Author Archives: Doug Merrill

About Doug Merrill

Freelance journalist based in Tbilisi, following stints in Atlanta, Budapest, Munich, Warsaw and Washington. Worked for a German think tank, discovered it was incompatible with repaying US student loans. Spent two years in financial markets. Bicycled from Vilnius to Tallinn. Climbed highest mountains in two Alpine countries (the easy ones, though). American center-left, with strong yellow dog tendencies. Arrived in the Caucasus two weeks before its latest war.

Trying Times

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Missed most of the first half of Milosevic’s trial?

Since the case began in February 2002, a tangle of bureaucratic setbacks has mired the trial in costly delays. Milosevic is accused of 66 counts of human rights abuses, from violations of the “customs of war” to genocide. After 298 witnesses, 30,000 pages of documents and millions of dollars, the case will reach its halfway point this week ? a level of inefficiency that has strained the patience of even the trial’s most ardent defenders.

So writes Mary Bridges in the Los Angeles Times (free registration may be required). And it may be about to get worse.

When the trial resumes July 5, its credibility will face even greater strains. Milosevic has announced his intent to call a staggering 1,631 witnesses, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former President Clinton, in his defense.

To finish in the 150 days he has been allotted, Milosevic would need to question 10 witnesses a day, a pace that would turn the courtroom into a revolving door of diplomats, dignitaries and press.

The trial of Saddam Hussein is likely to cause just as many headaches.

Of course art was there long ago. In 1992, Julian Barnes wrote about the trial of the former Communist dictator of a fictional country that bears a strong resemblance to Bulgaria. The book, The Porcupine, covers the whole territory of trying former heads of state. Read the novel, skip the newspaper reports.

49 Great Ones and a Stinker

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Not too long ago, I noted that the Sueddeutsche Zeitung was publishing a set of 50 great novels of the twentieth century. I got into the game a little bit late, but since then I have been more-or-less keeping up with their pace of one a week, largely by the not terribly edifying expedient of sticking to the shorter ones. It’s been a delight.

Despite their no doubt monumental efforts, the Sueddeutsche editors let a stinker through. Lucky number 13 on the list, Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Keeper’s Fear of the Penalty). The novel purports to show a man’s disintegration, before and after he commits a senseless crime. Trouble is, the crime really is senseless, making it beyond the author’s capability of approaching with his art. The book turns on the sentence, “Suddenly he strangled her.” Snoopy could write as well.

As the jacket copy says, the narrator wanders aimlessly through Vienna and everything irritates him. Most everything about the book irritates the reader as the story wanders aimlessly through the pages. Most irritating were the typographic tricks toward the end that were supposed to simulate the narrator’s almost completed disintegration. Maybe this sort of thing was daring or something similar when the book was published in 1970, but now it just looks silly.

There are 49 other books in the series, no need to bother with this one.

Finalité

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How many members will the European Union have by, say, the year 2020?

With the latest round of enlargement not yet two months old, the exertions of the constitutional debate still straining the dedicated Europeanists, and prospective members largely a collection of the poor, ill-governed and recently-at-war, it would be reckless indeed to speculate about the who and when of future enlargements.

That’s exactly what blogs are for.

Having said as far back as 1994 that the EU would probably admit formerly communist countries when at least one of them could be a net contributor to the budget (Slovenia), I’m feeling good about this particular type of recklessness.

Under the fold, the EU’s path to 39 members (40 if Serbia and Montenegro divorce), along with the first European Parliament elections that I expect their citizens to be able to vote in.
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Geological Politics

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Is Europe prepared for a world where Chinese and Japanese competition for Russian resources is a key geopolitical question?

For months China and Japan have been locked in a diplomatic battle over access to the big oil fields in Siberia. Japan, which depends entirely on imported oil, is desperately lobbying Moscow for a 2,300-mile pipeline from Siberia to coastal Japan. But fast-growing China, now the world’s second-largest oil user, after the United States, sees Russian oil as vital for its own “energy security” and is pushing for a 1,400-mile pipeline south to Daqing.

Emphasis added to the original article. If I had to guess, I would think that the EU-25 uses more oil, and other petroleum products, than China. I’d probably have to flip a coin to decide if the enlarged EU uses more oil than the US; I think it’s very close. (If anyone can point me to good statistics on this subject, I’d be grateful.)

Given that the bulk of Russian gas now goes west to Europe, to heat homes and, to a lesser extent, generate electricity, what are the chances that when the Chinese convert coal-fired power plants to gas-fired, Russian gas might go east, to fuel the world’s fastest-growing large economy?

Is there a European approach to this sort of question? Should there be?

A Little Greatness, Every Week

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The editors at the Sueddeutsche Zeitung cobbled together a list of 50 great novels of the 20th century. With postwar German modesty, they don’t claim that it’s exhaustive, definitive or representative. Just 50. And great.

The newspaper’s publishing house has been bringing one out every week since mid-March, and they’ll finish the run next February. (By the way, if anyone among our readers can tell me how they make the economics work at EUR 4.90 for each hardback book, I’m keen to hear more.) They’ve used some wit in the schedule – their Joyce choice published the week of Bloomsday, the last selection, for deepest February, will be If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveller…

I see the edition’s distinctive design all over town. With only fourteen issued so far, it’s still possible to tell almost at a glance which book someone is reading. The Hotel New Hampshire? The Name of the Rose? The Unbearable Lightness of Being?
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Cross-Border Labor Unions?

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This piece from the Washington Post may be old news to our readers, but it was a new idea – and more importantly – new practice to me.

With two like-minded unions, the clothing-and-laundry UNITE and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (soon to become one union, UNITE-HERE, next month), the SEIU is embarking on a campaign to organize such multi-service global companies as Sodexho, Aramark and Compass Group — corporations that provide food, laundry and janitorial services in ballparks, schools and hospital cafeterias, as well as in Iraq. Combined, the three companies employ 1.1 million people globally and 330,000 in the United States. Sodexho has 110,000 workers in the United States, and the three unions are putting up $10 million and 80 organizers and researchers to unionize it. But the battle won’t only be fought stateside. In conjunction with unions in Europe, says the SEIU’s Tom Woodruff, who is running the campaign, “We are working for agreements in more than one country.” The U.S. unions seek company-wide recognition, while unions in, say, Britain, want access to Sodexho’s list of workers.

Companies have been global a long time. Why have labor unions remained national?

That Was Quick

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A reasonably reliable source has given me some tips on outcomes expected from the current summit in Brussels:

* They will reach an agreement on the draft of the constitution. The European Parliament will have even more members, and the rules on qualified majorities will be sorted out.

* They will not agree on a successor to Romano Prodi as President of the European Commission. That decision will be put off until the third week of July.