I have a new BLOGSPOT. See: http://mywealthvirus.blogspot.com/

The text below is in Latvian. It is a Open Letter to the Latvian public calling to VOTE on September 17th by casting an EMPTY ballot. The letter also calls for the resignation of the Latvian President Andris Berzins immediately following the elections. The blogger believes that the current President of Latvia was illegally elected. That is to say, he was elected by a Latvian Saeima, which the previous President of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers, had dismissed as corrupt. This dismissal was subsequently confirmed by the public through a Referendum vote. The following link states the results (in Latvian): http://www.delfi.lv/news/referendums-2011/zinas/referenduma-oficialie-rezultati-10saeima-atlaista-ar-650-518-balsim.d?id=39788569 vote.

Labdien!

ATKLĀTA VĒSTULE TAUTAI.

Jau labu laiku rakstu (Latvians On Line http://latviansonline.com/forum/viewthread/34327/), ka vienīgais veids kā pozitīvi iespaidot un panākt nepieciešamās politiskās pārmaiņas Latvijā ir BALSOT AR TUKŠU APLOKSNI.

Saprotu dažādos iebildumus šāda veida protestam pret korupciju Latvijas politiskās aprindās, tomēr ir skaidri redzams, ka Saeimas atlaišana nekādi neieviesa Latvijas mēdijos populistu viedokļus par valdību, tās korumpētību, un cerības uz reālām parmaiņām. Tieši otrādi, populistiskos (publikas) viedokļus vairāk vai mazāk represēja kā politiskās aprindas, tā daudzi mēdiju avoti un žurnalisti, un debates notiek ļoti seklā līmenī, ja mēdiju stingri monitorētās diskusijas pat var nosaukt par debatēm.

Mans personīgais "populistiskais" viedoklis ir, ka tagadējais Latvijas Prezidents Andris Bērziņš ir korumpētas Saeimas iebalsots ārzemju banku ieliktenis. Tā kā balsotāji atzīst Saeimu par korumpētu iestādi, tai nebija un nav morālas tiesības A. Berziņu ievēlēt. Tomēr, tāpēc, ka tas tā ir noticis, Prezidentam Andrim Bērziņam ir no Prezidenta amata jāatkāpjas jau 18. septembrī, tas ir, dienu pēc vēlēšanām.

Vispaviršākais novērotājs var secināt, ka Prezidents Andris Bērziņš izvairās no valdibas korumpētības debatēm, jo piedaloties tiks pievērsta sabiedrības uzmanība viņam pašam. Neizbēgams ir jautājums, kas ir tie (un kas aiz tiem) kuri ieteica Andri Berziņu Prezidenta amatam ieteica un vaskoja viņam slēpes, lai sīkais oligarhs varētu ieslēpot Rigas pilī pār akmens bruģi. Man personīgi nav šaubas, ka viņa aizmugurē ir ārzemju bankas (iespējams zviedru). Katrā ziņā Prezidents Andris Bērziņš nevar izvairīties no šādām aizdomām, kuras izsauc viņa darbība kā bankas prezidents kādai zviedru bankas filiālei. Neatvairāmas aizdomas prasīt prasa, ka A. Bērziņš no Prezidenta amata atsakās, un piedalās jaunās Prezidenta vēlēšanās, kurās Prezidents tiek ievēlēts no tautas tiešā ceļā.

Vienīgais ceļš, kā panākt KONSEKVENTU DARBĪBU bez tālākās gurķošanās ir BALSOT AR TUKŠU APLOKSNI. Jo lielāks šāda veida balsotāju skaitlis un procents, jo skaidrāks kļūs latviešu tautas neapmierinātība ar ne tikai iepriekšējo atlaisto valdību, bet par debašu represiju vairāku mēnešu garumā pirms vēlēšanām sestdien, 17. septembrī.

Paldies par uzmanību un atsaucību.

Antons Benjamiņš, aka Jaņdžs

A Dead Chicken at Latvia’s Doorstep (XIV)

“But we cannot regain contact with meaning if we rely on the fallacious base that persists from the past. The critical thinking that we have absorbed [as a civilization] is opposed to dead meaning, ….” –Jean-Michael Oughoirlian in “Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World,” by Rene Girard.

The above sentence, taken from the concluding chapter of the above mentioned book, struck me apropo the elections coming up in Latvia on September 17^th.

Rene Girard, to whom the above statement is directed, has just made a remark with regard to the state of our global civilization. Girard claims that our contemporary patterns of thought have fallen into a pattern of “Puritanism [that] dessicates every text and spreads the most deadening boredom even in the newest situations.”

Girard goes on: “It is important for us to rediscover something in which we can believe, but there must be no cheating, either with the conditions that are forced upon us by the terrible world in which we live or in terms of those that dictate that the most rigorous research must do without any form of ethnocentrism, or even any form of anthropocentrism.”

Ethnocentrism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

Anthropocentrism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism

What this has to do with the recent dismissal of the Latvian Saeima, the election of a President by the dismissed Saeima (the result of which is that the country is presided over by a man likely representing the interests of foreign banks), and a election campaign for a new Saeima that both looks and smells like a week old chicken on our doorstep, is that “dead meaning” taints every Latvian with its stench.

On the other hand, it is maybe not so extraordinary after all, because all of Europe today stinks like “dead meaning” might.

In Latvia, as well as the rest of Europe, “civilization” has come to an end, not by the will of humankind as a whole, but by “dead meaning” thrust upon it by about 0.1% of the total population. This unique minority is the so-called corporate individual, sometimes called “oligarch”, but in fact a relentlessly mindless corporation said to have a human face. This grotesque individual, “dead” by the fact of straight faced delusions, even if some see them as a group such as the Bilderbergers, for example. A Latvian, Andris Piebalgs, acts as an advisor to the Bilderbergers. Balloons were floated to find out if he would be a candidate for the presidency. He declined on career considerations. He is the Energy Commissioner for the EU.

The “dead meaning” floats past this writer’s eyes as the dead body of a man he saw from a tourist’s boat on the Ganges rowing past Varanasi.  With that body floats Europe and Latvia, the latter a dead-Soviet state, but with a western face.

Glory be to sanctimonium. In Latvia, it is not possible to replace the word  “God” with the word “Sun”, because the anthem is “sacred” and the Sun is unimportant compared to it. The humour of it is that proto-Latvians, the Latvians who lived before 1918 (the year of the founding of Latvia) had the Sun as their female Dearest Goddess. The post-1918 Latvia is firmly established in the mind of nearly every Latvian as the collective “dead meaning”. The future is to keep going on the basis of inertia, a new Saeima to follow the dismissed old one as readily as a hen lays two eggs, one after the other.

If one is looking for a revolution in Latvia or Europe, one has to think of how to disassemble the corporate individual protected on all sides by phallanxes of attorneys and minds dedicated to legality over egality. There have been many proposals over the years, but all made sure that everything was “democratic” and that “human rights” are respected so much so that neither corporate individuals nor soldiers with the country at war should be sentenced to death. The “dead meaning” (the over-justification of why the corporate individual should not be given the ax) gives the reader the chance here and now to go—as they say in Latvian—“Ka-plunk!”.

So, what can the Europeans and Latvians whose minds have been clogged with “dead meaning” do?

In practical terms, I will stick with what I have advocated before: Go vote, but drop into the ballot box an empty ballot. Another thing, the proto-Latvians lived among themselves much more democratically when their habitat was the wood and the small clearing they made there for themselves. In terms of human habitat, Europe then was a much better place on Earth than it is today.

The world today, too, would be a much better place if human beings took back their right to be human without corporate advice or interference. Latvians and Europeans could be among the first in the world to take the Earth back from the not so virtual infantiles.

Go drop into the box a blank vote and get rid of "dead meaning".

Chickens Which Ran in All Directions

Have Become Chickens Come to Roost (XIII)

A picturesque view from the road.

Latvia is about to get leaders who cannot lead anyone, anywhere, who have no plans for the future, no idea where they come from.

As for the future, none of the current slate of political candidates has risked his or her neck arguing or speculating about a future that has a chance to create a society for long-term survival. This is why they have no real politik projections, only cynical and self-serving plans. As for the past of Latvia, the Latvian leadership lacks any real sense of it, leaving it begin (and die) with the declaration of Latvia’s independence in 1918.

For all of three generations now [70+ years since Karlis Ulmanis demise and his decommission of Latvians as a self-conscious and self-assertive community (1939)] the Latvian community—both in Latvia and abroad—has slithered about its own slippery gore, never quite able to manage an analysis of what happened to create circumstances that this should be so.

This writer has written about the past of the Latvian people in many blogs. His major conclusion may be summed up in a few words: a forest people are not a peasant people.

No doubt, the Latvian people have been forest and field dwellers, farmers, both. However, the Latvian roots in the forest, which is at the core being of Latvians (or proto-Latvians) have been deliberately erased by a myth that forced to the fore the story about Latvians slogging the plowed field as an exploited peasant http://uploads4.wikipaintings.org/images/vincent-van-gogh/sketches-of-peasant-plowing-with-horses-1890.jpg!xlMedium.jpg .

An afternoon sun

In other words, the Proto-Latvians, a people once politically free and democratic, with a language that celebrated the endearing word, with community and word protected from violence by the forests about them [which forest encouraged socio economic equality] were turned into uncertain democrats, urban dwellers no longer able to see the panorama of the whole (present, past, or future), but who present themselves as a demoralized pack of ‘elites’ and politicians of Riga. They are all happily setting the ship of state ever more adrift into the plastic rubbish at the centre of our planet’s seas.

While the Latvian people are correct to rate the occupation of the Soviet Union (in 1939 http://www.worldology.com/Europe/images/wwii_1939_ussr_baltic.jpg ) as a cruel blow to their existence as a community, this writer has been constant in pointing to the betrayal of the Latvian community by Karlis Ulmanis as a major contributing factor to the community’s demoralization, not to mention perversion of the state.

An unfortunate and no doubt once confused President Karlis Ulmanis is today variously accused of having  been a fascist dictator and/or a martyr to the Soviet Gulag—factors that play a part in what happened. However, the real “occupation” was accomplished by Ulmanis himself, when with no protest against an event that necessitated the shedding of his blood (if he was to avoid sheeding the blood of Latvians), he surrendered his personal job—presidency by dictat—for a job as an agronomer in the Soviet Union. Yes, Ulmanis died in a Gulag as the result of an outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa , not because the Soviets had scheduled him for execution there. Whatever the ideals of President Ulmanis may have been, his last acts denied them all.

While political science recognizes such an event as “founding violence” http://www.bluffton.edu/~mastg/Girard.htm , Ulmanis is responsible for creating a decommissioning violence, a mortal (potentially) psychological blow http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/38434/Trauma.pdf , which has been in effect since Ulmanis' nation-negating deed.

As a result of Ulmanis decommissioning of the State of Latvia (in a moral sense, one proud of itself), he created psychological conditions that have not been overcome to this day. This is not to negate the spirit of the Latvians who were outraged by the occupation and joined the Germans in attacking the Soviets. It is true that later (when easy guesses were belatedly acknowledged) the Latvians also turned against the German military. However, what needs highlighting is the fact that as a result of Ulmanis’ betrayal of the self-esteem of the community through his personal actions rather than acting through communal deliberations, the Latvian people, suddenly decommissioned psychologically, reacted to war and its violence emotionally as if it were liberating. The leaderless nation did not act with deliberation and rationally as it ought to have done.

 

As a result of the communal emotional state left to the winds and communal affairs not a matter of communally deliberated decision-making, the reputation of the Latvian legionnaires became exposed as much to eroneous action as to excuse-making that never examines the root cause of the psychologically induced uncertainty that haunts the psyche of Latvians today. History slip-slides as shallow men will let it. Certainly, a negation of Latvian history, whether in the far- or near-time, suits the current political elite and their sponsors.

To conclude: It is not the community-nation that is the concern of the current political elites. It is not the nation as a culturally sustainable entity that interests them. What is in the forefront of interest today are narrow and self-serving political schemes.

One ought not be surprised that the future of Latvia is never envisaged as, say, the land which may give Europe its future capital. It is well for the existing system that Latvia remain at the system’s periphery, where it can be exploited as borderlands generally are. That is also where the lands of the dead are traditionally found.

The road turning right.

Jaņdžs, aka Eso Antons Benjamiņš, 2. september, 2011-09-02.

Chickens Running in All Directions (XII)

Who is a heavyweight? I mean a heavyweight in a charismatic way.

I know that every star of whatever brightness is believed to be a heavyweight. However, this is a suspect presumption. The twinkle of a star may be but a twinkle.

The charisma of a heavyweight calls back to my mind the office of the Sacred King, the mythological, but not always, figure of ‘ancient’ times. This was a man, and sometimes a woman, who did real things in such a way that he-she earned themselves a place in a nation-founding myth.

Before the founding myth there was no Sacred King or Queen to guide society beyond the mother, children, and wandering Son circle. The members of this group were so much into each other that they seldom fought with each other.

Nevertheless, this incredibly tight knot, which was bound by incest [might this have been the original Gordian knot?] was often visited by exceptions: unforgettable murders. The murder by Cain of Abel belongs to this genre. The war between kings Paris of Troy and Menelaus of Sparta for the living body of Queen Helen was likely due to the fact that Helen’s bed was too close to that of her brothers. Such intimate relationships have long been erased from the founding story, whether the Bible or myth. Nevertheless, the story is a near perfect example of pareidolia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia in story telling. One may see this type of pareidolia as deliberate in order to facilitate the sometimes repressed mind. The ‘Mind’ of Western society fits the bill.

Due to the unwelcome outbreaks of murder among the ‘original’ family, a larger society—if it was to maintain itself beyond the immediate intimate circle for any length of time—needed to discover a reason for being. Why indeed not return to the warm circle of babies nuzzling the breasts of their mothers, the family where sex among its own is unavoidable?

There are two ways in which an incest ridden family can avoid future outbreaks of fratri-cide.  One is 1) to leave the murderous event, the horror, and prevent a recurrence of itself as long as it remains part of a society’s living memory, but thereafter risk a repetition; or 2) repress incest.

The repression of incest fell to the office of The Sacred King.

The Sacred King did not repress (as we may think today) by using the police or a military, but by offering his life to death. By giving (voluntarily) his life to death, the king creates for ‘death’ its large D. The Death of the Sacred King creates such charisma that it equals and passes the charisma of two brothers trying to slay each other.

In other words, Why us, why is it that we must die, but not them; or why we and they, but not they over there are dying?

The cause of an enlarged social space is stimulated into being by two powerful factors:  1) the fact that sooner or later a murder not only does but must occur; and 2) that without a mediating resource, the default will prevail; in other words, catastrophes of a tragic nature will be frequent. Brothers will kill brothers as if no sisters had been born. Incestuous dreams lead to incest, and death of one of the brothers will be by the hand of the other, who found his brother’s legs entwined with the same legs that bore them both.

The story of incest may seem far from the political economy of Latvia. Actually, it is not. Latvia is as every-where-else in the 21^st century. The economic disparity between the two brothers, the Oligarchs and the Populists, puts them at a catastrophic distance from each other. While one brother is a Populist with little education banging a whore who is also a Populist and most of the time stays unemployed, the other has so much money that he is called an oligarch, and the government runs scared of his big D….  

This is how the big D is weighed: Death on the one hand, Dick on the other. Both names are heavyweight, but the last one is for a laugh, no?

In Latvia the two brothers represent the nature of Latvian politics. One is a ‘non-existent’ Populists dreaded by the Oligarchs, because they are but a handful. The first mentioned are many, the last few. The Oligarchs are believed to be omnipotent, because America, London, Paris, and Berlin are on their side, while the others are said to be mere Populists, a Mob of sorts.

The Populists are the jelly on which the Tower of Babel, today owned by oligarchs, is built. We know the Tower of Babel to have crashed http://www.deldig.com/media_thumbs/180.jpg at least once before. Will it do so again? Does not the World and Latvian media speak as one out of a given system beyond which there is no other?

One sees this polarized relationship between the oligarch who pretends to the Prime Minister’s job of Latvia, and Clever John and Crazy Jane, the last being witch Ragana’s eldest daughter http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/2010/03/eso-antons-benjamins-aka-jandzs-not_26.html , the former her pimp. Like it or not, Clever John and Crazy Jane happen to be Latvian citizens, too.

What does one Lembergs do for an encore after President Berzins, who—before being stirred into a passion for his country by high office—receives the highest pension in Latvia? If Ls 5000 monthly were to be divided by 10, the result is Ls 500—which is to say that ten families could afford to return from England to Latvia or will not leave Latvia. Clever John and Crazy Jane (Gudrais Jānis un Dullā Žane) get screwed only the way an incestuous son of Latvia can screw them. Then the oligarchs have the gall to say that the Latvian language is the most holy, and go kiss their “D”s if you don't believe it.

The Middle Class, the “successes” from among the Populists are close enough to their Populist roots to appreciate the difference, and  continues to kiss the oligarchs’ Blarney Stone  http://www.irelandseye.com/blarney/blarney.shtm till it shines and right can no longer be distinguished from wrong.

Chickens Running in All Directions (XI)

Let me begin this entry with Apollo, the Latvian internet site so frequently put down, because it best represents populist resentment of Latvia’s corrupt institutions. The site speaks for itself by shouting loudly, clearly, and sometimes in a foul language the opinions that infect the populists. By populists this writer means that segment of the population without which democracy is not possible.

Speaking of democracy in Latvia, were it to exist here, there would be no public displays of the Turrets’ syndrome that infect the responses at said site, but [to paraphrase Adrian Kuzminski http://www.mdrtalk.org/ (go to ‘Populism, The Third Way’)] there would be a political economy of the people with claims to private property as a correlate to its claims to public power. In short, if Latvia were to be a democracy, it would use the leverage of its small size to seize for itself the intellectual ground that is that of the former Republic of Vermont (see above link) than ape the neo-liberal system that is visibly sick unto death.

Be that as it may, how does a country arrive at democracy when most of its authorities dream of becoming oligarchs, are oligarchs, or are in some way compromised by oligarchs. By using the word ‘oligarchs’, I mean not so much to put onus on the individual, but the system, re liberal capitalism self-regulating itself in such a way that there is in effect no regulation. A good example of this invasive power is the current President of Latvia, one Andris Berzins, an oligarch (granted, even by Latvian standards a minor one), who as a former bank director for an affiliate of a Swedish bank is blatantly compromising the economic interests of most Latvians.

In a recent media blurb http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/246875 , the President claims to know why the citizens of Latvia are unhappy with the Saeima, the legislative body of the Latvian government. The internet text is in Latvian, which may be as well, because were it in English, the reader would see through the clichés sooner than later and understand that the President’s ideas are simplistic and self contradictory. In this instance, a lie in Latvian obfuscates the lie more successfully than its presentation, say, in English, which due to its unfamiliarity to the public at large has less ‘white noise’ to interfere with the true interpretation of what he is saying.

In the media blurb, the President insists that he is a conservative to such a degree that he would not initiate measures without the full agreement of the Saeima (a body recently dismissed by voters as illegitimate). More over, President Berzins hopes that by presenting himself as such a conservative, he is not encouraging populism. (“…es kā prezidents atbalstīšu tikai tās iniciatīvas, kurām ir atbalsts koalīcijā. Ceru, ka tas nebūs pamats priekšvēlēšanu populismam”.) Apparently, the President is as confused about the meaning of populism as are most of Latvia’s political elites, which is to say, the President is just as interested in circumventing democracy as the dismissed Saeima. Not so incidentally, he is joined in his call for a special session of the old and discredited Saeima by the coalition of the Greens and Farmers (ZZS) http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/247227 , who are largely funded by an oligarch.

The other link that this blogger would like to mention appeared in Apollo. It is a summary of an interview in the newspaper Diena (13.8) with Valdis Birkavs.

Birkavs is a former Prime and Foreign Minister of Latvia. The text is in Latvian, and concerns itself with what Birkavs believes are the four stages of Latvia’s evolution as a state, re: 1) romanticism; 2) cynicism; 3) greed; 4) near hopeless confusion

http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/246776 In this instance, the Latvian text has no white noise.

Regarding the last and present stage of the government, Birkavs argues that after joining the EU and NATO, there began a period of indecision, aimlessness (for the last ten years), and standing in place. [“Līdz ar iestāšanos Eiropas Savienībā un NATO…. sākās periods… mētāšanās, bezmērķība [pēdējos desmit gados]… mīņāšanās uz vietas.”]

It is worth noting that Birkavs connects the deconstruction of Latvia’s sovereignty (see previous blogs) with Latvia enmeshing itself with EU and NATO. Joining the EU has cost Latvia its bright standard (spožo karogu) and surrendered it to Europe’s feckless http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/feckless politicians. This phenomenon has also been noticed by Philip Zelikow in a Commentary piece in the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e806c60a-c769-11e0-9cac-00144feabdc0.html .

Rounding off the neglect, both, of foreign and domestic policies in Latvia, George Friedman of Stratfor has much to say that hits the nail on the head, even though he writes of the state of the governments of the world and does not mention Latvia. Friedman is concerned over who are they who are presuming to be running the world? Are they not all lightweights? “The issue is: who are these people who are running things, what gives them the right to do so, and if that right does not somehow flow from competence, what does it flow from?”
Read more: Agenda: With George Friedman on a Crisis of Political Economy | STRATFOR

Which questions brings us to the question of who is a heavyweight?

I will attempt to make some suggestions in the next blog of “Chickens Running in All Directions”.



Chickens Running in All Directions (X)

The recent outbreak of hooliganism in London http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14449675 and in other parts of England, confirms the death of the traditional community with a vengeance http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14487982 . Not that this is anything new or has not been known to happen before. Many historians of economy, notably Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation, 1944), noted “the social catastrophe which followed the Industrial Revolution” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book) .

The social catastrophe of the Industrial Revolution was gradually arrested and a kind of temporary society reestablished in place of the traditional community. If before the arrival of the piston engine “…the self-sufficing household of the peasant laboring for his subsistence remained the broad basis of the economic systems…” (ibid), these systems were soon transformed into ones that turned the substance of its labors, labor including, into money.

Moreover, if before the arrival of money as the chief determinate of value, the community had been held together by the limits imposed by slow mobility (the horse, the sail, and objectified land), social rituals established over long periods of time, and the founding violence of the arch-Christian world (later to become neo-Christendom), the arrival of money commoditized even violence. Some of the first great wealth of our times was made by financing wars.

War is not a new phenomenon. We only have to recall the Vikings, who roved or sailed to distant lands and pillaged peaceable villages located far upriver of those lands. Indeed, such wars preceded the times of roads, because once the only ‘roads’ that were were rivers or paths along seashores. However, these early wars differed significantly from the wars of our time. While no one to this writer’s knowledge has called these early wars ‘fascist wars’, this is what they were, if we understand that  fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_and_ideology can stand for socialism on behalf of small homogenous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneity_and_heterogeneity  communities.

No doubt, early communities were also more or less democratic in the sense that individualism as such was non-existent or was barely perceived as such. Moreover, early communities probably sustained a dual system of self-governance: that of the sacred King being buttressed by so-called community of Elders.

The Sacred King was the scapegoat who legitimized the community by confirming through his death (real, ritualistic, one or both) the community’s will to be (as if to say: ‘The community is so important to me that I am willing to die for it’). The elders of the community (early bureaucrats) were then able to exploit the charisma of the death in an administrative way. Usually, such an ‘administration’ was by way of instituting common gods, ritualistic observations, distribution of supplies in times of emergency, and a network of messengers who distributed such summons as the Sacred King and the Elders issued in the name of the community. The community, often misnamed ‘tribe’, was generally visualized as a totem.

[The name of the Sacred King was probably John (Janis, Ivan, Huan, Jean, Dion, etc. The name probably derives from the name ‘gans’; re, herdsman. This is why the herdsman, also the Sacred King, is often identified with a lamb.]

Small community fascism expanded, after the great movement of communities from the East (perhaps originating in some climactic cataclysm) came up against the shores of the Atlantic in the West. With oceangoing ships not yet invented, many of the migrants settled as households (self-contained subsistence level economic units). Relatively peaceable communities at their inception, the governments of the communities—the Sacred King and Elders—soon came under the pressure of violence.

For one, the Vikings (and their like) had more prey (settlements) at hand, which they could attack; secondly, the relative vulnerability of a settled community vis-à-vis a gang of marauders increased the role of the messengers. With the arrival of violence, the role of these messengers was transformed. Traveling armed with a stick, we know them to this day as Gendarmes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Upljy3gks&NR=1  and Janissaries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ackK2GP8mCk + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opac9IGV8fM&feature=related .

The proto-Latvian communities had their Jahnihshi (Jānīši) or Johns, too. A Johns Festival song on Midsummer’s Eve or Johns Eve sings of this community’s guardian: “Ai, Jonny, son of the Sun!” Of course, today the word ‘Sun’ is replaced by the word ‘God’’. This is one of the ways that a small community is joined to the empire. Or could it be that one empire, the East, was exchanged for the empire of the West?

Yes, of course. I have frequently mentioned the 1209 attack by Bishop Albert’s knights (of Riga) against the proto-Latvian king Visvaldis and the city of Jersika (Jerusalem), which was located in what is now eastern Latvia. Situated on the left bank of Daugava (Jaunava?), Jersika was but a portage away from the Volga, whence the Black Sea and the Orient was wide open.

Without going through the labyrinth of proto-Latvian history (I do that in my earlier blogs), let us allow ourselves the fantasy of joining the 12^th and 13^th centuries in proto-Latvia to our days.

Today the Johns Festival on Midsummer’s Eve is famous for drunkenness by disoriented Latvians or summer concerts beginning with a Spanish song. John himself has been scandalized and was removed to heaven to sit on his hands there centuries ago.

Following a brief period of independence, 1918-1939, Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union and administered on its behalf from 1940 until 1991. Since 1991, after undergoing brain massage by shock and awe capitalism, Latvia is an invalid sovereign country presided over and administered by a President, who cannot escape having a conflict of interest and being under suspicion of being a proxy of Western banks. The same goes for the Finance Minister. Almost everyone pretends that this is not so, but perhaps as many as 20% of Latvians have left the country to work abroad. This ought to serve as proof of incompetence, failure, and ‘sovereign’ power sans charisma.

Ecce communitas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitas .

Chickens Running in All Directions (IX)

Judging by the ubiquity of the endearing word in the Latvian language (a number of languages share in this facility), a ubiquity that is now reduced to a potential rather than actual use, the proto-Latvians may be judged to have once been a peaceable people.

At some point in their history this peaceable people became subject to great violence. This violence appears to have been a prolonged affair, causing Latvians to become the victims of violence. That is to say, the victimization of proto-Latvians turned their descendants into a violent people as well.

If one follows Professor Rene Girard’s thesis  (this writer to a great extent does so), then the founding violence of the proto-Latvian community—that is to say, their recognition of themselves as a community through the killing of a scapegoat—occurred a long time ago. This initial violence through victimizing, likely, an innocent fellow human, was thereafter transformed into a profoundly felt guilt. Though, no doubt, I make what is known as a ‘forward looking statement’, it may be that the proto-Latvians projected their sense of guilt into their language. I.e., to avoid conflict among themselves, the proto-Latvians enabled their language to endear every noun and even soften verbs.

When speaking, the forebears of Latvians made the use of the endearing word a ritualistic practice by frequent insertions of words of endearment into their conversation. This practice reached a point, when such an insertion of endearments became automatic. This is a time when proto-Latvians and no doubt many of their neighbors created a unique not-violent http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/2009/11/eso-antons-benjamins-not-violent-terror_25.html culture.

One may cite as proof of the endearing culture the fact that the Latvian language does not have such phrases of swear terms as “mother fucker” (widely used by the English speaking peoples) or “yobt via mat” (the same in Russian). Interestingly, the latter expressions belong to people co-opted by empires, which make frequent use of war and prepare their people for it by surrounding them with bare existence conditions. According to the generals of empires, the enemies of empires never value their life, which is, so to speak, ipso facto, why the enemy’s people fuck their mothers. The empires never have peace through conciliation or re-conciliation, but through violence. To the proto-Latvian mind this kind of behavior is a sin against human rights. Such swearing means that (in loose translation) ‘God fucks his mother!’ To imagine such a thing is not worth sacrificing the proto-Latvian language for.

Today the Latvian language is not yet a total sacrifice for the dump, but with the media and officialdom having largely eliminated the endearing word, the Latvian language is being presented as a kind of bastard that can be sold as a slave to whoever is the oligarch of the moment. And when a writer’s novel pays no more than a few hundred lats, it leaves the language to the publicity pimps, who are this very the moment pimping it for whatever it is worth. It is known as the positivist mode.

When I (LOL) laughed out loud that Latvia had become an Administrative District in the European Union, I found it more than funny that the first bureaucrats administering the district are foreign bankers even as they play footsie with proxies like the President and Finance Minister of Latvia.  

In short, dear Latvians, the administrators predicted by ol’ George Orwell in his novel ‘1984’ are our overlords. We share them with their equivalents in Greece, Ireland, England, France, Germany. In fact, they are all over the world.

This then comes to the question whether Administrators have the right to send people, any people, to war? Can those, who guarantee themselves death in a down bed, send others to die in their place in wars they have declared? Can the President of Latvia be among the receivers of the highest pensions in Latvia? By what right does a foreign proxy send Latvians to war and leave men who hardly have visited Latvia decide Latvia’s domestic and foreign policy? Is the foreign policy of Latvia anything but a charade?

Talking about a charade—is not the tiff with Russia over whether Latvia was “occupied ” by the Soviet Union (1939) based on the (unspoken) fact that President Ulmanis offered the Soviets no resistance, but knowing that resistance was futile, did not offer his own life in lieu of it and as an affirmation that it was not futile? Did Latvia avoid becoming an administered district of the Soviet Union by offering no resistance to it?

If the Latvian legionnaires who joined the Germans against the Soviet Union in 1941, whether they volunteered or whether were conscripted, did so for patriotic reasons and in defense of Latvia and the Latvian community, did they also not step into Ulmanis do-nothing trap: Ulmanis did not re-found the State of Latvia by giving his life for it. He left the community fend for itself. The community, left without leadership fell into a legalistic trap: try as they may, they cannot extricate themselves from accusations of being trusted by the Waffen SS and all it implies.

A great many Latvians died, were sent to Gulags, fled to near and far abroad, but are not requited by the government of Latvia with a government that knows what it is doing.

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The following article by George Friedman at Statfor is an excellent summary of the political-economic situation in the world—not excluding Latvia.

http://app.response.stratfor.com/e/es.aspx?s=1483&e=334626&elq=f8bc5d7750824e1c851e140ca5937993