The-Not-Voter: June 2010

Sunday, June 27, 2010

“Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou
owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep
no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on
's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself:
unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare,
forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings!
come unbutton here.”
[With his “wits beginning to unsettle” (words by Kent), Lear tears off his clothes.]

While Mr. Ulmanis has no unfaithful daughters to trouble him, he has been—no less than Mr. Lear—flattered out of his wits by monsieurs Shkele and Shlesers, the leaders of the above (parenthesised) political parties. May one be so foolish and think that the two political leaders—if with Ulmanis’ help they turn their political weakness into a miraculous victory—will want to continue with him except make him another lamed President? Unfortunately, (if the ex-president has not overcome his naivite) the existential act may come as love comes to a virgin as he finds himself before the public no less unbuttoned than Mr. Lear. Baby, it is cold outside, whether the Fool who is witness is kind or not.

“Unaccomodated” (by fate) and betrayed (and challenged?) in full public view, what will Mr. Ulmanis do?

As much as King Lear was pressed by age and approaching death to divide his kingdom, so Mr. Ulmanis may have been moved by the hope that Latvia—which after all owes much of its coming into being to his grandfather’s brother, who was the last president of the first (part) Latvian Republic.

The late President of Latvia, Karlis Ulmanis—may through Guntis Ulmanis have another opportunity to rid Latvia of a corrupt government and give it another go at becoming a bona fide sovereign state of a people with bona fide claims to it. Mr. Ulmanis’ hope—that monsiers Shkele and Shlesers have “bettered” themselves—cannot be anything but a rhetorical device that masks the people’s effort to snatch the state from disaster. To permit one’s self to think so, one puts trust in the belief that Mr. Ulmanis decision is self-consciously made and knows its dramatic potential. There (is) (must be) a life-risking element to Mr. Ulmanis’ effort, however. Else, not only does he fail his forebear in a personal sense, but Latvia may look forward to itself as one of bygone days.

This blogger has written elsewhere that the government of President Kārlis Ulmanis (1936-1940) is a legitimate projection of the will of the people of Latvia--with one caveat: President Ulmanis failed the death or self-sacrifice test at the time Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union.

Perhaps Ulmanis hoped that through peaceful surrender (to the Soviet Union) Latvia will better survive the rule of the Soviet Union. War with it could not possibly lead to victory. It is (was) a legitimate hope. However, Ulmanis failed to confirm his hope for an independent Latvia as the better choice. He failed to seal the sovereign people’s hope with an offering of his life. Though Kārlis Ulmanis died in Siberia and lies in an unmarked grave (to make his life and works so much more forgettable), if such a fate is his living seal, it spoilt itself. The decline of Latvia has something to do with the failure of Kārlis Ulmanis to act existentially by making a literal gift of his life for the people’s dream.

By taking advantage of his position as the first President of Latvia since his grand-uncle Kārlis Ulmanis, and by discovering a way to continue the story of Latvia, Guntis Ulmanis has set the stage for becoming the Latvian people’s hero and saviour. He is offering the sovereign Latvian people the chance to re-think themselves once more. He may chose to make the offer real by blocking naked conspicuous consumption among all Latvians. After all, egality was (once upon a time) shared in by every country household that knew how to make its own brand of beer.

One hopes that the Latvian people may be persuaded to be existential and know to exclude conspicuous consumption from their vision of the future. However, if it is not to be, the failure will make monsoirs Shkele and Shlesers greedy princes all over again. While the spirit of victory is sure to rise to their heads, it will also guarantee that a share in their "murgs" (a nightmare) will not just quickly pass past the nation’s eyes but be found in the mirrors of all.

Guntis Ulmanis yet fails as yet to put the seal, the risk of life, on his effort. As long as this failure persists, the story continues as a circus. Everyone knows that there are no more heroines such as Spihdola, who once went to the aid of Jahnis Lachplesis. Today the sovereign nation of Latvia is disintegrating with such seeming inevitability that it makes one think it will soon reach total self-forgetfulness. Some think that we have already reached and are in the post-self-forgetfulness era.

Whether the above alternative is preferable to this blogger’s advocacy of NOT-VOTING, the blogger does not know. One may guess that Mr. Guntis Ulmanis may show his cards before elections. Hopefully these will not be cards of puffed up rhetoric and pictures of dancing horses. If it is rhetoric, the NOT-VOTER ought to consider it a real opportunity for him and herself and the NOT-VOTE.

Moreover, there is the question of whether there are other “Jahnis Lachplecis” (John Bears) among the public, and their name may become Jāņi, i.e. Johns, pl.. We know there must be ways to accumulate capital for Latvia, but surely not by hit or miss methods favoured by foreign investors. Latvians, if they know who they are, have to see what lies ahead for them not just for tomorrow, but the day after. They cannot be looking at the future with an investor’s eye. As platitudinous as that may sound, looking from here and this time into the future, the days ahead look bleak. The sad demographic future of Latvia makes one blanch.

Even so, the negative may in some way be taken advantage of and death may be avoided by creating and adopting a different life-style. The threshold into such a future may well come as a tragedy, the potential of which has been set up by Guntis Ulmanis.

The provocation for tragedy may come in many ways. Perhaps Latvians may wish to reduce the size of Riga, for example. A reduced number of people “better” people a nation when conditions prevail that make the “virtual city of the computer” prevail over the city of brick and concrete. The countryside of Latvia has to be repopulated if it is to survive the vulnerabilities of a city. The answer of how to do this also is not only one. But it will certainly not occur just because the farmers’ lot may be bettered. It will only happen with reforestation (makes one think!) and long-term projection and planning.

THE-NOT-VOTER has many concerns. Here is yet another: Latvians must import from the world-at-large a need for Latvia and must be able to pass the- import-of-capital test at the same time. Latvia must be and become real not only to Latvians dreaming if it is to be more than a dream.

Guntis Ulmanis may not know how to get from here to there. Perhaps no one knows. How is one to tell who will prevail and survive? You decide. Nevertheless, the next three months before elections may do worse than spread around a greater understanding over the role of THE-NOT-VOTER at election time. It is not just "this", "that", but it is also "none", the box named “Other”, usually below the “Yes” and “No” box.

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com or http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
19 The Politics of Camp in Latvia

When the former president of Latvia (1993-99), Guntis Ulmanis, unexpectedly announced his support for the political camp which calls itself “For All That Is Good for Latvia” and justified his move with the statement that the politicians he had previously denounced had promised to become “better” (as in an improved product), politics in Latvia reached a new plateau of camp.

The question before the Latvian electorate now is how much political camp is it willing to take. Will the virgins persuade the electorate to continue to follow the knights and their arms bearers and, thus, provide them with accustomed pleasures? Or has the time come for the electorate to NOT-VOTE?

Camp “For All That Is Good for Latvia” is an aesthetic effort to put business interests under one roof. If the effort is successful (aesthetics is seamlessly blended with greed), the success will rescue the failing TP and LPP parties (with about 5% of the voters supporting them at this time) from naked defeat, and may even propel them into the ranks of Latvia’s so-called democratic political leadership. In short, the former president Guntis Ulmanis has joined those who believe that a union of business interests will be “Good for Latvia”. Interestingly, Mr. Ulmani’s reentry into politics appears to come with an implicit blanket declaration in favor of freedom to consume. Ulmanis is betting that the past will repeat itself and the rose will rise again from another mulch of lies.

This NOT-VOTER argues that the violent past of Latvian politics [violence understood not as an imposition of physical pain or death, but an imposition of (un)certainty, one pole of which is economic destitution, the other the dream of everyone becoming an oligarch] faces a challenge. As Walter Benjamin wrote in his “Zur Kritik der Gewalt”, p. 202, (cited by Giorgio Agamben in “Homo Sacer”) with regard to such violence: “The law of… oscillation [between the violence that posits law and the violence that preserves it] rests on the fact that all law-preserving violence, in its duration, indirectly weakens the lawmaking violence represented by it, through the suppression of hostile counterviolence…. This lasts until either new forces or those earlier suppressed triumph over the violence that had posited law until now and thus found a new law….”

Walter Benjamin continues: “In the interruption of this cycle, which is maintained by mythical forms of law, in the deposition of law and all the forces on which it depends (as they depend on it) and, therefore, finally in the deposition of State power, a new historical epoch is founded.”

Latvia desperately needs a new historical epoch, and if one is not provided by the world beyond Latvia’s borders (which also needs a new historical epoch), then if it is to survive, Latvia’s citizens must make the epoch themselves.

Mr. Ulmanis is apparently betting that the repression of hostile counterviolence will, given his support, prevail. The word “repression” is used here in the sense of prevailing over and silencing those who would become NOT-VOTERS. The NOT-VOTERS are especially important in this instance, because they represent the feared counterviolence. A simple way to repress the electorate of NOT-VOTERS is to bamboozle it with calls to a corrupt patriotism. While ideally speaking patriotism (roughly speaking, the love of place one is born and/or swears allegiance to) is not corruptible, repeated failure by leadership to lead without ever a real self-sacrifice, can no longer be hid by words it has made meaningless.

These blogs identify with and propose a NOT-VIOLENT solution to this government’s hostility to populism (see earlier blogs for a more detailed the discussion of populism). It is therefore a concern that Mr. Ulmanis has bet that THE-NOT-VOTER will not prevail even if NOT-VOTING is the only method to defeat government corruption by NOT-VIOLENT means. Ulmanis’ may win his bet, just as all previous Saeimas (plural of the Latvian legislative body) have won. However, let us remember Walter Benjamin’s warning that such a victory “weakens the lawmaking violence [of the government]”. If a NOT-VIOLENT NOT-VOTE with its implicit NOT-VIOLENT terror aimed at the political lie is not sufficient to cause the emergence of a new historical epoch, “divine violence” (Walter Benjamin) may take place. An outbreak of divine violence signifies the dissolution of the link between violence and the law on the present side of the threshold. If so, there is a good chance there will occur violence that risks pain, death, and unforeseeable consequences; and (alas!) a failure of NOT-VIOLENT terror to be and act as divine terror on behalf of and against the death of the community.

While today Latvia stands this side of the threshold that separates law from violence, twenty years of bare life politics that suffers an exodus of 200,000 of Latvia’s people (potentially more) makes high camp of nationhood. As the link (above) to Wiki states: “Camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value.” Guntis Ulmanis, together with TP (The Folk Party) and LPP (The First Party of Latvia) edge ever closer to the threshold where the absurd and lawlessness becomes blurred. It is upon stepping past this threshold, this no-man’s-land, that we meet violence, which is expressed as self-extinction by demographic death spiral and a disintegrating and terminal society as well.

Do Latvians wish this on themselves? What does the other side, THE-NOT-VOTER bring?

If we take Walter Benjamin’s “divine violence” to heart, there will be some (Slavoj Zizek for one) who identify it with Jacobin violence [you either do or don’t (kill)]. However, a NOT-VOTE—if successful—is one of the few ways by which “the people”, the Populists, the true state of IS may reassert the peoples sovereignty over a government, certainly over parliamentary government, peacefully. Of course, the risk is great, which is why one wonders if Mr. Ulmanis is going to be an existential leader or go with the flow of neo-capitalism.

In favor of the camp of neo-capitalist “For All That Is Good for Latvia” [and the less incisive camp “Unity” (Vienotība)] is the fact that as yet they are on the side of sobriety. On this blogger’s side is the tilt (quite sober) toward anxiety that stems from the conviction that we will trip if the threshold before us is not the focus of our attentions. If Mr. Ulmanis wishes to prove how “good” he, the TP, and the LPP are for Latvia, he has to do it existentially or history will judge that he has fudged.

Bzzz,bzzz, ladybug, your house is afire! Go vote the NOT-VOTE if your children are to survive.

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

King Herod knew that he could not touch John by way of finding his behavior worse than his own. The secret path of celibacy was protecting John from attacks by Herod. While everyone knew what the secret was, Herod could not bring it into the open, because there was no man or woman who could claim to neever having relieved themselves of sexual tension by their own hand. Such a claim would make the claimer suspect of not being human.

King Herod wondered if there was some other way to trap John.

It happened that Herod had a daughter called Salome. Salome was a bad young woman. Her father had slept with her when she was fourteen and robbed her of all discretion in sexual matters. She had no inner sexual fantasy to speak of, because all her sexual fantasies could be realized. King Herod went to consult with Salome.

After Salome had heard King Herod out, she asked: “Does John have a girlfriend?”

“No,” answered the king.

“Then I know what his trouble is,” said Princess Salome. “He satisfies himself by his own hand. He is as much untouchable as is every woman’s challenge.”

“He must be stopped. I will chop off his hands,” said Herod.

“You cannot kill all the sheep,” answered Salome. “But I will dance for him,” the Princess added. “I will lure John out of himself. I will make him stand up.”

“John’s will not stand up for you or anybody but himself and his fantasy,” said King Herod. “I must make him shut up.”

“He will not shut up, father,” said Salome. “But don’t worry. I will have fun.”

“What will you do?” asked King Herod beginning to suspect something delicious in the offing.

“I will dance before John. You have the guards tie his hands behind him. Let them pull up his robe and wrap the hem of the robe under and around his arms at the back of his waist. Have them tie his ankles to the chair. Then I will dance before him.”

“Wow!” said King Herod.

“If you want to, you can watch,” said Princess Salome.

[The painter Picasso had a series of studies with himself as the old King watching young John making love to Desire herself.]

King Herods guards went to find John and took him prisoner. They brought him to Jerusalem with his hands tied behind his back and his robe pulled back to expose his genitals. Everyone in Jerusalem rushed to see.

After due exposure of John to the public eye, King Herod took John into his castle. He did not allow the public. He had the guards lock the gates, told the kitchen maids to stay in the kitchen, and then went with Salome and John under guard into his salon. The King had invited his brother and his wife to be his guests. A few chamberlains and chamber maids also sneaked in. The doors were shut behind them. They were in a large velvet crimson bedroom.

“What do you have to say for yourself, John,” asked Herod when John was sat down. “I hear that you do not know how to use that thing between your legs on women.”

“Oh, noble King,” answered John, “thou shalt not sleep with your brother’s wife.”

Herod’s brother’s wife Angelina hit John in the face with her fist.

“I understand what you are saying, John,” said King Herod. "Understanding things is not my trouble. However, I am troubled to hear that you will not get it up for women. If that is true, I will off with your head for sure.”

“Thou shall not sleep with ….” Before John could say the next word, a towel was wrapped around his mouth and tied tightly behind his head.

All torches and candles were put out but four candles. Then Princess Salome began her dance. She was covered by seven veils. She spun between the candles without the veils catching on flame—except when she tossed one directly onto one. Then the room lit up and revealed the next veil. It was bright yellow like the Sun that lights up the day.

The next veil after that was green, and then came orange. The fourth color was purple. Then came brown. It smelled like baked bread. Then came a pink one. The last was black. Then she stood before John almost naked.

John stood his ground and remained limp. His fantasy was unmoved.

Salome, the Princess of Desire in the heat of desire is challenged by John's immobility. She moved her underarm past John’s nose. John could not but have a sniff. John pretended not to like the smell of Salome.

Salome decided to waterboard John, but had the guards replace the water with wine. She made John drink two large gourds, at which point John had to piss where he was. Salome then ordered the guards to untie John’s mouth and put a whistle between his teeth. “That is all you will have to breathe if you do not get it up soon.” Salome let John blow his breath out through the whistle, but took it out for John to catch his breath. “I want to see you get it up, John,” said Salome, “or the next time you will breathe air through the whistle and it will be your last.”

John said unto himself: “Oh dear.” And he repeated “oh dear” many times. John also remembered what King Herod had said unto him about losing his head. He knew that he had to make up his mind to either get his Ding up, die for lack of breath, or lose his head. John decided to stay in charge of himself and lose his head.

Everyone may imagine what happened next. Salome did not give up easily. Perhaps she warmed up some butter and had it pored over John. Others may think of mayonnaise. Obviously, these are only two of a great many possibilities.
..............
So, how does this connect to NOT-VOTING? To insist there is one may seem odd, until you read that this story is in answer to the Latvian Pro-Vote team (LetUsVote www.ejambalsot.lv), which has put Kārlis Skalbe, a well known Latvian poet and writer of the first half of the 20th century, as the flag bearer of the pro-vote campaign. Unfortunately, Skalbe died more than a half a century ago, and his idea of Latvia is but myth now. Skalbe may be turning over in his grave, but his dream has to be imagined in another setting and in other ways today.

The only way that Latvia may survive in the future is through consciousness rising. Nevertheless, for twenty years the state has been dumbing the Latvian people down. As radical a move as recently made by Iceland to become a protectorate of the free word is perhaps thinkable in Latvia, but only a few will have thought of it or have other ideas how to make Latvia a place of need for the world. Most Latvian internet sites refuse to think controversial thoughts. The in-grown and nailed-down mentality of politicians rather has the country die. Therefore, be a NOT-VOTER!

Have a great Johns Eve eve.

[Next blog “Sex and Johns Eve (3)”. Conclusion.]

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Essentially ad hominem or, better, argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker and not addressing the argument. To those who recognize the failure of logic in ad hominem arguments, the argument amounts to so much churning of air. This is why one attacked by ad hominem arguments is advised not to respond, because to respond means to fall into the trap of illogic, which may lead two or more persons not only into churning the air, but filling the air with vilifications advanced by negative self-exitation. It is a perfect illustration of "negative freedom" . Sometimes ad hominem slug fests a la ad hominem lead to blows and injuries.

A most curious ad hominem event occurred last Saturday with the reentry of Guntis Ulmanis, a former President of Latvia, into active political life by joining the party of oligarchs [a joint venture of The People’s (TP) and the First Party of Latvia (LPP)]. The entrenched “felt hats” have joined their forces and formed a new party, the All That’s Good for Latvia Party (VLL). Media sources reported that the public was as shocked by Ulmanis action as the media itself. No one had imagined such a possibility, given the former President’s harsh words against certain high positioned members of said parties.

One does not have to suffer from the Tourettes Syndrome and see and hear it expressed in shouted curses toward everyone who passes one by. The argument here is that Tourettes may manifest itself also as an attack ad hominem. Ad hominem attacks need not take the form of curses, but may projects themselves as ad hominem love strokes. If so, Guntis Ulmanis and his oligarch friends are stroking the public the best they know how. In short, they all are promising All That’s Good for Latvia to Latvians (excluding the Latvian Populists of course) with narry a chance that they will deliver.

Why is this blogger so negative? The reasons are several. Here are a few.

• 1. The oligarchs are not presenting themselves as “oligarchs”. They are presenting themselves as “uzņēmēji”, a Latvian word that straddles the meanings of such words or clusters of words as “enterprising people”, “business enterprises’, manufacturers, industrialists, “providers of jobs”, and above all the literal meaning of the word, i.e., ‘those who take on tasks’. The last is from the Latvian word “uzņemties”, to take on, to take responsibility for.

• 2. None of the oligarchs, and certainly not the former President, have suggested any specific direction Latvia ought to evolve toward in the future. Indeed, there is no vision of the future of Latvia other than a consumer culture and more indulgence of “negative freedom” (the word “negative” is of course never mentioned in oligarch parlance). The only direction that the All That’s Good for Latvia Party has heretofore proposed consists of

 a) deflating the currency (Shkhehle-Šķēle, TP);
 b) enlarging the Riga (RIX) airport (Shlesers, LPP);
 c) aimless economic “growth”; aimlessness (other than personal enrichment) is now as established as the favorite activity of oligarchs.
 d) While Guntis Ulmanis has spent his post-presidency years taking an active part in promoting Latvia’s hockey teams, he has no larger vision of the future than a world full of hockey. Perhaps he plans to back the Dvina-Dnepr River Canal Project, a project that may be compared to the project that built the Suez Canal. However, to realize such a project, one would have to tear down Latvia’s only hydroelectric dam on the Dvina.
 e) Maybe Ulmanis has a plan that will persuade Latvians to tearing down the Kheguma Hydroelectric Dam. It will re-expose Staburags (the Hornpost) that was submerged by the dam’s waters in the Soviet era. It may again be used as a symbol of fortitude. The oligarchs will propose a private nuclear power station to replace the dam, but suggest that the transition from hydro to nuclear be will be hid from the public eye by through the continued use of the name “Khegums”.

• 3. The oligarchs are for economic growth left entirely in their hands, which know no better path forward than the one advocated by American neo-liberals and their European allies, who have brought the world the present financial and economic crisis. Hail! ten years of the Afghan war, more wars on the horizon, more than a hundred years of dumbing down the Middle and Working classes, and raise hope that the future will never end the days of conspicuous consumption or Pop Culture.

It will not have escaped the reader’s attention that an argumentum ad hominem is being used also by this blogger. I present an example of what the Tourettes Syndrome looks like when the above mentioned “love strokes” (the Latvian “paiya” or “glasts”) I try to imitate.

My “love stroke” for the oligarchs leaves no marks of aggression. To the contrary, I wonder if the devaluation now will do what it perhaps could have done at the beginning of our “time of troubles”. I am not convinced that it is not better if left be.

The airport. RIX, in Riga is a wonderful place, especially taking into consideration that in eighty or so years the tectonic shifts of our planet will submerge it and all of Riga. A long-term thinker would have built the airport near Yelgava, which will not be submerged by the dunking to come. After the flooding is over, we may see no more than a few of Riga’s church smiles and the top floors of some hotels. Bauska may start planning now where to build the harbor for leisure boats.

As for the Daugava-Dniepr Canal Project, I would rather reclaim the railroad tracks and replace the old tracks with tracks suitable for carrying a tele-capsule-for-two. If such a modernized version of the railroad were in place today, I would be among its first users, since the Aloja-Riga railroad line is but some 14 km drive from my home, and I am spared driving 35 km to Valmiera to catch a bus. Of course, we leave our car at the junction station, and off to Riga we go. We are transported back home by the same tele-capsule-for-two (private ownership encouraged), but on the opposite rail.

It is not at all unprecedented to claim one’s vision of the future against a vision that does not exist. And it should not surprise you that I encourage you to consider and NOT-TO-VOTE. I wish everyone to NOT-VOTE, because it is only by exercising such methods that the long repressed (dumbed down) citizenry has an opportunity to radically change their community’s socio-ecologic direction, rewrite their Latvian Constitution, the Latvian Satversme, and, yes, become a real community at last.

The next to join the (anti) ad hominem movement will be America. So! Why not be a real Latvian and do it first: I-WILL-NOT-VOTE.

[Next blog, Sex and Johns Eve (2) continued.]

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com

Thursday, June 10, 2010

As a preface, let me tell a story that is both myth and a story. The story is about King Menelaus and his wife Helen. Many of my readers will know the story by way of Homer, the Greek poet, but here is how I understand it. In fact, I owe my understanding to philosopher Michael Degener, who translated Paul Virlio’s book “Negative Horizon”. Degener’s introduction touches on both King Menelaus and Helen. Degener gave me a much better understanding why the story of Helen and Menelaus is so famous, and that its fame does not depend on the fact that Helen was abducted by Paris, or that—as the poet Christopher Marlowe said—Helen had “a face that launched a thousand ships”. The last a reference is of course to the Trojan war.

Degener presents Helen and Menelaus as individuals who set the scene for visual enactment of contact between “psychic interiority” and “concrete exteriority”. The following is my brief recount of this event.

King Menelaus is so infatuated (today we say, “in love”) with Helen, that he set up throughout his kingdom Helen’s statues. After Helen is abducted (most likely she was willing) by Paris and she is no longer a face in Menelaus’ immediate view, the statues—previously as if alive—stare back at the king with blank eyes. Without Helen, Menelaus falls into a deep void (some would say “funk”), which the Greeks called pothos. The last is a word from which the name of a common house plant and the word pathetic. In other words, Menelaus fell into the “void of longing”. As a result of this void of longing, longing turns to war for relief.

What the stage (of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon) portrays is the mystery that sets things in motion, but at the same time predicates the possibility that the motion may end in a disaster, i.e., a tragedy.

Let us return now to the Johns Festival. It is a very old festival not only for Latvians, but for all Europeans. The trouble is that no one remembers whence it came and what it is about. The explanations that we have all connect the story to a Christianity that was first introduced by the so-called Catholic world. The latter presents itself as the only world that ever was. This is not true.

All we have to do is go read the beginnings of the New Testament to be assured that John (the Baptist) (the Anointer) (the Healer) was the predecessor of Jesus. All of the stuff about John waiting for someone to come who is greater than he is a matter of editing-in a displacing event. A displacing event is what the Latvian media is doing this very day by displacing the Johns Eve Festival by calling the festival by such names as Lihgo Festival, Midsummer’s Eve Festival, The Big Family Picnic, and so forth. The fact is however that John never agreed to leave the stage, but was pushed off it. This does not mean however that the Johns are not alive or that the Latvians have overcome their “void of longing”.

This is the story of one John named John the Baptist. It may be a shocking story even to those who live in the 21st century and have seen and heard about everything. Here it is.

John was a man probably in his mid-forties. He was a sinewy man. His mind was oriented on healing the sick. In the process of healing them, he also taught them. He taught them to be honest with themselves and others. In Latvia, he probably lived in Jersica. In Russia, he was probably from Yaroslav. In the Byzantine Empire it was Jerusalem. He (and many like him) walked the then borderless and forested world, and visited the clearings in the forests where there sprung up households and villages. Because the Johns were itinerants, and thus under the special protection of the Sun, Midsummer’s Eve and the summer solstice was their special day. Most of the Johns did all they could to return on that day to the household or village of origin. The event became known as Johns Day, even as it is celebrated on the Eve of Johns.

The Latvian tradition has it that one may not sleep on the night from Johns Eve to Johns Day. This is to make sure that everyone gives their support to the Sun—so it may rise came Johns Day.

Our particular John had no trouble staying awake. He was celibate and had no young woman to make him want to go to bed. John kept himself pure for the Sun. When his body had the sexual need beyond endurance, John locked on to his will, imagined his need as an old hag, and masturbated. The strange thing was that the face of the old hag turned into an ever more beautiful face, and at the moment of orgasm shone like the Sun.

What does this story have to do with NOT-VOTING? Let it suffice to say that there is truth in arguments that you may not have heard before. This is why you should look at some of the preceding posts and see what the next will bring. (To be continued in Blog 17.)

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2
The forest
http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf

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Sunday, June 6, 2010

I recommend an interesting read (in Latvian) at Politika.lv http://www.politika.lv/temas/politikas_kvalitate/18182/

The author is Ivars Ījabs.
The response of one reader at Politika.lv: „Alternatīva ir nepiedalīties vēlēšanās. Tākā referendumos par likumiem un Satversmes grozījumiem, kā arī jaunajā referenduma veidā par Saeimas atlaišanu - visur kvorums tiek rēķināts tieši pēc pēdējās Saeimas vēlēšanās piedalījušos skaita - tad vien nenodota balss ir līdzvērtīga divām balsīm referendumā. Ja politiķiem neuzticamies, tad tā ir iespēja viņus turēt īsā saitītē”................................. In short a NOT-VOTE will have a significant and status quo breaking effect on the future of Latvia.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
15 Populists Ought to Consider...

There appear to be three main opponents that a great many Latvians like to dwell on in the media: 1. Populism; 2. (R)other; and 3. their own past.

The groups that dislike “populism” are three: a) people related to the Latvian government; b) the Latvian media; c) the populists themselves. The reason that government dislikes populists (whether of Latvian or (R)other origin) to the point where they have replaced the Jews as the internal enemy of Latvia is well summed up in an article by Professor Sergei Kruks called “The Paradigm of Culture and Civilization" . According to the article

“In the political discourse, culture gained the function of ideological homogenization—the nation defined itself and existed as a cultural nation.” This of course is the German Bildung model or way of raising a child (audzināšana). According to Kruks, the Latvian poet Imants Ziedonis advocates “’a small group of experts’ making an inventory of Latvian culture, defining a benchmark, and creating a static Latvianness. Of course, this was done in the 1920s, and to an even greater extent by the ‘soft’ authoritarian President Karlis Ulmanis in the 1930s. However, to try this in the 21st century, with 43% of the population being of Russian or Slavic origin and preferring to speak Russian at home makes for a question mark. And the answer is “mission impossible”—unless the government can find an enemy to which the label will stick. Since anti-Semitism is passé, and modernism demands that the whole world (Russians including) be on one’s friendly list, the enemy has become “Populism”.

To quote Ernesto Laclau from his well known book “On Populist Reason”, (Ch 1, Sent. 1) “Populism, as a category of political analysis, confronts us with rather idiosyncratic problems”. Among the idiosyncratic problems are the “ambiguities and paradoxes” of populism. Professor Laclau then devotes his book on how to make sense of the “apparently intractable question of populism”. Among his conclusions there is this interesting sentence: “While the task of political philosophy traditionally has been to reduce politics to police, truly political thought and practice would consist in liberating the political moment from its enthrallment to policed societal frameworks”. Is this not about the same what Sergei Kruks above calls creating “[a clarified] static Latvianess”? That is, Is this not policed politics and a corpse in a static culture? We can, thus, start to look for Populism among those who in the 21st century are in opposition to Christian imposed German Romanticism from the 19th century. If Professor Kruks is right that the policies of the elites of Latvia are attempting to impose a “ready-made identity” on all Latvians, few will not know in their mind’s eye who the populists are likely to be.

Next to the Latvian government, it is the Latvian media that knows least about Populists. The media is mesmerized by the mud balls slung by government officials at Populists and has been pitching in to help for some time. In fact, the media itself is a good example of what a ready-made universal identity, the so-called Latvianism, does to people and their institutions. There is a vision of anarchists running about the fields of Latvia-Anarchia, and Populists are applauding them.

We pretty much know that the 200,000 Latvians, most of who were once known as the proletariat class—mostly composed of countryside people finding the countryside destroyed by a catastrophic loss of jobs and many, far too many of the educated class looking for jobs abroad as well. [According to former Saeima member Ilga Kreituse, few if any of the 90 students graduating with a degree in Chemistry from the LU are staying in Latvia.] If one assumes that the emigrants left home because there was no other choice other than stay and become demoralized, then most of the emigrants are quality candidates for Populists.

Add to the Populists already mentioned yet others behind those trees there and we get some idea of who in the post-anti-Semitic age is the replacement of. IPopulism is not by any means only a problem for the Latvian elites who from the President on down define themselves as anti-Populists. The government of the EU is also infected by the pox of prejudice. The European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso in a keynote address to the Jean Monnet Conference warned of the danger of "populism". He said: "there are sometimes occasions when we see populism, xenophobia, chauvinism in Europe". This tells who the President of the EC sees as the spectre and spectres are in the wake of which follows chaos.

Thus, Populism is a danger even if Populists are not only anonymous Latvian emigrants, but university graduates without jobs, former government employees dismissed by economizing measures due to overspending. The policing of culture during the time of social duress continues as the police interrogation of Professor Kruks shows. No doubt, there is still some Populist sympathy or, rather, indifference to such repressive acts. Even so, Populists who are to be found among the economically worst off, once vociferous in their “fundamentalism” (over whatever), are shutting down and reemerging under the umbra of Populism in the Shadows.

This is a time when foundations are being shaken. As another blogger said about the Bilderberg Group conference “No, they are not having ‘fun’ at all. They are scared to death.” For all the present government of Latvia knows, the Populists in Latvia may decide to not-vote come October 2 elections.

Why NOT-VOTE? There is no other choice. Though raised as a Latvian with the meme of “[clarified] static Latvianess” printed on the brain, troubled times is not passing anyone, not even the Bilderbergers as we just read. NOT(-to)-VOTE means to not cast a ballot because only a Populist NOT-VOTE will prove to the elite manning the status-quo barricades that the troubles are not going away and must be dealt with right away.

A NOT-VOTE means that so few will vote that the elected will not call the police to protect them. Both elitiste and populiste will be on equal footing and, wishing no violence, the most populist solution will be the one most earnest and useful.

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
14 Sitting At the Bottom of a Barrel…

…and singing a Latvian folk song:
“Strauja, strauja upe tecēj....”
(a fast, fast river flows).
Where does the fast river flow?
The barrel is too deep
for anyone at the bottom to see,
whether it is a river or whatever.
The barrel merrily bobs its way
to wherever the stream flows.”

As any Latvian will recognize, the above of course are not the words of the song. However, words to a song may change with time either wholly or in part. In the original version of the song, a horse fears the fast water, and the rider cannot cross the river. The rider urges the horse not to fear and move on. At the end of the song it is not clear however whether a crossing in fact took effect.

But the words of the song unexpectedly reveal the intentions of the rider. He has not come to the river to cross it, but to build on top of the fast flowing stream a fire. His reasons are shamanistic: he wishes to build the fire for the people who do not wish him well. If one listens to the rhythm of the melody, it indeed sounds like a shaman’s (burvis, ragana) incantation.

[It is unfortunate that the lovely melody of the song cannot be entertained here because the YouTube version incants scenes of WWII with Latvian legionnaires in German uniforms. This surely perverts the soothsayer’s magic and fast paced curse on ill wishers.]

When I was a young student and sang the song, none of the above ever entered my mind, except perhaps when it came to the words “I chopped my firewood (with my sword) on a rock.”* Being old enough to have been a cowherd and have seen live chickens suddenly dead, I knew well enough that no one in his right mind would strike his axe or sword against a stone. Therefore, these words encourage one to think that the song actually is a shaman’s incantation against his ill wishers (those who have declared a curse against him), those of his client, or those of his nation.

I was encouraged to think of and reminded myself of what I knew about magic incantations when I received the following two youtube clips. The first is a political campaign ad on behalf of two of Latvia’s foremost neo-capitalist, while the second one is their victims’ response.

AŠ kvadrātā - Stendzenieka variants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m1gWH5-8qI&feature=related
AŠ kvadrātā - tautas vārds :) :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHteTxaSJZU&feature=related

It is obvious that the first ad is aggressive. It claims a 13% economic growth rate when the two heroes mentioned in the ad were (implicitly) riding high in government. The ad is unmistakably meant to put a curse on you who took power from us when we had ****** over the nation. We are ready to repeat the 13% growth clip squared if you elect us again.

The second ad, the one that is the response of those who received the curse of the first proves itself limp.

The ad responds by making ridicule of those who put the curse against them, but aside from ridicule (deserved) offers nothing new. It presents the future as more of the same. The ad suggests no tangible way to improve on the loss (to be compared to the death) of 200,000 emigrants, the vast majority of who represent the proletariat, but contains a good number of educated people—because there is no job for them in Latvia. The ad makes no criticism of those who originated the cursing, though it they are the ones whose economic policies bankrupted the nation, and in the name of capitalism lost the nation 200,000 of some of its best.

If the world ever returns to financial health and material prosperity and Latvia's economic situation improves with it, these 200,000 absent Latvians will likely be replaced by 200,000 Chinese. The Chinese are of course very nice people, but they will hardly know anything about Latvian roots, even less than when Latvians do not know much about their roots themselves. What has happened with the minds of these shamans? Are they possessed and is their power of possession squared? And is this why no prophecy comes from their mouths?

One can nth the curse and return it as a direct hit. For example, it could issue the curse on behalf of the proletariat and because of the harm that has been made to the nation. Almost all the 200,000 are working age people. They are the physical muscle of Latvia. The thought however never enters the mind of any of the cursed, because that has to be backed up with a vision of a more promising future and how to get there. By repeating to the curse of the first with the same images they use, but changing the words and getting no further than to make ridicule, is a tempest in the teapot between two banalities.

The fashion of the world in our time is to rule by not knowing how to govern. The Commandment that rules says: Do not kill:/ but reduce to slavery. This is what human rights amount to.

But, hey,

have we not all survived to be among the live ones? And have not many been reduced to slavery—very much so when it comes to using our minds? There are of course ways to bring the Latvian economy back to its feet, but none of the ‘democratic’ authorities dare offer it.

One offer that can be made is to realize the suggestion of a Dutch organization by the name of De Einder, or Horizon which asks that people who reach the age of seventy years be given the right to decide for themselves whether they are also “at a point where they consider their lives ‘complete.’”

When the choice is between losing a nation and doing what it takes to keep it alive, then the people who believe that their lives are complete and they wish to exit [as incidentally did the now forgotten Christians (the Cathars, Bogomils, Lollards, Johns Children and others)] are right. Countryside tourism, with a meaning that reaches far beyond fishing and other forms of escape, would then return again as something real and enliven the economic scene. If it was restrained in producing the reality that now circumscribes and diminishes life with an offer of virtual life in the city, the city will shrink down to an acceptable level.

Therefore, vote by NOT-VOTING in the upcoming 2010 elections. See previous blogs for more arguments on behalf of the NOT-VOTE.
Asterisks & Other Readings
*Uz akmeņa malku cirtu,/ Strautā kūru uguntiņu. /Lai sildāsi tie ļautiņi,/Kas man labu nevēlējā.
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2
If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com

The-Not-Voter