Teh Baltic Correspondent

Universities in Lithuania have it hard: salaries are dropping for the workers, and at the same time, the fees for studies go up. No one is happy and quality of studies is eroding. However, now one Kaunas-based university has found a solution to make money quick with little effort: selling of diplomas.
First, they tried to sell a diploma to a girl living in France: she wanted to be master of political science, because she was from a diplomatic family, as I heard. She had no previous studies in politics, and the university did not teach the subject in English, but as enough money was put on table, there suddenly was no problems. However, when too many professors were requiring her participating in exams, it suddenly was too much for her, and she quit the studies.
Still, the university had opened the Pandora's Box, and it took only a few months until they were trying again this new financial planning. This time, a doctoral degree was for sale.
Lithuanian students studying for a PhD pay 12000 ltl for the studies, unless they get a scholarship. However, now a Dutch writer wanted to get the degree due to his book on his life in Soviet Union. Memoirs worth a degree, as they had agreed with the earlier dean.
This of course caused some turmoil among the staff, as first of all, he was not qualified, the book was not political nor scientific and third, he wanted to be given the degree without him showing any effort. Resolution: some people agreed to write him passing courses required for the PhD studies, and everything was prepared. However, the money became an issue: as Netherlands is a poor country, 3500 euros was an obstacle too big for the writer - he had been given the impression that it would cost only around 1200 euros. - this was solved, and he got the studies with a third of the price of the local students.
No outsiders were informed on the decisions taken, and the local students still have to study for the degree and pay the regular price totally unknowing of the new discounted degree.
Thus, if you ever see a foreigner who studied a PhD in Lithuania, ask to see the dissertation. It may be that he just paid a pittance for the title. However, the local students still have to work for their paper.
If you would like to use the abovementioned opportunity and get yourself a qualification to work in the scientific community as well as an expert on about anything, run to Kaunas with your master's - it may be just enough for a foreigner!

That was the title of the runners-up song of Inculto at Lithuanian national Eurovision final in 2005. Partly I can agree with the message, but there are some issues in it, that is, sex tourism.

There's something wrong with the country's marketing: First, they cannot decide whether they want to market Lithuania as a country of honey, beer or as a crossroad to Russia, and then when everyone is having their own campaigns, what lives on is the sign near Vilnius airport, where a Lithuanian naked girl lying down on a hotel bed hopes you come back soon.

This ad did not really disturb me, before the I went to look for opening hours for Kaunas restaurants (I am pretty much behind the Finnish version of wikitravel guide for Kaunas - the English is most likely made by local tourism information centre). There are three sources for collective info: meniu.lt, restoranai.lt and einam.lt. The second presents only member restaurants that give a price reduction with their card, the first one is rather good, and the last one, decided somehow that all I need is to see naked Lithuanian girls. Sure I needed, on my work computer. Lithuania is not acountry of feminists, and a Scandinavian male can feel easily extremely progressive here.

Then there is this Olialia -thing going on in the country: suddenly it is cool and great to be blonde, stupid and having kilos of plastic as an airbag. They have a credit card from SEB (Wallenbergs' found a Sex Endowment Bank?), they run Pizzeria, sell cola (which got a bigger bottle after two of the olialia models got silicones), computers (as female nerds need the fastest there is with Swarovski - I always thought the longer the better, but these IT people just cannot wait)... and now even music. Please surf the web for Olialia Pupytes to find these wonderful ballades on hard knock life... ... that is playing with boys and spreading the legs.


A bit on an anti-prostitution campaign: http://www.lygus.lt/ITC/news.php?id=773

A quick look to the index published today shows that it's all Europe. But where are the Baltics? Going though the ranks one can see that while Latvia is doing just great, Lithuanian and Estonian performance lags behind the region on average.


However, I thought the ranking is very partial and does not give even slightest support for developing countries to keep on doing the good work with environment. On the other hand, it does not take anyhow into consideration how industrial countries have countless methods they could use to curb the emissions and health the world - that is money - and how the smaller ones cannot perhaps afford all the latest environmental technology, if they are even short of the basics like food and water.


Thus, A quick recalculation: EPI/log10(gdpcap07). Let's "standardize" the result of efforts to availability of methods, so to say. I removed Serbia/Montenegro due to missing data.

New results:  old result in parenthesis

New top:
Nepal 1 (38)
Costa Rica 2 (3)
Congo DR 3 (106)
Zimbabwe 4 (127)
Iceland5 (1)

Norway 43 (5)

Brunei -62
Australia -59
Denmark -58

Baltic Sea Region
Sweden 11 (4)
Latvia 45 (21)
Finland 57 (12)
Belarus  64 (52)
Germany 70  (17)
Lithuania 72 (36)
Denmark 89 (31)
Poland 93 (62)
Estonia 100 (56)
Russia 103 (68)

The new ranks show the countries with lot of money but little relative effort, as well as the poor ones that showing some effort. Of the BSR, One can notice how it was earlier practically divided by West-East division (as the whole EPI). The new calculation, where the ability (assuming GDP per capita is more relevant that GDP itself - GDP per capita tells relatively the amount of usable money per person, while GDP just shows a lump sum) comes in, seems that only a few countries do what they really could do.  Baltics kept their order even in the new calculation, and seems the majority of Baltic Sea Region countries still are on the plus side (above rank 81) in the world. Just shame on Denmark!

Original EPI: http://epi.yale.edu/

The new Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-Fraud may be Algirdas Šemeta! Why should you care?

First, there are a few issues with the title and the country of origin. Lithuania is for sure fighting hard(ly?) towards fraud, but nevertheless, this is a country of some good ol' corruption. I have heard stories of medical passes being bought by people who were first deemed to have too bad eyes for computer work, then bribing of police is not perhaps an everyday issue, but something that even foreigners have met in the country. And then the officials and politicians? Quite a few are involved in a more or less shady affairs. I think you get the picture: Lithuania is not a country of customs, audit nor anti-fraud. Still this does not mean that the customs would not reveal all the time record high illegal imports from Russia, nor that there would not be any people that would be experts on this area. Just, not Semeta.


The man who mostly looks like the Finnish C-class celebrity Matti-Esko Hytönen, has some issues of his own. He was taken as a commissioner to fill in the current president Dalia Grybauskaite, and as the trend seems to be, once you are in, you are in. Thus, Semeta is now offered for second term, and this may be the biggest mistake EU can make.



You can all go to visit the EC web page and read through the impressive CV of the man, but you will perhaps also notice the huge hole in it: the education is not given. Mr. Semeta says he has finished the studies of cybernetics and economics in Vilnius University in 1985. Thus, this Soviet time economist has the formal education of 5 years of university. The man of statistics (which by all means must be just good for the post, unless he is expected to understand the always so overvalued "why?" of the events) holds just the first level university education that was offered those times, but it is not written anywhere that a commissioner should be a phd or even a master, or is it?

Still, Semeta may be just the perfect man for the post. Bad language skills, looks of an evil genius and charisma that is left second only by Silvio Berlusconi. I surely hope that he has a strong team if he gets through, as the post may be too much for his rather narrow shoulders. It just is not a good move to put a man from country that has bad relations to our largest neighbor to rule the customs...

What you should expect: bad English, lots of statistics, long truck lines on Russian borders, great performances of Mr. Charisma 2009.
What you should not expect: solutions

A great new age is about to begin!

Hereby, we, the great omnipotent correspondent of the east shores of Baltic Sea, pronounce this blog as open. Surely, the development should soon take towards an integrated web page with more content, but the mismanagement of the EU funds has left us short of website development subsidy, and we can surely say that the evil forces of our sworn enemas are behind this all! We curse thee!

However, it is not a moment for panic yet. We shall return to glory, and make our name known! We shall be misunderstood many times during this process, but in the end, not even the glory of King Roman II will outshine our noble mission!

Thus, let's all hail the Baltics, denounce the denouncers, and oppress the oppressors!

And now, back to work...