicts of the world. Israel having deprived the enclave of medical equipment: so children must be operated on even amputated without anesthesia.

Le Monde, for one, has also turned to a powerful frontpage editorial to plead a critical case:

This unprecedented tragedy suffers from an equally unprecedented context. For six months, due to lack of authorization issued by Israel, no foreign journalist has been able to enter the Gaza Strip (with the exception of a CNN journalist, who entered with an Emirati NGO via Egypt) other than under strict supervision and control of the Israeli army.

As a result, reporting on the reality of the catastrophic humanitarian situation caused by Israeli military operations and the obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian aid remains for the international media a journalistic challenge that is difficult to reconcile with the right to fair and plural information guaranteed by democratic regimes….

This situation cannot continue. The Israeli government must allow global media access to the Palestinian enclave, so that journalists can do their work, as they do in other theaters of war. It is up to the editorial staff, and not to the authorities of one of the belligerents, to decide whether or not to send reporters on site, after assessing the danger. The right to freedom of information is at stake on a conflict which will have a lasting mark on the history of the beginning of this century.

It's difficult to exaggerate the bitterness the World Central Kitchen attack has engendered across continents and nationalities. As French cartoonist Rodho, member of the Cartooning for Peace collective, observes, “Netanyahu has recognized the ‘non-intentional’ strike on humanitarian workers,” but points out there is a “subtle nuance”—‘intentional’…’non-intentional.’  The consequences of both lie smoking on the ground.

And a collective breath is being held over how the Biden administration will respond. London’s Guardian reflected the views of so many:

A pivotal point has arrived in the cataclysmic six‑month war in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces’ killing of seven foreign aid workers and their Palestinian driver has spurred the US, the UK and other European allies to draw the line that they should have established long ago. On Thursday, Joe Biden called for an immediate ceasefire and told Benjamin Netanyahu that future support would depend on Israel taking steps to protect civilians and relief workers.

These warnings come too late for tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children. But they could now protect others from the continued offensive, the threatened ground assault in Rafah, and the famine setting in: Oxfam says people in the north are consuming on average just 245 calories a day.

The US president had looked not only complicit but weak, as the Israeli prime minister ignored pleas and criticism alike.

Elections 2024:  Senegal (reprised), Slovakia

Senegal’s voters have broken resoundingly with the past, as Andelman Unleashed has been reporting, while bringing to an end the rule of now apparently outgoing president Macky Sall. They elected Bassirou Diomaye Faye, at 44 years old Africa’s youngest president. Now he in turn has chosen his patron, longtime opposition leader Ousmane Sanko, as his prime minister.

Faye congratulates Sanko

As Harvard Professor Robert I. Rotberg points out in his SubStack “Robert’s Conflict Mediation Newsletter, “both are former tax inspectors [and] Sonko is now the power behind the throne.”

The hand of Slovakia’s Russia-friendly prime minister Robert Fico, who himself won a surprise election on October 25 as Andelman Unleashed reported, was strengthened Saturday when nationalist Peter Pellegrini was elected to the largely symbolic but in some senses important position of President. “Ukraine skeptic wins presidential race,” Germany’s DW [Deutsche Welle] headlined, before adding:

Pellegrini has expressed sympathies towards Russia and believes Slovakia should sometimes be skeptical of the views expressed by leaders in the EU and NATO.

Poland’s leading daily Wyborcza had a darker perspective:

The campaign was extremely fierce. In its final stretch, polls gave an equal chance to both—Petr Pellegrini, Robert Fico's coalition partner, and Ivan Korczok, former foreign minister….Pellegrini received 53.12%. His competitor, 46.87%.

This is a clash of two different political visions for Slovakia. Pellegrini emphasizes "defending national interests", Korczok sees himself as a European democrat. The former enjoys support in small towns and villages, especially among people who are slightly worse off and educated, as well as older people. Korczok has been the candidate of a metropolitan electorate.

Pellegrini presented Korczok as an "American agent" pursuing Washington's interests.

At the time of Fico’s victory last year, Pellegrini, who led the third-place and ostensibly more moderate Hlas party in the parliamentary vote, described himself as “the king maker.” His support gave Fico and his far-right team the votes they needed for an outright parliamentary majority. Now the pair have cemented their “arrangement.” Slovakia has taken its place firmly alongside neighboring Hungary and its leader Viktor Orban—also a close friend and supporter of Trump—both nations, it would seem, nowfirmly in the hip-pocket of Vladimir Putin.

….of course always, it’s Trump…

Indeed, for a good sense of just how some of the world, well at least here in Paris, views Donald Trump, our photographer happened upon two women laughing hysterically in front of a shop near the Pompidou modern art museum on Saturday.

—Photo by Pamela Title

The shop’s window proclaims “destockage” [clearance]. Our photographer asked if they were Americans—“thank goodness, no,” they exulted. They were Brits.

How others see the World

Russia still surging ….

The Slovak presidency was hardly Putin’s only victory in what could only be seen as a triumphant week for his crusade to defeat and destroy Ukraine. It’s hard to believe that Russia’s winning the war it started in Ukraine….and acquiring allies or at least friends. But this was a week where signals were questionable for democratic forces in far too many quarters.

Le Monde offered a chilling rundown of just how bad matters may be:

·      President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine is developing a weapon against guided aerial bombs. He also said that in the face of Russia's incessant air attacks, Ukraine could find itself running out of air defense missiles.

·      The United States is warning its allies that China has stepped up its support for Russia, in particular by providing geospatial intelligence to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine….

·      The situation is “particularly difficult” in the sectors of Bakhmout, Novopavlovsk and Avdiïvka, estimates the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army. “The enemy, thanks to its air superiority, missiles and artillery, is trying to reach its objective, namely the administrative border of the Donetsk region.”

NATO at 75

As it happens, this weekend marked the 75^th anniversary of the creation of NATO, facing perhaps its greatest ever set of challenges. As senior officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, gathered in Brussels, the alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gave quite a candid interview to the BBC:

An "alliance of authoritarian powers" is working more closely together against Western democracies, [with] Russia, Iran, China and North Korea increasingly aligned. He also said he was confident the Nato military alliance would agree on a long-term funding deal for Ukraine by July….

The world was now "much more dangerous, much more unpredictable" and "much more violent". He said there is an "authoritarian" alliance giving each other practical support that is "more and more aligned".

"China is propping up the Russian war economy, delivering key parts to the defence industry, and in return, Moscow is mortgaging its future to Beijing." Russia was providing technology to Iran and North Korea in return for ammunition and military equipment, he added.

Mr Stoltenberg said NATO had to work with other countries beyond its geography—such as Japan and South Korea—to "stand up against this stronger alliance of authoritarian powers".

The NATO chief has been trying to persuade other countries to commit more money to the war effort in Ukraine in recent days in the hope of a five-year, €100bn [$110mn] fund. He said he was confident he would get an agreement by July, despite some countries expressing hesitation this week.

And then the dénouement:

 “The Ukrainians do not lack courage, they lack ammunition.”

Andelman Unleashed … on the Air

We talked Ukraine and Gaza this week from Paris with the inimitable Laura Coates on her Sirius POTUS Channel broadcast. Her conclusions and ours were memorable. She is always well worth a listen.

Then there’s UvdL

If Ursula von der Leyen is to work her magic moving toward some pan-European military force as a counterweight to Putin’s military machine underwritten by North Korea and Iran with a dollop of help from Turkey and Hungary, first she has to win a second term as head of the European Commission following June’s continent-wide elections for the European parliament. She’d better move fast, especially with a second NATO-skeptic Donald Trump administration not inconceivable.

Her path suddenly got a whole lot rockier with the publication by the extraordinary Brussel’s-based Italian journalist David Carrietta who seems to have the goods on UvdL’s selection of a political ally for a plum job on the European Commission. On his SubStack page, La Matinale Européenne, reciprocally shared with Andelman Unleashed, Carrietta reported [as translated from the French]:

Part of the College of Commissioners has decided to openly contest Ursula von der Leyen's appointment of German [Christian Democratic Union European Parliament member] Markus Pieper as EU envoy for small and medium-sized businesses, triggering an unprecedented rebellion within the institution….

Mr. Pieper was not the candidate best evaluated by the independent selection committees and he was not the candidate recommended by commissioner Thierry Breton….[But] Pieper’s appointment came three weeks before the CDU, where not everyone is enthusiastic about Ms von der Leyen, came out in favor of a second term [for her] as the head of the Commission. 

Guess who’s baaaack?!

Why it’s Liz Truss. Who? That’s right, Britain’s shortest-tenured prime minister. “She still carries an aura of spectacular failure, so why hasn’t she gone away?” the Guardian asks.

…and answers:

The brief and calamitous premiership of Liz Truss broke all sorts of political records. It was the shortest by far in British history—just 49 days, though oddly in those seven weeks she became the first prime minister since Churchill to serve under two monarchs. Her approval rating before she resigned—9%—was the worst yet recorded by any modern UK party leader….

She was 47 when she quit Downing Street. Half a political lifetime still lay ahead of her if she could find some way to fill it. But stepping back from the fray is not the Liz Truss way.

Looking to explain why Britain has hit the buffers, Truss blames communism and the London dinner party lifestyle. Truss also appears to believe that lasting little more than a month in a job she had aspired to all her adult life is evidence not of her profound incompetence but of her virtue…. So she has hitched her wagon to a newly launched organisation called Popular Conservatism—or PopCon for short. 

Just what the world needs: more Popco®n ?

Still, there’s one note of optimism out of Singapore. As The Straits Times US bureau chief  Bhagyashree Garekar reported:

China’s status as Southeast Asia’s preferred superpower in a new…survey is likely to be short-lived, say analysts. The annual survey of 1,994 policymakers, journalists, businessmen and analysts in Asean nations showed that they would prefer China over the US—if forced to align with either strategic rival—by a narrow margin of 50.5% to 49%.

The findings…point to a reversal of trends seen in the last four surveys. In 2023, 61.1% chose the US, while 38.9% went with China. 

Analysts told The Straits Times that the findings…do not necessarily mean the region is uncritically closer to China. The downward trend in trust for the US appears concentrated among the three Muslim-majority countries of the region, which suggests it is tied to the war in Gaza.

And then there’s dating, Chinese style….

“The Chinese Communist Party launches speed dating to stem population decline,” reports Le Monde correspondent Harold Thibault in Cjhangxing:

Both social traditions and living conditions dissuade many young people from having several children and even from starting a family.

“Let passion flourish,” says Huang Jilai, an executive from Cjhangxing canton to around 50 young people gathered in a picnic area on the edge of a lake. Harvest love to make life more intense, more beautiful, sweeter. »

Spring has arrived in eastern China's Zhejiang province, and local politicians hope that the wonderful blossoming of peach trees will be conducive to meetings….The official union, associated with the Women's Federation and the Communist Youth League, is organizing three hours of activities bringing single girls and boys together—circle games, tied wrists with a pink string, picking flowers: everything is done to get closer.

A form of speed dating is being organized by the state in response to the demographic decline China is now facing. For the second straight year, China's population fell in 2023, and has been surpassed by that of India. The fertility rate, around 1.1 children per woman in 2021, is well below the 2.1 needed to maintain the population.

Now encouraging people to start and enlarge families, this same government imposed a one-child policy with prohibitive fines and forced abortions from 1980 to 2016. In Wuhan, an artist who’d been commissioned to create a statue of a happy couple with a child, installed in a park along the Yangzi River, had to redo his work to add two toddlers.

The consequences of an aging population—risk of a drop in productivity, major problems in pension financing—are already widely documented and worry leaders. [But….]

Pan Yuefeng avoids activities offered this Saturday, preferring to sit in a deckchair and has not met a glance that catches her attention. Her family begins to ask her if she is dating, without putting too much pressure on her. She is 29 years old and looking for “a thoughtful, people-oriented guy.” If they were to decide to have a child, she already knows there will only be one. “I would like to offer him a quality education,” explains the young woman . I tell myself, one child is already good. »

Finally, there’s …. Dilem

The great Franco-Algerian cartoonist Dilem reflects war and, well, peace? On the front page of Le Monde he draws a bored viewer, ready for the Olympics coming on the screen in front of him, while his left hand mutes the sounds of war that continue unabated in the background, laying waste a smoking, if hardly silent, landscape… silent at least to him.

Ali Dilem, who signs his works simply with his last name, Dilem, describes himself as "a cartoonist for as long as I can remember," having begun his career as a cartoonist with the daily Le Jeune Independant in 1990, joining Le Matin a year later. Known for his outspokenness against the regime of Algerian dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika, he has been subjected to more than 60 trials. The recipient of the International Press Cartoon Prize in 2000, he was made a chevalier of the prestigious French Order of Arts and Letters in 2010. He is a member of the global, Paris-based collective  Cartooning for Peace. 

Here’s how Dilem imagines himself: