The Lithuania Tribune has conducted an interview with Ojars Kalnins, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Latvia in the Riga Conference 2011. The interview was conducted on 17 September. 1. Lithuania and Poland are going through one of the most difficult …
Mr. Ojars Kalnins, the Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Latvia gave an interview to the Lithuania Tribune. We talked about implications of the crises of the Lithuanian and Polish relationship on the other Baltic States, Golovatov case, the Baltic Unity …
You probably don’t have a “policy” toward foreigners. Most people don’t. We just deal with ‘em as we meet them. If you live in a city like London or New York it feels like everyone is a foreigner. Them or us in an ethnic sense …
If you missed the total eclipse of the moon on December 21st, you probably also didn’t realize that it fell around the time of the Winter Solstice. If you know anything about Latvians, you know they love their Summer Solstice, but the Winter Solstice has …
Back in 2008, I edited the revised and expanded translation of Uldis Ģērmanis’ legendary history of Latvia, “The Latvian Saga”. Since Ģērmanis had written the book in 1959 from Sweden and the story stopped with the Soviet occupation of Latvia during World War II, I …
The one thing you can’t say about voters in Latvia is that they lack for information. As we approach election day on October 2nd, Latvia’s 1,514,936 eligible voters have been talked at, written to, snail-mailed and e-mailed, pamphleted on the street, and proselytized on the …
Back in 1992, Bill Clinton won the U.S. presidential election because his top campaign advisor James Carville made everyone in the Clinton campaign repeat one sentence every morning when they woke up: “It’s the economy,stupid”. This was an internal campaign theme intended to remind everyone …
In August, Latvia marks three anniversaries worth noting. On August 11, 1920, Russia signed a peace treaty with Latvia. Nineteen years later, on August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. This promise of non-aggression between Stalin and Hitler led …
A few years ago the Latvian Tourism Development Agency ran a promotional campaign called “You Won’t Believe it Until You See It!”, which talked about such things as blue cows, flying people and extraordinary singers. If that campaign were still up and running today, the …
Most people don’t know that Latvia has mountains and even fewer know that they are blue. Actually, Latvia has several “Blue Mountains” on its landscape and even a popular play called “Blue Mountain Marta”. But only one of Latvia’s “blue mountains” can be seen from …
When I was lobbying for Latvia’s independence in the late 1980’s, I used to tell Washington politicians that the Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia were just a brief 50-year interruption in the history of the Latvian Republic. When Latvia’s independence was restored in 1991, …
The choice of Rīga yesterday as the site for the secretariat of the newly established Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) is the second piece of good news Latvia has enjoyed this week. The other good news was that Latvia’s blondes have decided …
