tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75900252024-03-14T04:38:36.632+02:00Failed State Latvia?Occasional rants by a Latvian-American journalist (still) living in Riga on the dismal state of politics, the economy and much of society in LatviaJuris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-79017692632285101782013-05-12T13:12:00.000+03:002013-05-12T13:12:48.046+03:00Heavy metal in Liepaja - catching up with the story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
those of you who have been following the Latvian media, the saga of the rolled steel products company <i>Liepajas
metalurgs</i> (LM)has been in the
headlines. It has been building up to a crunch that may have come on May 3,
when the company’s creditors’ club, which includes a state-owned bank, the
state-owned electrical utility, the state treasury, state-owned Citadele
Bank, the Latvian subsidiary of SEB
Bank, an Italian bank and a British steel trader, offered to buy out the
company’s existing shareholders (for LVL 1 apiece or around six US dollar in
total), replace its management and put LM in some kind of protection from
creditors until it can be recapitalized and put on the path to profitability
again. But more on that later…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
LM was teetering on the edge is clear from a confidential audit report by Ernst
& Young that also says that if the
company is allowed to fail, it could have a knock-on effect of taking 1.2 to
1.5 percentage points off the Latvian GDP. Depending, or rather, regardless of
whose data you use (the auditors say LVL 305 million, other<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">sources,
perhaps adding in related companies, have a higher figure), LM is one of
Latvia’s largest companies by sales. In addition, 98% of sales are exports.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">With
a slumping market for rebar and falling prices, it was the combined export
markets of Europe and the world that killed LM’s profit margins and had it
selling rebar products to a major market – Algeria – probably below cost, according
to the extraordinary audit report.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
for the company’s official auditor, BDO Invest Riga , the Ernst &
Young report is unsparing – the auditors,
by also making a valuation of LM’s assets were in conflict of interest and methodologically
unsound – something which clouds the real risk associated with the assets pledged
against the company’s loans and, ultimately, to protect the government’s risk
with its loan guarantee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Without
going into detail, the officially “restricted access” document as stamped on
each of its pages, is a litany of instance of corporate mis-governance, bad
judgment and nontransparent dealings and transactions which, thereby, cannot be
scrutinized. No one says the “f” word (fraud, what did you think?) other than saying
that there was no evidence of fraud, given the no-one had any real evidence of
anything in the obscure dealings of LM and some of its related companies. The
situation was not helped with the apparently hapless and more likely feckless but
royally-paid (some LVL 14 800 per month) management board/shareholders unable
to deal with the deteriorating world market situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
it became obvious that LM had about a month left, if not less, before
insolvency proceedings are filed against it by creditor UniCredit (the Italian-owned bank), owed its regular
payment on the government guaranteed loan on April 30. As things turned out,
the government was forced to pay just over LVL 6 million in principal on the
loan when LM indicated that it could not pay. LM did cough up the interest on
the loan, without which things would have turned seriously south.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
seemed, too, that the electrical utility Latvenergo , initially blamed for the
problems LM was facing because of the utility’s more than slightly deranged
double charges for “green” electricity in line with government policy, would
only be one of several creditors rushing to file insolvency papers against LM
in court. Worse still, Latvenergo could
have simply shut off electricity to the
company’s brand new furnaces, something that you can’t turn on again without
serious technical problems (like hacking tons of solidified slag out of the
cold cauldrons, though not being an engineer, I could be wrong on that).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">None
of that has happened. Instead, the letter send by the creditor club’ s advisor,
Prudentia Advisers (advisors?- spellcheck seems happy with both versions)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Politically,
this is a situation where Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis coalition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">government
can do no right. Through Finance Minister Daniels Pavļuts it has indicated that LM’s problems must be solved by its
feuding private owners and by more private investment, no politician will be
forgiven for turning Liepaja into an impoverished ghost town by letting LM go
under (2,800 jobs lost immediately,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">thousands
more indirectly). By giving the scale of financial assistance that LM needs to
avoid insolvency and to recover, Latvia risks trouble with the European Union, if
it uses taxpayer money to bailout and recapitalize the company. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So
far two of the shareholders, Sergejs Zaharjins and Ilja Segals have agreed to
sell their shares in LM. With production stopped and both management and the
two aforementioned shareholder clueless as to what to do next, Zaharjins and
Segals may be getting the best deal they can hope for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
third shareholder, Kirovs Lipmans, who is also president of the Latvian Hockey
Federation, heard about the offer while attending the World Hockey Championship
in Helsinki. Despite blaming the other two shareholders, from whom he is
estranged, for the pitiful state of LM, Lipmans rejected the offer and said the
scheme put together by Prudentia would be a disaster for LM (as if the company
was not already ruined). Lipmans may be bitter that he, who played no part in
mismanaging the company, is being offered the same terms as the other
shareholders. However, he has repeatedly said that he could get the company
back on its feet, given a chance, and the offer by the creditors does include
such a chance. Lipmans has said he has found potential investors for LM, but so
far has not disclosed who they are nor even described them in general terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
things stand, it looks like the only serious player in the moves to avoid an
end-game for LM is the British steel trader Stemcor, a company that knows the steel
and steel products markets and would be taking over one of its suppliers.
However, for the scheme to work, the puck, so to speak, is on Lipmans’ half of
the ice, since he could swallow his pride, sell his shares and buy back into LM
with his own money and/or that of his unnamed investors and then run the
company in partnership with Stemcor.
Whether this scenario plays out remains to be seen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-48988568608910178192013-02-10T22:28:00.000+02:002013-02-10T22:28:44.795+02:00Anti-euro crusader gets stiffed, now what?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
so it has come to naught. That is how Saeima deputy Iveta Grigule’s efforts to
stop the euro implementation law ended, at least as far as using the right of
34 Saeima deputies to petition President Andris Bērziņš to refuse to sign the
law into force and put it to a referendum. The short of it is, she was stiffed
last Monday by the Harmony Center (SC), the party that seemed to have pledged
31 signatures. SC leader Jānis Urbanovičs said it would be “irresponsible” to
block a law that had been passed by a majority of the Saeima. Not even renegade
National Alliance (N) parliamentarian Jānis Dombrava was ready to put pen to paper
to block a law he had voted against in breach of coalition discipline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Grigule,
despite being left high and dry and looking more than somewhat foolish,
soldiers on, sending a letter to the president with a handful of signatures (I
heard three) anyway and promising to make every effort to get 30 000 voter
signatures for a referendum initiative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
I pointed out earlier, the ZZS parliamentarian’s appeal and that made by many
other euro opponents is largely emotional. There is some merit, however, to the
emotionally appealing slogan that “the people should decide”. Democracy is a
good thing, especially if it looks like a democratic decision made nearly ten
years ago (and implicitly) in voting to join the EU may have been hasty on the
aspect of joining the eurozone. National electorates should have the right to
revise earlier decisions, especially if they see things going in the wrong direction.
This is what the British government
under David Cameron is suggesting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So
far fine and good, but if there is going to be a referendum on the euro
(unlikely as that may be), there should
be a solid plan for the “no” side. The “yes” side has it all planned out in the
contested law, down to every detail. Unless the euro opponents – so far a
motley crew of cranks, crackpots and a few sincere and respectable critics,
such as the economist/entrepreneur Jānis Ošlejs – come up with a detailed plan
for how the lat will be managed after breaking away from its Exchange Rate
Mechanism II (ERM II) corridor with the euro, they will be no viable “no”
alternative. To leave things as they are means to keep the lat as “virtual”
euro, which is one of the pro-euro arguments – why not get the real thing? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
worries me about the eurozone is that its troubles may not be over. The Greeks
have not fallen over the side, but they would not be missed, even if there was
a knock-on effect on other economies, followed by a rush from northern Europe to sip ouzo, drink retsina and vacation on the
Greek islands for new drachma that cost a pittance in post-Grexit euro. The
serious shit, to use a term I am sure many economists use over a beer, will
start to happen when Spain and perhaps even France (the Economist, hardly a
crackpot rag has mentioned this) start hitting serious turbulence. That is when
a lot of countries will need a well-thought out plan B, perhaps regrouping
around a D-mark 2.0, probably called the Nordeuro or something like that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unlike
the Scandinavian countries that stayed out of the Eurozone, Latvia does not
have a strong economy and a prosperous
society, therefore the lat will have to be linked to some other currency or
currencies, in, at best, some kind of managed float. Those responsible for the “independent”
monetary policy that euro opponents say they are defending will have to design
and manage it. So far, it doesn’t look like anyone in Latvia has done so.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>P.S. Sorry for writing this so after the fact. My day job and some translation work has kept me busy. </i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-77491905660218049232013-02-03T21:34:00.002+02:002013-02-03T21:34:43.124+02:00Will weird deeds follow fighting words on the euro?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">This
coming week will get interesting as the anti-euro “Dragon Lady” and Saeima
deputy Iveta Grigule asks those who pledged their support in an effort to block
last week’s euro implementation law from coming into force to put ink to paper.
At least 34 signatures are needed on a letter to President Andris Bērziņš
asking him not to sign into force the law that was passed on January 31 and to
initiate a process leading to what would amount to a referendum on the euro
itself. After all, without a law specifying how the switch from the lat to the
euro would be made around the turn of the year to 2014, it will be impossible
to start using the euro as planned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Over
the weekend, the debate over whether to adopt the euro went into high, perhaps
too high gear as Sarmīte Ēlerte, a former newspaper editor and Minister of
Culture, presently a candidate for mayor of Riga on the Unity Party (V) ballot,
said that Grigule’s initiative was just as harmful to Latvia’s interests as the
failed referendum last spring to make Russian a second state language. It was
also a statement that, in effect, lumped Grigule of the centrist Green/Farmers’
Union (ZZS) with the leftist-populist and allegedly pro-Russian Harmony Center
(SC). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">In
response, Grigule said that Ēlerte was acting like a Soviet-era demagogue and
sliding into a desperate “the euro at any cost” campaign. She claimed that
countries such as Sweden and Denmark, both members of the European Union (EU),
were economically doing well if not better than the Eurozone countries and that
Poland and the Czech Republic were not rushing to adopt the multinational
currency. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">On
her part, Ēlerte said that “the populists and the “reds” are trying to split
society in order to stop Latvia’s development, gain votes in the municipal
elections and stay in power in Latvia’s cities.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Not
to be outdone, Grigule fired back with a nationalist salvo: “ By making us abandon
our own currency, the government is forcing us closer to a United States of
Europe. In the renewed Latvia, a whole generation has grown up together with
the lat. The grew up listening to their grandparents stories of the (interwar)
free republic and the battles, about the silver five-lat coin handed down from
generation to generation as a sacred talisman, a precious memory of those
distant and dramatic times. When we think of the symbols of Latvian statehood,
we think of the flag, the national anthem, the Latvian language, and also our
own lat.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Somehow
the rapid shift from reasoned argument to hyperbolic accusations and pathos
doesn’t surprise me but makes one wonder why both politicians are risking
taking this tack. Grigule, should she fail to get her 34 signatures, would lose
her quickly gained celebrity, something which the SC might think about before
having all 31 of their parliamentarians running pen in hand to a potential
political rival. If anything, Grigule’s nationalist appeal is aimed more at
getting one, two, maybe more “Jānis Dombravas”
to bolt from the National Alliance (NA) (as Dombrava did by breaking
with the coalition and voting against the euro implementation law, which passed
anyway by 52 – 40). In any case, I suspect that a lot of SC voters, good
citizens of Latvia, have more likely handed down some Czarist gold ruble coins
in the family, not the silver “Milda”
coin from the 1930s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">While
the 2014 Saeima elections are still far off, Grigule’s waving of the lat
banknote-as-flag is a signal where the ZZS will seek their first political
allies, hoping to be treated as politically respectable again after being
pushed out of government because of their alleged close ties to the notorious
oligarch and deposed Ventspils mayor Aivars Lembergs. ZZS was an uncomfortable
partner for Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis (V) government but was pushed
aside in the present coalition by the “anti-oligarch” Reform Party. However, the Reform Party is
effectively dead, garnering less than 5 % voter support in recent polls. Not
the least, the once popular party founded by former President Valdis Zatlers,
just after he dismissed the previous Saiema and was not re-elected, dug its own
grave by a desperate effort to bring SC into the government at all costs.
Zatlers (whose name was in the official party name until some time ago) even
said that it would take “tanks” to break his determination to bring the populist
and “pro-Russians” into government. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">With
Grigule talking like a “fellow traveler” of the NA, there could be some
tactical advantage to SC double-crossing Grigule and making sure that she gets,
say, just 33 signers (if you want more, pry some loose from the NA whose door
you have been barking at). To be fair, the SC at least has unsucessfully resisted
the euro implementation law by proposing to amend it with impossible
conditionalities – LVL 300 minimum wage, LVL 600 median wage, unemployment under
5% -- fantasies, at best, from the mid-2020s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">It’s
Sunday evening as I write, but it will be Monday soon and the fun can begin
again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-42175911099211669832013-02-02T01:25:00.000+02:002013-02-02T10:18:34.188+02:00The Green Dragon Lady claims a posse or a platoon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So
now the monkey wrench flies toward the gears of Latvia’s movement toward the
Eurozone. Whether it hits and stops the wheels, we will see next week. However,
it is hard to believe that Saeima deputy Iveta Grigule (Green/Farmers’ Union –
ZZS) would go out on a risky limb and groundlessly claim that she has the 34
Saeima deputy signatures pledged that are needed to ask the president either to
refuse to sign the law on adoption of the euro or submit it for a referendum,
first gathering the signatures of at least 10% of the electorate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
start of that process alone, even if it ultimately fails (insufficient
signatures or the euro law is approved), is a major threat to the process of
euro adoption, as has been pointed out earlier. In addition, there is yet another
threat – that the whole attempt to block the law can trigger a kind of
constitutional crisis in Latvia. Grigule has said that if President Andris
Bērziņš refuses to act on the request by at least 34 deputies, she will take
her case to Latvia’s Constitutional Court. Bērziņš could refuse, citing Article
68 of the Latvian Constitution, which requires at least 50 parliamentarians’
signatures if the disputed legislative act affects Latvia’s foreign relations
and treaty obligations. In this case, it could be argued that rejecting the law
on euro adoption is the same as backing out of the commitment made to
eventually adopt the euro when Latvia joined the European Union (EU) in 2004. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pro-euro
politicians, including Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, have argued
that by passing laws regulating the practical and technical side of the switch
from lats to euro, Latvia is simply fulfilling a commitment it implicitly made
when the electorate voted in favor of joining the EU in 2003. The euro itself
was not on the ballot, it was a yes or no to the EU, but the treaty Latvia
signed committed it to adopting the euro when it met the Maastricht criteria,
which it now seems to be doing after failing to do so in 2008 and 2011.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
is interesting how the issue would be framed before the Constitutional Court
(and I am no expert on Latvian constitutional law). It seems that the Court
would have to rule, explicitly or implicitly, on whether there was a Latvian
treaty commitment to adopt the euro, which could be changed by a referendum
rejecting the implementation law. The president’s rejection of a petition by
less than 50 Saeima deputies would also mean that Bērziņš at least implicitly
supports this interpretation. After all, if no international treaty commitment
by Latvia would be affected by a potential referendum, then there was no
commitment in force. The same if the court rules against Bērziņš. In effect,
the issue of whether Latvia already “voted” to adopt the euro when it joined
the EU and would be substantially modifying this commitment by stopping the
implementation law, or whether there was
no such commitment, will end up decided by the Constitutional Court.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So
far, so good for Iveta Grigule, who has become the opposition’s Dragon Lady to
the coalition government and has probably lured Jānis Dombrava of the National
Alliance to her lair. But what happens next, when Latvia is cast into the murky
ozone as far as its relationship with the euro in general? After all, if there
are no immediate or even medium-term plans to adopt the euro, then the lat
could come under various kinds of pressure. If uncertainty jacks up interest
rates and yields on the relatively few Latvian interest-bearing instruments
available to foreign investors (or investors in general) rise, the lat could
surge. Or it could plunge on uncertainty, fear and paranoia. How many millions
is the Bank of Latvia ready to spend to stabilize the currency, and by what
targets or standards? To keep it in a narrow ERM II corridor when being in the
ERM II regime is in question?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">No
one seems to have a “we just postponed the euro indefinitely” scenario for a
managed float of the lat – pegged to what?
Or not pegged, dancing around, to translate a (off)colorful Latvian
expression – like a fart in a frying pan (<i>kā
pirdiens uz pannas)</i>? All of these issues may come into focus next week, if
the Dragon Lady gets her way. Question is – will the dragon be able to blow out
any dangerous fires it sets? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">FYI: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px;">A </span><b style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px;">platoon</b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px;"> is a military unit typically composed of two to four </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_(military_unit)" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px; text-decoration: initial;" title="Section (military unit)">sections</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px;"> or </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px; text-decoration: initial;" title="Squad">squads</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px;"> and containing 26 to 50 soldiers. The Dragon Lady claims she has her platoon,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 19.18402862548828px;">Dear Latvian readers: the Green Dragon here has nothing to do with the national sport of alcoholism (<i>zaļais pūķis). </i>No such reference to Deputy Grigule is intended. </span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-88587878714279125562013-02-01T02:09:00.000+02:002013-02-01T08:43:12.191+02:00The euro implementation vote is only the start<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Latvia’s
parliament, the Saeima, passed a law setting out the technical procedures for
switching from its national currency the lat to the euro on January 1, 2014, assuming
that it succeeds in getting the green light for admission to the Eurozone from
the European Commission and the European Central Bank. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
vote was a bare majority of 52 to 40, with one parliamentarian from the
National Alliance, part of the governing coalition, Jānis Dombrava, voting
against in what was permitted as a “vote based on conscience”. Just late last
year, the National Alliance shook the coalition by suggesting it could oppose
the euro (backing off from its early official position in favor of joining the eurozone). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">However,
there could still be obstacles to a smooth entry. There is a less than trivial
possibility that opposition Harmony Center will get three more parliamentarians
(in addition to their own 31) to get the necessary 34 votes to request
President Andris Bērziņš to initiate a referendum on whether Latvia should
adopt the euro.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Saeima
deputy Iveta Grigule of the opposition Green/Farmers’ Alliance (ZZS) said she
would urge the other 12 members of her party in the Saeima to sign. ZZS faction
leader Augusts Brigmanis had earlier said no one from the ZZS would sign. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Once
the referendum ball gets rolling, Latvia would, like an airline unsure of its
estimated time of arrival, lose the January 1, 2014 “slot” for joining the
Eurozone. While Latvia has missed opportunities before in 2008 and 2011, when
it did not fully meet the Maastricht criteria, it could also lose the current
“window” of Maastricht compliant economic indicators. As Morten Hansen, an
economist who teaches at the Stockholm School of Economics recently pointed out;
Latvia’s export-driven economic growth could soon boost inflation above
Maastricht limits. Assuming the country maintains steady, non-credit fueled
high growth and moderate wage and price rises, this could have the paradoxical
effect of shutting the Maastricht window on an otherwise sound economy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is what is at stake – indefinite postponement of euro adoption while still
keeping the lat as a “virtual euro” pegged at 0.702 santims per euro unless
someone comes up with a better idea. Indeed, if the idea of the parliamentary
opposition is to back away from the Eurozone indefinitely, it might be wise to
consider an alternative managed float for the lat, but this is not being
discussed. Mostly, the debate has been framed in terms of avoiding various
economic “cataclysms” such as a post-adoption jump in consumer prices, poor
competitiveness that can no longer be counteracted by monetary policy (not that
it could before, with no room for devaluation under the present very tight
corridor) and demands to “pay the bills” of other wealthier, but economically
more troubled Eurozone countries (the example is made that unemployed Greeks
collect far more in benefits than a Latvian can earn working at a normal job).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
strong undercurrent of the anti-euro arguments is nationalism – the lat,
launched in the 1920s from a menagerie of interim currencies and World War I
occupation scrip – was replaced by the Soviet ruble in 1940 and reappeared
again in 1993. Between the time Latvia regained its independence in 1991 and
the re-launch of the lat, Latvian rubles were used and given the nickname of
“repshies” after the then Governor of the Bank of Latvia Einārs Repše. For many
Latvians the currency is a symbol of national sovereignty, like the
red-white-red flag, also repressed under the Soviet occupation and carried out
into the light again by some daring individuals during the perestroika period
of the late 1980s. Latvians still recall the emotional raising of the red-white-red
standard over what is now the Presidential Palace in 1988, on November 11, a
pre-war day of remembrance for those who died in Latvia’s war for independence from
1918-1920.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
the opposition parliamentarians fail to get the referendum ball rolling, they
can try to collect 30 000 signatures to initiate a referendum from below. Here
they may get some sinister allies – among them, the “Antiglobalists” demanding
Latvia re-instate the death penalty for “economic crimes” and, by the way,
calling most of what has happened over the past 20 years a string of such
crimes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Point
two of the Antiglobalists 2010 program calls for “starting a Nuremburg trial
against those persons, by whose action or inaction over the past 20 years, the
economic destruction and looting of Latvia took place and for political
decisions, that harmed the Latvian state and nation.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
other parts of the manifesto, the Antiglobalists call for a protectionist,
autarkic and state-controlled economic system that, of necessity, implies
Latvia’s exit from the European Union (EU) and, probably, from several international
trade treaties. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Another bizarre addition to the extraparliamentary opposition to the
euro is the “Gustavs Celmiņš Center”, which is a revived inter-war Latvian
fascist movement under the name of its founder and leader Gustavs Celmiņš, who
despite his sympathies for the Italian and German dictatorships of the 1930s,
ended up in a German concentration camp. Celmiņš was liberated by US troops
from another camp in Austria where he was held at the end of the war.
Thereafter, according to Wikipedia, in 1949 he emigrated to the United States.
From 1950 to 1952 he was an instructor at Syracuse University's Armed Forces
school in New York State, and beginning in 1951 he was also the director of the
Foreign Language program for the US Air Force, and a television lecturer about
the USSR and communism. From 1954 to 1956 he worked as a manufacturer in
Mexico. Between 1956 and 1958 he was a librarian at Trinity University in San
Antonio, Texas. In 1959 he became a professor of Russian studies at St. Mary's
University in San Antonio, Texas. He died on 10 April 1968 in San Antonio,
Texas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">As far as is known, Celmiņš steered clear of neo-Nazis in the US and
actually began sabotaging the recruitment of Latvian Auxiliary Police that he
was entrusted to do during the German
occupation, when it became clear some of these units would be used against
civilians, including Jews. Celmiņš
modern-day fan club is openly anti-Semitic and its present leader Igors Šiškins
(a Latvian despite his Slavic name), has served time for attempting to blow up
the Soviet-era victory monument in Riga (the blast failed to seriously damage
the monument). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Also forming a group within the Saeima to defend the lat are several
deputies, led by Nikolajs Kabanovs of Harmony Center, whom many see as
unsympathetic to “Latvian” causes. In effect, a strange informal alliance has
formed between “pro-Russian” (an ethnic Russian) Kabanovs and the “renegade”
nationalist Dombrava (Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis Unity Party has
demanded an explanation and, possibly, sanctions for the young nationalist’s
breach with coalition discipline).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">My take is that if the parliamentarians don’t trigger a referendum, the <i>loonazoids </i>of the broader anti-euro
movement are unlikely to be the ones on the front lines of gathering 30 000
signatures. Sociological studies show that Latvian society is conservative,
politically authoritarian and economically statist/socialist, but most ordinary
people would draw the line at throwing their signatures in with Šiškins or
Kabanovs. The Antiglobalists ….perhaps.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-5946397250253185002013-01-31T01:15:00.000+02:002013-01-31T06:54:02.200+02:00Latvian parliament to vote on a euro implementation law<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Latvia’s
parliament, the Saeima, is expected today to pass a draft law on implementing
Latvia’s planned adoption of the euro on January 1, 2014, but that will not
remove some potentially dangerous stumbling blocks to the Baltic nation joining
the Eurozone. The text of the law concerns a range of practical and technical issues in switching from the lat to the euro, but both proponents and opponents of adopting the euro consider it to be milestone legislation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Opponents of abandoning Latvia’s national
currency, the lat, have called for a protest rally in front of the parliament
building in the Old Town of the capital Riga. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">A more
serious potential threat is that opposition parliamentarians are trying to get
at least 34 Saeima deputies to petition the President, Andris Bērziņš, to
refuse to sign the law and trigger a referendum on the euro issue. 31 members
of the leftist opposition Harmony Center have indicated they will sign the
petition, while the Green/Farmers Union is split on whether to push for a
referendum on joining the Eurozone. If only three deputies join the euro
opponents, it would trigger a referendum initiative, which would derail adoption
of the euro in 2014 regardless of the outcome of a popular vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">As Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis pointed
out on a TV talk show last night, Latvia has already missed two windows of
opportunity to adopt the euro in 2008 and 2011, when the country’s key economic
indictor failed to meet the Maastricht criteria. Latvia can’t miss another chance now that it
does meet key Maastricht criteria.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">In a call-in vote to Latvian Television, in
which just over 9000 viewers could vote yes or no on adopting the euro, the yes
side won by only about 50 votes, a signal that while support for the euro may
be rising, the voting public could split down the middle if allowed to choose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Dombrovskis and other euro advocates maintain
that by voting in a referendum to join the EU in 2003, the Latvian electorate
also voted to join the Eurozone as part of the EU treaty to which it acceded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Euro (as in currency) skeptics are a diverse,
sometimes strange bedfellows, ranging from neo-fascists to “antiglobalists”
calling for restoring the death penalty for those they blame for Latvia’s
economic setbacks to the “autonomous resistance group” which sounds like a West
European anarchist movement and the “Left Patriots”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Much anti-euro rhetoric is based on claims that
joining the euro will destroy another vestige and symbol of Latvian national
sovereignty and appeals to nationalist sentiments and emotions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">In last night’s TV discussion, entrepreneur and
economist Jānis Ošlejs vigorously debated the Prime Minister, saying that
Latvia should not join the Eurozone until it was running a trade surplus with
Eurozone countries and had significantly increased the proportion of foreign
investments going into export-oriented manufacturing rather than the financial
sector and real estate. He said Latvia was at risk from offshore Russian
capital and likened the country to Cyprus, where banks also host large
non-resident deposits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Ošlejs said that the record of “weak” countries
in the EU was poor and Latvia would follow in their tracks if it adopted the
euro before restructuring its own economy in favor of manufacturing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> Dombrovskis replied that nations
outside the Eurozone had also suffered economic crisis and recession and the
euro could hardly be blamed for that. He also opposed claims that joining the
Eurozone would boost inflation, pointing out that inflation in Latvia peaked
during the credit-boom run-up to the crisis in 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The
anti-euro side has not presented an alternative to the current narrow-corridor
peg of the lat to the euro. If one rejects the euro on nationalist grounds or
because of fears that (despite a seeming respite) the Eurozone could fall
apart, the currency should have an alternative peg or managed float strategy,
perhaps against a basket of Scandinavian currencies or the “hard” euro that may
remain after a scenario in which Greece and, perhaps, Spain are forced to leave
the Eurozone. It this lack of a reasoned alternative scenario that may swing
public opinion (including businesses anticipating lower transaction and credit
costs and young people who have traveled, studied and lived in countries with
the euro) to reluctantly back switching currencies on January 1, 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-26662988489829372442012-09-27T00:41:00.000+03:002012-09-27T00:41:41.432+03:00Are the forces of "crusading ignorance" preparing to burn books in Latvia?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">It is getting seriously deranged in this country, and
hard to decide whether this is the culmination of one of the many processes
that make Latvia a kind of failed state/society lite, or the start of a
censorship and book-burning campaign by crazed religious fundamentalists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">It all started with a perhaps expensive (more that LVL
6000 for 500 print editions, an internet version and a teachers’guide)
translated Danish children’s book with stories of small children switching
gender roles for a day. The general idea is to put children in the place of
others, to think what it would be like to play a girl’s traditional gender role
(play with dolls) or for a girl to do “boy” things like team sports. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">When Latvia’s Minister of Welfare Ilze Viņkele presented
the book and the gender equality program, she was angrily criticized by a group
of fundamentalist Christians. Some 50 Christian and “pro-family” groups also
wrote letters to the Prime Minister, other government ministers and the media
denouncing the book and asking for Vinķele’s resignation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">The reaction of Latvia’s holy rollers was hysterical,
with one man claiming to be the father of six children suggesting on television
that a book burning be organized. Many comments on the internet by people who
had apparently never read the book saying that it was aimed at teaching
homosexuality. Others saw it as a plot to deprave Latvia (as if a girl playing
European football and a boy wearing a sweater with glitters was the height of
moral collapse). It is almost as if Vinķele’s presentation of the book opened
the depths of ignorance, religious fanaticism, and anti-Western or
anti-modernist rage. It is like a time portal opened to the 19th
century, if not the Middle Ages in a country that is outwardly a modern democracy
and European Union member state. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Vinķele herself said that she feared book burning or
physical violence could be the next step in the outrage by a segment of the
public over what they see as “homosexual propaganda” in the kindergarten.
Nothing, least of all facts and the views of modern science will convince these
people otherwise. It almost makes one think that there was something positive
about the Soviet Union’s “militant atheism” and anti-religious campaigns. A
little of that might be useful, though as much at odds with democratic values
and an open society (committed to freedom of belief) as the Soviet’s
totalitarian crusade to repress everything except the secular religion of
Communism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-82065555108707956422012-09-17T23:16:00.000+03:002012-09-17T23:16:24.424+03:00What could be behind the "pro-life" campaign in Latvia?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Pro-Life or, if you
please, anti-abortion movements aren't something I follow. Now, it
appears that a relatively low-key pro-life campaign has started in
Latvia, using the rather clever device of placing 27 statues of
sleeping full term babies on the ground in a square near the Freedom
Monument (a kind of entrance to the Old Town). Each of the babies had
a small label in three languages, Latvian, English and Russian,
stating what amounts to a kind of “Bioethics 101” problem along
the lines of “my dad abused my mom, he drank, she had no place to
go, no work...etc.”
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Basically, the 27
bioethics “problems” (it is said that 27 abortions are preformed
every day in Latvia) are meant to be thought provoking, though (I
have glanced at most, but not all of them) they skip over such cases
as rape, especially the rape of an underaged girl, incest and other
examples where abortion is probably the only solution.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The installation also
doesn't deal with issue of fetal viability, something best left to
scientists, but basically a standard for determining that, up to a
certain point in a pregnancy, the fetus is not able to live outside
the mother, even with massive medical assistance. In other words, the
standard determines that up to XY weeks of gestation, an aborted
fetus would have no chance of living and its biological existence up
to then must be weighed against the interests of the woman or young
girl facing an unwanted pregnancy. </div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What concerns me is that
these pro-life thought provokers may have another agenda, more in
line with the hard-core religious right. At least one of the
organizers of the installation and campaign is former Soviet-era
Latvian dissident Jānis Rožkalns. He is a very brave and decent man
(did time in the Gulag for his actions and beliefs). However, in the
past more than 20 years, Jānis has aligned with at least one
right-wing religious cause – opposition to gay rights, gay pride
parades and the like. I participated in debate against him and
another religious hard-liner, the Riga City Council member Jānis
Šmits and a retired Catholic archbishop and Cardinal, Jānis Pujats.
I took a libertarian position, that any and all public expression
must be permitted.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It would certainly be good
if this particular “pro-life” action was simply one to make
people think whether abortion is a desirable form of “contraception”.
Indeed, the next step should be actions to address the social
problems in some of the examples given – preventing violence
against women and the sexual abuse of under-aged girls, broad sex
education for children age 12 and up, and an acceptance that
adolescent sex is inevitable, therefore contraceptives must be
available if all other “restraints” fail --Christian chastity
advocacy, non-sectarian sexual ethics lessons, whatever.
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So, giving the benefit of
the doubt, let's see where this goes. But I have a nagging feeling,
that under all this are people who would like to see abortions
banned, to declare that an inviolable life starts at conception and that Latvia should be made into a sexually repressive theocracy. </div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I must say that abortion is a creepy thing for me. I would rather not have it as an inevitable choice for women or couples, but creepier, still, is the idea of law-mandated forced birth and the suspension of personal choice and autonomy for any woman the instant she becomes pregnant for any reason and under any circumstances. So given the choice, I tilt toward free choice.</div>
</div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-64877447503454760372012-09-01T16:27:00.000+03:002012-09-03T09:36:40.524+03:00Buffoon politics (?) appears in Latvia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="p1">
If anyone thought the totally <i>batshit</i> side of Latvian politics was also on vacation this week, they were proven wrong by the antics of former TV comedian formerly known as Viesturs Dūle. Things started out innocently enough a couple of weeks (?) ago when Dūle, the Latvian rapper Gustavo and some other dude announced they intended to start a political party called <i>Skaistā Nākotne</i> or “Beautiful Future”. That should have been a hint that this enterprise would quickly tilt to the gonzo side of things.</div>
<div class="p2">
And soon it did. After what must have been a hearty breakfast of hallucinogenic mushrooms, Dūle announced that was henceforth to be called Zuarguss Klororus-Zarmass. Gustavo, who was a stage pseudonym to begin with, will henceforth be called Arstarulsmirus Arsujumfus-Tarus and the third dude - Jurgstulajstus Lajurgus-Urgurus. </div>
<div class="p2">
Now I have read a little about ketamine-induced highs, where people apparently are propelled into a different dimension where choirs of elves appear. Or perhaps it was DMT that did this to you. Anyway, the names of our new political party founders appear to have come from the lyrics of what those elves were singing. From here on, whatever these guys do is total <i>crank-o-rama </i>as far as I am concern. Believe nothing they say. Oddly, just like real politics. Which may be the point of the whole, as Latvians would say, <i>balagāns.</i> </div>
<div class="p2">
To be sure, what Zuarguss and his buddies are up to is nothing new. In Britain, the <a href="http://www.loonyparty.com/">Monster Raving Loony Party </a> has been a part of the comic political landscape since the 1980s. It seems to have become a small business and a means of promoting various alternative and strange musicians. Nothing wrong with that. What is worse is when there are politicians and political movements that are geniunely <i>wackbat</i> (my word, derived from wacko and batshit), as illustrated by this <i>New York Times</i><b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>blog on <i><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/the-crackpot-caucus/">The Crackpot Caucus.</a> </i> Perhaps the <i>balagānšik</i> formerly known as Viesturs Dūle should get back to exposing the real crackpots and cranks in Latvia, which I think he was trying to do in his satirical TV shows some years ago. In any case, Zuarguss has also cast a pall of unseriousness on his movement to improve education in Latvia. There are real, serious problems in Latvia that cannot be solved by yet another put-on political movement -- but at least one that signals that it is not for real. At the same time, <i>Skaistā Nākotne</i> it has published some <a href="http://skaistanakotne.lv/">programmatic material</a> (in Latvian) that appears to take a serious, if somewhat unconventional stand on the issue of corruption (those guilty of bribe giving or taking should be fined, not jailed, etc.) Too bad little of this can be taken seriously, now that Zuarguss and Arstarulmirus have been chanting with the elves. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
</div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-80662104194919634212012-08-22T23:41:00.000+03:002012-08-22T23:41:48.777+03:00Latvian society still needs freedom after 21 years of independence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">By
the standards of adulthood in some countries, the age of 21, Latvia has reached
adulthood in its second period of independence. 21 years ago, in late August,
1991, Latvia’s independence was recognized by the brave little nation of
Iceland. Others quickly followed, although it took a while for both the United
States and what was left of the Soviet Union/Russia to get on the bandwagon.
With that, the issue of formal independence was settled, followed by Latvia’s
admission to the United Nations, to other international organizations, and, in
2004, to both NATO and the European Union (EU). Latvia has fully joined “the
community of nations” and all that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
reason Latvian engaged in a struggle to regain their independence was, in large
part, because they were not free, not able to discuss the status of their
nation without fear of arrest or persecution, they were unable to make key
decisions of economic policy, they were not free to leave the USSR or even to
travel internally with full freedom. With independence, many of these freedoms
were renewed, at least at the national level. The nation state was free within
the rules of the international communities it had joined.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Under
the expanded freedoms of assembly and expression of the <i>perestroika</i> period of the late 1980s, Latvian society was able to
vent 40 years of frustration and anger at the injustices, oppression and
absurdity of the Soviet occupation. This meant that most “liberated”
(unleashed, rather than free) expression was, in a sense, one dimensional. The system
was bad, Communists were bad, the Soviet economy was unable to meet consumer
needs, etc., etc.. By Soviet standards, to be able to criticize, even to rant
against the existing order was an unprecedented form of “free expression” of
opinions almost universally shared.
This was something quite different from what was understood as free
expression in the West, that is, at times a cacophony of diverse voices and
viewpoints. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
be sure, there were debates during the “awakening” movement of the late 1980s,
among them, on whether Latvia should seek autonomy inside a reformed USSR
(whatever that meant), or whether there should be complete independence (which
happened, essentially, in the middle of this incomplete debate). Independence was suddenly a reality,
rather than a goal to which progress could be controlled or paced. There could
be little more debate on this issue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
1991, so-called political parties were formed across the entire political
spectrum, from ultranationalists to revanchists, who wanted a return to the
Soviet Union, perhaps with some modifications. To some extent, there was free
political debate among these parties, but it was largely based on superficial
preconceived ideas of what conservatism, social democracy, even nationalism
meant. After 40 years of occupation, preceded by six years of authoritarian
rule, there was little or no practical democratic tradition in Latvia. The
country had only been a rather shambolic parliamentary republic up to the
bloodless coup in May, 1934, just 16 years after declaring independence from Czarist
Russia, hardly a model of freedom and openness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Latvia
regained its independence never really having had any tradition of democratic societal
debate (OK, historians may contradict me), at least not in modern times (post
WWII) and therefore in the living memory of anyone except 90-somethings.
Latvians, during the freedom struggles of the late 80s , experienced freedom as
the license to vent their own, largely similar rage and pain, without having to
listen to other, noticeably different voices. One was, after all, standing in a
largely harmonic choir. Instead of respecting diverse different opinions, there
was just “us” and a “them” whose power and authority was waning. “Them” were
only capable of responding with
“Soviet” arguments and warnings of the dire consequences of separatism that
largely fell on deaf ears or were laughed at. Such “debates” with darkly
comical, pernicious buffoons (hard line Communists) hardly prepared anyone for
serious and respectful political debate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Later,
debates in the Saeima also reflected this lack of democratic tradition, as well
as the limited political and economic education (in a modern Western sense) of
may parliamentarians. Certainly, the parliament was not a glowing example for
society at large. Looking at present day attitudes toward free expression,
non-conformity, opposing opinions – never mind such “hot” issues as gay rights –
it is clear that 21 years ago Latvia regained its national independence, but in
21 years it has failed to become a truly free, democratic society. The
independence came, perhaps, too fast and easy, the freedom is still struggling
at the everyday, practical, interpersonal and intergroup level. Latvians are
still “free” to rant at others, to vent their own rage, but reach for the tools
of repression when others do the same, but from different positions. So thanks
for the independence, but please, bring on some real freedom, the kind where
people aren’t threatened by diversity, open debate and tolerance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-52530516087494033952012-08-20T01:35:00.001+03:002012-08-20T01:35:17.358+03:00Authoritarian society in Latvia tilts against Pussy Riot?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
outrage against the harsh
sentencing of the Russian musicians and performance artists <i>Pussy Riot</i> seems to have passed by many
Latvians (to be fair, there have not been mass gatherings or riots in the streets in any other
countries). What disturbs me is not the passivity on this issue, but the fact
that a significant number of Latvians in social networks seem to support the
punishment of the three Russian women, who have already been jailed for five
months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Latvia
has been exposed to democratic values for more than 20 years. One could even
say that the whole freedom movement of the late 1980s was based on a hope to
once again be a free, democratic nation. But it apparently came at a time when
the social fabric of Latvia was damaged beyond some critical breaking point,
leaving an almost indelible Soviet mentality of “ it is right to repress what I dislike” fixed in the personalities
of many Latvians. I judge that by the response of people on Twitter and other
social networks, where I suggested that the arrest and anticipated sentencing
of <i>Pussy Riot</i> was a violation of the
freedom of expression.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
was shocked – though knowing Latvia, only slightly shocked – how people who are
knee-jerk anti-Russian on other issues (Russian language, Russian schools, the
New Wave music festival) were so quick to align with the authoritarian Kremlin
when it came to three young women causing less than a minute of disturbance in
a largely empty Orthodox church. People carried on about how it was right to
punish those who had “desecrated” a holy place (where, apparently, other
non-religious events had taken place), how the behavior of the women was
somehow despicable. There were also claims that <i>Pussy Riot </i>members had made a pornographic video and had
participated in group sex (as if either of these actions lessened their freedom
of expression with regard to the incident at the Orthodox Church). But mainly,
there was a general belief that it was right to repress and punish those who do
not agree with one’s own beliefs or some ill defined public morality and order.
The authoritarian personality
lives on in Latvia, it is one of
the most persistent legacies of the Soviet occupation and, perhaps, also the
authoritarian regime from 1934 – 1940. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-44425359489925258122012-08-03T01:09:00.004+03:002012-08-03T01:10:58.067+03:00On emigration and the Riga fundraising ban<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">A couple of events coincided and made me want to write
something about the state of society in Latvia. The latest demographic
statistics show that Latvia has lost some 340 000 inhabitants in the past 12
years, of which more than 211 000 emigrated and some 128 000 represented
“negative natural increase”, a bizarre way of saying that, in fact, the Latvian
population is slowly dying out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Last year 30 380 persons, most of them of prime working
age (including more than 4 000 children) left the country to move abroad more
or less permanently. Net migration was just over 23 000, since some 7 000
immigrants (or repatriated emigrants) arrived in Latvia. Nonetheless, the
emigration statistics show that precisely the part of the population that
should be having children in Latvia and diminishing “negative natural increase”
is the one that is leaving the country. As a total percentage of a population
of perhaps two million, 30 000 may not sound like much (even though it is equal
to all of Rēzekne packing up and leaving), but it is a larger percentage of the
productive and fertile segment of the population – call it the life blood of a
nation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Why is Latvia bleeding out? I have discussed the issue
before – and the reason is a complex set of circumstance that, at the end of
the day, tell the mobile and ambitious part of the population that nothing is
likely to change in the deep governance of society in the foreseeable future.
By deep governance, I mean not only the behavior of government, but also the
ability of society to self-organize and the way it has done so hitherto. In
short, Latvia has failed to launch from being a wounded post-soviet society to
becoming a modern, self-confident, educated democratic community. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">The
stubborn death of trust<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Community requires trust and there has been little in the
track record of those running Latvia to cause any trust in institutions (polls
show that there has only been a slight bounce-back from levels of trust in
socio-political institutions that could only be called a kind of pernicious
anarchism). Meanwhile, as I believe I have written before, Latvia’s joining the
European Union, coupled with cheap airlines and the capability of rich and
frequent communication via the internet, have led to hundreds of thousands of
Latvians exercising their choice of governance by emigrating, but still
retaining physical and virtual ties with friends and family in the
“fatherland”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Indeed, some recent videos I saw of Latvians celebrating
the midsummer Jāņi festival in the United Kingdom were eerily like my childhood
as a child of political emigres in the US. Back in the 50s, Latvians in the
Boston area who had been in the US for about as many years (4 or 5) as those
working in the UK celebrated Jāņi
by gathering at a farmstead with a large field and arriving, often, in the
first cars they had bought once settled in. The videos of Latvians gathering at
a rented farm field somewhere in the UK were almost the same thing – just some
of the vans and cars looked like prosperity had come a bit more quickly to the
Brit-Lats. And like my parents generation in the 1950s, they were young
families with kids and an aura around them that, henceforth, this is what
“being Latvian” will have to be. Unlike in the 1950s and 1960s, when Latvia was
a Soviet occupied country, visits to Latvia from the UK or Ireland are no
problem at all, which does not change the fact that these people are starting
to form semi-permanent communities in their countries of emigration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">The
easy growth of emigration 2.0<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">The interesting thing about the communities that formed
in the post-war exile was that they could not really grow by adding new members
from Latvia and many of them, due to processes of assimilation and aging, are
at a tipping point of starting the slide toward extinction of their identities
(the people aren’t going anywhere, there will be fourth and fifth generation
kids with “strange” names and some
inkling of why). The new emigrant communities are being fed by a constant flow
of new arrivals from Latvia, giving them a different dynamic that the handful
of 90-somethings gathering to celebrate 65 years of the Pigbridge Latvian
Welfare Society (Pigbridža was a fictitious American town with a big Latvian
community that came up in some satirical Latvian emigre writing).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Fundraisers
will always be among us<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">As to what is happening back in Latvia , the Riga City
Council has banned individual and small-scale fundraising starting August 1.
There was a noticeable drop in the number of fundraisers around the Riga
Central Station, a favorite gathering place for both mendicants and moochers,
with the latter taking the upper hand. The daily dog encampment, grown to three
animals and a variable crew of up to three misery marketers, was gone.
Hippety-Hop, the young otherwise able-bodied below-the-knee amputee has not
been seen for a while. One pathetic looking old lady (a station-area regular)
was seen talking with her handlers...er..marketing consultants, but not
actively soliciting donations. The municipal police have been firmly herding
the fundraisers away, but only to have them return once backs are turned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">This is an insoluable problem and probably a waste of
police time and legislative effort, since fundraisers would not be doing their
job if they were had the means to pay fines and for the true supplicants, jail
(showers, food, a bed) could be a blessing. The fundraisers who are backed by a
crew (who can enforce getting their cut far better than the police can enforce
a fine) will be temporarily harassed and scattered, as well they should be, but
there the core crime isn’t fundraising (which really shouldn’t be a crime), but
rather a domestic form of human trafficking. Here, I would be perfectly
comfortable with some knees getting busted (but not the ones bent in
supplication, rather, the knees and heads of those emptying the mendicant’s cup
at the end of the day). Aggresive fundraising should also be punishable – two
stern refusals by the prospect and the fundraiser/moocher deserves a kick in
the teeth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Broadly speaking, the fundraising is one minor symptom of
the failure of Latvia to launch and of the discrepancy between macro-economic
statistics and street-level reality (against the background of ongoing
emigration). Beggary, to finally call it by its politically incorrect name,
will always be with us in every kind of society or social order, if only
because there is a small percentage of humanity who simply blow off the open
cars as the train of history races
on, and they cannot be gathered back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="LV" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: LV;">Finally, I have seen the macro argument made by Edward
Lucas that Eastern Europe should be dropped as a description or a concept, and
most of his arguments are...logical. So why, in defiance of that logic, do I
see <i>Eastern Europe</i> every day here in
some aspect of Latvian life. More on that in later posts...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-50104786565889289812012-06-24T16:16:00.000+03:002012-06-24T16:16:58.966+03:00Anti-Semitic fog around Latvia's Jewish restitution issues may hide other agendas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
most Latvian of all holidays, the Midsummer Līgo celebration is over
(technically, today, June 24, as I write, is still Jānis Day, from which the
holiday derives its name of <i>Jāņi</i>).
Normally this signals the start of a respite from active politics, since the
Saeima (lovingly called the “Monkey House” by some journalists) is in recess.
This year, on the eve of <i>Jāņi</i>, a
moderate political earthquake hit as Minister of Justice Gaidis Bērziņš of the
National Alliance resigned in protest over what he said was a dispute over
government plans to deal with the issue of restitution of property seized after
1940 to some Jewish organizations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">By
some accounts, the value of this property – buildings and land in Riga and
other places around Latvia – is around LVL 30 million. That is not some cash payment the
organizations want (as sometimes misinterpreted), but the estimated value of
the properties, some of which may be unusable and unmarketable and would have
to be compensated in cash should the plan go through.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
National Alliance objects to the government’s plans to reopen the restitution
process (begun more than 20 years ago) for the sake of one
interest/religious/ethnic group. This is not in and of itself an unreasonable
position. Even Jewish community spokesmen have said that they would welcome the
government allowing other ethnic, religious or social organizations to recover
property that they are entitled to, but have not managed to claim to date. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">However,
the debate has stimulated a very ugly torrent of hateful, anti-Semitic comments
in Latvian news portals. To what extent this reflects the views of society or
just of a small core of crazies using different pseudonyms is unclear. But the
stuff they are writing is pretty deranged:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Damned Jews! Those (obscenity censored by the
portal’s bot) sent money from the USA to Hitler to run his war machine. That’s
how they got their state. Asking compensation from Latvia which belonged to the
Urals or Germany. Wrecked banks! And now they ask for their property? Adolf, where
are you?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If you are a Jew, it is
best if you immediately shoot yourself.
Jews are the bloodsuckers of other nations.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">HITLER SHOT TOO FEW OF
THEM<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not without reason this
nation was hated during Czarist times and they were deprived of all rights. The
Soviet system allowed them to awaken and rename themselves with Russian last
names and make up the name Hebrews, because the name Jews(žīdi, neutral in
Latvian, but reminiscent of the abusive “zhid” in Russian)sounded derogatory to
them. The Jews throughout history have done more harm to the world than all
wars taken together. If someone were to add up all the owners of capital in the
world, a not very pleasant scene would be revealed – we are all dependent on
their greed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While
these rantings rarely get translated and presented outside of Latvia, anyone
reading the portals uncritically could get the impression that Latvia is a
profoundly anti-Semitic country, distorting the debate over restitution to
Jewish organizations as a purely “anti-Semites against the Jews” issue, which it is not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
issue is one of making an exception for organizations that have some break in
their historical continuity to recover property after established deadlines. In
the case of Latvia’s Jews, with much of the community destroyed in the
Holocaust, it is no surprise that some Jewish organizations had no direct
“heirs”, even if they were
reconstituted in the years since Latvia regained its independence in 1991. It
is also claimed that the Jewish organizations seeking to regain properties
mainly have Russian Jewish immigrants as their members, and have little or no
continuity with the Latvian Jewish organizations that were expropriated in
1940. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
analogy that could be drawn (hypothetically) is that of an Irish Catholic
congregation in the US that has some of its property taken illegally in, say,
1970, and drags the case through the courts and other institutions for more
than four decades. In the mean time, the Irish Catholics are replaced by Latin
Americans, who are no less Catholic, but of a different ethnic background. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
will not really work in Latvia, because when it comes to “ethnicity”, the
current Jewish community is seen as “Russian” and representing the “occupation”
(even if many moved to Latvia during the Soviet era because it was seen as one
of the least anti-Semitic areas of the USSR). A few persons associated with
“anti-Latvian” causes, such as Vladimirs Lindermans, one of the instigators of
the referendum to make Russian a second state language, is understood to be
Jewish. So is Aleksandrs Giļmans, an ex- politician who has cast doubt on the
historical condemnation of the June 14, 1941 deportation of thousands of
Latvian citizens (including a disproportionate number of Jews). That, for many
Latvians, is the equivalent of Holocaust denial for Jews. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">By
creating a medium intensity political crisis (not quite toppling the
government), the resignation of Bērziņš comes as a confluence of the worst
possible factors – perceived and real anti-Semitism in Latvia, issues of
restitution for the Soviet and Nazi eras (it was actually the Soviet occupation
that confiscated Jewish property, the Germans didn’t get their chance) and
suspicions that the whole thing actually is a symptom of bigger (?) political
sharks fighting under the murky waters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
National Alliance seems to be shrugging off the anti-Jewish tempests in several
internet teacups that its move has set off. The party alliance itself cannot be
labeled as anti-Semitic, even though one of its former(?) spokesmen, Jānis Iesalnieks,
triggered a discussion of the possibility of “intelligent anti-Semitism” –
whatever than means? Is it criticizing Israel’s policies (a legitimate issue,
but Israel is a state, not some hazy entity called “the Jews”). Or what?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
the National Alliance may be hoping to gain is threefold – to have the
government retreat on the Jewish restitution issue or open the matter to “all”
ethnic and religious organizations, to replace Bērziņš with its new candidate
for Justice Minister (keeping that post) and to perhaps unseat Daniels Pavļuts
of the Reform Party as Minister of Economics. The Harvard-trained minister’s
party, according to the latest voter polls, would get 1.8% in an election held
today, putting it well below the
5% threshold for being seated in the Saeima and making the party
political “ dead meat” waiting topple over when the next Saeima elections come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Who
else may be behind the scenes? There have been guesses that the beleaguered
Ventspils mayor and oligarch Aivars Lembergs could be pulling the strings. His
main benefit would be political instability and bringing international
attention to “anti-Semitic Latvia” rather that to his case. A Latvian court
said it would enforce a British court ruling freezing some USD 135 million in
Lembergs assets. It could be the beginning of the end, and he is using his
waning political influence to pull down as much of the house around him as
possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
for the Jewish properties, the picture is not clear. Conflicting lists exist of
what is in question – some properties have already been returned (Bikur Holim
hospital), while others look abandoned, in bad shape or in the hands of “owners” who seem to have obtained title to them
from the Latvian state by murky means. What this may actually expose – whether that
was the purpose of the Jewish community’s requests or not—is the mess or “bardaks” that still exists concerning unclaimed
and “difficult” properties 21 years after Latvia regained its independence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-86458472234021847762012-05-15T23:52:00.000+03:002012-05-15T23:52:35.185+03:00What will happen to "fundraiser" Hippety-Hop?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Fundraisers (why say beggars? Same
thing.) around Riga's Central Station are nothing new. You get to
know them by sight after a while. There is the cat and dog colony
kept by one or more bums at the entrance to what I call the
“Stockmann tunnel” (which leads from the Central Station square
to the Stockmann department store and the Forum Cinemas multiplex).
Also on the steps are an old woman sitting impassively and another
woman who suffers from some neuromuscular disorder. Standing by
Riga's and some say, northern Europe's busiest pedestrian crossing
are a number of amputees, one with a crutch, the others double
amputees in wheelchairs. There have been a number of “bum fights”
between the man with the crutch and at least one of the guys in a
wheelchair. Apparently there are territorial issues. The shouting
during the fights is in Russian.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the most intriguing characters
is a relatively young man (20s) on crutches with a a below-the-knee
amputation, who I will call Hippety-Hop, because, until recently, he
was a very forward and aggressive fundraiser, actually going out in
traffic and hopping up to stopped cars to solicit alms. He also
spends hours standing at one or the other of his favored positions
(one is at the steps leading down to the Stockmann tunnel).
Hippety-Hop can be there for hours, standing. Street-level
fundraising is a full time job for him, as it is for many of the
others. But given Hippety-Hop's stamina and vigor (until recently),
one wonders what exactly happened to the man and why he is doing what
he does – hopping around and plaintively fund-raising in Russian
(or so I suppose). I saw him last summer when he was almost
exclusively working the traffic lights and stopped cars.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Losing part of a leg is a major trauma,
but it cannot compare to the disfigurement and degradation of the
double amputees or the alcohol-ravaged bums. Why was Hippety-Hop,
whatever his level of education, not offered some kind of
rehabilitation and work? If the dude can stand for hours or hop
around on his crutches, why not do factory work, if not in Latvia,
then Ireland or the UK? Most European countries have programs to put
the lightly (and in some cases, even the most severely physically
handicapped) to work. In a call center, no one knows how many legs
you have.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't think Hippety Hop has the
language skills for this kind of work. Lately, it seems, he is on the
downslope. His face shows signs of what I suspect is drug abuse. My
guess is heroin, I have seen him in what seems to be a “nod”,
eyes closed, impassive, face looking more ravaged than ever before.
Last summer, when fundraising among the cars waiting for then lights
to change there was even a vigor to his hop-step and an earnest look
on his face as he almost demanded something from the drivers. Now it
looks like the dude is down and out.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It looks like there may never have been
a chance for Hippety-Hop to get back into a normal life after losing
part of his leg, neither through the efforts of Latvia's rock-bottom
impoverished social welfare system, nor through assistance from
charities or non-governmental organizations. Of course, I don't know
the full story, or, for that matter, any story about Hippety-Hop. For
all I know, his injury may have been the result of recklessness, part
of a stupid, risk-taking lifestyle.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Certainly heroin is not a good choice.
Latvia doesn't, as far as I know, have open, non-judgmental needle
exchange or methadone programs (I don't know because I don't hang
around with any junkies). So every time Hippety-Hop snorts or shoots
up, he risks overdosing, or, if using the needle , HIV or hepatitis.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Will Hippety-Hop last out the summer?
Who knows? Ironically, he may go down before his fellow fundraisers,
the bums wallowing in the dog and cat colony, the old lady, the woman
with the neuromuscular thing, even the double amputees and
bumfighters. I know almost nothing about social work, but at least
some months ago, it may possibly have pulled Hippety-Hop off the
street and out of this particular form of fundraising.</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-16119960050238171782012-05-06T00:04:00.001+03:002012-05-06T00:04:11.618+03:00Urban cattle and swooping bikes are back!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's spring and they are back, or have
been back for a while – the urban cattle and bike-riders. The
former are clogging the sidewalks again, shambling along in small
bunches, wandering into traffic, gathering in pedestrian bottleneck
and making them worse, or creating bottlenecks where there were none
before.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The bike-riders are out in great
numbers, often a danger to the urban cattle (they swerve around
them), to other pedestrians (zooming by at high speed, no warning)
and to themselves (few helmets, bells, reflectors or lights after
dark)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Don't get me wrong, I understand the
need to ride a bike – it is cheaper than public transport, much
cheaper than driving, good for physical fitness, the (urban)
environment, etc.etc. All that is correct and I have friends and
workmates who ride bikes. But I also see bike-riders in Riga as a
hazard. There is no bike-riding culture, one could almost say that
Latvia lacks both the infrastructure (bike paths) and the level of
civilization to have the same level of urban biking as in Copehagen
or Stockholm. Maybe in 25 or 50 years, but not now.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As for urban cattle, they are
everywhere, almost a universal phenomenon. There were some in London,
shambling along as one tries to purposefully go somewhere. In
Stockholm, as I may have written before, the local urban cattle
specialize in what I call “ stand and stare” – gathering where
others want to pass and simply staring into space or at some signage
that normal, conscious people can read in seconds and move on.
Tourists are often behaviorally indistinguishable from the local
urban cattle, but then again, being a tourist is being – urban
cattle in foreign city, moving about in small herds, aimlessly,
though not always wandering into traffic or boorishly blocking the
movement of those walking with purpose as the local cattle do.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I bear no ill will toward bike-riders
as a whole, though I sometimes wish a evil fate on those who narrowly
miss me at high speed. There is no reason to zoom down a sidewalk at
40 Kph. However, it seems few urban riders are injured or worse. Most
fatal bike accidents occur in the countryside, it seems – shitfaced
motorist takes out equally shit-face bike rider, riding as if in the
middle of a wartime blackout (no lights, no reflectors, no helmet).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So one faces another summer of trying
to walk from point A to point B, getting past or through clumps of
urban cattle heading for a point best designated by an imaginary
number, and glancing over one's shoulder to see if any bikes are
swooping down. Enjoy, I suppose...</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-31162397957612649972012-02-20T00:11:00.000+02:002012-02-20T00:11:46.602+02:00More on the Latvian referendum and the Nisei Russians<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well, the <i>balagāns</i> (carnival)
of sorts is over. The outcome of the referendum was clear to start
with. More interesting are the results of the referendum when
analyzed as a kind of survey or popularity poll. Clearly, something
is the matter in Latgale, the eastern region of Latvia, and it is not
only that most people there seem to be happy speaking Russian. Even
before the vote, Latgallians were dissatisfied with new government
rules preventing the daily crossing of the Russian border to bring
back cheaper motor fuel, cigarettes, alcohol and other goods. For
many “bordertown” inhabitants, this essentially “legal
smuggling” for resale was a means of survival. According to some
reports, when the new policies were announced, there was a near-riot
in Rēzekne.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the long term, ways have to be found
to create jobs in Latgale and to at least slow down the emigration
that has taken around 20% of the region's population since the last
census in 2000.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The point has also been made that
something has to be done to resolve issues with the so-called Russian
speakers. Mostly it seems to a kind of Rodney Dangerfield complex
(the late American comedian known for his repetitive line: <i>I
don't get no respect</i>). Since
just what this means, exactly, is hard to define, maybe people should
talk about it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
suspect the Rodney Dangerfield thing is something that afflicts
<i>sovoks</i> a lot more than
it affects the part of the population I called the <i>Nisei
Russians</i> (like the second and
onwards generation ethnic Japanese in the US). The Slavic <i>Nisei</i>
are people who are fully aware that they are no longer living in the
Russian motherland and, for whatever benefits their country of
residence offers, there are certain sacrifices. One is that Russian
is not the state language, but that it is respected or at least
benignly neglected as long as you can communicate in whatever the
local language is.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When
Latvians arrived in the US as refugees after World War II, they
learned English, and when many Latvians moved to English-speaking
countries to seek work in recent years, they also had to speak
English. No one is going to make their language the new state
language, although countries suddenly facing significant numbers of
Latvians are taking pragmatic steps to ensure that important matters
are explained to them in Latvian – basic laws and regulations,
procedures for dealing with the authorities, perhaps safety rules at
some workplaces.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This
is nothing new – countries with large migrant labor communities
provide services in their languages, be it Turkish in Germany,
Finnish or Serbo-Croatian in Sweden. However, by the second or third
generation at the latest, the descendants of the immigrant laborers
are fluent in the local language, sometimes, perhaps all too often,
at the cost of their “native language”. For this reason, places
like Sweden even offer home language teaching. This leads to bizarre
employment ads seeking instructors (with higher education) to teach
an obscure African language spoken mostly by illiterate goatherds.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What I
mean to say is that there is a range of options short of adding new
official languages for dealing with a significant and often permanent
population that doesn't speak the local and indigenous language. In
the time of the <i>Nisei</i>
Russians (who had been there for generations) in Latvia, the Russian
language was also handled pragmatically. Latgale, already a problem
child back then, prevented Latvian being enshrined as a state
language in the 1922 constitution. Someone wanted the Latgallian
dialect (with different spellings and pronounciations) also made a
state language. Latvian was later made a de facto state language in
practice and by later legislation, but as I understand it, made it
into the constitution only in 1998. In the Saeima, where most
deputies were multilingual, indigenous languages such as German,
Russian and Yiddish could be spoken, bu the transcripts of
proceedings were published in Latvian.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Back
in the 1920s and 1930s, except for some historical irritation with
the Germans, the local ex-lords and landowners, languages had largely
co-evolved, with only Russian being briefly pressured on certain
parts of Latvia at certain times under the Czars when it was decided
to russify the non-Slavic peoples of the Russian Empire. So no
language, except for German, was politically <i>loaded</i>
and even then, it was resented rather than resisted because no one
was forcing on free citizens in a free country.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was
the Soviet Union, led mostly by Russians cowering under a fearsome
Georgian, that weaponized the Russian language and turned it on the
non-Russian peoples of the aptly named <i>prison of nations</i>.
Russian was going to be the common language of a Soviet people to be
forged, first by the <i>subtractive terror </i>of
executing, deporting or imprisoning national elites and national
bourgeois elements, then by “gentler” proactive methods of
teaching a Soviet <i>newspeak</i>
that closely resembled Russian. Along with it, to Latvia, came the
first speakers of Soviet Russian, many of them descendants of ethnic
Russian or other Slavic peoples who had already had been put through
one or two runs of the Soviet grinder.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
result was that the Soviet Russian used in publications and official
speech also embodied or in various ways served the totalitarian
regime that the Soviet occupation brought with it. It was, after a
while, the Slavic language of <i>sovoks</i>
– <i>homo sovieticus </i>by
another name – but often, too, of lowlife and criminals (maybe I am
mistaken, but the Soviet industrialized Baltic states were a place of
<i>work release</i> for large
numbers of Soviet criminals finishing their sentences for ordinary
crimes). The Russian of the Soviet era (OK, I don't speak a word of it,
so I am told and have read) became the carrier of totalitarian lies
and nonsense in one aspect of a pretty unpleasant life, and the
<i>bljed! suka!</i>bellowing
drunk ex-jailbird neighbor pounding on the door because his wife has
locked him out again in another side of Soviet reality.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Latvia's
<i>Nisei Russians</i>, who
for the most part were ordinary folk who celebrated Christmas in
January and celebrated Easter for hours with kissing all around, were
buried under the <i>sovok avalanche </i>dumped
on the country under Soviet rule. They were lumped with the
Russian-speaking <i>sovoks </i>and
I have spotted a few <i>Nisei</i> in my circle of aquaintances. <i>
</i>Back in the day, most Russians
in Latvia spoke at least some Latvian, and it was not a threat to
what they were.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
However,
the new Soviet world permeated by <i>sovok-Russian </i>was
a direct threat to Latvians and Latvia's indigenous nationalities, it
was a weaponized language aimed at making sovoks of everyone, with
real Soviet Russians being just a bit more equal that others.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is
this attitude, that of Soviet Russian privilege, that has survived
the end of Soviet rule in Latvia and has not been moderated in many
cases by attempts at “integration”. Even without examining the
practical effectiveness or theoretical validity of Latvia's
integration efforts, it seems obvious that while immigrants can, in
many societies, integrate “upwards” from the “lower” status
of new arrivals to being accepted or even part of the elite (see how
Latvian-born Laila Freivalds became a minister in Sweden), it is
harder, if not impossible for self-proclaimed or self-deluded elites
to “integrate” in a direction they perceive as downwards. For
<i>Tovarsich Bljed-Suka</i>
adjusting to a free Latvia where he had to speak the Dog Language was
a serious challenge. In many cases it still is. That is what the
referendum was about for many Latvians.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-18779713306117593432012-02-18T11:21:00.000+02:002012-02-18T18:15:34.900+02:00The referendum and Latvia's Nissei Russians<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So the vote has started in the language
referendum. The effort to make Russian a second state language in
Latvia is doomed to failure. There is no real need for it, anyone who
is monolingual in Russian can not only get their daily business done
(with a bit of hassle in some places) but they can also enjoy a broad
spectrum of local Russian culture and information (theater, radio,
local TV) as well as a massive amount of Russian-language electronic
media from Russia (both on local cable channels and with satellite
dishes). <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Indeed, the default choice in putting
together cable TV program packages is a few local channels and almost
everything else but <i>CNN</i> and <i>BBC World</i> (if available) is
either in Russian or with a Russian soundtrack. Even <i>Lattelecom</i>,
the national telecoms and pay TV operator, recently replaced the
English-language <i>History Channel</i> (which I think could be
switched to a Russian soundtrack) with a monolingual Russian science
channel <i>Nauka</i>. It is impossible to switch languages on this,
even when the Russian soundtrack seems to have been laid over English
in some kind of adapted segment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A number of commentators have said that
the underlying causes of the referendum are unresolved ethnic issues
after 20 years of independence and should be seen as a strong signal
of failure to build a unified society based on multi-ethnic
solidarity. As “<i>let's all sing Kumbaya” - </i>desirable
that may seem, suffice it to say that there are few societies on the
planet that have achieved this. That includes the US, despite the
1940s war movie Army squads where the Italian guy, the Irish kid, the
wisecracking Brooklyn Jewish guy, the Scandinavian farmer's son and
the college kid from Philly all joined together to fight the evil
buck-toothed Jap (more on that later).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am sure
integration would have worked had Latvia been towed away in 1991 and
anchored as a large island next to Tasmania, off the coast of
Australia. Completely isolated from its ex-aggressor and occupier
neighbor, the island republic would be a happy nation of Latvians of
different ethnicities, with Russian as a home language (as were
Latvian, German, Greek in hypothetically neighboring Australia) for
part of the population.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This,
however, was not the case. Latvia and its Russians remained under the
powerful, sometimes chilling political and increasingly state
power-elite-controlled media shadow of an unrepentant Russia.
Vladimir Putin's outrageous statement that the collapse of the Soviet
Union (prison of nations, anyone?) “<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">was
a major geopolitical disaster of the century”. How do you say
WTF?? in Russian? The ethnic Russian and non-Latvian Russian speakers
(Belarussians, Ukrainians, other “Soviet nations” represented
here) were enveloped in a separate Russian media bubble that was
hostile by default to the Baltic states, portraying them as
cryptofascist apartheid societies. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Latvians,
in the early and mid-1990s, frankly, had other concerns than being
hypersensitive to the needs of a nation or national minority that
they saw as the oppressor nation for the previous 50 years. Never
mind that those concerns were making a </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Charlie
Foxtrot</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
of their politics and economy with incompetence, corruption,
bungling, you-name-it. The perception of Russia and what Russians in
Latvia </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>represented</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
(whether individual Russians themselves had chosen to do so or not
didn't matter) was determined by hard, recent historical experience.
The Latvians and Russians shot down by the OMON paramilitary police
in January, 1991, were not shot by Samoans, in case anyone hadn't
noticed. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Which
brings us back to the Japanese and the US in 1941. I think one of the
unseen and sad aspects of the ethnic situation in Latvia has some
rough parallels with the way US citizens of Japanese ancestry were
perceived after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Latvia in 1940 had an
indigenous, integrated Russian community, all were citizens, served
in the Latvian military, had their own fraternities, the Russian
Orthodox or Old Believers churches, etc. Then the “motherland” of
Latvia's ethnic Russians, in a series of actions led by Russians from
Russia (and aided by Latvians and other nationalities, to be sure)
committed the long, drawn out atrocity of the 1940-41 and 1945-1991
occupation of Latvia. As a result “our Russians” who had lived
here for centuries were overwhelmed in the consciousness of Latvia's
Latvians and other victim nations by the image of the Russian as
conqueror, occupier and oppressor.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
the US, in the space of a few hours on December 7, 1941 and in the
years of war that followed, the “mother nation” of the Japanese
in the United States became a treacherous aggressor, killing American
boys on a Sunday morning, marching them to death on Bataan, and
fighting with the </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>perceived
</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">savagery
of mad dogs on Pacific islands like Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa,
where soldiers had to be burned in their caves by Marines with
flamethrowers and Japanese mothers shot by snipers to keep them from
throwing babies off cliffs into the sea. A slightly different image
than the mild-mannered math teacher at a California high school or
the family running a grocery store on Hawaii. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">By
no means was the internment of Japanese Americans justified, but it
can be explained by the shock of what Japan did to the US (and by no
small measure of racism back then). Latvia has done nothing of the
kind to its Russians (including the huge contingent that were moved
in during the Soviet period). Think of the mild-mannered hypohetical
Mr. Nakamura being replaced at Santa Monica High by 20 samurai-sword
waving wanna-be Tojos (that is the military leader of the wartime
Japanese government). Something like that happened in Latvia, and it
lasted almost 50 years. So maybe don't blame the Latvians too much
for the referendum having a number of ironic and even absurd angles
to it.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That
is my quick take on things as voting gets under way. I have to go off
and do some work for a a foreign newspaper as a one-off freelancer.
More later. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-69793188349900616132012-02-12T18:03:00.000+02:002012-02-12T18:03:54.844+02:00What has Latvia's transition turned into? - a comment on political scientist Iveta Kažoka's views<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A lot of buzz has been generated among
the Latvian<i> twitterati</i> by an essay by political scientist
Iveta Kažoka in her Latvian language blog on the website
<a href="http://www.politika.lv/">www.politika.lv</a> . Kažoka
contends that Latvia is no longer “a society in transition” (from
totalitarian socialism to...whatever?), but something else, showing
the seeds and potential for a better society. To be sure, she
asserts, there are significant hinderances to such development, but,
nonetheless, she is an optimist, if only Latvians (or Latvia's
inhabitants as a whole) were to change their mentality somewhat.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Kažoka writes, that after attending a
conference in Lithuania and getting around a bit elsewhere, she can't
accept that the “transition society” label applies to Latvia any
more:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 0.18in; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #363636;"><i>Despite
that 10, 6 or 4 years ago, labeling Latvia as a transitional society
was almost automatic. It seems, intuitively, that in recent years the
use of this term has gradually faded. Today, when identifying
ourselves to an international audience, a more frequently heard
description is “new European Union member state” or “new
democracy”</i></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.18in; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #363636;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>It
seems to me that this change is not simply one of description and a
change of labels. It is the start of new thinking, a new paradigm
about our society, a new approach to life and development. From a
comparatively blind, unreflective construction of a desirable model
of governance and the copying of discourse to modeling governance
after one's own image and likeness (with individual borrowings from
those societies that are most successful in some area). To my mind,
this is the most significant change. </i></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Kažoka goes on to say that one
characteristic of the change she perceives is that Latvians no longer
view other model societies uncritically, they see the flaws in such
places as Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia. The political
scientist believes this can lead to a desire to do better in our own
way, rather than a “cynical relativism” that says that if the
Scandinavians have not fully eliminated corruption, it cannot be done
in Latvia.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Kažoka lists what she believes are the
good qualities of Latvian society, including:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>-the
</i></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>ability
to cope, adapt, change, search for and find compromises</i></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: #333333;">-a
pragmatic ability to learn from their mistakes, having self-esteem,
involvement as values</span></i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>-</i></span></span></span><strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">education
as a value</span></i></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">-a
growing intolerance for superficial glamour, Nordic modesty.</span></i></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">She
then discusses three negative characteristics that Latvians have to
overcome in order to advance along the path that she thinks is
opening up. She calls them “three reflexes of helplessness:.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">-a
low level of mutual trust</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
that the political scientist and commentator describes as “tragic”
</span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">-</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">a
culture of self-depreciating lamentation and “loser-ism”</span></i></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">-stagnant
conservatism and an inability to think outside the box</span></i></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
a rather upbeat ending to her post (perhaps my summary doesn't do it
justice, Latvian readers or those who wish to amuse themselves with
Google translate can check it out <a href="http://www.politika.lv/article/latvija-vairs-ne-parejas-sabiedriba">here)</a> Kažoka writes:</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
have not hidden the fact in earlier posts that I am skeptical about
traditional development planning methods. I see some sense in them,
but I don't believe that they are a decisive factor in the faster or
slower development of a society. In my opinion, more important
processes take place in people's heads, in their perception of the
world, because it it is these that either encourage a person to
action in the hope of some achievements, or put a brake on doing
anything at all. In very general terms, things will be such as is our
attitude.</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: #363636;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">No
one can say for certain what the world will look like in 20 years. At
the same time, it is clear that the keys to success for a society in
this century are new technologies, the ability to learn and
cooperate, and inner freedom for creativity. Let us take this into
account and do everything so that people in Latvia will have these
keys. In my opinion, Latvia as a society presently has the
preconditions to become a society where people want to live (rather
than leave at the very first chance) if we deprogram ourselves from
three learned reflexes of helplessness (mistrust, “loser-ism” and
traditionalism) we can be at the very forefront of change. </span></i></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Latvian saying “from your mouth to God's ear” is my first
reaction to Kažoka's post. But in more critical terms, I would ask –
does this analysis and possible future scenario fit the data? OK, I
am not a social researcher, Iveta is probably better trained on such
matters. The </span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Eurobarometer</span></i></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
survey she mentioned to me in a Twitter exchange shows that 78% of
Latvians don't trust the government, 89% don't trust political
parties and 82% don't trust the parliament. If this isn't dismal,
perhaps it is better not to ever see dismal...</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
other data that I look at are emigration and is corollary,
depopulation. The region of Latgale has lost more than a fifth of its
population (21.1%), even Vidzeme, often regarded as a kind of Latvian
heartland, is down 17.5%. Among Latvia's cities, Daugavpils has lost
19.3% of its population since 2000, Rezekne is down 18,1% and even
the capital Riga has lost 14,2% of its inhabitants.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Admittedly
a lagging indicator, figures on the impoverishment of the nation from
2010 show that 46% of the Latvian population would be below the
poverty line but for various kinds of social welfare payments. That
could be considered a sign that the welfare system works in the
country, but at the same time, that people are unable to earn a
living wage in Latvia, hence the continuing emigration. Figures on
household disposable income show it had fallen by 20% in 2010
compared to 2008, the last year before the economic crisis struck
with full force.</span></span></span></span></strong></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">There
is also a recent study by University of Latvia researchers showing
that the alleged Latvian love of work is a myth – the countryside
population in many places has sunk into a culture of existing at a
subsistence level on welfare and other transfer payments or doing
temporary subsidized day labor. A culture of heavy drinking and
alcoholism has also become endemic, with the result that employers –
farmers and small businesses – cannot find suitable workers. The
boozers and welfare dependents prefer their lifestyle to getting a
steady job with taxes and social fees paid. </span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Another
recently published “positive” figure is that the number of youth
unemployed age 15 to 24 has decreased at the end of 2011 by over 7
800 from the end of 2010. Somehow I don't think these people all got
jobs in Latvia. In fact, a fair guess is that most of them emigrated
and only a few found work or started their own enterprise in Latvia. </span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Unfortunately,
I don't think the data I see fits Kažoka's conditional optimism,
nor, for that matter, that her conditional optimism is based on the
data (unless she, whose day job is political analyses, facts, figures
etc., has seen other data sets that I haven't seen). </span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As
things stand, the paradigm for Latvia is stagnation (with some bright
islands of progress in the economy, like the IT start-ups that
gathered at the recent <i>TechCrunch Baltics</i>) and continued emigration
simply because it is so easy to find places that are better governed
than Latvia and where work is better paid and people better treated,
in general, than here. That just comes from the facts and figures, it
has nothing to do with whether I am a pessimist or optimist or
cheering for Latvia to do better. In a race where your favorite horse
is almost dead, it is this fact, not the cheering, that matters. </span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-88956752676849106232012-01-29T21:06:00.000+02:002012-01-29T21:07:16.295+02:00The 2011 census of (eventual) doom?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Maybe it is just a kind of scientific
fallacy, but it is said that some large animals, when shot by
hunters, will keep moving or attacking even after they have suffered
fatal injuries. The damage is done, but for various reasons, it can
take many seconds or even minutes for the animal to die. Given a
“freeze frame” image of the animal just after it was shot, a
veterinarian could say that while the creature is very much alive
when the snapshot is taken, it is just a matter time before the
injury it has suffered will kill it or at best severely cripple it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The 2011 Latvian census, sadly, is this
kind of snapshot. A nation isn't exactly a charging rhinoceros, so
the analogy is poor, but it is a living socio-economic and historical
organism. It can suffer fatal damage that is visible, obvious, yet
will take time to work its ultimate effects.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The<a href="http://www.csb.gov.lv/en/notikumi/key-provisional-results-population-and-housing-census-2011-33306.html"> 2011 figures </a>show that Latvia had a
population of 2.068 million, down 13% from the last census in 2000
and down 22.4% from the 1989 census, the last before Latvia regained
its independence. In absolute numbers, this represents a population
loss of 600 000, more than the losses suffered to political
repression (including deportations), combat in the Second World War,
and refugee flight to the West.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At first glance, these figures would
appear to be evidence for the strident claims that Latvia's 20 year
period of independence has amounted to “genocide” in excess of
anything the national has every experienced. This is not true. Of the
13% population loss since 2000, 190 000 are emigrants. Presumably
most of them are alive and many of them are better off economically
than their cohorts in Latvia. 119 000 represent deaths in excess of
births, but very few of these deaths were violent, although some
could be considered premature by European life expectancy standards.
So to speak of “genocide”, except in some peculiar metaphorical
sense, is a misleading exaggeration.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
However, it is not an exaggeration to
say that the end result of Latvia's demographic decline will be
further depopulation in coming decades and the eventual
unsustainability of the Latvian nation as such. In other words, there
will not be enough people of working age to support a growing number
of pensioners and, indeed, to prevent economic stagnation. Labor
immigration may be the only way to remedy this, reversing the
depletion of the active labor force by emigration and low birth
rates.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Who or what is at fault for this? I
would say that the Latvian political elite over the past 20 years is
responsible for, in effect, keeping open and “salting” the deep
wounds ripped into the nation's fabric by 50 years of Soviet
Communist occupation. Not the least, most of Latvia's governments
since 1991 have, to a greater or lesser degree, perpetuated the
Soviet mentality and Soviet way of handling matters. Most notably,
they have largely ignored the advice (sometimes not well presented)
of Western countries and during the European Union accession process
to do a number of things that require little or no spending – stop
bribery, end other forms of corruption, run government cleanly and
efficiently. I have expounded on this before.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now that Latvia has failed to do what
it could have done to heal and mitigate the wounds of occupation, it
has, in effect, turned these into self-perpetuated wounds that have
now turned the nation into a ticking demographic bomb that it is
probably too late to disarm. Latvia is well on its way to becoming,
and will probably inexorably become a territory with a shrinking,
aging, demoralized population and a stagnating, most likely shrinking
and unsustainable economy. That is the brutal reality of the census.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-77798839717417235642012-01-11T18:12:00.000+02:002012-01-11T18:12:08.573+02:00Latvia: A drab, grey nation in midwinter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>I am writing these recent
impressions of Latvia while visiting the US East Coast (the Boston
area). While life is no picnic here at all, there are “shiny happy
people” around instead of what I saw just before departing. I will
be going back to the drab, gray nation on Friday. </i>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the things I have been doing as
a hobby is to walk around Riga and photograph people, buildings,
street scenes and the like. A place I have gone a couple of times
with my camera is the Riga Central Market, with its former Zeppelin
hangar halls and open-air area. To get there, one way is to go
through the Central Station, which has partly been turned into a
multi-level shopping center with clothing stores, electronics shops,
restaurants, newsstands and a supermarket.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
To go from this modern 20<sup>th</sup>
or even 21<sup>st</sup> century environment (shops selling iPads
etc.) into the Central Market is a remarkable and depressing
transition in terms of the people one encounters. It is a
socio-economic leap to another world of mostly old, haggard, grey,
apathetic and resigned faces and bodies. Listless, old, greyish-pale
expressionless or ravaged faces abound, almost like a contingent of
people shuffling away from some disaster just around the corner or
over the horizon, too burned out to move very fast. Is this the
Third World, the photos of Somali or Ethiopian war victim and refugee
faces, only white and better nourished?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The impression one gets is of a society
from which the life-spark has vanished, or more precisely, emigrated.
There is only a scattering of young people in the otherwise old and
worn masses shuffling about the market with tattered plastic bags
(almost like the Soviet era, except that then plastic bags were a
sign of privilege, net bags and cloth abounded). The young are
tourists or shoppers seeking fresh, organically grown vegetables and
other foods from the countryside. The sellers, too, for the most part
are <i>babushka</i> type country
women, with a bit higher energy level than their often morose
shoppers.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I fear this somehow
illustrates the state and fate of the Latvian nation (including
non-Latvians, too). Drab, haggard, impoverished, drained of any hope
for the future and of an age when, given the overall demographics and
state of health care, there probably is little time left for many of
the individuals one encounters. All this just a few hundred meters
from the modern center of Riga, where tourists and somewhat better
looking locals gather, as well as the significant but visibly
dwindling young, who are often livelier and happier.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What is going on?
As a colleague working for a foreign news agency said, it appears
that the local Latvian media don't really care. Poverty and long-term
unemployment statistics are big news in many other countries. A shift
in the number of poor generates considerable media attention,
analyses, searches for root causes and the like. Not in Latvia. Even
the annual Human Development report seems to focus on issues of
identity and emigration/immigration (to be honest, I have only
skimmed parts of the document).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It would be facile
to say that the root of all this is the transition to a capitalist
market economy. There were similar scenes in the Central Market of
huddled, grey masses of socialist citizens waiting in huge lines
(sometimes crowds bordering on mobs) for a piece of gray frozen meat
to be hacked off a huge block with an axe. One of the roots of the
seeming exhaustion and demoralization of Latvia's people is fifty
years of occupation and a totalitarian, centrally planned economy
that did provide a dull, monotonous subsistence for most people
living under the system. It was the era of stagnation, shortages and
little apparent hope that anything would change, though with a
certain reliability that rents would be low, electricity cheap,
bread, fish, potatoes and other basic foods generally available and
the occasional sausage or fruit waiting at the end of a long queue if
you were lucky. Being a victim was nothing new to Latvians leaving
socialism and entering the new system of the 1990s.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
problem was that the new “system” in the 1990s consisted of most
of the ex-Communist elite of an entire country trying to imitate the
behavior and lifestyle of characters on the American TV show <i>Dallas</i>,
since this best approximated what they had been taught about
capitalism. The idea was to immediately spend money – the more, the
better – on huge houses and big cars. Dishonesty and cheating –
whether on wives or business partners – was part of the deal.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
To be
sure, stuff like that happened in the real world, so that the picture
of how things were in non-socialist economies as presented by <i>Dallas</i>
was selective, but not entirely inaccurate. There was no show made
called <i>Central Committee, </i>
which could have shown the depravity (now documented) of the
Communist elite running a state-owned, planned socialist economy and
succeeding poorly, sometimes pointlessly and often sloppily at
providing what are still the promises of socialist movements
everywhere – free healthcare, free education, and full employment.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is obvious that
a grab-whatever-you-can economy will generate inequality, or rather,
exaggerate existing inequalities among a population that had been
indoctrinated that complete equality was possible and that, indeed, a
semblance of it existed in the low, but barely adequate standard of
living shared by most of the population. Among the old and hopeless,
memories of this have turned to nostalgia for “better times”
under the old system.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Why is Latvia
turning into a society with a significant, even dominant population
of the aging, passive and helpless poor? Some would say that the
cause of poverty is the failure to equally distribute wealth,
bringing us back to the socialist argument that all one needs is a
centralized system for equally distributing resources in a planned
way. This works, more or less, in organizations that are smaller and
somewhat less complex than society as a whole. The best example, in
rough and general terms, is the military. All soldiers have more or
less the same uniforms, weapons, food and medical support and can be
relied upon, as a whole, to carry out centrally issued orders and
instructions. The military is, looked at this way, an organization
that produces the outcomes for its members that are promised by
socialism – equality in the fulfillment of all basic needs by
central planning and allocation.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
However, it can
also be argued that the root cause of poverty is low productivity.
Here the military analogy breaks down, because functionally
“socialist” armies do not produce what they consume. They are
not, strictly speaking, “economies”, and it is economic systems
that create wealth, multiply and refine resources. Latvia's poverty
stems in part from a failure to form an economic system that
increases its own productivity and, thereby, the wealth available for
“redistribution”, should anyone choose to do so.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Productive and
evolving economic systems also need strong institutions that ensure
the rule of law, the enforcement of contract and the orderly
elimination of non-productive economic entities in favor of those
that are innovative and more productive. With all their imperfections
and failings, Western European countries have created such economic
systems based largely on private ownership and market relations among
economic actors.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Since
the early 1990s, Latvia has had a long parade of advice and
instruction on how to reform and transition society from a failing
socialist economy to a modern market system, including the necessary
institutions to underpin such an economic system. To be sure, a lot
of the advice given to Latvia over the past 20+ years has been
condescending, oversimplified, overoptimistic, and presented with
little understanding of how the presumed audience – <i>homo
(post)sovieticus</i> saw the world.
But at the end of the day, or rather, the two decades, Latvia was
given almost all of the basic and much of the sophisticated knowledge
on reforming its society that was needed to build a socio-economic
system that would increase productivity and increase the total wealth
of society.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So it can be said
that much of the poverty in Latvia, exacerbated by the emigration of
productive and potentially productive individuals, was caused by a
failure of politicians and institutions and, to some extent, society
as a whole, to learn the lessons repeatedly given to them since 1991.
They can be summed up as – don't bribe, don't steal, deal honestly,
pay fairly, invest for the mid-to-long term, educate your workforce,
streamline government, make bureaucracy small, smart and efficient,
make the benefits of tax-paying visible and obvious, keeping taxes
moderate, etc. etc.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Too little of this
has been done. Instead, the political elite has discredited itself to
an extent unheard of since modern polling methods have been used. The
collapse of trust in institutions in Latvia is very likely
irreversible and has already mutated into a kind of social paranoia
as witnessed by the run on Swedbank. The end result is that we have a
society that, at least by street-level observation, is ravaged by
poverty and has failed to implement the practices that would have
significantly reduced that poverty. It is too late to retrain the
older part of the population to do the work, say, of five Chinese
while getting paid three times Chinese wages (probably a bad
comparison), and the young are making decisions every day to leave a
country they perceive as failing and futureless. The drab, gray,
haggard, exhausted, aged population that one sees behind the
socio-economic divide of the Riga Central Station (and probably in
many rural areas) is the result of a series of choices over the past
20 years that, whether intentional or simply clueless, have resulted
in an act of “futuricide” agains the Latvian nation.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-87032899908354557182011-12-12T08:11:00.000+02:002011-12-12T08:11:36.656+02:00Banking with Chicken Little in Latvia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There are reasons for concern
everywhere about the financial system, especially in light of the
Eurozone debt crisis, the postponed, but still possible collapse of
the euro and other things based on facts, figure, events and rational
analysis. But that is not the biggest immediate risk for bank
customers in Latvia. The biggest risk is proving to be the customers
themselves.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Whatever else banks are, they are
institutions based on trust at the customer level. That is, the bank
is kept solvent by the fact that depositors a) believe the bank will
be there the next day, which depends on b) most of the other
depositors being there the next day. If that doesn't happen, whatever
else the bank is doing with the money <i>entrusted</i>
to it by customers doesn't matter, because, basically, the customers
cannot be trusted to stay with the bank and can, for whatever reason,
seriously damage it or pull it down.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This
is what is starting to happen in Latvia with the initially groundless
panic surrounding <i>Swedbank </i>
and, to a far lesser extent, <i>SEB. </i>
Both parent banks in Sweden are stable, solvent, and there are no
signals from any of the many third parties watching the banks
(auditors, analysts, shareholders) that anything is wrong (or, for
that matter, that the official authorities, which there may be some
reason to mistrust, are hiding anything). But now in Latvia, the mass
hysteria of bank depositors is itself becoming at least a low
intensity threat to <i>Swedbank </i>
and the other banks. It at least suggests there is some truth, but
little reason behind the saying that in bank panics and runs, the
cool and rational will fare the worst, remaining as the “last man
not taking everything out of the bank”.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There
may be an explanation, but not a justification of public behavior in
Latvia in connection with the recent closing of <i>Latvijas
Krājbanka. </i>However, that was a
relatively small bank in terms of assets (but broad-based in terms of
numbers of customers) and its demise was the result of alleged
criminal behavior by the owner of its parent <i>Snoras Bank</i>,
the Russian millionaire Vladimir Antonov. Also, thousands of
customers were compensated to the extent of their deposit insurance
coverage very quickly, with some LVL 200 million paid out within days
of the collapse.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
fundamental problem is that people in Latvia now have a largely
irrational distrust of banking system as a whole, with <i>Swedbank
</i>singled out as the market
leader, and a far less irrational mistrust of government authority based
on inept initial statements (<i>Krājbanka</i>
is OK) by the Financial and Capital Markets Commission (FCMC) in
connection with the collapse of <i>Snoras </i>in
Lithuania. This mistrust is showing signs of turning into a kind of
mind-set of the Middle Ages. What I mean by that is that people see
their surroundings as governed by incomprehensible, mainly
malevolent and arbitrary forces beyond their control or
understanding. Wars, plagues, famines were frequent occurances and
to the average illiterate peasant, they simply happened or were acts
of God or other mystical forces. It now seems that many Latvians view
the financial system and their environment as a whole as a malevolent
force to which one can only react in the short term, based on the
basic emotions fear and suspicion, putting reason and the checking of
emotions against facts on the back burner. It is the kind of mindset
that led to numerous panics, delusions, witch-burnings, children's crusades and other acts of mass hysteria in one form or another. This
is shocking and baffling to the more rational societies of Europe, in
particular, the Swedes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another
way to put it is that these recent and still ongoing events show that
the greatest risk to any Latvian customer of a stable, well
capitalized and profitable Swedish-owned bank is the fact the many of
his or her fellow customers are like Chicken Little, ready to run
about madly shouting that “the sky is falling”. It would almost
be reason enough to move one's assets, if possible, to <i>Swedbank
</i> in Sweden, where the cohort of
bank customers is less excitable and irrational.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-278074644808059552011-12-03T19:34:00.001+02:002011-12-04T11:19:46.049+02:00Weaponizing the Russian language in Latvia again<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I wrote about the successful
signature campaign by Latvian citizens to make Russian the second
state language, I got some comments on Twitter and elsewhere that “a
language is just a language” and it was somehow wrong to associate
demands for Russian as a state language with the Soviet policy of
Russification.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is surprising, except when it
comes from the generation that doesn't fully remember what the Soviet
Union was like. To be honest, I didn't live in Latvia then, but I
participated in many emigre Latvian activities, including
demonstrations against the Soviet russification policy, which
consisted both of imposing the Russian language on the Baltic
populations and massively importing Russian-speaking labor (at least
to Estonia and Latvia). The latter means of russification ended with
the collapse of the USSR in 1991.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The actions of Balts abroad were based
on personal experience (visiting the Baltic States), anecdotal
stories and academic research (including a book by the Latvian
political scientist and present-day Saeima deputy Rasma Kārkliņa)
that characterized policies regarding the use of Russian in
non-Russian Soviet republics as part of the policy of russification.
It is probably beyond reasonable dispute that the Russian language,
during the Soviet era, but also with precedents in Czarist Russia as
far as the Baltic were concerned, was used <i>as a weapon</i> of
state policy aimed at subjugating and, eventually, assimilating the
Baltic nations to some greater, Russian-dominated ethnos.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Soviets made it clear-- the future
belonged to a Russian-speaking new Soviet people that would have
erased all traces of the diverse national identities that had been
(in some cases forcibly) incorporated into the USSR. Those policies
were terminated with the collapse of the USSR, but it is reasonable
to say that the widespread post-Soviet knowledge of Russian, whatever
merits one can ascribe to it otherwise, could also be described as
one of the <i>badges of occupation</i>. In other words, on a “but
for” basis, many Latvians would not speak Russian <i>but for</i>
the occupation of Latvia for 50 years, a period of time when they
were compelled to learn Russian. Above and beyond Russian as a
compulsory subject in school, there were also campaigns (proclaimed
in the Latvian-language Soviet press) exhorting people to improve
their Russian and emphasizing the role of Russian as the basis for
the new Soviet nation of the future.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As a
language learned by compulsion during the totalitarian occupation of
Latvia, Russian can be seen as a weapon that has left its impact on
most Latvians (and non-Russians in Latvia, such as Armenians, Poles,
Georgians, etc.), even if that impact has entirely benign consquences
today (buying a beer at a Moscow bar, watching Russian movies,
whatever). However, those consquences are benign only because the
regime of Russian domination and compulsory teaching of Russian has
ended. If it had not, “Russianspeakingness” would continue to be
a sympton of russification and a badge of occupation and dominance by
a foreign power.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
successful signature campaign to restore Russian as a state language
in an independent Latvian state, reviving, at least formally, the
status it had in the Soviet Union, is an effort to make Russian a
<i>weaponized</i> language
again. Since there is little or no evidence that ethnic Russians in
Latvia cannot conduct most of their daily lives speaking Russian,
there is no logical need to make Russian a second state language
except to make it a weapon again.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
To be
sure, it is a weak and irrational weapon if, as some suggest, it is
aimed at expressing some kind of protest by the “Russian-speaking”
(read ethnic Russian) citizenry for not getting a share of political
power after the recent election. Unfortunately, their poster-boy,
Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs, ran mostly as a populist social democrat,
attracting some ethnic Latvian votes. His Harmony Center party
(Saskaņas centrs/SC) was acting like a party of Russians, not a
Russian party pushing for specific issues relating to Russians as a
significant minority in Latvian. As a “Russian” party, SC should
have agitated for more adult education in Latvian as a foreign
language to make more citzens functionally bi-lingual as well as for
home language instruction to keep Russian children form losing their
native language (something the USSR never did for minorities living
outside their borders). Most non-Russian Latvian citizens would have
no issues with that. But those Latvians, who don't see Russian as
“just another language”, should object against having a weapon
pointed at them again.
</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-1791951463309386172011-12-02T00:49:00.001+02:002011-12-02T00:57:47.623+02:00Russian as an official language = re-Sovietization<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Riga is a heavily Russian city, always
has been since I personally knew it, which is from my first visit in
1980 or so. There appear to be no problems getting by in Russian
here, just this morning, as I was buying my copy of the
magazine <i>Ir</i> at a
<i>Narvesen</i> shop, the
clerk smoothly went from telling another customer something in
Russian to asking me for my LVL 0,95 in Latvian. As an interesting
aside, the girl behind the counter looked to be of Roma (gypsy)
ethnicity, a people who, in Latvia, mainly have Latvian as their
mother tongue going back for centuries.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There
is no lack of Russian culture and media here. There are placards for
all sorts of Russian singers and entertainers coming to Riga. The
Russian Theater in the Old Town on Līvu Square has been
spectacularly renovated and attracts an audience made up of anyone who
understands Russian. Contemporary Russian TV series as well as old
Soviet films are shown on Latvian TV channels with subtitles,
something which (except on some channels) is never done for English
language material, where a Latvian voice-over (<i>murmulis</i>)
is the standard procedure. Some commercial signeage is both in
Latvian and Russian, and Russian foods and canned goods are sold in
their Russian-language packaging with small, Latvian-translated
labels (in micro-typeface) pasted on.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In
short, Riga is a very comfortable town to be Russian in. You can make
it through your whole day speaking Russian, because most of the
population does, and in a commercial situation, the customer's
language is what matters (for making the sale and building the
relationship). Even in some hard-line, state-language only
institutions, a translator will eventually be called if thats what it
takes to get important business done, so that the Russian-speaker
will still remain in his/her language sphere.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Given
all that, enough ethnic Russian Latvian citizens (so we can forget
<i>that other issue</i> that
gets brought up whenever “the Russians” are discussed) signed a
petition to have a referendum on making Russian a second official
state language. To me, that sounds like bringing back the Soviet
Union – the bi-lingual signs everywhere that weren't really based
on language equality, but rather, we will have your Latvian <i>jazik
</i>around until we absorb you, make
all the other non-Russian Soviet “nations” part of the “we are
Russkie-Borg”. It was prelude to a “soft” destruction of
national identity (as opposed to the Siberian alternative), Chapter
Two of the Russification policy of Czarist Empire.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
petition campaign, was, or will be, at the end of the day, part of a
campaign to <i>resovietize</i>
Latvia at an official, day-to-day level. It will be back to when, if
a few Russians were present, everyone spoke Russian. In the Soviet
era, it was because of fear of political repercussions, but if the
second official language is passed, it will be because of the laws
and regulations of the independent, democratic Republic of Latvia.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Perversely
enough, the whole process may have started with a failed initiative
by Latvian nationalists to petition for a referendum to make all
state-financed education in Latvian only. But was that enough to
trigger the successful counter-petition by the pro-Russians, or was
it merely a lucky excuse? It almost didn't get off the ground
because two different Russian nationalist groups were at each other's
throats for a while as to who would start the signature gathering.
Then there was the extraordinary Saeima election and the bizarre
attempts by Valdis Zatlers and his Zatlers' Reform Party (ZRP) to get
the pro-Russian Harmony Center (SC) into government at all costs.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
ZRP's efforts were a spectacle, against all political logic
on both sides of the attempted coalition. The political programs of
the ZRP and SC didn't match – center right parties and
self-proclaimed populist social democrats cannot have too many common
policies in government. Moreover, the SC, by dropping most of its
populist positions in order to get into a government with the ZRP at
all costs, proved nothing but that it was a chameleon willing to
betray the electorate that believed its own slogans.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The SC
apparently took great offense at not being let into government as a
“Russian” party that got a few more votes that anyone else (as if
“Russian” and not liberal, conservative, social-democratic,
centrist was an actual political ideology). Then one of the SC
leaders and Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs publically signed the petition,
apparently triggering a wave of copy-cat signings by other SC
members. This all was in the interests of “national bolshevik”
Vladimir Linderman, who was the de-facto leader of the petition
signing movement, and “rapped for Russian” in a video along with
the semi-monolingual Valerijs Kravcovs, an ex-Saeima deputy, ringing
a huge motherfucker of a bell (you were wondering when I would let
slip some obscenity, weren't you? :) ). Ušakovs said he was merely
asserting his self-esteem (strange, for one of Latvia's most
photogenic young politicians), but Linderman and his droogs were dead
serious – they want to impose Russian as a second language and will
do their best to see that it is enforced.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
unintentional consequences of Nils' wounded self-esteem and his
self-proclaimed respect for Latvian as the sole national language (go
figure on that one) will be that Latvian will end up back where it
was in the Soviet Union, as the language you speak at home, on the
street, or in official situations when there are no Russians around
to demand that their language be spoken,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
won't go so far as to say that Russian as a second language will be
the end of the Latvian nation and all that (even if that is one
possible scenario), but it will end up at least as a significant
nuisance (if properly resisted). One example is French in Canada,
which means that even the Inuit who have never been near Quebec have
to pour their <i>milk/lait</i> on their morning cereal. Or the Finns, who
have to learn Swedish (to some extent) in school out of respect for a
few villages where the ethnic Swedes still speak it (on the island of
Åland, the Swedes on this Finnish possession speak English when
dealing with the mainland. Then there is Ireland, where the Irish,
who all speak English, with the exception of some Leprachaun-infested
villages, where some people actually speak Irish, but everyone has to
learn and forget Irish in school in any case.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
moved to <i><b>Latvia </b></i>in
1995, not Russia, and, while I have visited Russia a couple of times,
I have no desire to live there. Being in a virtual Russia was not
part of the deal of what I now see (for a number of non-language
related reasons) as a dubious choice to live in Latvia (the economy
is a wreck, the future bleak). Frankly, I don't want my son (16) to
grow up in a Russified country, where the role of Russian goes well
beyond the present-day “modus operandi” (described at the start
of this post) that seems to work, while presenting a lesser, but
nonetheless non-trivial threat to Latvian identity.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Don't
get me wrong. I am a pretty multicultural person and can get
along/have gotten along elsewhere – Sweden, the US, where I grew
up, Germany, where I have worked and know the language. But for me,
Russian as a second official language would be a defeat of all that
Latvian independence meant, a <i>re-sovietization</i>
of conditions in this country. Count me out on that...</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-88254025899173216062011-11-28T22:49:00.001+02:002011-11-29T08:46:00.935+02:00How badly did “FukTuk” Fuck Up? If at all?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I just had to use that title. “FukTuk”
(with the fuk like some Brits say, well, you know...) is how Latvians
often pronounce the acronym for the Financial and Capital Markets
Commission, <i>Finanšu un kapitāla tirgus komisija</i> or FKTK, the
financial markets supervision and regulatory commission. The agency
has been getting a lot of criticism recently after the looting of
Latvijas Krājbanka, the Latvian Savings Bank, and its parent bank,
Lithuania's Snoras, by their main shareholder, Vladimir Antonov and
his lackeys.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the one hand, it would seem that by
offering to resign, the head of FKTK (FCMC is the English acronym)
Irēna Krūmane, has admitted that – here we go again – FKTK
fucked up. But this is actually a wrong and ignorant interpretation
of events, even if mistakes were made. The mistakes didn't concern
the direct regulatory and supervisory functions of FKTK. It was more
of a public relations problem (Krūmane, who was out of town, may
have sent the wrong people with inadequate briefing on what to say,
to explain the Krājbanka fiasco) and the problem of having to face
down ignorant media and the public, screaming for someone's, anyone's
blood.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Strictly speaking, Krūmane's
resignation is like a head of the national police resigning because
the crime rate isn't zero. Well, almost. To have a crime rate of
zero, you would have to have one cop following, say, every one or two
citizens (an impossibility) and also have absolutely no corrupt or
fallible cops who could be persuaded to join, rather than fight
criminals (after all there is a lot of money and excitement in
crime).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That is not how the system of criminal
justice and law works. It works mostly by self-regulation and a
number of other individual and social mechanisms. Most people, for
one reason or another, stay within sight of the boundaries set by The
Ten Commandments, or at least those, that apply to transitive actions
(those affecting the rights of others). That may exclude idolatry –
the having of other gods, etc, and another “ultry” reserved for –
adults – that goes with the coveting your neighbors' wife and all
that. But it certainly covers stealing, slaying, and, to a large
extent, bearing false witness. That is because you have to be pretty
much of a sorry-ass, evil fucker to do any of that, and most people
are not like that, or evolution would have reduced us thousands of
years ago to a small, about to be extinct pack of upright apes
snarling and fighting with each other for the last bananas in some
remote jungle. That's not how things are.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Peer pressure and the need to have the
respect of others are also powerful restraints on the urge to do any
kind of batshit stuff, whether it harms anyone or not. Driving up to
a cloister, blowing your horn in the middle of the night, waking the
nuns and then mooning them standing on the roof of your car really
doesn't hurt anyone and would make a great and gross teenage movie
scene, but it is not what you want on the front page of the newpaper.
Nor do you want to make the evening TV news for being shitfaced at
the wheel of your car as the cameras show up and then go into a
racist rant about Uigurs or some other obscure nationality as the
police take you away. Nobody, well, almost nobody, wants that kind of
shit.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is more or less the same with the
financial system. Like the police, Krūmane could reasonably go to
sleep at night on the assumption that most of those she rides herd on
would not simply up and break every rule for the hell of it. In fact,
with two layers of checking and regulation provided by the internal
controls and risk management of any financial organization, combined
with regular checks by independent auditors, there is enough of a
self-running system to keep things on the straight and level.
Finally, there are the regulators, seeing to it that the others are
at least equipped, set up and ready to do their jobs. This means
credit committees, risk managers and a lot of double checking and
signing off on stuff before any other people's money is utilized.
That is what banks are – other people's and enterprises' money
entrusted to the bank or other financial actor. One shouldn't fuck
with that, nor go unpunished for doing so.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What happened at Krājbanka is that,
despite most of the necessary checks, balances and scarecrows (the
idea of being jailed in disgrace keeps fingers off the cash like a
scarecrow spooks the crows)being in place, the bank's managing board
chairman Ivars Priedītis did go batshit and pledge some LVL 100
million in assets as collateral for loans made to Vlad the dude with
a sportcar jones and his various projects. Priedītis had been a
pretty straight and honest guy before that, but the mo-fo simply went
or was pushed over the edge into crime when he agree to sign off on
the deals on an adventure of his own. Apparently, the rest of the
bank management knew fuck-all about it, or maybe merely suspected
something. They certainly didn't suspect Vlad, assuming that several
national intelligence agencies could have the dude's past in Russia
all wrong. So maybe he found the cash needed to start his bank in
paper bag in a Moscow back alley. Hey, those were the days in the
Wild, Wild East.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So what failed was not really Krūmane
and the system under her. The system is based largely on trust (most
information is not submitted by liars). What failed was one guy,
perhaps a few more people going rogue. Some financial institutions
with some of the best monitoring and internal controls have had
traders cut loose and create enormous losses, if not bring the whole
motherfucker down if they were unlucky enough. Taking the wrong side
of some financial derivative instruments can cause losses big enough
to warp spacetime around them, dwarfing anything that Priedītis
pulled off. Lucky that that didn't happen in Latvia, which is not to
say that it couldn't be done. Just most people in the business won't
try it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
You can do all the checks and cross
checks you want, but no system is God, and most run themselves
adequately, thank you. It is foolish to think anything can or should
be designed to be everywhere all at once. Don't blame the overseers
for failing to do or be that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
By offering to resign, Krūmane has
actually thrown herself on her sword as a PR stunt to restore some
trust in the FKTK. The blogger and political scientist Iveta Kažoka
made this point about trust in the financial system being undermined
by Krūmane's communication style. Her appeal for Krūmane to resign
was borderline strident. But for Krūmane it was probably a
tactically right move to keep the dogs from tearing apart the
institution by thowing herself to them (sword, now dogs is only a
sign that it is late and I am tired from pulling all sorts of shit
for my employer over the weekend in Stockholm to in order get and do an
important interview). When it is all over, whoever takes her place
should remember that sitting in that chair, no one will excuse you
because sometimes things just happen (“honest Ivars” at Krājbanka
went wacko), and they will crucify you for not being god even if you
said you couldn't be.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7590025.post-24837789047420831622011-11-25T00:40:00.001+02:002011-11-25T00:45:47.171+02:00Russian investment in the Baltics -- by "whitelist" only<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's beginning to look like 1995 all
over again. That was the year that Banka Baltija, Latvia's largest
bank at the time, was destroyed by economic crime. In fact, looking
back, the whole bank <i>was</i> the
economic crime. It was probably never intended to be anything else.
The case with Latvijas Krājbanka or the The Latvian Savings Bank, is
not identical. For one thing, Krājbanka has historically been around
since 1924. During the Soviet era, it was one of the few institutions
where private persons could keep their money on deposit. After
Latvian independence, it was privatized in 2003 and in 2005 Krājbanka
was acquired by Lithuania's Snoras Bank. Snoras Bank, in turn, was
owned by Vladimir Antonov, a Russian “investor” now suspected of
looting both Snoras and Krājbanka, who also attempted to buy
Sweden's Saab.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Like
Banka Baltija, Krājbanka's customers were mostly private persons. On
its home page, the bank says it is (was now) one of the largest
providers of financial services to private persons. When Banka
Baltija crashed, tens of thousands of Latvians lost their often
meager savings, which they had been criminally lured into depositing
with the bank. Krājbanka's customers entrusted their money in good
faith to a bank that had, in fact, worked as some kind of functioning
bank for over 80 years. In short, the bank did what it promised its
customers, up to some as yet indeterminate point at which Antonov
started influencing the operations of Snoras and Krājbanka with
criminal intent.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Whatever
the sequence of events, the effects of deliberate looting and
deception are being felt – thousands of customers have had their
savings thrust into limbo (theoretically, they are covered up to EUR
100 000, but the payout will take time) and hundreds of businesses
and government and municipal institutions. The total cost to society
will be in hundreds of millons of LVL, including businesses ruined by
the crash, small municipalities losing most of their funds and
further unemployment triggered by all of this.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In
some cases, the losses have been staggering. The Latvian State Radio
and Television Center had more than LVL 24 million on deposit at
Krājbanka, having chosen the bank as offering the best and safest
terms for holding this amount of money. This is now lost, especially
as Krājbanka is likely to be liquidated. The famous Latvian composer
and musician Raimonds Pauls has lost most of his savings of some LVL
700 000 on deposit with Krājbanka. It also looks like significant
funds – something like LVL 70 000 may have been put on deposit by
the Latvian Filmmaker's Union.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Recriminations
are already starting, just as they did when Banka Baltija fell apart.
The Financial and Capital Markets Commission, Latvia's banking
watchdog, is being blamed for missing the signs (or looking the other
way) when it should have seen the shady deal in August that plundered
Krājbanka of funds, diverted, it is said, to Antonov's private
projects, including his attempts to buy Saab.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All
things considered, though, it is impossible for any regulator or
watchdog, no matter what resources it commands (such as the
Securities Exchange Commission/SEC in the US) to double check on
everyone, especially when criminals ar lying. Banka Baltija founder
Aleksandrs Lavents and his managers lied systematically to auditors,
who had neither the duty nor the capability to test every number and
assertion offered by the bank with a lie detector. The Krājbanka
case was different, but at some point, most likely due to the actions
of Antonov, the bank turned into a fraud against its customer.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Moreover,
Antonov's behavior seems to fit into a pattern of criminality and
fraud by Russian so-called investors, who have either earned their
money by some form of crime at home, investing the spoils of
plundering and corrupting Russia into relatively benign Western
businesses, or who are simply taking the worst of so-called Russian
business practices into the West, like a gang of Wild West bandits
riding into town on money bags rather than horses.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Antonov
seems to fit into the latter pattern, making destructive
“investments” in Lithuania and Latvia, attempting to get a foot
in the door at Saab (hindered, at least, by the Swedish authorities
who were aware of his possible organized crime connection). Antonov's
father Alexander survived a shooting, an incident that casts light on
what his lines of business were and possibly still are.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
At the
end of the day, the impact of the Krājbanka collapse will probably
be less dramatic than Banka Baltija and far less than Parex Bank's
collapse in 2008, which cost the government around LVL 1 billion in
bailout spending and almost made the country an international basket
case (when the basket says IMF on it, it is just a temporary resting
place until your limbs grow back). Parex Bank's collapse also has
elements of criminal sleaze, but it was done by locals and perhaps
with a bit more sophistication. There is a difference between getting
rich owning a bank that earns money serving shady characters and
doing for them (as well as its other customers) what it promises to
do, rather than breaching its trust to depositors and customers and
simply stealing or squandering their money. In any case, the full
story of Parex and various criminal and semi-criminal activities may
yet emerge.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What
all this suggest that with the Baltic countries being of particular
interest to Russian based criminal “investors” such as Antonov,
it is time to take targetted action. To be sure, there are examples
of Western fraudsters and financial criminals, from the people
running Enron to Bernie Madoff. But these guys eventually go to jail
in the US and other Western countries, they do not move to London and
buy football (soccer) clubs when rival gangs in Russia star breathing
down their neck, or when their gang falls out of favor with the
Russian political elite and the secret services.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
would suggest that Russian investment in the Baltic countries be
allowed on a “whitelist only” basis – that is, to put you money
into any project in these countries (and why not the US as a whole),
any person whose investment capital was accumulated in Russia
(meaning any wealthy Russian citizen) shall be barred from
significant investment in any enterprise except if he or she is on a
“white list” of investors who have been thoroughly background
checked and vetted to be as clean as possible of any criminal or
Russian secret service ties.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Whitelisting
would be fair to Russians who want to put largely honestly earned
funds into legitimate businesses in the Baltics, but it would create
a presumption borne out by events, that the Russian post-Soviet
super-rich are not to be trusted and probably, by conscious intent or
instinct, engage in barbarous business practices. It may be the only
way to prevent a Banka Baltija 3.0, now that Krājbanka may prove to
be a Banka Baltija 2.0 (Not So ) Lite.</div>
</div>Juris Kažahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052208772017734513noreply@blogger.com6