Stealing Latvia, Final Episode

First part of the old witch’s story



Of ducklings and grasses



Latvia was stolen with the help of a helpless Latvian President.

This is a funny story but also sad. Both little children and grown-ups who tell children this story will laugh and cry.

So, here it goes.

Once upon a time in a country called Latvia, there lived a real witch. The witch wore a black sheet over her otherwise bony and teatless body. Color black made the witch both invisible and horrible looking. The more invisible the witch was, the more horrible she became to the imagination.



A group of about a dozen came marching through the meadow,
but I had to drive on and know not whence they came or went



Many people were struck blind by the sight of the witch—even if she stood in the shadows. There may be to this day blind people alive in Latvia, who can tell what happened when they had their fateful encounter with the witch. The moment she appeared was when she wanted to eat human eyeballs. This is when she (or he?) became visible to Latvians.

The moment the witch’s victims saw the witch, their eyes turned black and teary and flowed from their sockets as rotten eggs. Even as the people screamed, and the smell of rot filled the air, the witch came over to the horrified victim, and licked its eyes right off its cheeks. Many say that the witch smacked her lips and made sounds that sounded like “Nyam, nyam”. The witch then took the opportunity to sit the shocked and blinded victims down wherever it was it all happened and tell them a story.

This is what the witch told.

Once upon a time Latvia was a country covered by great forests. The Latvians themselves were people living in the forest, where they made small clearings to build their houses. The Latvians subsisted mostly on salted mushrooms and cabbages (in the winter) and wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, milk, and honey (in the summer).



A midsummer heaven of daisies



The Latvians of former times ate no meat, because they did not like to kill anything alive. The one occasion when the Latvians were willing to kill was at certain high noon times, when the Sun—the goddess who represented the wonders of the universe for them—was directly above them. Trapped in the glowing moment of noon was like being trapped within the Sun herself. To make themselves feel real again, the Latvians gathered a crowd of witnesses (other Latvians), and then asked if one in their midst wanted to die.

“Hee, hee!” laughed the Latvian witch, and continued:

Quite often no one came forward and said “I”. Who in his right mind would? But then why ask the question. This was a moment of truth.

If no Latvian came forward to say that he-she loved Latvia as much as him- or herself, then there was no community of Latvians. Then all those Latvians who had come together on Johns Eve and on Midsummer Day stood at high noon on privatized Gaizinkalns were just a lot of curious tourists watching some silly ritual or other.

There came a time, however, when in fact no one came forward. The Latvian tourists did not in any way feel themselves more real than real feels at high noon at any other place, and evidence for that reality was in the lats, dollars, and euros they left behind at the inn. Oh, yes, the inn was called “Pagan”.



Clover in bloom



The tourist brouchure does not explain that “pagan” stands for pa-yan. Yan had been the name by which the original proto-Latvians designated a man and a human being. Women were included through a trick of the Latvian language: it could turn almost every word into a feminine word by adding a vowel. In this case, Yane, sometimes Zhane, stood for all women.

Thus, the word “pagan” is actually “Yan” and “Yane” demoted to being pa-yan and pa-yane, and then again to pagan. “Pa” is a prefix that diminishes the significance of who ever bears the word by half or more. While Saule stands for the Sun, pa-saule stands for the planet Earth.

When the day came that all Latvians became tourists in their own country (and many tour right out of it, say, to China or Ireland), then something needs to be done for Latvians to recover themselves as something more than tourists. If this does not happen, Latvians turn into soap bubbles and everything goes Pop! This is a great time for witches to drink blood.

Of course, I am not talking of real blood. If sometimes the blood is real, most of the time it is symbolic.

The fragrance is like that of a mild honeysuckle

For example, if Latvians do not become real, the time will be lost to rent out Riga for the next hundred years to the Chinese as their capital in Europe. Right now the Chinese are all over Europe http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-says-it-will-bailout-insolvent-european-countries saying they are ready to save floundering economies and worthless currencies. If insolvent Riga and Latvians become real and play their cards right, China could bail the Latvians out of their debt and turn Riga into Latvia’s taxi meter for Chinese passengers.

With the tax money, the land of Latvia could be turned into a forest again, and Latvians could again be a forest people. Don’t you know that if you want a real democracy, you must live in a forest? The barons got the best of proto-Latvians when they got them to cut down their forests and their machineguns could move down anything that crossed the field.

“Hee, hee!” laughed the Latvian witch. “To this day, I hide best behind trees. When in a forest, you will never know when I jump out from behind a tree.”

There is even more to tell.



Gate West of the Temple to Black John

Not being too smart and tied into a knot known as “the oligarch”, the Latvian parliament elected a new President, one Andris Bērziņš. The reason the Latvian Saeima (Parliament, sort of) did this was because the new President had been the head of a Latvian bank, drew the highest pension of anyone in Latvia, and was an adventurer, a Don Juan who did not distinguish between women and people when it came to a chance for a tryst.

You know what I mean, said the witch. Hear this!

When President Zatlers suggested in his State Directive #2 (based on the 48^th Pants of the Latvian constitution) that the people decide through a vote in a Referendum whether to dismiss the Saeima or not, his mind was hoping he was reading the mind of the People right, that is, that the Saeima is really deserving of dismissal. President Zatlers gave a long list of potentially anti-Latvian acts of the Saeima, one of which is a surreptitious evolutionary form of privatization of Latvia, which in due course will surprise Latvians by turning Latvia into a non-State. This can be achieved if the sovereign of Latvia is not the People, but the Saeima.

Quite a witchy story, is it not? hee heed the witch. It is also high noon.



Black John on Johns Eve, Midsummer 2011



Could the man to step forward as a sacrifice at this high noon be President-Elect Andris Bērziņš?

It is not Bērziņs life anyone wants, but the Presidency he holds is wanted back in the hands of the sovereign People again. The 17^th of September vote for the new Saeima should include a vote of Latvia’s sovereigns for their next President. Of course, Andris Bērziņš can be given a place on the candidates list. So can Valdis Zatlers. So can others.

(To be continued.)