If not for his late and somewhat befuddled response to catastrophic floods in eastern Germany back in August 2002, Edmund Stoiber might well have been Chancellor today. The floods and some convenient anti-Americanism tipped the scales for Gerhard Schroeder, leading to his replacement by Angela Merkel. Yesterday, Stoiber announced that he would step down as Bavaria’s premier and as head of the CSU at the party’s conference in September.
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Author Archives: Doug Merrill
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
A storm with hurricane-force winds is making its way across Germany as I write. The national rail system has stopped all passenger traffic (for the first ever, by some accounts). I’m a long ways inland and in a building essentially sheltered on all sides, but it’s surely rough out there.
Dramatic rescue in the Channel, probably more trouble in the Baltic or Poland, depending on how the storm tracks. Purists will note that this is not a hurricane (being neither tropical nor having a cloud wall), but for mid-winter (or ostensibly mid-winter, the blooming and budding plant life argues otherwise) in Central Europe it’s a good little storm. Hope none of you have had to be out in it too much.
Centipedes of the 21st Century
Bruce Sterling gives the canonical definition of a “centipede,” a new approach to political scandalmongering, probably coming soon to a polity near you. Unless you’re in India, Greece, Poland, Indonesia, South Africa, the UK or the USA, in which they’ve already arrived.
Basically, a centipede is an attempt to drive a politician from power by creating a moral panic. “Centipedes are a cheap, highly effective, low-risk, highly-mediated method of political destabilization. Centipedes are new phenomena because the barriers-to-entry in media have crashed. This means that subversive efforts formerly isolated and punished as libel, slander and whispering campaigns can swiftly take on avalanche proportions. While pretending to be about spontaneous indignation and moral values, centipedes are coolly calculated and all about power. … I named them ‘centipedes’ because they are segmented, covert, and poisonous.”
He also details their common characteristics. They’ll probably be increasingly recognizable.
German-American Relations
Given our slightly jaundiced piece on things Anglo-German, it may be just as well that work and other nuisances kept us from joining in, but the good folks at Atlantic Review held a “blog carnival” yesterday on German-American relations.
The introduction in English is here (just ignore the juxtaposition of a tagline featuring the words “truth, honesty and integrity” and a button proclaiming “GOP blogger” because the intro does provide a good summary) and the introduction in German is here.
Who Lost Turkey?
That’s the question on the cover of this week’s European edition of Newsweek, and it’s a good one.
The rift isn’t formal yet, as the EU will likely opt for only a face-saving partial suspension of negotiations after a deadlock on Cyprus failed to be resolved last week. But it takes no special reading between the lines to see that a fundamental tipping point has been reached. Late last week Cyprus threatened to “veto” Turkey’s entire bid. French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, kicking off his campaign, also called for the suspension of further talks. “Turkey’s place is not in the EU,” said he.
Long experience with the EU and its predecessors warns against saying never and assuming that anything is ever completely settled. On the other hand, Turkey first signed an Association Agreement with the European Community before the Beatles had a #1 hit in America. That’s now longer than the entire lifespan of East Germany.
There are reasons why Turkish membership will take time, and why membership will be difficult for all concerned. But frankly, I can’t see how Europe’s interests are served by a definitive rejection. An important opportunity is slipping away.
From Vancouver to Vladivostok
Not unlike the cold old days, the US and Russia have been at odds over the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). At the recent ministerial meeting in Brussels (Belgium currently has the OSCE’s rotating chairmanship), the Russian ambassador complained about an imbalance in the Organisation’s work, specifically that too much emphasis was being put on the “human dimension.” That’s an OSCE bit of jargon that covers things like free and fair elections, protection of human rights and so forth. (This was all reported in the German newspaper whose web site could be better organized, page 6 of the December 5 edition, but can one find the article on said web site? No. Try here, instead, as long as the link lasts.)
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Ambassador Lavrov said that the OSCE should give equal focus to the military and economic aspects of security and cooperation in Europe. This is kind of a nutty thing for a Russian ambassador to be saying.
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On the Polish Right
The scandals seem to keep coming. On the heels of news that an assistant to the former presidential candidate from the League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin, LPR) party took part in a neo-Nazi festival in the summer of 2005, come reports that parliamentarians from the Self-Defense (Samoobrona, SO) party made sex a condition of employment for some women.
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Russia to Veto Kosovar Independence
According to dpa (as related on page 6 of today’s FAZ), the Russian ambassador in Serbia said that Russia would use its UN Security Council veto to put the kibosh on any UN action to recognize the independence of Kosovo. He couched his argument a tiny bit more diplomatically, in that he said Russia would veto a solution that is not acceptable to both sides, i.e., Serbian and Kosovar. But it’s essentially a foregone conclusion that the Serbian government will not look favorably on independence for its former province.
A status recommendation is expected at the end of January from UN representative Martti Ahtisaari. The dpa report says to expect him to recommend limited independence under the auspices of the EU. That’s confusing, even for diplomatic language, and it might be enough of a fig leaf to avoid a UN confrontation.
If not, it will be interesting to see how EU leaders, particularly German ones, who often praise the UN as a source of legitimacy (see Iraq, for instance), react in this case. (German public and commentator reaction will be interesting too; sometimes it seems that the UN here is regarded as a politics-free and near-holy Instanz.) My bet is that a Russian veto will be roundly ignored and recognition extended in some form on a bilateral basis. Consistency being a hobgoblin and all that.
Limping into the Union
Romania’s government lost its majority over the weekend. I know, it took us a little while to notice, too. In fact, our attention was called to it by the German newspaper whose web site could be better organized (page 6 of today’s edition, not on the web site apparently).
The Conservatives departed the four-party coalition, a move that was not unexpected, given that they had already threatened to walk out this summer. The background is suitably Balkan, a mix of personal clashes, links to Communist-era security services (of which Romania’s was one of the nastiest), and using public office for private gain.
Less than a month before Romania’s accession to the EU, this is not a great sign. On the other hand, no one seems to want to bring the government down before then. So Romania will enter with a minority cabinet, which will fall early next year, with elections to follow. Welcome to Brussels, Bucharest.
A 21st Century Kind of Question
At his delightful blog, Timothy Burke takes up whether qualitative research about virtual worlds is best served by the methods of anthropology or history.
Douglas Thomas just pointed out that when we talk about qualitative methods in virtual world research, we always tend to define that as ethnography, when there are other kinds of qualitative methods that are potentially important, including history.
I think that’s right, and it struck me how odd it is that I, as a historian, generally talk about virtual worlds methodology in terms of my habitual dissatisfaction with the tendency of anthropology to visit its own ethical obsessions on all discussions of ethnography as a method. I don’t talk about historical narratives or events in virtual worlds, even though what I think is most interesting about virtual worlds is that they are historical, processual, dynamic, iterative. …
I had a discussion earlier today about a parallel problem in simulations of emergent phenomena, which also seem deeply historical and processual by their nature.
Read it all. Stretch yr brain.