The Latvian Riflemen received orders to arrest the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Their preliminary duty was to liberate Dzierżyński from the hands of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries who had taken him hostage. The Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic was clearly not yet a properly-functioning police state if this could happen to the Cheka’s chairman.

—Robert Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, (Great Britain: Penguin Books, 2020), 103.

This statue is not far from the river, in front of the Occupation museum, and is surrounded by tourists taking photos of the statue, photos of each other in front of the „Riga“ statue. I very much doubt many visitors have much of an inkling what part the Riflemen played in consolidating Bolshevik power in the early Soviet state.

After khachapuri and alus in town, on the footbridge over the tracks on the way back to my hotel, up the hill along the road to the left, past the independence memorial.

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

—Czesław Miłosz, translated by Anthony Miłosz
Warsaw, 1944

Guardian:

In an exchange free from major gaffes but unlikely to appease his critics, Biden was asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News how he would feel if he were to remain the nominee and lose to Donald Trump. “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” the president replied.

In other responses his opponents may see as arrogant or out of touch, the 81-year-old claimed that he is “running the world” and no one is “more qualified” to be president.

Die Zeit:

Schwer zu sagen, in welchem dieser vielen Momente es am deutlichsten wird: Das wird nichts. Das reicht nicht. Joe Biden schafft es im Interview mit dem US-Sender ABC nicht, die Zweifel an seiner Amtsfähigkeit zu zerstreuen. Er hat offenbar nicht einmal verstanden, dass er das jetzt tun muss, soll seine politische Karriere nicht ein so tragisches wie unwürdiges Ende nehmen.

Keineswegs, weil es ihm an den kognitiven Fähigkeiten mangelte. Sondern weil er – wie auch sein engstes Umfeld, das ihn bestärkt, im Rennen zu bleiben – nicht sieht oder nicht sehen will, wie desaströs die Lage ist.