Global Eyes

News and notes from around the world. Plus: Today's cookie. The macaron.

CG Announcements

From Claire—we have a winner! Our premium newsletter for subscribers will henceforth be called “Global Eyes.” Thank you, winner! (She prefers to be unnamed.) Thank you, too, to everyone who played. Some of the runner-up suggestions were great, too. We’ll keep them in reserve for the next time we name a CG newsletter.

Update: We postponed my appearance on “In Lieu of Fun” until later this week. I’ll let you know when I’ll be on.

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Save the dates: CG Book Club Calendar

From Rachel—Merry Christmas from the Cosmopolitan Globalists!

No required reading for this one. It’s just a regular old party. But this is your chance to help us pick next year’s books. It’s open to the first ten people to respond by emailing cgbookgroup [at] gmail [dot] com.

Then, coming up in the New Year, you’re warmly invited to join us for a discussion of T.R. Fehrenbacher’s This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History, suggested to us by Robert Zubrin. Please read parts one and two by Saturday, January 8, then join us on Zoom at 15:00 GMT.

We’ll discuss part three on Saturday, February 12 at 15:00 GMT. Check timeanddate.com to find your time zone. Space is limited to 15 people, so email cgbookgroup [at] gmail [dot] com to reserve your place.

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What we’ve been writing

Cosmopolitan Globalists Vladislav Davidzon and Arun Kapil both went to the Zemmour rally at Villepinte last Sunday. (Yes, the one that devolved into a bloody brawl.) Arun has a write up here:

… I have to say that I found jarring the thunderous applause and cheering of these young people at the diatribes against immigrants, Muslims, foreigners, Europe, the United States (more on that below), and the many other targets of extreme right-wing hate from the warm-up speakers and, of course, Zemmour himself. The animosities and hatreds of these young people are disturbing to my sensibilities. They, like their elders in the hall, are not kind or generous; some surely are on a personal, one-on-one level but they are not in the larger sense; in this, they are the polar opposite of my late-millennial daughter and her friends, as well as so many students I’ve had over the years.

And here’s Vladislav’s account:

… some of the anti-racist counter demonstrators from an organization called SOS Racisme stood up on their chairs to protest as Zemmour launched into his signature attacks on the media and mass immigration. They were quickly surrounded and attacked with chairs and fists and bundled out the back exit next to the press stand. The young Zemmour security men proceeded to form a human wall, clasping each other by the back and moving in unison against the cameras so as to cover what was happening outside. They yelled “Advance!” in unison as they pushed the evening news cameramen out of the way. My friends and I decided to leave with some minutes to spare before the end of the speech, and we ran straight into three bloodied activists being walked out under police escort.

A group of several dozen young men, Zemmour supporters, resembling European paramilitary soccer hooligans formed into a spontaneous column—I had only seen thuggish behavior such as this in Eastern European political rallies previously—and began to follow the bloodied anti-racism activists out before the French riot police formed a cordon between them and the retreating activists.

Vladislav was on France24’s Debate yesterday to discuss Russia’s threat to Ukraine, too.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves explains why liberal democracy matters in the Economist:

My father was a teenager in 1940 when the Soviet Union invaded Estonia. An orphan and poor, he was largely oblivious to the changes—until June 14th 1941. On that day, working a summer job at the railyards in Tallinn, he saw thousands of Estonians pushed at bayonet-point into hundreds of Russian cattle cars, 30 or 40 to a wagon. Men, women and children were separated and sent to different parts of Siberia.

All throughout the night my father ran between trains, bringing water to those locked inside. Out of all the tragedies of the 1940s, this was his most traumatic. When, as a child, I asked him, “What are communists?”, his answer was, “People who take you from your home and send you to Siberia stuffed in a cattle car.” …

…. A classic story told by my father and others, though probably apocryphal, has it that when they arrived as refugees in Sweden, someone asked, “Why did you come here?” They replied: “We were rounded up and deported by the Soviets.” The Swede innocently inquires: “Why didn’t you call the police?

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Global Eyes

News and views from around the globe