Latvia: a few days in October

 

One of the first things you notice about Latvia is that you can see a long way, there are lots of trees, usually in the distance and everything is very clean and tidy.

They also like green, and odd shades of green. This is a library and an apartment block in Juanjelgava.

Here in the main street of the small town old timber houses still stand. The pavement and roads are all clean and fresh with many Latvian flags flying but the old buildings seem to lack that element of pride in external appearance found across the old Soviet countries.

At one moment the sky is blue and then, not much later . . .

October rain clouds appear.

On our visit, rain was forecast for all day, every day, from 4 - 12 October. However, as the photos will show as we go through our travels, there was actually very little rain in the day. Most fell at night or late afternoon / evening and we seldom had to shelter or use windscreen wipers! We might have just been lucky but the Latvia we experienced was cool and crystal clear.

It's not easy to stop on Latvia's main roads. They have wide grass verges but slightly lower and I could never be confident of getting back on the tarmac again if I did decide to stop. Instead I found it simplest to wait for a convenient bus stop to check a route or look around. It was the same if you took a wrong turning; the road may be dead quiet but not quite wide enough to make a three- or, more likely for the bigger car we had hired, seven-point turn safely. There were turns but all at right angles into small vehicle-wide unmade tracks which, again, prevented a chance to turn back. Often we finished up in some woodland where we finally found a place on the track to make a turn!

There are many parks and all seem well-organised and attractive to tourists. Above is a park near Gauja where there are many well-marked pathways (and the only car park where we had to pay to park). The toilets at every place we stopped were excellent, even those plastic portable box types seem to be regularly cleaned and kept nicely. Those in fuel stations were amazing, compared to the dreadful facilities we're used to here in Britain.

The Gauja river looks muddy but I am not entirely sure why. It looked pretty clear to me at the time.

This particular park also had a cable car running from the nearby town across the huge forest.

Autumn had just stared to produce some colours other than green.

Latvia has lots of castles.

Every view seems dominated by trees.

A path in a forest near Koknese. More trees, of course.

The Daugava river is impressive and runs from Riga right across the country. Almost the whole of its length provides beautiful scenery.

There is plenty of room for people in these places. Nowhere did we find annoying bodies spoiling the view, nor litter of any description at all.

Old castles in varying degrees of dilapidation or rebuilding are open to clamber around, with plenty of those classic 'frames' for photos!

The blue skies continued to defy the predictions of rain.

In many parks or park-like spaces artists have erected timber structures.

Riga old town. All the streets are cobbled. Clean buildings here of classic design.

Jurmula is the seaside resort close to Riga. A very long and attractive beach.

On our visit the wind was more like a gale and it was all we could do to stand vertical. Huge waves like this are rare.

We had come down this stairway from a nice apartment block but getting back up was not quite as simple.

We had planned to visit Rundale Palace Museum but caught a glimpse of this place near Bauska on the way.

This was a marvellous castle that had been very recently opened, with much very clever and sympathetic reconstruction.

Inside there were rooms galore at every turn, some with displays which would not have been out of place in a museum in England, some that were just empty but with splendid windows and views.

Outside there were yet more cellars and rooms to search round.

Remarkably, it was possible to reach the very top of the tallest tower.

This is the Lielupe River, another wonderfully attractive river flowing straight through forests galore.

The journey back was interesting to say the least. My TomTom navigation device suggested the yellow route, some 120+ km. Google said take the pink road, nice and direct and only 50km. Whilst I understood that the shorter route might not be as fast and probably a lot more twisty, I preferred this to what might just have been a tedious normal road back.

Very shortly after leaving Bauska we encountered a sign to say that the surface might be uneven for 2.9km. It was a bit bumpy but just an unsurfaced road with a few potholes so nothing that seemed too bad. Once the 2.9km was done, however, another sign announced another 3.3km of the same. And so it continued! Not only was the surface getting worse but heavy rain earlier in the area had led to the potholes filling with water so you couldn't be sure how deep they were. Some holes stretched across most of the road and you did just have to hope that the water wasn't too deep.

The car I'd hired was a new Toyota Corolla with a pretty but very vulnerable front spoiler and it certainly was not the ideal car for this kind of trek. So we had to approach the unknown holes very gingerly to ensure that there was some chance of the tyres remaining inflated and wheels vaguely round in shape and suspension and steering bushes staying intact. At one point a huge lorry with a trailer, both laden high with timber, passed me which will give you some idea of my pace.

Most of the journey was spent on the wrong side of the road or wending left and right in search of some vaguely manageable surface but we only met a couple of cars going in the opposite direction so no trouble there. At Valle we crossed the P73 which was tarmac and much more pleasant-looking. However, the sign saying an uneven surface for the next 3km might just have been telling the truth so we carried on, firmly believing that there was no way the whole of the next 20km would be as bad. They were but we made it and the delight on finding some lovely smooth grey tarmac near Juanjelgava was great. We would have celebrated with a few drinks had we had any to hand.

Next time I shall hire a Jeep-like vehicle. Whilst the main roads are really excellent, there are many, many interlinking tracks which look like they're main roads on the map but actually are just tracks.

A smooth track - but not all are like this.

The other side of the river Daugava from Juanjelgava has some beautiful scenes.

In the summer, boats are available for rent or travel from either side of the river.

An arboretum on this northern side of the river is a peaceful and pretty place to visit.

Another castle was here once too.

You'll see plenty of these churches - a noticeable design and colour scheme which makes them appear quite modern when they may date back hundreds of years.

Latvia, a truly photogenic country.

One war might end another

I felt I had to write about what is happening in and around Israel in my last article. I felt that I should support Israel but I think like many people I wasn't too sure that Israel was good and Hamas were bad and that Israel could also be bad too if they wanted and that there was a good chance they'd be very bad indeed to the Palestinian people rather than just Hamas people and that would be difficult to justify. After listening to some interviews and reading some articles, however, I felt much more confident and able to write as I did.

With a much better understanding of the Soviet Union's history and Ukraine, I have been writing for many months about the terrible things that have been happening in Ukraine, hoping each time that there might be some glimmer of light for the good people of that nation. So far it has just remained very gloomy. Ukraine has made some advances in the South and steadily troubles Russian sites here and there by hitting planes, equipment or significant buildings but they haven't managed to pull off those decisive hits or advances which could bring the end-game closer.

Russia appears to have an endless supply of bodies to put into the fight. They are predominantly pretty useless and little more than bodies but sufficient to absorb enough of Ukraine's bullets and attacks to make progress slow.

With supplies from Iran and North Korea now getting through and increasing for Russia, our support and supplies seem to be at best level but probably starting to dwindle for Ukraine. Certainly the new Israel - Hamas war has taken almost everyone's focus away and the West are now wondering just how much more they can help Ukraine when they may be soon need to be ready to assist Israel in the escalating war in the Middle East.

All we need now is China to decide that it is a good time to make a move on Taiwan - maybe just a blockade or two but enough to divert enough of our ships and forces to permit someone else to advance elsewhere. A really determined effort by Russia to get a grip on Kiev, a strike by Iran on Israel, an accidental launch of a North Korean missile . . . any of these actions now seem feasible and would almost certainly be of benefit to Russia and the anti-Israel cause as we would simply bluster and say what we'd do but not actually do anything.

Even if there is no big 'success' for Russia I fear there is even less chance of any big 'success' for Ukraine (unless Israel feel inclined to give them a hand with some air power while their up in the sky). I do hope that Israel does give Hamas, and, if necessary, Hezbollah and Iran a bloody nose in the very near future as that will demonstrate that someone we support is prepared to say enough is enough and actually take some action.

Should such action lead to response which we are unable to ignore either contractually or morally then perhaps, at last, we too will have a chance to give Russia a kicking and send those pathetic bodies back home where they will be needed to help Syria or some other god-forsaken place in that awful area.

I have this feint hope that the Middle East war that is going to start, if it hasn't already, will help clear the air over Ukraine and give them some hope and a chance to reassert their borders after all. If Britain is drawn into battles with enemies of Israel then, whilst all hell will let loose, one does get the impression that Ukraine will come out of the winter stronger and better-supported and better-protected for 2024.

Just what is Palestine?

I wish I had paid more attention in History and Geography classes at school. If you asked me to draw an outline of Israel, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Jordan . . I would get none of them right. I might have got them in about the right area on that eastern bank of the Mediterranean Sea but that's about as good as it gets and I have no idea where Palestine is. Here's a map to help anyone as poorly informed as I am. 

This is a bad area and seems to be where trouble has always been brewing. I can't remember a time when something bad wasn't happening in this area. Now things really are looking grim after the most awful attack by Hamas terrorists from Gaza which killed over 1400 people in Israel, shocking, deliberate execution of civilian men, women, children and even babies which breaks every rule in the book of decency. Unsurprisingly, Israel has hit back and, as I write, everyone seems to be saying they should be careful not to overreact, start a regional conflict, World War III and so forth. No-one appears to have suggested that Hamas might have given some warning of their proposed attack or consider whether it was reasonable to shoot people who were simply having a meal with friends or celebrating at a music festival, or chop down someone running away, or take children hostage, parading mutilated bodies of girls in the back of trucks as they drove through town almost unchallenged. 

There seems to be an underlying dislike of Jewish people and, whilst I don't think Israel is home to Jewish people alone, this translates to simply disliking Israel. I read about this in places far and wide - from Labour Party troubles with historic antisemitism in its ranks to bad treatment of Jewish people in some neighbourhoods of London, to say nothing of some organisations which appear to believe that Israel shouldn't even exist and, of course, we should all be aware of the appalling atrocities carried out by Germany's Nazi forces and sympathisers in World War II. Following recent events, many national leaders have made it clear that they 'stand with' Israel and some of us are committed to support Israel militarily too but I sense a reluctance, much as we have remained on the side-lines, watching what happens in Ukraine, we remain conveniently distanced from that strange area where we are not entirely sure about who belongs where and whether Israel has been mean to Palestinians in the past.

There is, however, also a far more disturbing hatred of 'Israel' which appears to have been fomented by external forces but nevertheless appearing as big demonstrations in British towns and cities. I don't see many Israeli flags being waved and some institutions even seem to be nervous about displaying the Star of David for fear that they'll be attacked. A casual observer on the streets of most of Europe would take the view that the world takes the Hamas side and whatever they did was bad but somehow kinda justified by something in the past and that Israeli forces now need to be very careful and would they please give notice of whatever they're thinking of doing and maybe we'll be charging them with war offences if they don't behave well and are not nice to people in Gaza. It's extraordinary. Have we all been conned by the very clever Hamas-supporting international groups who feed the media and twist the story. Read the BBC accounts of events to date and these are hugely sympathetic of the plight of Palestinians and how worried everyone is that the Israeli IDF will 'overreact'. After the first day's reporting and subsequent quotes from carefully-worded statements by politicians left, right and centre we read very little now of any sadness or loss or pain that the Israeli people may be suffering. You do get the feeling that even the BBC are not very keen on Jewish people.

I need some better context for all this in order to have confidence in saying more. I want to say that I believe that Israel has every right to seek out every single supporter of Hamas, and Hezbollah while they're at it, put them on trial and lock them away somewhere for many years. If some innocent civilians get hurt in the process because the cowardly terrorists hide amongst civilian families, in schools and by hospitals then that is a price that Palestinians must accept for permitting terrorist organisations to flourish and take control of so much of their lives there. After all, Hamas supporters were, I think, elected by Palestinians at the last election for government. Presumably voters were aware of their views then so maybe cannot be regarded as totally innocent after all.

I am still not well-enough informed, though, and so turned to this excellent article by Roger Kimball in The Spectator's US edition yesterday.

It’s so cute when politicians like AOC and Rashida Tlaib, to say nothing of hysteric undergraduates and ill-informed lefties across the country, complain that Israel is an “apartheid state” that is illegitimately “occupying” the land West of the Jordan River from the Golan Heights down to the border of the Sinai Peninsula. 

Responding to the murderous attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7, AOC decried “the occupation of Palestine” while Tlaib urged “ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system” that can “lead to resistance.”

Hermeneuts of the world, unite! What does Tlaib mean by “resistance” here? Slaughtering innocent partygoers? Incinerating and beheading babies? Indiscriminately raping then murdering hostages? And what is the force of “lead to”? Is it meant to suggest that Israel is somehow to blame for such acts of “resistance” because — because why? Because the Jewish people occupy the place that was 1) their ancestral homeland and 2) with which they were reinvested by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, by the victorious Brits after World War One and and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, explicitly to provide a “national home for the Jewish people,” and 3) by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948?

What group of people do they think belongs there?  

“Palestinians” is the usual answer.  

But who or what are the “Palestinians”?

“People from Palestine,” you say.  

But what is Palestine?

From time immemorial, Jews occupied the spot history knows as “Judaea.” What happened to that? Gibbon said that Hadrian, who ruled from AD 117 to 138, was one of the “five good emperors.”  Maybe so, but there is a reason that the Jews proverbially accompanied any mention of Hadrian with the imprecation, “May God crush his bones.” 

Hadrian brutally put down the Bar Kokhba revolt of AD 132-136 and, in an effort to stamp out any remnants of Jewish nationalism killed, or exiled the entire population and renamed “Judaea” “Syrian Palestine.”  

The “Palestinians” that we know and love today were an invention of the KGB and their puppet Yasser Arafat, an educated, middle-class Arab of Egyptian origin who devoted his life to murderous anti-American mischief. (Among other things, he arranged for the murder of Cleo Noel, the US ambassador to Sudan.)

Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former chief of Romanian intelligence, defected to the US and wrote about the links between Arafat and the KGB: “Arafat was an important undercover operative for the KGB,” Pacepa wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

Right after the 1967 Six Day Arab-Israeli war, Moscow got him appointed to chairman of the PLO. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Soviet puppet, proposed the appointment. In 1969 the KGB asked Arafat to declare war on American “imperial-Zionism” during the first summit of the Black Terrorist International, a neo-fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. It appealed to him so much, Arafat later claimed to have invented the imperial-Zionist battle cry. But in fact, “imperial-Zionism” was a Moscow invention, a modern adaptation of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and long a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to foment ethnic hatred. The KGB always regarded antisemitism plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism.

Somehow, those details are omitted by the “pro-Palestinian” lobby in their pursuit of ecstatic antisemitism, as is the inconvenient fact that “prior to the PLO Charter being released in 1964, no one referred to Palestinians with the same intent as used today. There is a reason no mention exists prior to that moment. The KGB had not created the fictitious people until that time.”

Don’t believe it? How about this statement from Zuheir Mohsen, a senior PLO leader, in 1977:  

"The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons."

The history of the Levant makes for a complicated story, not least its recent history. I will not try to tell it all here. But the idea that the Jews are illegitimately occupying territory that really belongs to “the Palestinians” is a politically-motivated historical falsehood that only an unhappy terrorist or a half-educated Western leftie, could believe. 

Maybe you know this already. I certainly was not aware of such a Palestinian state. It explains why I couldn't find 'Palestine' on a map. It doesn't help solve any of this crazy conflict, of course, but I can speak now with a little better understanding and try to argue with all those people waving Palestinian flags and shouting bad things about Israel. 

Lastly, with all this woke stuff from the last few years going on, you really do have to wonder that it is entirely OK to rant and rave publicly about how bad the jews are or how much you might hate Israel or Israelis or those people you see in North London with long sideburn hair, odd black hats and often a beard but dare to criticise Black Lives Matter or object out loud to kids getting treatment to reassign their gender or just feel uncomfortable peeing next to a man in a frock and you're in big trouble. Does any Pride supporter really think that gay, lesbian, queer or whatever people would last more than five minutes in Hamas-Hezbollah Land? If anyone's backing the wrong side then they are. But so too are an awful lot of ordinary British people and I can only assume that it is because they're either stupid or just ill-informed. Like I have been.