TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #44
Trump ‘reaching a phase of war’… Making nice to China… Putin owns history… Replacing those tanks… Iran: Someone’s talking… Pharrell’s smallest handbag…and cartoonist Thiago imagines Trump in his bath.
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. Reporting this week and through August from our base in Paris.
How others see America
The world holds its breath
“Charges against Trump: ‘We have reached a phase of war,’" was the headline in Switzerland’s leading daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Beneath a photo of a clearly angry Trump, Washington correspondent Christian Weisflog reported: “Donald Trump boasted back in 2016 that he could shoot someone in the middle of the street in Manhattan and not lose a single vote. Now—seven years later—this sentence is often quoted again by the American media. Trump did not commit murder. But he is now charged with, among other things, embezzlement of top-secret government documents and obstruction of justice….Nevertheless, fearing Trump's voters, the vast majority of Republicans support the lie of a political witch hunt to stir up their base.”
If there was any doubt about how petrified most Europeans are over the potential of a Trump return to the Oval Office, the evidence was no clearer than in the lead editorial of France’s Le Monde the morning after his arraignment. “The Trump Threat to American Democracy,” the editorial began, then asked, “Is the United States on the way to becoming a ‘banana republic’?….Unlike previous cases targeting the ex-president, which have become sort of routine, these latest charges relate to the operation of American institutions. And question the man who had sworn, on taking office as president, to be its defender. They therefore touch the heart of a democracy which Donald Trump has undertaken to undermine for his sole personal benefit, tirelessly demonstrating that he is in no way a statesman….Donald Trump's new war against the justice system of his country shows that the danger remains, alas, tangible.”
Making nice to China….
Seems to be the goal of Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing. Arriving early Sunday morning as the first Secretary of State to visit Beijing in five years, his goal was to return relations to approaching an even keel, though China continued to insist that the blame for any rupture lay fully on the United States. But as Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan warned in a joint news conference with Blinken in Washington before his departure, “speaking now, as a diplomat, I want to make this plea: Please don’t put too much weight on poor Tony’s shoulders.”
At the news conference was the Singapore Straits Times US bureau chief Nirmal Ghosh, who asked “how ASEAN centrality…fits into the Indo-Pacific Strategy with China?”
The visit “is aimed at building open communications with China in an important but insufficient first step, amid low expectations of any breakthrough in the rancorous relationship,” Ghosh wrote afterwards, “and a resumption of top-level diplomacy after Mr Blinken’s original visit in February was cancelled amid a diplomatic row.” A euphemism for the downing of a Chinese balloon when it crossed the U.S., Ghosh adding, “The trip is also to advance US interests and values.”
Later, the State Department said Blinken had phoned his counterparts in Japan and South Korea, just to reassure them before he took off.
But going straight to the source, the Chinese Communist party paper, People’s Daily somewhat restrained as far as aspirations for the talks. Washington correspondent Zhao Huanxin warned, “Dampened expectations hover over Blinken's visit….Beijing has said it does not shy away from competition, but opposes featuring competition predominantly in bilateral relations, or defining the relations as a competition.”
How others see the World
Now Putin owns history
As it happens, I follow one of the Kremlin’s Telegram channels. On Wednesday, it let it be known it would be hosting a discussion "Creating a unified history textbook in modern Russia."
A star-studded group was convened: Vladimir Medinsky, an assistant to Putin and chair of the Russian Military Historical Society; Sergey Kravtsov, Minister of Education; Anatoly Torkunov, rector of the Foreign Ministry’s MGIMO, which describes itself as “Russia's most revered educational institution,” Torkunov also being on the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The moderator? One of Putin’s favorite trained seals, Trofim Tatarenkov, a radio and TV anchor and actor.
But it’s not like they were soliciting ideas, nor indeed any input whatsoever. The book has already been printed and is slated to arrive in the hands of 11th and 12th graders across the land in September, though its use “will not be mandatory.” Hah.
The Russian emigré news channel Meduza even got its hands on a copy and found that it “now includes a chapter on the full-scale invasion of Ukraine…. and teaches students that the West used Ukraine as a ‘striking fist, aimed at Russia’ and as a ‘foothold for a NATO attack.’ The textbook also says that in January 2022, Moscow learned that Ukraine, with the support of the West, was preparing for a ‘full-scale military operation to capture the Donbas and Crimea,’ which forced Russia ‘to take preventative measures.’ The goal of these measures, as stated in the textbook, was to ‘relieve Donetsk and Luhansk from daily shelling, ensure their sovereignty, and the de-militarization and de-nazification of Ukraine.’” At the end of the chapter: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s June 1941 statement announcing Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union—“Our cause is just! The enemy will be defeated! Victory will be ours!”
So is Russia winning?
News from the Rialto of the Donbas and other eastern and southeastern battle zones of Ukraine, if not Shakespearean, was certainly less than fully encouraging. “Ukraine’s counter-offensive is making mixed progress,” London’s The Economist reported. “Its real test will come when it hits Russia’s prepared defences….They are making progress. But neither side has committed its reserves and the most important fighting may not occur for another week or so.”
But perhaps even more important is the materiel that’s been lost. “Ukraine has lost valuable weapons in its counter-offensive,” Thomas Gutschker writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Now the pressure is growing on the partners to send replacements. America is leading by example, Germany wants to replace modern tanks with old ones.”
Then FAZ elaborated: “Ukrainian troops lost some valuable equipment during their first attacks: four German Leopard 2 main battle tanks, two French AMX-10 scout tanks, six Swedish PBV 50 infantry fighting vehicles, 16 American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, three Finnish Leopard 2 mine clearance tanks and a German Wisent....Most of the vehicles were lost in an ill-prepared push in the Zaporizhia region.…[But] Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius…when asked whether Germany would provide equivalent replacements, said: "We also have to secure our own stocks, we also have maintenance work to do and we need a defensible Bundeswehr."
Iran: Someone’s talking
Not only does it seem that the United States is talking (again?) to Iran, but they’re quietly telling others about it. Amir Tibon and Amos Harel write in the Israeli daily Haaretz: “The Biden administration regularly updates Israel on its indirect talks with Iran…a senior Israeli official told Haaretz, adding that the Israeli government hasn't yet decided on a definitive position on these talks. The same official also strongly denied allegations that Israel was somehow trying to sabotage the talks by leaking sensitive information.”
The same week Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei paid tribute to Iran’s nuclear achievement, the Times of Israel quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu going even further: “’What’s on the agenda at the moment between Washington and Tehran is not a nuclear deal, it’s a mini-deal,’” Netanyahu was reported to have said. “‘We will be able to handle it.’” But there was more as the deal “includes a stipulation that Iran will not enrich uranium above 60%, and in exchange, the US will release Iranian funds that are being held abroad under sanctions. The two sides would also carry out a prisoner exchange.”
And then there’s Pharrell…if you can find him?
The multi-talented rock star was named recently creative director of Louis Vuitton’s billion-dollar men’s collection.
Now, he’s gone tiny. No I mean really really tiny. How about a handbag the size of a grain of sand? That’s what his auction house (yes, he also has one of those, called Joopiter) is auctioning off this week in Paris. As Mitia Bernetel reported in Madame Figaro magazine: “The MSCHF brand, which excels in provocation, this time pushes the limits of leather goods by creating an it-bag that is measured in microns. Mini, micro and even nano, the handbag is lost in the infinitely small at MSCHF. The cheeky New York collective…unveils its latest work: a bag so small that it is really observable only under a microscope….the accessory almost a third the size of a sesame seed. It is therefore only by equipping yourself with an observation tool that you can admire the details, and discover that it is a replica of the OnTheGo model from Louis Vuitton in a yellow-green version. Fluorescent….It will be offered during a sale organized jointly by producer and designer Pharrell Williams, via his auction house Joopiter, and Sarah Andelman.” [Full disclosure: my daughter-in-law.]
How did they do it? Simple. Find a nanotechnology company to make it. “Printed in 3D in a visible color,” Bernetel continued, “the first prototypes of the miniature bags were partly misplaced by the teams when they were received, the New York collective likes to tell as an anecdote.” And this coming week it goes on the (virtual) auction block, accompanied by a powerful microscope. Just to make sure what is this speck, the size of a grain of sea salt, that you’re buying for $15,000 to $25,000, or even more. Indeed the opening bid on Monday morning was already $15,000.
Finally, there’s …. Thiago
The Brazilian artist Thiago imagines Donald Trump immersing himself in the luxury of a bath of top-secret documents.
Thiago Lucas, who signs his works simply with his first name, was born in Recife in 1987, studied history at the Federal University of Pernambuco, and has a postgraduate degree in Northeast Brazil History from the Catholic University of Pernambuco. During this period he began researching caricature as a means of exposing the “drought industry” in northeast Brazil. His interest in caricature began at age 14, when he began following drawings published in the newspapers of Pernambuco. For him, interpreting the world through graphic humor is a form of resistance to a world at once unequal and exclusive. He contributed to the newspaper Folha dePernambuco from 2009 to 2015, and currently for Sistema Jornal do Commercio de Comunicação, and is featured in the extraordinary collective Cartooning for Peace.
Here’s how Thiago imagines himself:
STAND BY !!!!
It was and IS much worse than the moment he tanked the agreement. Trump was never able (and still today is unable) to understand how the end of this agreement has spiralled the entire region out of control and continues to rush headlong to a potential nuclear Armageddon. I devoutly hope that is only hyperbole, but I fear not !