Saturday, 17 June 2000

"For Fatherland and Freedom"  Latvian Link
  News
  Picture Album

Subj: Latvian Mailer and AOL Chat Reminder for Sunday, June 18th
Date: 6/17/00 8:32:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: Silvija
File: usmas-ezers.jpg (40779 bytes)
DL Time (TCP/IP): < 1 minute

Sveiki, all!

With our Latvian vacation coming up in month or so, our thoughts turn to our "other" home... (well, actually, our thoughts are really turning to home made chicken soup made with "milestiba" — love — for our colds/bronchitis... but soup seemed less entertaining...)

This week's picture is of Usmas Ezers (Usma's Lake), near where Peters' mom lived in Mordanga.

In looking around for some information on Usmas Ezers, we ran across an informative description as to its size, depth, what fish were plentiful, and so forth, part of a larger site we're featuring this week.

In the news,

It's sad and ironic that Putin is threatening world instability during the very week in history that the Soviets turned the Baltics into puppet states and that, a year later, Stalin began his mass deportations.

Again, we wrap up with warm thoughts of "home..." and Usmas Ezers.

Remember, mailer or not, Lat Chat spontaneously appears every Sunday on AOL starting around 9:00/9:30pm Eastern time, lasting until 11:00/11:30pm. AOL'ers can follow this link: Town Square - Latvian chat.

Ar visu labu,

Silvija Peters

IN ACCORDANCE WITH AOL'S MAIL POLICY and good manners, please let Silvija (Silvija) know if you wish to be deleted from our mailing list. Past mailers are archived at latvians.com. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

  Latvian Link


The information on Usma's Ezers was part of a site dedicated to "Information for fishermen and water tourists"; it's available in Latvian only.

http://www.vis.lv/cope/

  In the News

U.S. Defense Secretary Cohen: Russia must do its part for good relations
    VILNIUS, Lithuania, June 10 (UPI) — Russian opposition to the possible expansion of NATO to include Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will not influence NATO's decision in 2002 to admit those countries to the alliance, says U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen. Moreover, Russia must share the burden of restoring good relations with the West, Cohen said at a press conference here with his Lithuanian counterpart Ceslovas Stankevicius.
    "First of all we should be clear Russia does not have a veto over NATO decisions," Cohen said. "We always want to take into account Russians concerns and Russian interests as we make our decisions in terms of how we carry out actions today and what we may do tomorrow, but that is internal to our decisions, and Russia does not have a veto over those decisions. NATO members will decide in year 2002 whether there should be an enlargement."
    Cohen said relations with Russia seem to be getting back on track after almost a year of strain brought on by the NATO-led war with Yugoslavia, a traditional Russian ally.
    Nevertheless, the responsibility for restoring strong ties between NATO and Russia is not NATO's duty alone, he said. "That is a mutual responsibility. Establishing a good-neighbor policy also requires Russia to act in ways that are cooperative and constructive. So it's always very much of a two-way street. That's how mutual confidence and respect is established," Cohen said.
    Russia just this week threw Cohen and the Clinton administration a curve by first rejecting their request to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow the United States to push ahead with a strategic missile defense system, and then offering its own version of a defensive system as a counterproposal.
    Cohen expressed concerns that the Russian proposal is not feasible and is meant to undermine NATO support for the controversial U.S. National Missile Defense program.
    Maintaining good relations with Russia is one of the chief concerns of tiny Lithuania, a former Soviet satellite that declared its independence in 1990, but won it only after nine months of military occupation and after 14 civilians were killed during a crackdown.
    Lithuania is one of three Baltic states seeking to join NATO, a decision that will be made by the alliance in 2002.
    Russia has made it very clear it opposes NATO membership for Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, a fact that Cohen downplayed today.
     "Whatever takes place with NATO enlargement it's important that the Baltic states and the other members of the European community and NATO itself seek to find ways to cooperate on many levels with Russia, be it in environmental protection, disaster relief, peacekeeping operations — wherever we can. Separate and apart from NATO, I think it is important (for all nations) to find ways to constructively engage Russia," Cohen said.
    Cohen will visit Moscow for meetings with Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, members of the Russian Duma and possibly President Vladimir Putin.
    Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon told reporters after a meeting with Cohen and the eight other defense ministers gathered in Vilnius for a conference that all agree they need to continue drawing Russia into the fold. "They need to continue engaging with Russia, to expand engagement between Russian and the Baltic states, and get Russia involved in more 'Partnership for Peace' exercises," said Bacon, who attended the morning meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen. "They want cooperation with Russia, not confrontation. Everybody was clear about that."
    "They all said the idea is you can't have a secure Europe if you are divided in two camps," Bacon said.
    Further cooperation may have the side benefit of easing Russian fears about NATO expansion, Cohen said.
    "To the extent such measures are undertaken it does contribute to a sense of security on the part of Russian people and Russian leaders and that will be important as debate unfolds on future NATO membership," he said. Nine former Soviet satellite states aspire to NATO membership, including the three Baltic states, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania.
    Lithuania in particular has made "great progress" in trying to prepare itself to meet the high standards of NATO membership, Cohen said.
    Last year NATO accepted three new members out of the five former Iron Curtain states that wanted to join — Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
    "We have indicated that the door to NATO remains open. No nation should be excluded by virtue of geography or history," Cohen said.
    The Baltic states are the most controversial of the new crop of candidates. The three countries have strong ties to the United States: the president of Lithuania, Valdus Adamkus, was an American citizen and the Chicago-area administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the chief of the military was an American Army officer.
    But Russia considers the three countries its front line and strongly opposes their NATO membership. Bacon said the Estonian Defense Minister, Juri Luik, at the meeting expressed his view that NATO should accept all nine candidates at once in 2002 both to unify Europe and to deflect the attention from the Baltic states' accession.
Copyright 2000 by United Press International

World Health Organization: Misusing Antibiotics Makes Them Less Effective
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
    WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) — If people do not stop misusing antibiotics, new "superbugs" that resist all drugs could take the world back to the time when minor infections killed, the World Health Organization said on Monday.
    But the WHO also recommended that antibiotics be used more widely than ever to treat diseases that need to be fought with the powerful drugs.
    "We must take urgent measures to turn back the threat of infectious disease," Dr. David Heymann, executive director for communicable diseases at WHO, told a news conference.
    "We are here today to call on the world to mobilize a massive effort to make better use of these powerful weapons before the window of opportunity closes and before we move further toward the pre-antibiotic age."
    Doctors and health officials have been warning for years that bacteria are developing resistance to even the strongest antibiotics.
    Because they are so numerous and multiply so quickly, a few bacteria or viruses can survive almost any medical assault and, as in the old adage, that which does not kill them makes them stronger. Microbes with a slight tendency to resist the antibiotic survive and pass on their genes. Over time, forms evolve that are fully resistant.
    If a patient does not take a full course of drugs to wipe out all the infectious bugs, resistance develops even more quickly. If people use antibiotics when they do not need them, such as when a person demands antibiotics to treat a viral infection such as influenza, the bacteria naturally present in their body develop resistance and can be spread.
    "In many instances, poorly planned or haphazard use of medicines has caused the world to lose these drugs as quickly as scientists have discovered them," the organization said in a statement accompanying its annual report on infectious disease.
    All major infectious diseases are becoming resistant to drugs, the WHO report said. "In Estonia, Latvia and parts of Russia and China, over 10 percent of tuberculosis patients have strains resistant to the two most powerful TB medicines," it added.
    "Because of resistance, Thailand has completely lost the means of using three of the most common anti-malaria drugs. Approximately 30 percent of patients taking lamivudine — a drug recently developed to treat hepatitis B — show resistance to therapy after the first year of treatment."
    WHO said it was proposing that the United States lead an effort to spend more on drugs to fight infectious disease around the world.
    "We need to use antimicrobials more widely but more wisely," Heymann said.
    Gonorrhea was once easily treated with cheap penicillin, Heymann said. But poor countries did not treat victims and now 60 percent of gonorrheal infections are resistant to multiple drugs and must be treated with expensive quinolone drugs at $5 to $6 a dose.
    WHO analyzed the costs of cutting in half the death rate from five diseases — pneumonia, diarrhea, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. "WHO estimates that with $15 billion over the next 10 years, we could decrease mortality from these diseases by 50 percent," Heymann said.
    The Global Health Council, which took part in the news conference, suggested that the U.S. double annual spending on global health from $1 billion a year to $2 billion to kick-start this process.

Lithuania approves law calling for Soviet damages
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
    VILNIUS, June 13 (Reuters) — Lithuania on Tuesday approved a law obliging the government to bill Russia for damages caused during 50 years of Soviet rule and which could run into billion of dollars.
    The law, which threatens to sour the Baltic state's relations with Moscow, was easily approved with 68 MPs in favour, none against and 13 abstaining, the parliamentary press office said.
    The law demands that the government create a negotiating team for talks with Russia by September 1. It also instructs the team to then draw up damage estimates by October 1.
    "By November 1, 2000 the government has to apply to the Russian federation concerning the compensation for damages," the law says.
    Calculations of damages will also be sent to the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the European Union, the law adds. Though the law sets out no specific amount, analysts have said they expect the damages to run into the billions of dollars.
    Lithuania tried but failed to launch similar talks with Russia, which is considered to have taken over the rights and liabilities of the Soviet empire when it collapsed in the early 1990s.
    Last week Moscow called on Lithuania to be "realistic" while considering the law. A group of Russian lawmakers cancelled their visit to Vilnius on Tuesday citing the law as one of the reasons.
    Lithuania and its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Latvia were occupied by the Red Army in 1939 and incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, when tens of thousands were exiled to Siberia.
    The three nations regained their independence in 1991.

Baltic politicians say Soviet crimes must be tried
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
By Alistair Holloway
    TALLINN, June 14 (Reuters) — Baltic politicians urged the West Wednesday to set up a tribunal to punish the perpetrators of crimes committed in the name of communism, saying they must be seen in the same light as Nazi war crimes.
    "Let us ask ourselves, and the whole world: What conclusions should we draw to prevent those horrors from happening again?" Estonian President Lennart Meri said in a statement delivered at a "Crimes of Communism" conference.
    Estonia, like Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania, was forcefully incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940.
    June 14 is commemorated here as the start of mass deportations across the Baltics by Josef Stalin in 1941 in which thousands were sent away to camps.
    Many died on the trip, few ever returned.
    "...10 million innocent people paid the price of totalitarianism with their lives and even today this terrifies us," Meri, himself a deportee, said.
    Deportee and Nobel prize nominee Jaan Kross told the conference 150,000 of Estonia's 1.5 million population were victims of communist crimes, either deported, murdered or left to die in prison camps.
    "The repressions and deportations which were a hallmark of the communist system must never be forgotten...It is our duty to remind each generation of their (the victims) courage and suffering," former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in a statement read at the conference.
    CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL EVALUATION
     Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar told the conference crimes committed under communism should be given an "authoritative international evaluation" similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II.
    "One of these phenomena has been declared criminal and the other not. It is the greatest inequality of our time," Laar said.
    Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, at a ceremony in Riga commemorating the 59th anniversary of the deportations, said there could be no end in the hunt for war criminals, regardless of ideology.
    "These crimes, both in our criminal code and in all international practice, have no statute of limitations. They are crimes which remain punishable for ever and ever, as long as the very last person who took part in them is still alive and it is possible to find evidence to bring them to court."
    Latvia recently convicted former communist partisan Vasili Kononov of crimes against humanity for his role in the murder of nine civilians in 1944.
    Russia, which regards the 77-year-old as a persecuted hero, has sharply criticised the verdict and accused Latvia of resurrecting Nazism.
     Earlier this week Lithuanian parliament approved a law calling for the government to demand compensation for crimes committed by the Soviet Union.

Putin says NATO expansion threatens global stability
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
    BERLIN, June 15 (Reuters) — President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that NATO expansion and U.S. missile defense plans threatened Russia and hence global stability.
    In a speech to German business leaders in Berlin, Putin warned that the ambitions of the former Soviet Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to join NATO, if realized, would bring the Atlantic alliance to the Russian border.
    "(NATO enlargement) does not serve to strengthen European security," he said. "Naturally we have to ask the question why is NATO moving toward our frontiers?
    "Do we not have the right to think of our security? We have not only the right but a duty, for the sake of the security of all. Because if a country like Russia felt itself to be in danger, it would destabilize the situation both in Europe and across the world."
    He called instead for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to be upgraded into a full-blown regional security forum.
    Putin also said Moscow was ready to share technology to provide an anti-missile shield for Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals" and insisted only cooperation could keep the post-Cold War peace.
    He said U.S. plans for an anti-missile defense system were "very dangerous" and could have serious consequences if they destroyed the balance of power.
    "There is now no risk of all-out war in Europe," he said "But that is no reason for complacency. Realizing plans for a National Missile Defense would be a blow especially in Europe."
    Putin said his summit last week with President Clinton had shown that they had some ideas in common.
     "We must act — only together," he said.
    'SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES'
    "If we allow ourselves to destroy the balance of forces and interests that exist in global security, this could have very serious consequences," he said, adding that Europe would be the first affected as parts of the U.S. system would be based there.
    "What would Russia do then?" he asked. "It would be obliged to react in an appropriate way as if it were deployed on the territory of Europe and directed against Russia. What would NATO then do? Would Russia respond? And what's that called? It's called a new armament spiral. We think that's very dangerous. Can we find a way out? I'm sure we can."
    One solution, Putin said, would be to "consolidate an all-European security area," including working with NATO on a non-strategic anti-missile defense system.
    "Russia is ready for such cooperation and has concrete technical proposals for this. We think this is all possible technically and technologically. All we need is the political will," he said, repeating suggestions made earlier this month.
    He also called for more work on creating a nuclear-free zone in central and eastern Europe and for discussions on expanding the CFE treaty on conventional forces in Europe to naval and air forces.
    "I'm convinced that all these measures would put down a solid basis for peace and stability on the continent for the 21st century," he said. "If we move together."
    Putin is in Germany for a two-day summit.

Estonian President hits back at Putin NATO comments
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
    TALLINN, June 16 (Reuters) — Estonia rejected on Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin's assertion that further eastward expansion by NATO could endanger international stability.
    Estonian President Lennart Meri, reacting to Putin's statement made on Thursday during a visit to Germany, said the history of the NATO military alliance showed it had increased stability both for its members and its neighbours.
    "Mr Putin's statement regrettably ignores one of the basic principles of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) subscribed to by Russia herself," Meri said in a statement released by his office.
    "(That is) all countries have the inherent right to choose their own security arrangement, including the joining of alliances...No country has ever contested the right of Russia and Belarus to form a security alliance," he added.
    Putin had warned that if the former Soviet Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania realised their goal to join NATO, NATO would extend to the Russian border.
    "If a country like Russia feels threatened, that would destabilise the situation in Europe and the whole world," Putin said.
    Belarus, under President Alexander Lukashenko has forged an economic union with neighbouring Russia based on joint institutions. Many see the arrangement as a step toward a full union of the two countries.
    Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have held NATO membership as a key foreign policy objective since they broke from the Soviet Union almost 10 years ago. They were overlooked in NATO's first round of expansion last year when former Warsaw Pact states Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined the alliance.

Estonia PM Supports Vilnius's Soviet Damages Claim
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
    TALLINN June 16 (Reuters) — Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar said on Friday he supported Lithuania's plans to bill Russia for damages caused during 50 years of Soviet rule, which could run into billions of dollars.
     Lithuania approved a law earlier this week obliging the government to bill Russia for damages. The law threatens to sour the Baltic state's relations with Moscow.
    A spokesman for Laar said he discussed the law with his Lithuanian counterpart, Andrius Kubilius, on Friday at a meeting of the three Baltic prime ministers in Parnu, Estonia.
    "As leader of (political party) Pro Patria I have talked to the leader of the Lithuanian Conservative Party, Andrius Kubilius...and we have agreed to support the idea of beginning negotiations on compensation for damages," the spokesman quoted Laar as saying.
    The spokesman stressed that Laar was speaking as a political party head.
    A spokesman for Latvian Prime Minister Andris Berzins said: "The Baltic prime ministers agreed that it's important to put together mutual efforts to explain to the world what happened here during that 50-year period."
    News agency BNS quoted Lithuania's Kubilius as saying there was nothing unique in his parliament's decision to seek compensation from Moscow, saying Germany had paid damages for Nazi occupations World War Two.
    Lithuania earlier tried but failed to launch talks with Russia, which is considered to have taken over the rights and liabilities of the Soviet empire when it collapsed in the early 1990s.
    The three Baltic government heads also said at their meeting that they must not let the world forget the suffering their nations saw at the hands of the communists.
    Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were occupied by the Red Army in 1939 and incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, when tens of thousands of people were exiled to Siberia.
    The three nations regained their independence in 1991.

Reuters historical calendar - June 17
    1940 - Red Army troops occupied Latvia and Estonia and pro-Soviet administrations were installed.
Copyright 2000, Reuters Ltd. [excerpt]

  Picture Album

On a hot day — especially like the one in New York today — Usmas Ezers looks like a fine destination to dip one's toes in to cool off!

Usmas Ezers
latvians.com qualifies as a protected collection under Latvian Copyright Law Ch. II § 5 ¶ 1.2.
© 2024, S.A. & P.J. Vecrumba | Contact [at] latvians.com Terms of Use Privacy Policy Facebook ToS Peters on Twitter Silvija on Twitter Peters on Mastodon Hosted by Dynamic Resources