Bens Latkovskis / Autori

On April 23 of this year, Latvian society was shocked by horrific news: in Tukums, homophobes overwhelmed by bestial hatred found and set on fire a homosexual person in the middle of the night in the stairwell of the victim's house.

It was thought that the Glasgow climate conference and the G-20 summit in Rome, which was largely devoted to climate issues, would be the main political performance of this autumn. But now there are more and more voices saying that the outcome of this conference will be a fiasco.

Unfortunately, in almost two years of the pandemic, it has not been possible to find a clear and fully explanatory algorithm for the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the Covid-19 disease caused by it. Attempts to find a close and, above all, unequivocal correlation between the measures taken and the spread of the virus have still not yielded unquestionably convincing success.

The announcement by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen that there will be no fences at the EU's external border and that money will not be allocated to "barbed wire and walls" has caused confusion among part of Latvian society. How so? Even the EU acknowledges that the migrant crisis on the Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian border with Belarus is an element of hybrid warfare deliberately triggered by dictator Lukashenko, but tangible help is not following.

The deterioration of relations between the EU and Poland threatens to have very serious consequences. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has even warned that these consequences could be tragic. His words should be listened to in particular, because the mentality aspect plays a very important role in this matter, and there are no people in Europe who know Poles better than Lithuanians. Together, the two once formed the most powerful country in Europe - the Polish-Lithuanian union.

The "hard" lockdown has finally been launched. We can now take a breather at home and take a look at the political context of this event.

The coalition agreed on Monday to announce a hard lockdown from Thursday.

Only retroactively do people say with conviction that this or that event could have been easily foreseen because everything was going that way so obviously that only the blind man could miss it. In reality, until the very last moment, people don't want to believe that something really bad can happen. For example, that a serious, great war might begin.

First off, two things. First: a person feels the greatest injustice and resentment when according to some common criteria something is given to others, but not to him. Second: only someone who is morally twisted is ready to punish and abuse the elderly, for whatever reason.

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.