All About Latvia

We’ll be liveblogging the Eurovision Song Contest Saturday night, but in the preparation of this shining example of the -decadent West- popular culture, let’s take a history walk.

Here’s almost every Latvian Eurovision song ever.

2000 - the group Brainstorm performed “My star.” The group came in third, after Russia and Denmark, which won that competition held in Sweden. Not bad for a debut. Latvia was selected as the last 25th country to participate in the contest replacing Greece, which withdrew.

2001 - Arnis Mednis represented Latvia in the contest with a song “Too much”. Unfortunately, his performance was not found among the vast universes of YouTube. He came 16th.

2002 - Marie N (also known as Marija Naumova) with a song I wanna earned Latvia the right to host the next Eurovision Song Contest. She came first.

2003 - F.L.Y. performed Hello From Mars, which didn’t fair well among the earthlings on the European continent. They came 24th.

2004 - The rules were changed to accommodate more countries-participants. Latvia was represented by Fomins & Kleins with Dziesma par laimi, A Song About Happiness. Happy or not, the song didn’t qualify for the final.

2005 - Valters un Kaza sang The War is not Over. They came 5th.

2006 - Cosmos performed I hear your heart. Talented though they may have been, they came only 17th.

2007 - bonaparti.lv with Questa Notte. They came 16th.

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Kalamaja, Tallinn, Estonia 8:09 p.m. May 22, 2008. Send in yours to aleks - at - allaboutlatvia.com

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RIGA – Telegraf, Chas, Vesti Segonya - the Russian-language newspapers in Latvia all have a certain degree of bitterness toward this free, democratic country, where they’re published.

The latter two newspapers, however, are overflowing with poison that spills off their pages. Their readers, it seems, are mostly angry men and women who salivate at the thought of how the state discriminates Russians in Latvia. Some of those readers gathered at the Victory Day celebration earlier this month.

A news story in Chas on economy would usually entail some kind of citizenship angle seemingly irrelevant to the actual economic news. It frustrates a journalist. Chas openly supported the PCTVL party mostly of archain Stalinists that barely made it into the parliament after the 2006 elections. Ironically, the party hacks blamed the media for their losses.

I subscribe to the best of the worst Russian-language newspapers in Latvia, Telegraf. As a friend of mine described it, it is the most loyal newspaper of the three. It’s not ideal - it whines every once in a while, but it also contains interesting political and economic news, some exclusives, and avoids dwelling on issues like citizenship and language laws. After all, their status quo is likely to remain for years to come.

This morning Telegraf and Chas announced a merger. New newspaper is expected to be launched this August. Its format and name aren’t known yet. Although officially it is a merger, but in reality Telegraf’s taking over Chas. The Telegraf owner London resident millionaire Valery Belokon has bought more than half of the stock in the Chas publisher, Petit publishing house.

The Telegraf managing editor Tatyana Fast confirmed the merger news on the radio last night. However, it’s the bad news for the Chas editor Ksenya Zagovorskaya, who was incommunicado yesterday. After all, her days as the managing editor of the newspaper are counted.

I personally welcome the news. If the new project improves on the Telegraf’s take on news, it’ll make an interesting informative newspaper about Latvia for the local Russian community. And perhaps, will signify the end of PCTVL in the next elections and teach more loyalty toward the country the Russian community likes to call its home.

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Framingham, Mass., USA, 7:30 a.m. May 22, 2008. Send in yours to aleks - at - allaboutlatvia.com.

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