Indra, no offense over your jibe, just to point out a prevalent prejudice that gets past on unintentionally.

Farmers are looking to raise crops that will bring them money. I believe that the real problem is not in raising hemp, but in processing it. Unfortunately, I do not know if there is a hemp coop or any kind of org that can be approached by your partner on the subject. I remember reading many years ago that in some climes there could be a harvest of three crops per season of hemp and that it can take place of tree fiber.

Legalizing hemp for medicinal purposes (I always stress tea over smoke) or at least decriminalizing it in local coffee houses, down at the farm tourist retreats, at temple to John sites (they would surely spring up fast, and I am not saying this as a joke, but with a major revival of countryside cultural life in mind) would bring in plenty of tourists even in these hard times. I am particularly thinking of the puritanical Swedes, whose banks took our financial innocence and whom we owe cannabis tea bags as compensation from stunned pupils who catch on to real politik quickly. It will no doubt also help the ferry business.

Jandzs,

I appreciate your response but my suggestion of “radical change” has at its basis some simple principles of human behavior that are about as fundamental and universal as they can get.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  This doesn’t have to be tied to any religion to either elevate or contaminate.  You don’t need to see that as matriarchal but that’s what I call it since the patriarchal hierarchical model is about winners and losers, one up/one down.  This ties into the LOL thread about Darwin where no one mentioned the 19th century Victorian sexism and racism in Darwin’s thinking and research and the following harm to the world with “Social Darwinism.”  Nor did anyone touch on the problem Darwin encountered in explaining altruism in species. It’s all too easy to ignore racism and sexism if you’re a white male; and “altruism” is more easily understood by “female” logic since it suggests win/win propositions. 

Now “racism” is up in the face of the world because of a black president in the most powerful country in the world.  I was sure that “sexism” needed to be addressed first. Maybe it would have prevented the “honor” decapitation just yesterday of the wife in Buffalo, USA, by her husband.  But the entrenched order still appears to be first black Barak Obama and then maybe someday black or white Barb Obama.  Too many white liberal men cared more to assuage their racist guilt while rejecting any sexist guilt that would make them deal with laundry and stuff at home and Mrs. Clinton as their leader in the White House. It’s not that Hillary Clinton, as the individual female, was a better “savior” but I thought it was time for the serious symbol and signal of change towards principles of gender equality and inclusiveness - and time to get different “logic” and thinking about wars, financial matters, the environment, families (including the “families” Obama doesn’t define as female with children). 

It’s not rhetoric when you live the words you speak.  You can’t be for equality and change in rhetoric alone.  It certainly is the old real inequality and false-religiosity rhetoric when the head of the Latvian Lutheran Church is allowed to discriminates against women.  Imagine if black men were not allowed to be ministering in Latvia’s congregations in the age of Obama?  Latvians want more children but are men in Latvia (or anywhere) more willing to change diapers, shop for groceries, and drink less beer and vodka out of the altruistic regard for their children? 

I will review your “janis” writings but your need to make this male-name figure preeminent in a pantheon of powerful, awe-inspiring life and nature forces that stand at least equally with your notion of the value of janis to Latvians to me just seems a continuation of the same old pattern of looking to a male savior whether he be janis, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Darwin, Barak Obama, Putin, etc. ad nauseum. Don’t even get me started about the political or financial gods (turned devils) so much in the news starting with John Edwards: The testosterone and male hubris gone wrong of Spitzer, Greenspan, Kargin, Madoff, Stanford - the list grows daily and not a single female name among them.  I’ve previously elaborated and linked.

I am familiar with Karen Armstrong and already mentioned her in another thread.  The full context can be found in an LOL search by her name.  I wrote (about the unconfessed/unhealed Russian sin of the occupation of Latvia, the debilitating issue the Latvians and Russians have failed to resolve as a win/win):

It’s not some “berkeley-brownie” notion of “international peace and friendship” that is wrong but the flaw lies with the human beings who can’t seem to “do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.” You don’t invade the home of another.  You don’t impose your “ideology of brotherhood” and the barabarity of false “braliba” on the Balts for fifty years and then not acknowledge your transgressions against humanity once your crimes are exposed.  You don’t live in denial -  but you purge your conscience of your crimes.  You acknowledge your crime against another, ask for forgiveness,  and make restitution before you “demand” acknowledgment of your own humanity in kind.  I would hope that anyone supporting “braliba” would also support this.  It’s the human way to be and it can be religious.  (Religious people may want to read more by Karen Armstrong.) It’s about the “practice” versus the “belief” of “braliba.”

jandzs, you keep speaking of “decriminalizing” - but what are the parameters of the law as it is today?  What is allowed, what is not?  Citations to LV’s criminal code would be appreciated.

There may well be some kind of even aged infrastructure there for processing the fibres and/or for the boards.  Perhaps there is even something for other materials that can be adapted.  If you’re interested, I’ll get Andrew onto this forum.  I’m sure he would be happy to promote the hemp led recovery of Latvia seeing as he couldn’t get enough of the powerful to be interested here in Australia.  He would also be able to supply details about other sources of information I’m sure.  I gather that machinery to process the fibres can be built relatively simply and cheaply - Andrew even had a small one built himself that now stands rusting in a shed somewhere.

Oh, and as for the other stuff, I don’t think tourism is necessarily the answer, certainly not in itself.  Think about some of the smaller nations that are dependent on tourism.  Often they remain poor, underdeveloped and vulnerable to the vagaries of the fluctuating tourist dollar and exchange rates.  Even in richer countries, tourist destinations in themselves are usually just part of a local economy that produces other stuff.

As for the dysfunctionality of any society?  What do you do about it?  How do you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on?  How do you get a whole community to get it’s s—- together?  Surely Latvia’s small size could be an advantage in this.  But first you’d have to get widespread acknowledgement that there is a problem.  What is Latvia’s government acknowledging in this regard?

You may have heard about the bushfires here in Victoria.  It’s not on the scale of something like the Asian tsunami, but nevertheless a big shock to a hitherto affluent, complacent community.  The reverberations will be felt a long time, not just because of the loss of life, but also because of the damage to infrastructure and an already problematic water supply.  It is interesting to see how people react - the shock, the blame game, the way the government chooses to give aid and to whom.  However, like I imagine it would be in Latvia, people aren’t really going to recover until they are able to move on and just “do”.

Cheers!

Sveiki!

“But first you’d have to get widespread acknowledgement that there is a problem.  What is Latvia’s government acknowledging in this regard?”

I don’t have it in me to look up direct quotes from Kalvītis’, et al.  But, I honestly think that on the basis of its actions since last autumn, the ruling coalition - which has held both the premier’s post and finance minister’s portfolio since March, 2004 -  would summarize its position in the following way.  No legislation that has been enacted, no measure that has not been taken, nothing that has been done, said or thought in any fashion is responsible for the current economic crisis in LV.

Visu labu,

Elizabete

PS This is not meant to imply that the current premier (namely, Godmanis, in case that changes by the time this is read) doesn’t promise everyone that things will get considerably worse.

After studying this issue for a while.  I believe that even though hemp is not good spiritually speaking, it would be a good source of revenue for the government in Latvia, and could be taxed as such.  How could they sell it?  Perhaps it could be sold like in a package of cigarettes, but have one hemp cigarette with the rest tobacco cigarettes in the package.  This way people would not go too crazy buying this hemp, and it would still support the tobacco farmers too!!!

Indra,
With all due respect, we (we= people living in LV) should play the “blame game”  for a bit, though I would frame it as the “responsible for”  game. If we (we= people resident in LV) do not somehow come to a collective agreement/understanding on who created (not 100% but close enough) this mess that we are in, they (they= citizen voters) will vote those _____________es back into office. Here in LV the cynicism is overwhelming, even by cynical Latvian standards, but is it cynical enough to make sure that TP, TB/LNNK etc stay under the 5% mark? Es pilnīgi ne zinu! Bet, that is the 64 LVL question. And, if you follow our (our= LV, as it relates to all of us who are interested in LV) politics, you would notice that our TP friends are doing every cynical maneuver possible to assure their return to power by assuring that new elections will be held under the same old rules that have brought them into majority-minority status election after election.

We (my LV voter wife and I) were in Aksnīte yesterday to talk about support measures and accomodations that are now available for children with learning difficulties. Talking with these wonderful people is a grand combination of inspiring and heartbreaking. The director of the school and his assistant are in the process of dealing with integrating two smaller schools (smaller?) that will join their school next year. The heartbreak comes because, their school is so small itself that they will not be able to hire a single teacher from the schools that are closing.

The Ministry (education) is currently rewriting regulations regarding grade retention. The proposal is that a school can retain (even a high school student) if they are failing even ONE course. That means if a student is in 12-14 subjects in 9th class (the norm in LV) they can be forced to repeat an entire year. In Aksnīte they would not do this, but they fear for the economic and social consequences of this being done in smaller schools who may use this possibility to keep student numbers up so they are not forced to close. For background, three years ago the Ministry changed the regulation for minimum failing courses from 4 must be failed to 3 to allow retention. This resulted in a near doubling of the number of kids grade retained. And yet our (our= all people effected by the LV education system) problems with children leaving schools without basic skills remains. And yet the Ministry’s response to the problems with quality in schools is to use the same club of grade retention. Why? We would and do argue for improving education quality by a variety of methods that would directly help students, teachers and parents.

Yesterday afternoon our education tour took us to the Vakar skola in Jekabpils. They wanted to talk about the retention regulations too. For them, they fear the increase in angry, disaffected kids coming to them. When we have looked at grade retention statistically and anecdotally in LV we see an ugly picture. The last time the Ministry reported numbers, there were almost 10 000 kids grade retained (academic year 2005-6) - that is the equivalent of nearly 15 of the biggest schools in LV grade retained. A back of the envelope calculation says that a kid in LV has about a 1 in 4 chance of being grade retained in their school time. Socially, economically and simply morally this has huge costs for us (us= ?).

We need to apportion some blame here, otherwise the same people will show up in office time after time.

I do not know any cannabis growers in Latvia, who grow “kaņepes” for industrial use or to produce butter. Most of the links, unfortunately, connect to what may be best described as a “teen mindset” and interest in Jāņu zāle (Healing Johns grass) by immature minds. The latter no doubt due to the Latvian government’s heavy handed (and paranoid) mindset.

Unfortunately, the Latvian government does not appear to have a site where information is available for those interested in industrial production. The now departed minister of Agriculture, M. Roze, ends his directive (see last link below) with the sentence: “Zemes īpašnieka vai tiesiskā valdītāja pienākums ir iznīcināt savas zemes platībās augošās kaņepes, kuras aizliegts audzēt saskaņā ar šo likumu.”

Perhaps some industrial cannabis growers from Latvia will respond here with more info about the situation in Latvia. The same are likely to be the source of seeds for cannabis butter. It would be interesting to know if there is a professional industrial cannabis growers association.

Below some sites of interest.

Legality of cannabis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_of_cannabis

Cannabis as tea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_tea

Legality by country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_country

Industrial use:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

Latvian law:
http://www.saeima.lv/saeima9/lasa?dd=LP0233_0

indra_liepins et al.,

“Think about some of the smaller nations that are dependent on tourism.  Often they remain poor, underdeveloped and vulnerable to the vagaries of the fluctuating tourist dollar and exchange rates. “

Which small nations do you have in mind ?

Visu labu,

I guess it’s also too “radical” to be green.  The future is not in exploiting Latvia for quick profit for a few but in creating sustainable and environmentally friendly business ventures that lead in green imagination and organic creativity not follow in old paths of failure.  Enough of sex-tourism, pot-growing, meth-making, factory-farming, clear-cutting, polluting-development, and over-developing useless bank products, etc.  It has already brought the rest of the world and Latvia to the brink of social, economic, and environmental collapse.

Information about growth and development in a healthier and more sustainable direction is readily available.  Hemp is not the only product in green and organic possibilities but here’s more on hemp:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1387683/_benefits_of_hemp_our_planets_most.html
Benefits of Hemp- Our Planet’s Most Sustainable Material
January 20, 2009 - by Nadine Rowland
The secret is out. After years of misinformation, consumers are discovering that hemp is one our planet’s most abundant and environmentally sustainable resources. Hemp products tend to be durable, well made, sustainable, and are usually produced and imported using fair trade practices.
In the past year, the number of consumers seeking greener choices when purchasing has increased significantly….

http://www.reason.org/commentaries/smithheisters_20070419.shtml
Reason.org -April 19, 2007
Industrial Hemp Can Boost Economy, Cut Pollution
Schwarzenegger’s drug war concerns are way off base
By Skaidra Smith-Heisters
If not for a curious veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, California farmers would be tending to their first, very useful and profitable crop of industrial hemp right now. Instead, legislators in Sacramento are back for the second year in a row, working on a law to allow industrial hemp cultivation in the state.

With worries about terrorism, school shootings, and escalating gang violence, you’d think California law enforcement would have better things to do than complain about growing hemp, based on the unfounded and archaic linkage between this promising industrial crop and marijuana as it is grown and consumed today. Law enforcement authorities should understand that a field of industrial hemp is the last place anyone would try to grow marijuana. They have an ally in California hemp farmers, who will be required to take extra precautions to keep illegal marijuana growers from trespassing and damaging hemp fields. And from the marijuana grower’s perspective, cross-pollination with a hemp crop in close proximity would ruin their product—not unlike crossing two purebred dogs of different breeds. The two plants are the same species, but industrial hemp contains insignificant amounts of the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC), that is valued in marijuana.
/..../
With a name like Skaidra, maybe she’s Latvian.
Most “green” people also try to be non-sexist and non-racist.  Maybe Latvia and Latvians just are not ready for the future in their natural evolution. 
P.S. New research on dairy cows shows that cows given names produce more milk, just like the old Latvians already knew.

Dairy cow Grietina:
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/01/28/Study_Cows_with_names_give_more_milk/UPI-41541233181982/

Hemp houses for Australia:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/hemp-houses-for-australia.php

It would appear that natural plant based remedies may indeed be gaining favor: a recent announcement:
http://drboli.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/advertisement-310/

Latvia is lurching from failure to failure, from crisis to crisis, from no can do to yet another no can do.

“Speaking to his party members at a meeting of LPP/LC Saturday, Godmanis emphasized that politics may hinder and at this time does actually hinder economic development.” [Uzrunājot savus partijas biedrus LPP/LC domes sēdē sestdien, viņš [Godmanis] uzsvēra, ka politika var traucēt un pašlaik arī traucē tautsaimniecības, ekonomikas attīstībai. http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/72/articles/149953/0 ]

When the former Latviam PM suddenly projects distrust on politics, one can be sure that that has been his operandus vivendi all along. In other words, there never was a politics of democracy in Latvia, except as “democratic” competition between a few oligarchs with liberal democratic political leanings, which the media regurgitated as “democracy in action” in its news stories. As a result, Latvia is a country with no small (micro) businesses worth speaking about. Most of the businesses are macro chain store operations beginning with the banks and ending with the food stores. Like it or not, this makes the majority of Latvians employees (darba ņēmēji) and not small business owners. When the disproportion between business owners and employees is as extensive as in Latvia, one may argue that the post-Soviet times have been a form of medieval serfdom.

This is one reason why the Latvian export business never was developed, and what little there was of it has collapsed. In short, there never was an export business—except for the cutting down of private and public forestland while these lasted. One of the few “export” businesses in Latvia was the tourist business, but even that was under pressure for a number of years, because it had little to sell, and one increasingly began to hear about “internal” tourism, rather than attracting foreign tourists. Projecting Latvia abroad turned into a total disaster, with the nail in the coffin provided by the mismanagement of the economy by the government. Ojars Kalnins, director of the Latvian Institute, which is responsible for promoting the country abroad, began a recent interview by stating that the most important product of Latvia are its people. Well, yes (cheap labor force for Ireland?), but is that how you start an advertising campaign? The former ambassador has made similar unimpressive statements in all too many interview. http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:n_CWegFXtpsJ:www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4025197,00.html+Ojars+Kalnins&hl=lv&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=nl&lr=lang_en
While this writer is no expert on tourism, it seems obvious that tourists will go visit that place or country that has something to offer. What has Latvia to offer a foreign visitor? Jūrmala? Alright. But what else? There are no spectacular sights in Latvia and there are no products here that cannot be bought elsewhere and cheaper. This is why one who is responsible for promoting Latvia ought to have the guts to imagine and then argue and promote a tourist program that will indeed make the tourists come to Latvia. The reader may remember how Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, became such an attraction. Which brings me to the question, why not combine a product that Latvia has plenty of—milk—and (yet to be) legalized Johns Grass? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_tea My neighbor’s only cow, Rasa, would then not have to face the slaughterhouse knives, and her owner would be able to buy the food and medicine she needs, but cannot afford now.

Jandžs,

Where do you get your info regarding fractions of businesses being large (macro- as you say) vs SME (micro?)? My understanding is that the vast majority of LV business (by number of businesses and LVL volume) is small business. In my own small world 2 of my three brothers-in-law are SIA owners, as am I. In fact in my little house, my son complains that he is the only one in our house without a business- my wife and I are on the board of “our” NGO and I have a SIA (Ideas in Development- if anyone needs my services!).

I have joked from time-to-time that we are in a SIA society here in LV. It seems to me that most people that I know have one!

Second- LI has done tons and tons of real promotion. Every time we have project or exchange or whatever they are of greatest help. Ojars is a pretty upfront guy who represents LV well.

Third- LV has lots to offer. A few years ago, my primary endeavour was writing nature projects. Eco tourism will never solve LV problems, but it is important. Look at Pape (http://www.pape.lv) look at the North Vidzeme Biosphere Reserve projects. These are great and build on so much that is preserved about LV.

Fourth- you are absolutely right to say that LV needs (has needed for some time) to develop processing and production using wood products. You are wrong to assert that LV is running out of trees. One of the bright spots in LV govt/private has been the strong collaborations with LVM and World Wide Federation of/for Nature and the diminishing of illegal timber harvesting. I recall reading that LV now has more trees than only 10 years ago.