Latvia Heading for a populruppted or corruplistic government?

The Latvian affiliate of the German-based market research and polling company GfK has published a poll indicating that the Harmony Center (Saskaņas centrs/SC) will get 41 seats in the extraordinary Saeima elections to be held in less than a week. In the last elections to the 10^th Saeim,, GfK accurately predicted that SC would get 29 seats, which gives considerable credibility to their latest forecast.

The poll also sees the Green and Farmers Union (Zaļu un zemnieku savienība/ZZS) getting 13 seats down from 22, Unity (Vienotiba/V) would get 21 seats (down from 33), Zatlers' Reform Party (ZRP) would get 18 seats (as a new party, no prior presence), and the nationalist National Alliance (Visu Latvija-Tēvzeme un Brīviba-LNNK /NA) -seven seats.

The only combination that “works” from these forecast results is a coalition of SC and ZZS, easily getting 53 votes (or more, if support for the ZZS is stronger than anticipated). The resulting government will be populist – with the SC advocating more spending for pensions and social programs (even at the risk of expanding the budget deficit) and “corruption-tolerant” with the ZZS still holding out hopes that its backer and “eminence grise”, Ventspils mayor Aivars Lembergs, who face criminal charges for economic crimes, will someday be prime minister. Hence the idea that the government will be populruppted or corruplistic, combining the words populist and corrupted.

The SC and Lembergs have both entertained the idea of renegotiating Latvia's deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the vain hope of extending Latvia's very favorable credit terms (never mind that the IMF has not given any new loans at the same low rates) rather than re-financing the loans and going back to the market. Even if it worked, it would mean continued austerity, something at odds with the SC's attempts to be social-democratic.

The ZZS, a party ready to go in bed with almost anyone in order to stay in government, will continue to shield state-capture and corruption, though perhaps with less vigor since the SC will want to keep a relatively “clean” image. Indeed, one of the reasons people will probably vote for this party and forget the battles over “acknowledging the occupation” is that the SC has not, so far, been involved in any major corruption scandals (probably because it has been kept away from the trough by the bigger pigs).

Interestingly, Latvia will probably be praised for getting a government with its first ethnic Russian PM, Nils Ušakovs, a kind of Latvian version of Arnold Schwartzenegger – a politician of national scale who spoke the official language with a slight accent. There will also be well-grounded fears that an EU member state has been drawn further into Russia's sphere of influence, although the same could have been said about Germany and its pro-Russian policies some years back, for instance, regarding the Nordstream gas pipeline.

So, if the GfK poll and forecast are right, Latvia is heading for a change, putting the present government party in opposition, a different party and possibly an ethnic Russian prime minister in charge, and, after some years of slight progress in breaking away from corruption and free-spending, pedal-to-the metal government, a partial back-to-the future with populist spending and tolerance of, to put it mildly, politico-economic hanky-panky.

On violence..and futility

I am reviving something I was writing in Latvian for a closed reading list. It started with looking at the government and ruling elite as an unknown creature from which we try to elicit some kind of response. First we make sounds at the creature. Nothing happens. Then we flash colored lights at the creature (this is getting to be like the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Finally, (and this is not to be tried lightly with a real alien or unknown beastie), we poke the thing (a minor act of violence) and it finally responds.

It seems to have been the same with the Latvian government. Peaceful public protests were dismissed as “yapping” by angry little dogs by the government of Aigars Kalvītis. The protests involved both audible (chanted slogans) and visual (signs and placards) cues. There was no response. On January 13, 2009, a mob “poked” the creature of government by stoning the parliament (Saeima) and other buildings, trashing some storefronts, fighting the police and overturning some of their vehicles.

Boy did that get a response! Ivars Godmanis, prime minister at the time, appeared on national television the next morning, stone-faced and speaking in a voice almost from beyond the grave. “We have awoken in another Latvia”, he intoned. Well, good fucking morning, as if this shit hadn't happened in other countries, in some, like Greece, just weeks before!. Right after that, then president Valdis Zatlers also gave the Saeima an ultimatum – to pass amendments to the Latvian constitution allowing popular initiatives to dismiss the Saeima, to change the election laws to prevent powerful candidates or “locomotives” from running in more than one electoral district as well as other measures by March 31 of the year. Some of what Zatlers requested actually got done and he never acted on that ultimatum.

The quick and simple, maybe oversimplified conclusion is – a bit of violence is the only communication that elicits a response from the ruling elite in Latvia. Paving stones and smashed glass are “heard”, words and protests, ignored.

But that is about the end of it. There was needless and senseless collateral damage from January 13, such as the stoning of a library building near the Saeima, the ransacking of a liquor store and serious injuries to a teenager hit in the eye by a rubber bullet. It also became clear that the “political” stone throwers were joined by a rabble out for the thrill of destruction and looting.

Even the political stone throwers represented no one beyond themselves and their personal anger with politics and politicians. Even their violence was “senseless” because it had no agenda and no organizational back-up in society. In other words, these guys were not the vanguard or fighting unit of a well-organized and defined revolutionary movement.

I started writing this before the rioting in the UK, which puts a different angle on things. Those events gave an entirely new meaning to the idea of politically (and economically)senseless violence. One may be able to better examine things once data are collected on the more than 1600 persons arrested in the wake of the UK disorders, but it now looks like what happened was an outbreak of theft, violence and destruction by the British equivalent of what are called urlas in Latvia. These are uneducated, unemployed (though not always) purposeless, substance-abusing, petty criminal rabble. They are apolitical except to the extent that some commentators on events try to interpret the formation of the UK lumpenproletariat in political terms. It is likely that the Brit-urlas have no political agenda and little or no political consciousness.

Before anyone starts drawing conclusions from what I have written so far, I am not building up to advocating terrorism in Latvia. Suffice it to say that in earlier times, somewhat better organized Latvians did turn to anarchism and/or revolutionary violence, such as in the uprising in 1905. Terrorism is merely the other side of extremely poor and often oppressive governance, it is a reaction to the action or inaction of the state – at least in simple terms, discounting the terrorist movements based on shared misperceptions of reality and bizarre ideologies.

One can safely say that there is little basis for domestic terrorism in Latvia, mainly because those dissatisfied with the state of affairs have taken the much easier step of emigrating and see no sense in staying behind to fight a political battle. Latvia's citizens have seen all to often that when “political battles” (elections) are won, the spoils are divided among some of the winners at the expense of taxpayers, or, at best, literally despoiled and wasted in attempts at governance by incompetent fools. Electing a few “good people” merely thickens the brake linings on some wheels of a what has been a runaway train of corruption, incompetence, cluelessness and folly that has characterized much of Latvian politics over the past 20 years. That is what the reform movements of recent years have accomplished, thickened the brake linings without stopping and just slightly slowing the train. I refer to the Jaunais Laiks (New Era) experiment, the re-try of the same formula with Vienotība, the work of “good people” (no irony intended) such as Valdis Dombrovskis, the “new kids in the Saeima” or the former exile Latvians and some of their allies.

Tax resistance?

Maybe I am misinterpreting some socio-economic phenomena too optimistically or politically, but some parts of the population have reacted to this pattern of failure of governance by simply withdrawing from economic engagement with the state. That is another way of saying – not paying taxes. Again, at the risk of overpoliticizing what is happening and projecting a consciousness into this behavior that isn't there, I would argue that this form of effective “secession from the state” is, at least, a minimally effective form of resistance.

Undeniably, the lack of tax revenues is (and we have heard this song before) deprives pensioners, the health system, the police, the schools, the roads etc. of funding that would have made these government services better. But it also says, from the de-facto tax-refusers' point of view – that I am also depriving one of the world's most expensive bridges of my money. I am not paying for borderline-poor medical services so that characters like Mr. Golden Hands (New Era's first Minister of Health Āris Auders), the surgeon, can take my money that was earmarked for his treatment of patients, and then hit these patients again for a hefty envelope payment.

In what may be an idealistic fantasy, I think that at least a few Latvian businesses are paying in envelopes not to enrich the boss at the expense of depriving the state of tax revenues, but simply because envelope payments instead of withholding social tax are actually a form of direct-action social welfare. An example I often use is that if a small business has monthly labor costs of say, LVL 10 000, the owner takes some LVL 3000 or whatever the social tax rate is, and pays it to the state. Month after month, those LVL 3000 have no visible impact on the miserable looking pensioners, the beggars (at least those who are not professionals), the local hospital about to close with its “fat-years” MRI unit that gets used twice a month, etc. etc.

Now take those LVL 3000 and pad the envelopes of employees that one knows personally – Jānis, who looks after his infirm mother, Anna, who is paying for her daughter's university, Sergejs, who can now afford a private day-care center for his son and needs elective surgery himself. The extra money, taken away from the rathole of paying the state with a negative return on taxation now becomes a tangible, here and now (or in the foreseeable future) benefit for a small circle of people who need it and use it wisely.

It is, of course, pure political science fiction to imagine that, having experienced a degree of state failure for 20 years (minus the attributes of real failed states, gunmen in the streets, three hours of electricity, the whole Somalia scene), Latvian society would self-organize into communities of resistance as it did, to some extent, when forming the Peoples' Front (Tautas Fronte) in the late 1980s. Having exhausted the possibilities of getting a response from the present political system, such communities of resistance could at least improvise local solutions to problems the state is unable to solve.

Electronic civil disobedience?

For example – shutting down a hospital to cut costs (after deranged, shambolic spending on health during the “fat years”)? The community simply occupies it, organizes that some work is done voluntarily in exchange for care, local business puts in some funds to benefit the town's citizens, the MRI units services are offered, on the internet, to patients across the country (or even from abroad).

Elsewhere, people can take non-violent, disciplined direct action against the state –occupying ministries or government buildings, at least for a short, symbolic period, or organizing electronic political actions, including the limited “hacking” (a note on a home page – this agency is run by thieving or wastrel fools). Such actions would involve technically illegal behavior and would require backing by legal defense and public relations teams, to do everything to hinder (by legal means) the prosecution of persons involved in resistance activities, and to explain to society and the media (with social media, everyone is media) the reason that activists were being made, in effect, political prisoners.

Back to Gewalt gegen Sachen?

At some point, there would have to be symbolic violence against the state, targeted trashing of state property, but if this was done against the background of a mass civil resistance and direct-action movement, it would be a small price to pay for finally breaking the grip of a political ruling elite that has, by the “experiment” described above, shown that violence is the only language that it hears.

Having said that, I have to emphasize that this is an impossible scenario and there are no signs that anyone is trying to execute it. The human capital needed for something like that has been dispersed abroad by the consequences of 20 years of the political elite's behavior. Those who remain are too disorganized, drawn to crackpot ideologies, übermother political movements or simply given up on the whole mess, often based on a rational assessment of the situation. I think I can count myself among the latter.

We will have yet another election, triggered by good intentions to throw the bastards out, but I suspect the result, at best will be another deceptively bright false dawn, and, more likely, a typically Latvian political bardaks where the sleazy but untainted-by-being-in-government Harmony Center (Saskaņas Centrs/SC) will be the biggest winner. Then, no one among the “good guys” will want to play with them. So they may end up with a “worser” if not worst case scenario of SC aligning with the Green and Farmers' Union (Zaļo un Zemnieku Savienībā/ZZS) to put one of the oligarchs (and a popular one among the large ignorant and populist-manipulated part of the electorate), Aivars Lembergs, in de-facto control of the state.

More nothing special..

So the coming election battle, triggered by the drama of dismissing the Saeima and the subsequent referendum, may yet again amount to nothing – nothing special. The referendum showed that almost 95% of the electorate rejecting the present political elite and the antics of the parliament up to now. One could almost say it was a reflexive vote against two decades of state underperformance, if not what I call state failure light. But that is it. There will be no second Awakening/Atmoda. There will be no powerful popular movement of resistance and direct action, no one is there to lead it, and the very few, probably too few good people able to change much of anything, are running again for what I call the Big Monkey House (disrespectful? Check those referendum results again).

Maybe, just maybe, the 2020s may be a time when the last hard-core homo postsovieticus retires from political life or dies off, and then the 1,6 or 1,8 million left in a marginal, stagnant little European country may, at last perk up and find that they can at least adequately govern themselves. But is there any point for someone like me, of advanced youth but with a few good years left (working and writing)to linger here and wait to see where the chips fall in ten or fifteen years?

20 years of freedom – and?

OK, I will join the great chorus in saying how great it is that Latvia regained its independence in 1991 and nothing could have been worse that continuing to stagnate under the Soviets. The Soviet occupation was a truly horrible time, especially the beginning of it all, with deportations, war, deportations again and repression and fear that only eased very gradually toward the end of the 1980s. Add to that the bizarre economic deprivation, queues, shoddy products, blat-level corruption, dismal everyday life with little or nothing changed, no freedom to travel, etc. etc.

The occupation left indelible marks on the Latvian nation, and those are the reason that, at the end of the day, we are happy to have our freedom, we say we cherish our freedom (and we probably do), and we should never, never lose that freedom again. Of course!

But what have we made of that freedom? What did those of us who lived outside Latvia expect? We grew up as “refugee/emigres” wherever we were, a status that kept important, vital parts of our lives focussed on Latvia and on the impossible dream of Latvian independence. The dream came true, but we who grew up in freedom knew that freedom was the most important kind of opportunity, often the first step. Freedom is to be used, filled out with a vision, a path chosen together with other free citizens.

Yes, Latvia used its freedom. The country made its way into the European Union and NATO, two visions that it automatically adopted once free. But after that? There is no realistic, coherent vision for the future.

To be frank, Latvia achieved freedom from the Soviet Union, but is still far from free from being a nation of far too many homo post-sovieticus. It has lost up to 300 000 inhabitants to emigration, a good part of them, perhaps, for largely economic reasons, but also because what the political and economic elite of this country has done and failed to do has broken any trust they had in the government and any faith in the future.

I put myself among those who have lost this trust and faith – for reasons that I have argued many times over in this blog. Latvia could have done a lot better with its freedom over the last 20 years by making many choices not made. Many of these choice not taken involved actions and changes of behavior that would have cost very little money. It is not case of failing to do as old rich countries did with their wealth, but failing, with few exceptions, to behave as old rich countries did in order to become both rich and reasonably civilized.

Much of this I have described in earlier posts. There is really nothing new to say on the 20^th anniversary of the Soviet coup and independence. I don't regret spending much of my life growing up in the US, living and working in Germany and Sweden, while always trying to “be Latvian” and do things for “the Latvian cause”, even as a journalist. I can say, too, that I have also “served my time” here in Latvia, for better or for worse. We have what we have. Been there, done that, yet again. But I've had enough, too, in one sense. I want to be somewhere else and do something else next, before going even further into “advanced youth” where my options will shrink.

The deeper roots of Latvia as a failed state lite

What are the historical and socioeconomic roots of the failure of governance and, to some extent, the failure of society that make me say that Latvia is a failed state lite? Why are the crisis in politics and the stagnation of the economy most likely intractable?

The deepest roots go far back in Latvian history. Maybe “600 years of serfdom” is a myth. The truth is that Latvian society was largely untouched by even a theoretical understanding of democracy and nationhood well into the 19th century. Subjugation and the serf mentality it created left a profound effect on national character and mentality.

At the start of the 20th century, Latvia was fortunate, despite being part of the Russian Empire, it had developed somewhat of an educated elite, sufficiently in tune with the movements and forces that had already changed or were changing Western Europe. These were classic liberalism, nationalism, scientific rationalism, to some extent Marxism, socialism and social democracy. 

To be sure, the majority of society were still subjects, not citizens, trading loyalty or favors for the good will of the German manor lord, the Czarist bureaucrat or Father Czar (caratētiņš). Patronage and corruption, such as it was, had not reached depraved proportions, though I may be wrong and am ready to stand corrected on historical issues from this period.

Multi (25+) party democracy?

When Latvia gained its independence, the liberal democracy foreseen by its constitution, the Satversme, was the product of the nation’s small elite, which today we would call “Westernized”. The constitution had to be implemented in a society with an underdeveloped and fragmented political culture. How else does one explain 25+ political parties? The country’s already diverse population found expression in having, in the Saeima at one time or another, Zionist parties who differed only on whether they split a certain religious or political hair vertically or horizontally, Old Believers (Russians with ZZ Top beards), the Fishmongers and Breeders of Dwarf Swine etc. Some of these are made-up parties, but if you check the Saiema rosters from back in the 1920s and early 1930s, I don’t think my creative guesses are far from the truth.

As for corruption, etc., I assume that the film Ceplis (Soviet-era made), showing the antics of the business and political elite of the interwar period,  was not an extreme exaggeration. Certainly, the culture of horizontal patronage among members of student fraternities (korporācijas) thrived, with some jobs or career advancements open only if you were a member of Ļurbalonia (sorry to insult all decent student organizations by avoiding naming any one in particular and making up this name)

After the bloodless military coup of 1934, it was back to being subjects again, this time of the Leader and Good Farm Manager (best try on labais saimnieks) Kārlis Ulmanis. Being a subject or follower of the good Vadonis (leader) also created, to my mind, a perverse version of that which is utterly lacking today in society’s attitude toward its institutions of governance -- trust. 

The few remaining Latvians who experienced the Ulmanis era as young adults or teenagers often speak of those times with adulation. What shines through is that all these people, back then, trusted the Leader. They trusted him not because he had their electoral mandate based on informed choices, or based on a record of rarely or never breaking previous trust, they experienced as trust being relieved of the need to make choice and follow up, critically and skeptically, the actions of those chosen. Whatever the Leader does must be good, because we all, or most of us, trust him in this sense. 

And so it was: I stay my place, you stay your place (to make a somewhat bizarre translation of what Leader Ulmanis said when the Soviet army rolled, unopposed, into Latvia in June, 1940). It quickly turned out that for Ulmanis  “my place” was an unknown grave somewhere in the USSR, while “your place” (for the leader’s subjects) was a lot of places, many of them horrifying (Siberian labor camps, the Riga Ghetto, Waffen-SS fighting hopeless battles in some Russian swamp, Red Army on the other side of the swamp, fishing boats to Sweden, semi-slave labor under Allied bombs in Germany, and a whole range of merry adventures). In other words, almost everything had been fine on the Leader’s watch, but he just happened to lose the country. 

Depradations of totalitarianism

And so, for the next 50 years, Latvian society was the largely unwilling subject of totalitarian foreign powers. The German occupation was relatively short, 1941-45, a different flavor of terror and terror with different targets than that of the Soviets in their first 1940-41 and subsequent 1945-91 occupations. 

The Soviet deportations of 1941 and 1949, the losses of population due to battle casualties on both sides (Latvian citizens conscripted by the Germans and the Soviets), the Holocaust killing of the Jewish population, and the flight of some 200 000 Latvians to the West as the World War II ended, had a devastating impact on the social structure of Latvia. A large part of the nation’s educated elite were lost as refugees, war casualties or victims of political repression.

Economically, the already damaged agrarian base of the country was practically destroyed by collectivization and political repression. The most capable and productive farmers, in addition to losing their property, were imprisoned or deported as kulaks.  The message of the early years of Soviet rule in Latvia was that any skills or behavior that would have been considered as entrepreneurial before the war or today were best hidden from the authorities. 

With Stalin’s death in 1953, there was significantly less reason for day-to-day personal fear of the government authorities, but people were still largely subjects of a regime beyond their control. Moreover, the Communist regime was obviously mendacious (or put simply, a liar) about its economic and social achievements. For most people in Latvia, the imposition of a centrally planned, command economy meant a decline in living standards and the quality of life, while Soviet official propaganda portrayed it as progress and advancement.

Latvians, who prided themselves as a nation of farmers, were shocked when collective farms or kolhozes, sometimes turned to buying bread at artificially cheap prices and feeding it to pigs because proper animal fodder was not available (delayed, misdirected or embezzled). The destruction of the market economy and the absence of competent management (as well as the intractable problems of managing a command economy) degraded labor productivity in almost all fields. Salary incentives often had little impact because there were few goods or services to be bought with higher income. 

By the time Soviet planners, desperate about the failure of the centrally planned economy to deliver what Communist slogans had been promising for decades, started experimenting with various incentives (aside from exhortations and bonuses in “wooden rubles” ) the “animal spirits” of enterprising Latvians and others across the USSR had created a dark, distorted “market economy” of favor and influence trading, bribes, stolen production and the “misuse” of socialist state property. 

Summing up the effects of Soviet totalitarianism, the late Latvian historian and political commentator Uldis Ģērmanis described the society created by Soviet rule as an “anti-civilization” (anticivilizācija) -- a tragic, at “best” black humor parody of what “civilization” is generally understood to mean. It was a fragmented, atomized, demoralized society under a false banner of internationalist unity and socialist construction that, in fact, engaged in industrial activities that have been described as “value destructive”  rather than “value-adding”. 

Informal communities of trust

With a lingering fear of the KGB and its informers or stukači, society fragmented into small communities of tenuous trust (family, close friends, school or university classmates) that also provided “safe areas” for officially unsanctioned or forbidden activities -- a cousin to sell sausages from the meat of a kolkhoz pig that never was put on the books (piglets die, nobody double-checks), a classmate to bring Levis jeans from a sailor in return for some other favor. This, too, was part of the anticivilizācija, since in normal, open societies, people at least had some trust of public institutions and could be open about other communities of trust they belonged to -- churches, clubs, circles of friends and the like. In the Soviet anticivilization, these communities, instead, formed an ad hoc underground of, if not deliberate, then defacto resistance to most, if not all of what the state represented.

Theft, embezzlement and double-dealing were the safest and most powerful weapons of resistance to the state, which was  seen as a dangerous, hostile menace. Few people would risk the penalties for raising the pre-war Latvian flag on the factory flagpole or of distributing “anti-Soviet” leaflets. But when it came to skimming the monthly production quota of some “deficit” goods, even the local Communist officials could be offered a cut and keep quiet about this offense to good plan execution. Often they were at the top of and even started whole “food chains” of pilferage and off-the books production (there were reports of informal “night shifts” at Soviet factories that produced for the benefit of the managers, while the “day shift” muddled about pretending to work).

This form of resistance also brought practical benefits in a society of chronic shortage and disfunctional official channels for getting anything done. Raise the red-white-red flag and get away with it-- so what? Nothing changed. Steal several rolls of good fabric and you are owed many favors by your elementary school classmate, now a seamstress, including making you a jacket from part of what you stole. Or arranging to see her sister, a dentist who is not a butcher. 

As the malaise of the centrally planned but nearly unmanageable Soviet economy spread to more and more institutions, bizarre relationships developed. Even as Latvians, enjoying perestroika and glasnost freedoms, shouted at public rallies for the Soviet Army to leave Latvia, Latvian kolkhozes unofficially traded food (meat, eggs, fresh produce) to nearby Soviet army bases in return for motor fuel. Soviet army conscripts were living on poor rations, sometimes the kolkhoz care packages filtered down to them, more often, the officers would send Latvian sausages, smoke meats and cheese back home to Russia for consumption or sale through one of their informal and hidden communities of trust (Uncle Leonid in Krasnoyarsk and his black market boys). Meanwhile, had there been a major military alert, many tanks and armored personnel carriers would not have made it far past the army base gate, because their fuel tanks had been siphoned to pay for inventory for Uncle Leonid’s basement meat emporium. 

Society as a thieves’ market

This society, a thieves market of fragmented, mutually suspicious informal little groups, all deliberately or unconsciously undermining the enemy state and its official economy, was what stepped into complete political and economic independence, somewhat unexpectedly, in August, 1991. The flags on the flagpoles changed, little else did, though much was expected, far much more than from the Communist slogans of the last time the order of things had changed back in 1945.

The Latvian leadership of the early 1990s were basically well meaning, inexperienced (at running free countries) and baffled Soviet people trying to be “ post-Soviet” (when “post” amounted to days or weeks). They inevitably failed. Bumbling mistakes were made, temptations “to grab a little” abounded. Society -- a rag quilt of these little groups of tentative trust -- took a few looks and concluded -- it is all the same. The state is still a hostile and incompetent force, failing to deliver the milk and honey that implicitly stood behind all the slogans and songs of national pride and independence. So fuck ‘em.

Oh, but there was milk and honey and five-star cognac in abundance, because the market economy kicked off in Latvia and the rest of the former USSR as one of history’s biggest yard sales. Millions of tons of inventory -- metal, chemicals, scrap, caviar, furs, you name it -- were there in the ownerless warehouses of ownerless all-Union enterprises. So people got to it, and were literally rolling in hard currency.

This was not entrepreneurial capitalism, but it sure looked like “ wow, I’m a millionaire”. What role models did anyone have for this? Certainly not the discreet charm of US or British “old money” where wealth was “flaunted” by funding a university library, opera house or scholarship fund. Try  Dallas  instead. 

By the mid-90s (around the time of the so-called G-24 loan fiasco, when millions in foreign aid loans were wasted and shamelessly embezzled) the first Western and European Union (EU) advisors started arriving in Latvia under the Phare and other programs. Sometimes stridently, sometimes unintentionally condescendingly, the advisors and consultants repeatedly told their “clients” that graft and stealing were bad, that bureaucracy had to be eliminated or made efficient, that government operations and finances had to be open and transparent, plus a whole shopping list of things that had to be done if Latvia wanted to join the “civilized” world and eventually, the EU. Much of this fell on ears that were open in the classrooms and seminars, but often deaf when it came to putting the lessons into everyday practice.

In the 90s (and still, almost 20 years later), it was often argued that Latvia could not be like developed Western countries because it was poor. Certainly, it could not afford to build massive new infrastructure, tear up its railway net overnight and adjust it to European gauge and many other things, but that was not the issue. Latvia didn’t do the simple things that were recommended over and over by the Western consultants and that cost little or nothing -- like stop embezzling, taking bribes, being harsh and unkind to people seeking public services,  treating employees as equals, not servile subordinates, etc. 

What happened during the late 90s and what continues up to now is that the remnants of the anticivilizācija simply shrugged off all well-meaning outside influences and went about their business. This showed up not only in the activities of significant parts of the political and economic elite, but also in everyday behavior by ordinary people. It has probably been underestimated to what extent much of the population is psychologically twisted, undereducated, and made passive-aggressive by both the Soviet legacy and the experience of the past 20 years. I have described these behaviors in other posts. 

Opening the floodgates

2004 and EU accession opened the floodgates for people who wanted to get away from all this and move to where they were, first of all, better paid, and second, better governed both by the states where they moved and, often, in their new workplaces. The end result is that Latvia has lost some 300 000 inhabitants, in non-violent and, for those directly involved, even subjectively pleasant ways (I disagree with those who compare the population loss to a war, economic migrants are not refugees from conflict nor are they war casualties). TV shows on emigration often feature people saying that they are living dignified lives for the first time after moving to Ireland or England.

However, the emigration also took away a very significant part of the population that, had it been confined to Latvia by difficult immigration rules in other countries (no EU membership), might have formed a powerful political opposition to what has happened. A potentially revolutionary opposition was simply vented off like steam, thanks to Latvia joining the EU and many people choosing a relatively quick way to get away from, though hardly solve, Latvia’s intractable problems. It could even be said that many of the country’s best and brightest have been lost, simply because it matters to be good and bright elsewhere, but not very much in Latvia.

While we may not yet be scraping the bottom of the social and demographic barrel, we certainly are in the lower layers, and it even seems that it can be seen on the street level - the increasing numbers of worn-out, strange, haggard, desperate and sometimes criminal looking people on the streets. It also seems, looking at  some remaining young people, that the generation of fetal alcohol syndrome babies from the 1980s has started growing up. Yet another sign that the effects of anticivilizācija lingering 20 years after the USSR collapsed.

Anticivilizācija has left more than a physical condition. It has also hit at what I would call the “social DNA”  of the nation, the processes by which social behavior patterns, rather than physical characteristics, are transferred from generation to generation. Compare this, if you wish, to the operating system of a computer, the program that determines how all other things are done by the machine. Real DNA is like hardware, and there is nothing particular about the Latvians -- same as everyone’s and same as it ever was. 

Warped “social DNA”

The social DNA of Latvia, however, is badly warped. It predisposes people to a strangely post-Soviet paranoid inferiority complex. Being told that, or determining one’s self that one lacks something is not in and of itself  enough to develop an inferiority complex. A rational individual will look for ways of remedying one’s faults and failings. Add to that a paranoia fed by complex, overlapping and overlaid conspiracy theories and being told that there is something wrong is equal to trying to make things wrong or worse. No need to listen to these voices!

Moreover, the paranoia exaggerates the inferiority complex to its opposite -- not only are we victimized, but we, as victims, play a special role on the world stage with major figures such as George Soros and the better part of the Russian intelligence services (and most of the Russian population of Latvia) out to keep use down and make things worse. This paranoid inferiority complex -- sometimes mild, sometimes intense --blurs the view of or blinds the remaining population to seeking a way out of their lingering misery. Instead, with fewer and fewer educated and thinking individuals as part of the mix, society continues to chase phantom solutions and explanations for its problems -- a return to mythical autarky, a strong leader (appearing from where?), more wacko conspiracy theories, many of them fed by crackpot Russian websites and publications, since people able to critically read other languages have moved to the countries where they are spoken -- England, Germany, Sweden, etc.

So where does that leave things? Unfortunately, it looks like Latvia has slipped past some kind of tipping point, and what we will see for the many years is stagnation and slow decline. People who expect a great repatriation of the 300 000 immigrants are deluding themselves. What is there to come back to, to permanently come back? For those who emigrated to Western Europe, frequent visits are not a problem. Keeping up the language and culture -- ditto, if anyone wants to. An emigre middle class can afford its ethnicity and most of the trappings as a hobby -- the post-war refugees proved this. Latvian churches and centers everywhere. The new emigrants are duplicating this to some extent. They are saying that their presence in Ireland, England, wherever, is (semi) permanent. The only benefit they will bring to those remaining in Latvia is a steady flow of repatriated funds (remittances) and money spent when visiting “home”  from their real and socio-economically better homes.

I have seen the future, and it may not be there.

Sacking politics, witch doctors and the Ubermother

Overshadowed by the terrorist attack in Norway, almost 700 000 voters in Latvia voted by almost 95% to sack their parliament, the Saeima, on Saturday. Not that the event would have gotten all that much attention without Norway. When these domestic political dramas occur, Latvians think the whole world (or Europe, at least) is terribly interested and even take mild offense when little or nothing is reported in the foreign media.
By contrast, when foreign analysts, advisors, educators or whatever show up and sometimes mildly, sometimes frankly suggest to Latvians that they have let their country become a corrupt, incompetent or "best of both" socially and economically disintegrating soon-to-be "Osteuropa" (in the bad sense) backwater -- then of course, shut up, we know best, you didn't live here for those 50 years, who are you and basically we are a planet of our own.
So now we have one end result of that defensive arrogance bred by a simmering inferiority complex. As Arnis Kaktiņš, an astute political analyst and opinion pollster said, the near-95% vote could also be considered a total rejection of the political system and most, if not  all that has happened in Latvia over the past 20 years. Pretty impressive. But what next, what then?
As many as 300 000 Latvians have already made a choice and moved to other countries that are better able to govern themselves. Not perfectly, by far, but producing far better results, basically by doing for years and, in some cases, decades or even a century or two, that which all those foreign know-it-alls were talking about for those same 20 years, when the outside world was giving Latvia its share of aid and advice.
Some of the advice was about matters that cost nothing -- like not stealing and wasting taxpayer money. Like not running the institutions of governance like a cross between "lets have a nostalgia for Soviet-style bureaucracy day five days a week" and the game of "who is the biggest cretin?". Like not making both petty and awesome scale bribe-taking pretty much standard procedure.
So we are left with a largely failed state, society and economy. too poor to pay for decent police or education or medical care, but merrily building a nearly-billion dollar bridge where small change like LVL 80 million (USD 160 million) can't be accounted for, just like change that fell out of your pocket on the bus. Who wouldn't vote against all that?
But what next? As usual, Latvians are largely at a loss. The country made it into NATO and the European Union (EU), though perhaps it didn't deserve the latter, but then Brussels was convinced that once in the door, the post-communist shambolistans would get their acts together, which they didn't. So once those goals were reached, and we could send soldiers into purposeless battle against a near-Stone Age Muslim society, while the folks back home went batshit all the way to the bank, pushed the pedal to the floor as politicians told them to do, and contributed to the worst economic crisis the nation has faced since the 1930s Depression. Or worse, since Latvia claims to have  sailed rather well through that one, if you believe that an autarkic, authoritarian system was an effective remedy.
It is not like nothing is happening, to be sure. Former president Valdis Zatlers, who successfully dismissed the Saeima (once the popular vote was in), started his own party, the Reform Party or Zatlers's Reform Party, symbolized by a logo of a Red Cross (yes, the medical symbol and the one for the folks who show up after typhoons and earthquakes) with an arrow-thing sticking into it. Whatever that means.
Basically, the ZRP (Zerp?) as it is abbreviated is yet another clone of a we will do it better centrist reform, clean government and nice smart people party.  It sound a bit like New Era (Jaunais Laiks) or, for that matter, Vienotība, the chimera being patched together from Jaunais Laiks (the original reformers party founded by mildly(?) wacko Einārs Repše), the Citizens Union ( a kind of nationalists lite)  and the Societ for a Different Politics ( a kind of social democracy lite).
Well, good luck to them. So far, reforms have been nothing but false dawns, and the electorate seems to know and have expressed that truth.
The day after Zatlers founded his party at a place appropriately named "The Dream Factory" (Sapņu fabrika), it was back to normal in Latvian politics as a witch doctor (healer) calling herself Virsmāte or the Ubermother founded her own political party dedicated, also, to healing the country and bringing on better days for everyone. Just like Zatlers.  In fact, there are probably as many witch doctors in Latvia as there are bright, Western educated 30-somethings ready to step up and join the ex-president's team. So, with just about six weeks left until the extraordinary elections (a system dismissed by 95% of the population, according to Kaktiņš), the merry band of pranksters -- the ex Pres and his boys and girls, the badly battered Vienotība, the ever-faithful to the accused criminal Aivars Lembergs Green and Farmers' Union, and, of course, the witch doctors-- can set off on yet another race for the discredited halls of power in a failing state. As always, it will be sad fun to watch and very hard to cast a vote and still take oneself seriously.

Urban Cattle II - more observations

“Urban cattle”. the phrase I coined, was accepted by the Urban Dictionary (urbandictionary.com). I submitted it because it amused a friend from back in the day, now safely living in California, but never been to Latvia, nor even Latvian. Is the dictionary listing the reason they seem to be propagating, increasing in numbers here in Riga? 

They were out in force on the weekend, along a major thoroughfare, Brīvības, which is a very wide boulevard for most of its length. Probably, therefore, a great place for urban cattle to wander out, stand on the white center line, oblivious to traffic or to meander across perhaps 50 meters from a legitimate pedestrian crossing.

At real pedestrian crossings, such as the one by the Riga Central Station, said to be the busiest in the Baltic area, the urban cattle mingle with the ordinary pedestrians, who watch and wait for a countdown indicator. For this subspecies of nimble urban cattle, any number below minus 10 is a signal to jump the curb. With red-light running a very commonplace event, never mind racing on yellow, it is a wonder that I haven’t seen any urban cattle taken out.

The nimble ones, I have noticed, are young and usually look spaced on some cocktail of addictive substances. With a loping gait and eyes watching some chemical cartoon version of the reality around them, they set off, oblivious to blaring horns as cars swerve around them. I mean, Lonja the urla or his Latvian counterpart (can’t tell cause the cattle don’t speak very much) are on the move, the deck is rolling and it is another day of solvent sniffarama or whatever they are into.

Then there is old Zonko the geezer, who crosses and wades into a line of cars, so that he is hidden from the next lane, where folks aiming to do a right turn only can’t see him. Surprise!

Further out of town, we see Dancin’ Dan, who is traipsing, fucked up on rotgut, along the center line, waving at some cars, shit eating grin on his face. I still wait for the return of Meatface the mobile phone man, but maybe he has been taken out, though hitting him with a vehicle would do as much damage as whacking a real, and not so small cow. Not recommended.

Somewhere closer to the Alfa shopping mall, the airhead teeny boppers start appearing, also traipsing or teetering on the white center line, but unlike Dan, sober and stupid as a fencepost as Latvians would say. Favorite meandering area for these urban cattle is also within sight of an elevated walkway where you can cross the street any time you want. 

Then there are the tourist cattle, more often than not Swedish, lumbering along the sidewalk or crossing the street with technical correctness, but unaware that this is not fucking Stockholm, folks. They don’t stop -- the cars. Maybe they swerve,  they may honk and if old sheep-brained Sven and his wife notice, they will live another day with no casts, no crutches. 

Back on the sidewalk, the bikes are out in numbers, to them, pedestrians are just slalom poles to be weaved around at high speed. To the bikies, we are all urban cattle. 

Able-bodied beggars, urban cattle and the assless anorexic

Every day, I keep seeing strange and stranger stuff here in Riga at the ill-defined but somehow "street level" of observation. Most of it points to this society continuing to slither into further disintegration and degeneracy.
Let's start with the beggars. They have been around for a while, they are a symptom of both socio-economic and personal problems. They exist, to some degree, everywhere. You get used to most of them around the central station in Riga (railroad stations attract the wacked-out and weird everywhere). The two one-legged dudes, one on crutches, the other in a wheelchair, prone to periodic bum-fights. The various dudes, so clueless about misery marketing as to wallow in one of the pedestrian tunnels with one or more dogs.
Don't get me wrong, the wretched (who are such for whatever reason) certainly deserve at least the companionship of a dog. Dogs seldom propose getting drunk or shooting heroin, so they may even be better companions than the kinds of pals one acquires by persistently being in lumpenproletarian circles. But for fuck's sake, don't bring the dog out to beg with you because it clearly says that any alms will be split with a)the seller of rotgut (krutka), for drugs (that should be decriminalized and available at maintenance clinics), for some kind of food, and for the dog??!!
But what disturbs me more is that there are able bodied beggars not showing many, sometimes even no outward signs of addiction, misery and depredation. These guys should quit begging when they have enough to buy a Ryanair ticket to the UK or Germany, where they might be able to find work.
One beggar stood out -- a young, cleanly-dressed woman (early or mid-twenties), showing none of the signs of decline of the other young women who claim to beg for their children. What is worrisome that she looks able-bodied in another sense, that is, potentially approachable by people wanting to buy sex. In other words, she is potentially one step from prostitution (which, with some qualms, should be legalized) and the risk of being trafficked. Why doesn't she simply get the hell out of here before some else arranges to have her taken to elsewhere in Europe.
Now to urban cattle. I am not talking about the urban cattle of India that one sees simply moving about cities in traffic, standing, wandering, stopping and flicking the flies with their tails (or so one sees them in TV documentaries). Maybe I am wrong, but the idea of cattle to me means --dumb. The urban cattle I see day to day in the streets of Riga are the folks blithely, cluelessly wandering into traffic, doing the most outrageous things.
Take one guy. He is standing halfway in a traffic lane.  I am driving and slow down, gesture for him to cross. But what does Zork the Zombie do? Nothing. I drive around him and shout something like cross, for fuck's sake! (pises pāri! in Latvian). But there are more bizarre things ahead. I spot a guy standing on the white line in the middle of a major street (Avotu). This is a favorite grazing area for urban cattle who simply go out there and then dumbly watch the traffic, hoping to cross when the fancy strikes them.  Is he one of them?
No, the dude, lets call him Meatface, is standing and talking on his mobile phone. OK... We drive on to a place nearby to look at a used office chair. This means -- park, climb five flights of stairs, talk to the seller, determine that the chair is not for us, politely say goodbye, walk back to car and drive back to the paid parking lot where we keep it passing the corner of Avots and Lācplēša and what do we see-- Meatface is still standing in the middle of the street, talking on the phone. WTF?
Then there are the more nimble cattle, the darters, who dash blindly into the path of traffic in one of those gaps in the flow of cars. Cars do slow and sometimes stop, so the darting cattle are not often removed from the gene pool.
Urban cattle, to be sure, are not a Latvian phenomenon. My "favorites" in Stockholm, on the subway system are the ones who wander up to the top or bottom of an escalator and simply stand and stare. Stå och stirrare - stand and starers, they could be called in Swedish. Simply unable to unfuck themselves and made a decision -- Down or Not Down (the strange Swedish way of labeling escalators Ned and Ej ned).
An so to the the assless anorexic. She was walking ahead of me in one of the pedestrian tunnels, like a large, ultrathin Barbie doll come to life. Instead of legs, she seemed to be walking on thin, flesh-colored stilts. No hints of any body under her skirt, where the stilts disappear. Assless.
Anorexia, like anywhere, is a problem in Latvia, little talked about with probably no medical and psychological resources to deal with it. It is a first-world ailment, Latvia is moving toward being its own version of third-world lite. 

One reason I am looking for a Plan B jobwise

I try not to take things to the level of personal issues,  except when they reflect greater issues affecting Latvian society as a whole (such as street level observations of reckless bike driving, drunks, degenerates and wackos on the street). This case in point, however, illustrates how journalism is done in Latvia, both the deficiencies under which I consciously operate and the faults of the system by which news is processed.
One of the aspects of Latvian news agency work is sometimes covering events simply because they are happening and concern issues of possible interest. You simply sit through whatever it is and try to get some kind of readable angle on the event, often because stories are written simply to generate volume rather than quality (this is especially absurd in business journalism, where I believe a story has to a) move markets, which is not possible in Latvia or b) provide information that gives readers some form of business decision support). That is the way it should be, but to keep one's numbers up with those running the news machine, you sometimes write stuff based on ..well, WTF not? Just keep it accurate, if not meaningful.
I went to a meeting of broadcast-media related folks arranged by the Latvian National Electronic Mass Media Council (NEPLP for short in Latvia) to discuss the preliminary stages of drafting a new model for public service electronic media in the country. Tim Suter, a British expert, led off the presentations, talking about issues related to public service media governance and the different media models it can apply to. Suter has worked as a radio and  television journalist for the BBC, including "Newsnight", as an editor with the BBC, then with the British Department of Culture, Media and Sport, then with the British broadcast media oversight authority OFCOM,  and as the founder of two private consulting companies with such media organizations as the BBC, BBC Trust, News Corporation, ITV, Five, Time Warner, The Newspaper Society, TwoFour54, UKTV, Federal National Media Council (UAE), Discovery, Microsoft, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, the Council of Europe, the European Commission.
As a preface to my description of the specific problem (how a so-so, but accurate and printable story got killed), suffice it to say that based on his background, Suter probably knows what he is talking about when in comes to European broadcast media and has some idea of what the budgets of European broadcast organizations are like. In addition, he was presumably briefed on the situation in Latvia by his host, the deputy chairperson of the NEPLP, who said how pleased she was to have met Suter while at EU-related events and had thought of bringing him to share his knowledge on public media governance issues with the audience in Riga,
Suter gave a common sense description of the issues, but nothing in the nature of run down the hall shouting "stop the presses" as one did back in the day. There was a second presentation of the possible models emerging, in general terms, from the fog of what do we do next? that was made by a lady from Ernst& Young. Again, there are just so many ways you can line up the ducks if you are given three ways to do it. Nothing that would have deserved any bells back when wire services ran on teletype machines (I remember those times),
Then there was a discussion where someone, I believe it was an executive from Latvian Television, asked what Suter thought of the funding level (i.e, budget) of the Latvian broadcast media. Suter said that he had seen Latvia's figures "in outline" and it seemed to him that such a level of funding was "unsustainable" and would present the public service media with very difficult and perhaps irreconcilable alternatives of fulfilling the public service mission or engaging in commercial activity to maintain adequate revenues.
Bang! There was the basis for a best-effort story. I headed back for the office as I didn't have all day to spend at the event and would be replaced covering the conference by another reporter from the agency. Of course, I had no chance to ask Suter in a one-on-one interview exactly why he had doubts that Latvian public service media funding was sustainable, but given the constraints of the situation, I considered his background and authority in the field sufficient basis for publishing his snap opinion and adding that the heads of Latvian TV and radio have complained in the past about inadequate funding from the state. So it was a real issue, seen not only by the British expert.
The best comparison I could make is watching a sports TV show where, for some reason, a famous sports doctor makes a comment that, after seeing some short videos of a tennis player's last match, he suspects that the player may be about to suffer an injury. The doctor's opinion, heard on TV, would make adequate agency news copy based on the doctor's experience and record. He need not say that the way X served indicates he is protecting arm muscle such and such because it hurts him. If the doc says it, it is news, and it may be best practice, but not always possible, to call the doc and get an explanation in detailed medical terms, of how what was seen in two or three video highlights tells an experienced medical eye that something is going wrong.
Well, what happened was that a news editor demanded and insisted that the story contain Suter's detailed reasoning for why Latvian public media financing was unsustainable, or it was unfit to run. Given other stories and work and practicalities, I didn't think it was worth the effort to try to find out and said, look, the guy is an authority, not an idiot, and the issue has been raised before. It is an adequate, debate stimulating story. In fact, it contains elements of the reporter generated "exclusive" where you call up side A to tell you that yes, they still believe white and do a follow up with side B saying, outrageous, we think black and a third story by a political commentator saying that the nation is yet again debating black vs white showing that political polarization is growing. I mean, why not, everyone does it and the point is, it suffices that these views are real (even if dormant when you make the call) and accurately reflected.
What it ended with was that I chopped everything Suter said and ran only what the Latvian consultant said (nothing special) and e-mailed the news editor -- as far as I am concerned, fuck it, kill the whole thing. Which apparently happened. An ignorance-based decision, IMHO.
Having said that, it is yet another reason to get out of a situation where I find myself doing half-assed journalism for an often half-assed news product. Any reasonable job offers will be considered -- preferably for English-language media outside Latvia, inside Latvia, or, all else failing, some other media in Latvia. Maybe IR needs someone to do telecoms and high tech?

Narcotic summer effect and a two-wheeled jolt to reality

This is the time of year when Latvia, indeed, the entire Baltic-Nordic area blossoms into summer with long bright evenings and never-quite dark nights. The Midsummer or Jāņi festival is the pinnacle of "Latvianness" with its Līgo songs, beer, traditional cheese, bonfires and celebration. Everything looks rosy and this year, there was a long holiday weekend of four days to take a break from work.
With the sunny streets filled with tourists and the often glum population looking a little better, the summer in Riga can have a kind of narcotic effect, exaggerating the things that are good about life here and putting the deep, fundamental crises in the economy, politics and society in the background.
This evening I was shocked out of the mild euphoria when, while crossing at a green light (for pedestrians) on a one-way street, a burly man on a bike whizzed by narrowly missing me and turning into the street in the wrong direction.  I was so startled that I yelled after him the Latvian equivalent of "watch where you are going, motherfucker!" (Skaties kur brauc, mauka! -- the English translation expresses the emotional gist and is not literal). Anyway, the dude actually circled around to mutter something at me, but that was the end of it.
I have written about reckless cycling earlier and how it brings out a lot of contradictions. On the one hand, bike riding is "green" and makes economic sense for those who don't want to pay upkeep on a car or public transport fares.  A number of my work colleagues ride bikes and I would never wish them ill. I  may have earlier written (after some near misses by two-wheeled assholes racing and weaving down sidewalks) that I regard news of bike riders being knocked down by cars as "one less" (temporarily or permanently). That is a bit harsh, and the irony is that the urban bike cowboys usually aren't the ones who get taken out by motorists, they are usually someone out in the country, alone on a dark dirt road who gets mowed down by the local shit-faced (lopā for my Latvian readers) country boozehound weaving down the road in a car.
There has been a campaign to alert drivers to the increasing numbers of bike riders and their "invisibility", but I would not risk anyone's life on the assumption a series of TV ads will change the generally savage (though less than some years ago) attitude of Latvian drivers. In any event, there is really no place for bike riders. There are few bike paths and the riders forced on to the sidewalk by traffic probably have no choice. They do have a choice about their speed and the possibility to use a warning bell to indicate they are approaching to pedestrians.  Unfortunately Riga is not, in terms of infrastructure and societal behavior, nor will it be for decades, anything like Copenhagen or Amsterdam or even Stockholm, where there is a civilized order for both motor vehicles and bikes. Bike riders will continue to be a threat to the rest of us and some of the rest of us (in cars  and trucks) will menace those on bikes. The low-intensity conflict will go on, with casualties on both sides.

A political weathervane and a fine, bland little gathering

The first organized public reaction to the dismissal of the Saeima and subsequent “merriment” was a rally called by TV personality Viesturs Dūle and others on an isolated, semi-artificial island in the river Daugava. The idea was to protest against the oligarchs allegedly running Latvian politics and also to “bury the oligarch within each of us”.

The latter part very much put me off from the whole undertaking, because I don't feel a bit like wanting to make a great fortune by skimming tax funds and using other advantages derived from state capture. I have nothing against a great fortune, but please, let it come to me by my own efforts on a law-governed, free market.

If the message was that the citizenry of Latvia is also responsible for the dismal state of politics, then it has nothing to do with any oligarch in any of us. Instead, it is the inability to learn from past mistakes in voting, to hold politicians to their promises (at least the executable promises), and to be ready to organize a democratic, non-parliamentary opposition/resistance movement when one realizes that the whole system here in Latvia is, to put it precisely, fucked.

Aside from that and the fact that the whole event on June 8 can probably be best described by the Slavic-derived Latvian word balagāns, (a kind of cheapo, shallow but still entertaining little carnival), it was a weathervane event, since as many as 8 000 mostly young people gathered to listen to a few speeches and watch a huge wooden symbol of “corruption” set afire. The thought crossed my mind that something like that would have more impact if a real symbol of the oligarchs were burned, like a barn or toolshed belonging to one of them (naturally, harming no physical person, in the spirit of the 1960s German Gewalt gegen Sachen /Violence against objects/ debate within the Ausserparlamentarische Opposition/APO). But we are still a few steps away from something like that, which, for various reasons, I doubt would have any desirable effect.

Anyway, I hope that many of those on the AB Dambis island went away from the event committed to doing something more than just shooing away the oligarch within them and voting on hypothetical and real issues on an internet website. Heck, with a little help from some experts, I (or anyone else) could put up a website where we could vote on the merits of intergalactic flight or anything else. As far as the real oligarchs in Latvia are concerned, I am afraid that they best fit in with a bizarre Facebook event scheduled for exactly 10 days later, on June 18, National I Don't Give A Fuck Day. That is how the powers behind this country's bozo parliamentarians look at public opinion in Latvia, like it or not.

On an everyday basis, the social degeneration continues apace. I had to take a bus to the airport to retrieve the family car, since my wife had flown away to Sweden for a few days and left it in a long-term lot for me to pick up and use over the weekend. The first thing that happened on the good old No. 22 bus was that the traffic wardens or whatever you call them boarded the bus and checked everyone's electronic tickets. Then, knowing almost no English on the one bus route most frequented by foreigners, they hassled an air Baltic pilot (I think he did register his e-ticket) and got a LVL 5 pay-off from him. It was either that or delay his flight to Baku.

Next on board was a shirtless junkie who spent the whole trip up to the next to last stop before the airport nodding (actually bowing at times, almost to the floor) and leaning as he rocked back and forth on a young mother and her kid, or almost bumping into the already fleeced pilot standing across from him. The junkie was joined by two or three criminal looking friends at one of the last few stops before the airport, but then the whole lot proceeded to hop off at a stop in the middle of nowhere just before the airport. To what purpose, I don't know. Driving back in my car, I saw Joe the Junkie waiting for the bus back to town, still in his own quadrant of outer space.

Personally, I think you have to be pretty much a degenerate fuckwit to develop a heroin habit. Politically, I think they should legalize the stuff, register addicts, give them prescriptions, clean needles, shooting areas and decrease the crime rate from addiction related thefts, burglaries and robberies. None of this will happen in Latvia this century...

Another thing brought back to me at the anti-oligarch (but nice, please!) rally was the fact that even Latvians with some sense of purpose are unable to think through any issues that concern them. I don't think I am breaching any confidences by writing about someone who approached me as the rally was breaking up (a man of around 60, roughly my age) and wanted to talk abut some things. The core of it was that he wanted to set up an NGO for Latvian families. So I asked – fine, to what exact purpose? One of things bothering him was that ethnic Latvians had been given fewer opportunities to privatize their apartments than ethnic Russians (post-war migrants) who mainly lived in Soviet-era housing. Many Latvians lived in older buildings that were denationalized.

Assuming we cannot turn back the privatization or denationalization process, I then said that the issue was one of building housing. That didn't move the discussion ahead, as the person believes that there are ex-KGB and Communists everywhere whose specific purpose was to derail any such initiatives. I asked whether, perhaps, the former KGB, if still under control of Russian intelligence, might have other missions under present-day circumstances. Sabotaging initiatives to build housing for Latvian families did not seem to be at the top of the global priority list for anyone running stay-behind networks out of the Kremlin, IMHO. Neither did that move things anywhere.

I then suggested that some people could solve their family housing problems by working abroad, but then the person said that the people he was concerned about didn't even have 5 LVL to buy a cheap Ryanair tickets out of here. Well then, said I, the problem is really extreme poverty, which can have a number of personal and structural causes – lack of education, addiction/alcoholism, lack of jobs, etc. But that also didn't focus things. I am still not sure what this proposed NGO will do, how it will affect anything and how it will define the root problems that it wants society or the government to deal with. There seems to be a total lack of education in problem solving and the critical thought (what are the issues? what are the causes?) needed for it. To be sure, the person was sincere and not really a crackpot (not that public gatherings lack for those). But this is the level of things here. The ones who can get their heads around issues have already done the socio-economic math and are out of here. On that note, please look again at my video CV and spread it around, as I have serious doubts, very serious doubts, about staying on here: http://latviantelecoms.blogspot.com/2011/04/request-for-leads-tips-and-job-offers.html

"Dismiss the Saeima" - an even brighter false dawn?

It finally happened. What has been chanted frequently in the street of Latvia's capital by larger or smaller crowds of demonstrators or picketers has at last been set in motion: Dismiss the Saeima(parliament)! Dismiss the Saeima!

After what can only be described as a partly depraved, largely cowardly “vote” by 37 abstentions to NOT lift the parliamentary immunity of oligarch Ainārs Šlesers so that a court authorized search of his residences could be conducted, President Valdis Zatlers probably did the right thing. It was the second major event after the January 13, 2009 riots that made the ruling elite wake up to “a new Latvia” the day after. Or so it seemed and seems.

The problem is that complete political depravity, incompetence, cluelessness etc. has become endemic to Latvia and one need not have a “wake-up call” event to discover that. It has been going on with various degrees of intensity for 20 years. That is long enough to conclude that the “symptoms” are not temporary, transitory (as in side effects of transition from the Soviet system) or even easily curable, if at all. The inability to rule itself with out massive self-plunder and waste of resources given in good faith by (starting with G-24 funds in the early 1990s, to EU Phare programs in some of which much was taught, little learned or applied, to EU funds the past few years) is no longer an anomaly of Latvia, it is a characteristic. It is what the anti-corruption police were fighting in their raids against the offices of the oligarchs Andris Šķēle and Aivars Lembergs and with the warrants to search Šlesers' residences. 

I doubt that this gesture by President Zatlers, who concisely and mildly defined the problem in his televised speech, will do very much to solve the problem. By bringing about new elections (a Saeima trusted by 10% of the population is unlikely to get referendum support) Zatlers has at least opened a very thin crack (not a window, we have been missing “windows” through 20 years and five elections) of opportunity for some kind of change.

The question is, who will carry out those changes? We have seen false dawns of reform, starting with the founding of New Era (Jaunais Laiks/JL), one of the components of the present Vienotība (Unity) alliance. That brought us the “golden hands” of the corrupt surgeon/Minister of Health appointed by the loopy Prime Minister Einars Repše, who at least decided to serve not having collected LVL 1 million (around USD 2 million ) in contributions for a personal fortune that he asked for. Not being as rich as he wanted to be didn't keep Repše from making huge crackpot investments (a luxury yacht ride business, real estate in the middle of nowhere) and borrowing money like a sheik who had spend too much time at the water pipe.

The JL government fell, paving the way for the good old boys of Aigars Kalvitis and the “fat years” to run the Latvian economy (with a little help from Swedish banks and a population that never learned the difference between loans and gifts) into the ground, leading to the present years of depression, stagnation and mass emigration. Then, in a surge of hope for which there was little basis, the 2010 elections brought in Vienotība, the new amalgam around JL (JL2 or JL and New Friends, were it a band). The previous administration, which was effectively “re-elected” unter the Vienotība banner, had already done much to make spending cuts with an axe and in a manner that demoralized and depleted vital public services rather than making them more efficient, leaner and meaner. Hundreds left the ranks of the police, there was probably much “negative selectivity” among other bureaucracies, with those hit by salary cuts but able to sell their education and skills elsewhere willingly moving on, most likely, out of Latvia. The medical professions (doctors, nurses) started a major bleed-off to other EU countries. All in all, the catastrophe and demoralization continued.

Vienotība also got in bed with the puppet party of oligarch Aivars Lembergs, the Green and Farmer's Union, in order to form a government and keep both the pro-Russian Harmony Center and the radical nationalist “ All for Latvia” in opposition. Even without mentioning the disunity preventing a quick unification of “Unity” into a single party, Vienotība has failed most expectations raised in the election campaign. It deserves to be run out of town, but probably with fewer dogs and pitchfork waving citizens chasing it than the other parties.

So one the euphoria fades after Zatler's speech and historical decree number 2 starting dismissal of the Saeima, what happens next? I don't see a solution. Many of the best and brightest have simply left the country for places where their efforts result in a better quality of life and where rational (though often flawed) governance is not an issue. The political elite, like a drunk someone is trying to deal with, has gotten another loud slap with a towel soaked in ice-water, but as we know, this doesn't make anyone less drunk. It will be interesting to see what new chimerical political creatures will appear over the next few months to drag what is left of the electorate into new illusory traps.

Maybe I am wrong, I am not on the scene at the moment (visiting the US for personal reasons), but I am not placing any hopeful bets.

Crusading Obscurantists attack a social studies textbook

Obscurantism and theocratic tendencies, never far in the background in Latvia, are raising their heads again as a virulent debate rages over the inclusion of psychologist's views on homosexuality in a 9th grade social sciences textbook. The psychotherapist Jolanta Cihanoviča is quoted in a reprinted interview as saying that homosexuality is not an illness, that this has been acknowledged by medical and psychiatric organizations around the world, and that it is a “normal aspect” of human sexuality.
Religious organizations, including the archbishop of the Latvian Lutheran Church Jānis Vanags, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Latvia, Zbigņevs Stankevičs, representatives of Baptist and Seventh-Day Adventist congregations, signed a letter to the Latvian government demand that the textbook be withdrawn because of what they deemed unacceptable views on homosexuality. Interestingly, the letter was also signed by a nationalist member of the Latvian parliament, the Saeima, Imants Parādnieks, who, according to press reports and his own statements, maintains long-term, affectionate relationships with two women and has been called a “polygamist” by some media.
Latvia's Ministry of Education and Science has now caved in to the demands of the ultra-conservative religious factions (mainstream Lutheranism is tolerant of homosexuality, Latvia's church does not even ordain women) and hinted that the views of “the church” would be included in the next edition of the textbook. Presently, it looks like the “church” is considered to be only those religious leaders that vehemently denounce homosexuality as sin and depravity, and also reject the views of medical science and psychology that different sexual orientation is not an illness or disorder.
I wouldn't object to a social science textbook that illustrated contemporary trends by examining the debate in society and within world religions on sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. That could very well include quoting the condemnation of gays as depraved sinners by some Latvian religious leaders and the acceptance of gays and all other people by such ministers as Harvard-trained Juris Cālitis, who has held religious services ahead of Latvia's controversial “Gay Pride” events a few years ago.
However, the danger in the present turn of events is that the education authorities of a formally secular democracy are caving in to the demands of obscurantist religious movements and their political supporters. If they make gains on the “hot” issue of gays, other attacks on the secular teaching of science are not far behind. After all, as recent polls show, this is a country where 35% of the population believe that the sun revolves around the earth.
Media stories about the controversy, as always, generated hundreds of reader comments, most of them vehemently homophobic, supporting the censorship of the textbook, and referring to various conspiracy theories about why most medical and psychiatric organizations in the world, including the World Health Organizaition (WHO) do not see gays as Satan's agents sent to deprave the young and to destroy Latvia in particular.
Cihanoviča, an experienced psychotherapist who has been published internationally, was denounced in violent, hateful language in many of the comments, something that has almost become a norm in Latvian internet media. It yet again affirms my observation some time ago that Latvians hate free speech and love hate speech or something to that effect.
To be “fair”, or at least to explain why the endemic witches' kettle of ignorance, xenophobia, paranoia and twisted national inferiority complex was set a-boiling again, Cihanoviča used the word “normal” (normāls) in Latvian. It became a red flag to a herd of intellectually blind (or disabled) raging bulls, because to many Latvians, normāls is seen as meaning “this is what you MUST accept” or “this is what you MUST go out and do”. In other words, in the narrow, scared and information deprived mind-space of many Latvians, it mean that “we are turning your kids into gays and they better obey, because it is normāls.” In fact, normal simply means that it is something that is out there, that doesn't go away, that is part of nature, life and society. In Latvia, snow is normal, but I don't have to affirm that I love it or to run out and buy skis or a sled.
The whole issue is interesting, because it falls squarely across the themes of two of my blogs – one on free speech issues, because text book censorship by religious groups is a major free speech issue in many countries, It also addresses the issue of Latvia as a failed state of sorts, whose failure is partly rooted in the persistence of ignorance, xenophobia, authoritarianism and the populist appeak of crusading obscurantism or, as Latvians put it karojošā tumsonība. The warriors of intellectual darkness have made the education authorities blink, which is a very bad sign.

Protests and flowers mark 21 years since Latvia's independence renewal vot

A small protest rally and an official flower-laying ceremony marked the 21st anniversary of a vote on May 4, 1990 by Latvia's then Soviet-style legislature, the Supreme Council, to start restoring the nation's independence and break out of the crumbling Soviet Union.
Two decades and a year later, Latvia fits the initial description I wrote when starting this blog under its current title -- a "failed state lite" where the facade of modern civilization remains, but society's trust in the institutions of governance and in a viable future is probably irrevocably shattered.
To be sure, independence was accompanied by some unrealistic expectations that could be still heard among the protestors. Independence is not complete economic autarky (self-sufficiency) in some kind of surreal economic system where everything is owned by "the Latvians". Independence is not a stern, all-providing powerful state/government, that ensures and enforces 19th century morals and values on an obedient population. On the same subject, independence is not an instrument for finding a new, charismatic "leader" for an isolated pastoral (largely farming) nation looking only to itself and the past.
Independence was and still may be an opportunity for Latvia and the people living there to participate in the modern, Western world as it is (hardly an ideal place, but much better than the world before the Enligtenment and the spread of much maligned and totally misinterpreted "liberalism" that gave birth to the idea and possibility of free nations of free individuals governed by the consent of these individuals).
In any case, this was not meant to be an essay, but a videoblog, which I now present:

An update on the state of affairs (videoblog)

I did a videoblog update on the state of affairs in Latvia. Sometimes I don't feel that I have time to write, so instead, I sat down in front of my iMac webcam and recorded this.

"Urlasation" -- the path of the future in Latvia?

A method both used and sometimes disparaged in sociology and economics is that of "street level impressions", or what one sees, day-to-day, not using any particular methodology or quantification. It is, to be sure, subjective, but not always useless information.
My street level impression living here in Riga is that society is undergoing visible signs of demographic shift and behavioral degeneration. The number of sullen, boorish, possibly (often probably) abusively intoxicated or just plain disturbingly weird individuals seems (at least proportionately) on the rise. Just yesterday I passed a pasty-faced, glassy-eyed young man who decided to scream incoherently just as we passed each other on the sidewalk. His gait was not that of a typical drunk, more likely the user of an individual combination of recreational chemistry. And this at around 11:30 in the morning. Which is not to say that  9 am, shit-faced drunks aren't a common sight.
The "street" is also getting disturbingly older. I am not simply talking about old people -- I am talking about worn out, haggard, empty-eyed, decrepit looking desperate old folks along side the drug and alcohol addled, white-trashy looking young. The bright and ambitious 20-somethings can still be seen, but I suspect most of them are gone. Many of the teenagers and young loitering on the streets in hoodies and jogging pants are locally called "urlas", a kind of Slavic slang for what I would call lumpenproletarian white trash. Urlas are generally seen as Russian, but there are plenty of ethnic Latvians fitting the category as well.
My view of things is, of course, colored by the fact that I work near the Riga central station, and central railway stations around Europe have a way of attracting the weird, the strange and the underclass.  I think no one can outdo some of the drunken derelicts I have seen near the Helsinki train station nor the junkies that used to hang around near the Frankfurt Bahnhof when my office was next to it.
The begging around the Riga train station is taking on some Third World aspects -- the public display, even flaunting of amputations and other disabilities is commonplace. There is a young man (otherwise able bodied for a desk, service, or sit-down factory job) who stands on crutches displaying his below knee amputation and soliciting alms. Nearby on the steps leading down to a pedestrian tunnel is a woman shaking from some neurological disease and others whose main affliction is alcoholism.
While there is little or nothing that could be done for most of the beggars. one wonders why the young man simply doesn't emigrate. It is also surprising to be approached by young alms-seekers who start the conversation in good English. So emigrate! You have the basic skills.
The depressing thing about these observations is that they point to a clear and almost irreversible social degeneration -- the "urlasation" of the remaining young (or rather, the emigration of most but the urlas) and the pauperization and visible psychological misery of the old and very old. One rarely seems even mildly happy faces among the older population, but quite a few haggard, thousand-yard stares.
Many, maybe even most of the individuals and categories of individuals I have described cannot be strictly "blamed" for being what they are. They are the victims of a collective political and societal failure, after 20 years of independence, to produce conditions where there is reasonably efficient governance and where education has produced productive individuals who can locally be paid at least roughly in line with their productivity. What we have instead is a downward spiraling or, at best, stagnating, demoralized, ill-educated, poorly productive society that has little hope of pulling itself out of its self-made misery in the foreseeable future.