Bens Latkovskis / Autori

The fight against the Covid pandemic is increasingly reminiscent of a world war. Fortunately, in a much lighter version compared to the wars that took place in the first half of the last century. This time, the war is not being waged between individual countries or their parts, but at the same time on two different fronts, against the virus and the spread of the disease it causes, and against those self-proclaimed internal enemies that seem to be hampering quick victory.

The main decision taken by the Crisis Management Council in the black of the night and accepted by the government is, of course, not about changing store opening hours, banning children's out-of-school clubs and watching theater performances in half-empty halls with covered faces. All this is the usual veil of smoke, behind which is the usual routine - the acquisition of money, which is more than there has ever been before.

The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Filipino journalist Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. For efforts to protect freedom of expression, which is an essential condition for democracy and lasting peace.

With the onset of autumn, the number of people with Covid has risen sharply. Just like last fall. A year has passed (hopefully with intensive work) and now we should evaluate what has been done.

On Monday night, the virtual world experienced the biggest technological crash since 2008. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram went down for several hours. Of the big ones, only Twitter maintained smooth performance. Paradoxically, once again confirming the irrational nature of the market (and not only the market), Twitter shares fell the most on the stock exchange - 6.7%, while Facebook (FB) only fell 5%.

An Eastern sage once said: In a forest without a tiger, the monkey becomes king. This epigraph could be repeated in almost every article dedicated to our political reality.

Videos are circulating on social media in which Australian police brutally deal with people who have allowed themselves to appear in public without a face covering – the burka of 21st century white people. These videos clearly demonstrate the mental brotherhood of all people, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.

Germany has held the most exciting Bundestag elections of this century, as most political observers point out. As the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has ruled the country for the last 16 years, did not take part in the elections herself, the intrigue on who will be her successor remained until the last moment.

The foreign policy course of US President Joe Biden can be described in three words - "America is back". At least that's how it's presented. By this is meant the restoration of good US relations with its transatlantic NATO partners.

As every autumn, in September, the largest worldwide political fashion show in the world, the UN General Assembly, takes place in New York, on the shores of East River. It so happened that on the same day both the world's most influential political couturier, the President of the United States, and our President demonstrated their collection of political comments. First Joe Biden, and after a while Egils Levits, as usual, in a half-empty hall.

According to the World Bank's (WB) ranking of the world's most business-friendly countries - Doing Business 2020 - this year, as last year, Latvia ranks 19th out of 190 countries, leaving 171 economies behind, says the Ministry of Economics' latest report on Latvia's business environment, dated October 2019. The question may arise, is there no newer rating for 2021? The answer is short: there is not and will not be, because the WB has stopped determining this rating.

Signatures are now being collected on the portal manabalss.lv for “unjustifiably unvaccinated” Covid-19 patients to cover the costs of treatment themselves. One does not even want to think about what anti-humanitarian proposals could follow next, but already today there is a rapid increase in conflict situations in schools between Covid skeptics and Covid hysterics.

According to polls, Western Europe is most concerned about climate change, but Latvia's biggest problem is depopulation. Not only from the national ethnic point of view that there are fewer and fewer Latvians in the world and we are a dying nation, but also from a purely practical, economic point of view.

Šo sarunu ar ilggadējo ZZS frakcijas līderi Saeimā un bijušo Latvijas Zemnieku savienības (LZS) priekšsēdētāju Augustu Brigmani iniciēja raksts “14. Saeimas rezultāti”. Brigmanis kā joprojām aktīvs LZS biedrs vēlējās precizēt dažus, viņaprāt, diskutablus jautājumus saistībā ar nākamruden paredzētajām 14. Saeimas vēlēšanām.

In an interview with TV3's morning program "900 sekundes", Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš made some debatable statements and was basically inciting people.

On Saturday's TV24 program "Nacionālo interešu klubs", talking about changes in the world after the 9/11 terrorist attack, Professor Leons Taivans expressed the idea of the decline of US power.

In the first part of this series, I wrote that although the 14th Saeima elections are nominally scheduled after more than a year, we can already talk about their results, because the construction of the political system in Latvia is finished, which means that only insignificant, cosmetic changes are possible in the future. In the previous article, I described this new political system, but this time I will talk about the main task (goal) of this election and the mechanisms by which this goal will be achieved. And, of course, about the very results of the 14th Saeima elections.

As in the aftermath of any particularly tragic event, also after the terrorist attack of September 11 2001, statements were often made in the public sphere that "the world will never be the same again", "history will be divided into 'before 9/11' and 'after 9/11'” and the like.

Although the elections to the 14th Saeima are nominally planned only after more than a year, we can already talk about their results, because in Latvia the construction of the load-bearing structures of the political system has been fully completed. This means that only insignificant, cosmetic changes are possible in the future.

One of the main faces of last summer's protests in Belarus - flutist Maria Kolesnikova - was sentenced to 11 years in prison in a closed and secret "court" hearing on Monday. As even her lawyers were forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, these 11 years are practically the only thing known about the trial itself.

It is about 1.5 km from Kyiv Central Railway Station, where the bus from Boryspil Airport stops, to the booked hotel. Already in Riga, looking at the map, we decided to go this distance on foot. In reality, however, everything looks a little different than when studying the map at home, so after getting a bit lost, I asked a passerby - a forty-year-old, portly, simply dressed man - how to get to the Olympic Stadium, which is the nearest landmark to the hotel.

August 31 is the deadline for US troops to leave Afghanistan. The deadline was originally set by the United States itself, but has now been set by the Taliban as an ultimatum, putting US President Joe Biden in a rather ambiguous position.