TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #57
Special visitors to America … amid panic … a French hostage … Kim & Vlad vs the world … Iran under siege … Covid, an apocalypse … Bulgarian cartoonist Tsvetkov imagines a Kim-Putin toast
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.
How others see America
Special visitors
Forget Donald Trump and his various court dates, impeachment efforts by the GOP against Joe Biden, disarray on Capitol Hill and the fast approaching shut down of the entire American government. None of that is making hardly a ripple beyond the nation's borders. What folks are concerned about is Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky's imminent arrival in New York to address the UN General Assembly and then his visit to Capitol Hill in Washington just as Congress will be in throes of debating $24 billion in new American aid for Ukraine's war against Russia.
As Giuseppe Sarcina put it in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera: "In the American capital, the Ukrainian president will return to directly confront Biden and the leaders of the Republican Party. The conservatives control the House and have so far overwhelmingly supported sending military aid to Kiev. However, disquiet is growing: the Trumpian minority is loudly asking to limit funds going to Ukraine. Zelensky will try to shore up a bipartisan consensus, at least between now and the spring of 2024. Then we will have to evaluate the impact of Donald Trump, protagonist, and almost certainly dominator of the Republican primaries."
Of course, with the fall meeting of the UN General Assembly moving into high gear, there will be a parade of foreign leaders heading to New York, with many making a side trip south to Washington to check, firsthand, the political temperature there as America begins to gear up for its quadrennial bloodletting of a presidential election next year.
As the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung correspondent Paul-Anton Krüger reported from Washington, Annalena Baerbock, Germany's "Foreign Minister is promoting the cohesion of the West in the USA. She meets supporters of Ukraine—but also wants to convince skeptics of arms aid."
“With a side trip to Wichita Falls, Texas to visit German pilots being trained on T-6 jet fighter trainers, she was able to see, as she put it how Germany and NATO can ‘further strengthen security in Europe.’ Earlier, in Washington, she only met senators and one representative from the Republicans—the party in which the radical supporters of former President Donald Trump are increasingly questioning financial and weapons aid for Kiev and have become part of the political battle with the Democrats over the budget, while doubting the value of the alliance anyway." And Krüger concludes his report with the observation, "it is also clear that the Republicans are not the only ones expecting Europe to play an even greater role. She can report on her trip that Germany is now the most important supporter of Ukraine after the USA."
Still, there is a campaign coming….
And as Hugh Tomlinson, veteran Washington Correspondent of The Times of London pointed out on Friday, "Democrats panic as polls show the president’s age is a decisive factor. The White House has tried to brush it off. Joe Biden himself has made jokes about it. But a string of opinion polls have shown that a majority of American voters are asking the same question: can Biden win the White House again at nearly 82, and can he serve as president until he is 86.”
Tomlinson's paper is owned after all by Rupert Murdoch, which the rival Guardian points out saw "removed all legal barriers on Rupert Murdoch interfering in the editorial independence of the Times and the Sunday Times." Still, Tomlinson quite rightly observed, there is "growing panic in some quarters of the Democratic Party after a series of dismal polls showed that Biden’s age was a decisive factor in the president’s stubbornly low approval rating from voters."
How others see the World
Another hostage?
The French ambassador to Niger, where over a month ago the military seized power and France refused to recognize the junta as the nation's legitimate rulers, have now taken its diplomat hostage. At least that's according to President Emmanuel Macron, who has himself no doubt felt a bit under siege these days from his fragmented parliament. Macron defines Ambassador Sylvain Itte's predicament, however, in more immediately pressing terms: “We are being prevented from delivering food. He eats military rations.”
I do recall my confrères under siege along with diplomats in the French embassy in Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge had seized control of the capital back in 1975 lamenting the too-rapid depletion of the mission's lavish wine cellar that had been laid in so meticulously over decades.
Meanwhile, in nearby Burkina Faso, whose junta has agreed to come to the aid of its neighboring junta in Niger should any military efforts be launched to dislodge them, that nation’s rulers ordered France’s military attaché expelled this weekend due to “subversive activities,” and given him 15 days to pack up and leave Ouagadougou. As Le Monde quoted the foreign ministry’s reaction in Paris, “This accusation “‘is obviously fanciful.’”
Iran under siege
This week marked the one-year anniversary of the murder of Mahsa Amini, the young student assailed and beaten to death by forces of the religious police as her hair covering they found to be "mal porté" (poorly worn). The page one banner of Le Monde on Friday observed that in Iran "one year after, the revolt is still brewing." Indeed it is.
Le Figaro was more direct: "Iran: a year after, the unfinished revolution."
But the real crisis, Le Monde observed, will come "on the death of Ali Khamenei," the nation's Supreme Leader. Indeed, the lead editorial of the paper points out "Iran, an Islamic Republic in ruins." Then it continues:
“It is painful to commemorate the death of a victim of arbitrariness, and even more so to take note of the failure of the vast popular uprising to which it gave birth….The courage to demonstrate against such a ruthless dictatorship…has struck the world. This horizontal mobilization was, unfortunately, swept away by the same weaknesses which had condemned a decade earlier a good part of the 'Arab Spring'…. In the space of a few years, Iran's authoritarian drift has produced devastating results.”
Iran's unveiled young women
“As for its qualification as 'Islamic,' it has foundered on the powerful contestation of its symbol, the veil….Incapable of responding to the economic crisis fueled by its kleptocracy and its incompetence, its nuclear adventurism has been further accentuated, the Iranian military-religious regime has broken with a people who have had hardly anything to do with its beginnings. These people are forging themselves against the waves of protest and repression they are undergoing, and they have the future on their side."
There's always Covid
We're booked to get our Covid booster on Tuesday (September 18) in New York. But as Le Monde reported, "Faced with an increase in the circulation of the virus responsible for Covid-19, the Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, decided to bring forward the vaccination campaign by two weeks, to October 2. Vaccination for the most vulnerable people was initially to be carried out at the same time as the seasonal flu, on October 17, but the minister decided to follow the advice of the Committee for Monitoring and Anticipation of Health Risks, which recommends 'access to the vaccination booster as soon as possible.'"
Le Monde then went on to point out that "England announced at the end of August that it was bringing forward its vaccination campaign against Covid-19 to September 11." Talk about being one-upped.
Apocalypse….when?
That's what London's The Economist seems to be preparing for. Or as it headlined "Doomsday: How to get ready for the end of the world. Britain’s latest risk register anticipates the apocalypse in detail." It goes through a whole inviting list from “major outbreak of African Horse Sickness" which it concedes "few will suffer sleepless nights over (unless you keep mules)" to "pandemic [with] 'up to 840,000 deaths" Overall, it seems, the nation's risk register lays out "many, varied, and sometimes splattery ways in which Britons might be wiped out—then assigns scores to them."
British threat room
As for dealing with these risks, well that's another story. Its suggestions, the magazine concedes are "faintly feeble; at times almost eccentric. For a 'marauding terrorist attack,' it refers to advice that tells people to 'run' then 'hide,' which, though sensible, is not wholly comforting."
Apocalypse now !
That was a broadly held fear when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russia's Vladimir Putin huddled in eastern Siberia. The Straits Times of Singapore reported that Kim "inspected a Russian fighter jet factory that is under Western sanctions on Friday, part of a visit Washington and its allies fear could strengthen Russia’s military in Ukraine and bolster Pyongyang’s missile programme."
“Russian President Vladimir Putin had discussed military matters and deepening cooperation with Mr Kim when they met….Mr Putin and Mr Kim called each other 'comrades' when they met at Russia’s most advanced space rocket launch cosmodrome, with Mr Kim toasting to Mr Putin’s health and victory for Russia in Ukraine. The US and South Korea appear worried by the revival of Moscow’s friendship with Pyongyang which they fear could give Mr Kim access to some of Russia’s sensitive missile and other technology.”
In the end, Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov was widely quoted as saying “no agreements were signed” during the visit.
Not surprisingly, however, the Korean Herald reported Senior South Korean Foreign and Defense Ministry officials and their US counterparts said Friday North Korea and Russia will pay the price for military cooperation because it violates United Nations Security Council resolutions. “The alliance of South Korea and the US is stronger than ever. The Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group meeting today where we discussed issues in depth will make the alliance more powerful,” First Vice Foreign Minister Chang Ho-jin said, following the get-together of the group.
And then there’s Japan….
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is very proud of the makeup of his new cabinet. As Julian Ryall reported in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, Japanese media have trumpeted the record-equaling five women, that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida named to his new 20-strong cabinet, although critics have pointed out that the record high still leaves Japan last in the G7 for female ministers." Still, they include Japan's first female foreign minister Yoko Kamikawa. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was among the first to congratulate her, without pointing out her distinction of serving in an increasingly mixed cabinet. Here's how the State Department put it:
Blinken "offered congratulations on her appointment. They emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Japan Alliance to security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. The Secretary and Foreign Minister also discussed countering the DPRK’s [North Korea’s] reckless provocations and Japan’s support for Ukraine in the G7 and United Nations."
Still looks pretty male
"Critics also said that it remains well short of the 30 per cent of women in the cabinet that former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi set as a target two decades ago, which the present administration continues to adopt," the SCMP concluded.
Finally, there’s Tsvetkov….
The Bulgarian cartoonist Ivailo Tsvetkov imagines a toast between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and just what might be the outcome when their glasses clink.
Ivailo Tsvetkov is an editorial cartoonist for the Bulgarian newspapers Monitor and Telegraph. Based in Sofia, he has won more than 70 international cartoon prizes and is a member of the great Paris-based collective Cartooning for Peace
Here’s how Tsvetkov imagines himself:
At LEAST one a week every week !!!
But THANKS !
Thank you, David.
I especially liked the political cartoons.
More, please.