A link to a detailed and well argued post why to exercise your right to NOT-VOTE!
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/

Another post well listening to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_512284&feature=iv&src_vid=BNx642Tj9cc&v=gV9A2IGShuk

While many posts have argued on the NOT-VOTE issue,
the same backtrack in the last days before the election.
The following is one such, but offers an excellent short history on the fascist tilt given by the oligarchy:
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/

My own latest blog series gives the millenium perspective:
http://jesusthebogomil.blogspot.com



 



NOT-VOTER TIME IS HERE AGAIN!!!

The poppy among the weeds


The following link says pretty much the same thing that I have been saying for years. DO NOT VOTE! Be a NOT-VOTER! Change the system from that of a closed circle to that of a TOPOLOGICAL circle. Do not be afraid that the world will fall apart because you abstain from causing it further damage!
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_vote_they_rule_the_case_for_voter_rebellion_20120917/

Wormelings in action and play in Latvia.

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

Many years ago, I was active in an anti-nuke non-violent direct action group known as Clamshell. This was in the early to mid 1970s. Clamshell's centre, to the extent that it had one, was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its mother, to the extent it had one were the Quakers; while its Action Committee often met in my apartment at Newton Corner, Mass.

When Clamshell and I parted ways, I was conflicted about, on the one hand, the risk that non-violent direct action implied, and, on the other hand, the not so serious attitude of many of the student participants in the group. Quite a few were ready to provoke violence by going beyond peaceful protests and cut and climb fences in order to provoke the police to violent response.

I was not of the opinion that provoking violent reaction from the authorities was the way to go. IMO the mind-space of United States politics seemed like that of a Pop Culture that had swallowed a perpetual "growth" pill, rather than a society that had come to an in-depth understanding and political antagonism with regard to its delusions and profligate ways. The delusion of our Pop Culture of having a perpetual right to be a perpetual consumer at the expense of the rest of the planet were likely to rise in self-righteous wrath and smother the anti-nuke movement with accusations of violence. I was not persuaded that the time had come to test non-violent direct action to such a degree.

Wormelings in a carousel fly high over Riga.

That the establishment of the U.S. is still living in a Pop Culture environment is evidenced by the acts of its violence.

Today I noticed on Google a header that suggested that the Navy Seals who are said to have killed bin Laden are now the heroes of the more vehement sector of this culture in the U.S.

However, in the rest of the world things may be changing, and non-violent direct action may be coming of age. To better understand the point that I am making, please read the following http://www.undispatch.com/israel-shootings-and-the-start-of-a-non-violent-protest-movement-for-palestine

Incidentally, not-voting, too, is an act of non-violent direct action or what--in another series of blogs (see esoschronicles)--I have called not-violent terror. Such non-violent direct action acts as described in the above link, may indeed popularize not-voting as a tool of resistance to a democracy gone morbidly decrepid.

(This post a dupe of one posted at LatviansOnline, re: Riga as the future capital city of Europe. The reason for duping the post will become apparent when the reader reaches the words"not-voting".)

A number of Latvian populist Not-Voters (empty ballot casters) caught protesting the post-political concensus dictatorship in Latvia. Photograph taken in May of 2011.


The monopolization of Christianity by neo-Christians through the use of such methods as used by the Inquisition, gradually eliminated the human brain as residence of the bi- or multi-polar mind. [Sorry for such a heavy sentence, but once you digest it (it may not happen until you read the whole blog, the rest comes easier.]

Over the centuries—beginning with about the 9th or 10th centuries of our era (according to Anatoly Fomenko’s reconstruction of history)—multi-dimensional thought became not only a monolithic monopol, but came into the virtual physical possession of certain political groups. The successor groups to neo-Christianity (to the extent that monopolistic power allowed the concept of division of power) continued to consolidate further, even as the groups refined and sugared dogmatism to such an extent that its sour core was no longer suspect.

With time, neo-Christianity, while never losing its monopolarized mindset, nevertheless retreated in deference to power concepts even more ferocious and focused on monopolistic practices than it had been.

Paradoxically, one of the first next steps (after neo-Christian consolidation of their victory) was the Magna Charta, one of the so-called precursors of modern democracy. The process of concentrating and consolidating uni- or monopolar thought, did not end there, however.

Like the neo-Christian bishops, the princes who reduced the King to a fiction were in turn metamorphosed into bankers, and the bankers were perfected by the military.

The recent past of history shows that within the monopolar mindset there is possible (at least in its beginning) a monopol that is opposed to the princes and bankers without actually being their opponent. This virtual and unreal opposite pole of the monopole, was known as Communism. The state of the Soviet Union was most certainly a post-neo-Christian phenomenon. Interestingly, Communism dissolved before the stronger unipolar power as had neo-Christianity itself.

The clear victor and possessor of unipolar thought is what we generally know as Western thought or, to narrow it down, Western democracy. Western democracy, the monopol of Western power, resides in a slightly tortured, nevertheless, accurate sum of words, re: “free-market-human-rights”. No ands or buts, all one word.*

In Latvia the possessor of the “free-market-human-rights” privilege resides in the parliament of Latvia or Saeima. This privilege is guarded—among the several authorities guarding its well-being—by the Voting Committee. This committee allows “democracy” to be defined by the above mentioned four magic words only. No other words will do. In short, the Latvian government does not recognize the legitimacy of a ‘not-vote’ (casting a blank), which is a vote against a monopolistic concept of democracy.

As a consequence of censoring a Not-Vote, it is easy for the Latvian democracy to exclude what the members of its Saeima and public Medias call “populists”. Populists—those who are “them” vs “We”—belong therefore outside the walls of the Latvian Monopolist Democracy.

A photo of three Latvian Populist Not-Voters. While the man in the center is a known Latvian citizen, the citizenship of the two "Populist Wormelings" on either side of him is still being hotly debated issue in the Saeima. It appears that being born of a Latvian mind does not necessarily guarantee that the result is a Latvian citizen.

Interestingly, the polarization of the Latvian government on one end and the Latvian populists (virtually everyone not in government) on the other end has almost perfectly aligned itself along the axis of Monopolist Post-political Thought vs Multi-Threaded Thought Renewed. The Multi-Threaded reality, dismissed as “populism” and excluded from politics by the “law” of the Voting Committee, is the “enemy” rather than honorable opposition to the current Latvian government.

All Latvians know that the “enemy” has chosen to vote against the government with its feet by leaving the country. Not surprisingly, perhaps for the first time since the tenth century, unipolar thought is threatened with extinction through the simple expedient of a demographic crash.

This presents one with the thought that Riga may become the future capital of Europe at the expense of the Latvian people. Or may Riga become the first capital city of a multi-polarized and populist Europe? Will the members of the Latvian Saeima perhaps chose to become Populists and refuse to vote (Not-Vote) for a Latvian president in the upcoming Parliamentary elections? There is always hope.

*I owe some of the thoughts here expressed to a rereading of Chantal Mouffe on populism.

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + 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 http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, or http://the-not-voter.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
36 A Unity of Disbelief
The elections are over. In a show of unity of disbelief that their beloved Latvia is at the precipice of loss of identity, the voters have voted for Unity Coalition (Vienotība). The vote is as logical in its expression of hope, as it is a disaster in facing reality.

One of the other two runner-up parties, Harmony (SC) and Farmers and Greens (ZZS) is bound to enter into a coalition with Unity. At this moment the bets are that the partner of Unity will be ZZS, the party of the Greens and Farmers. If so, then Harmony--essentially a party with its power base centered in Riga--will be in opposition.

The Business Party (LPP) and ultra nationalist LNNK/VL have about 8% of the total vote each. There exists speculation that these two parties may now merge. If so, the foundations will have been laid for the Latvian version of a zionationalist movement.

At the time of this writing, The Not-Voters have increased their number sevenfold over the 9th Saeima, to wit, it now stands at ~ 35,000 Not-Voters (out of a total of 966,823). With regard to the 8th Saeima, the increase of Not-Voters is tenfold.

The Not-Voter believes that the deciding factor in the success or failure of Unity Coalition will be an openly stated, wordlessly executed oath of “self-sacrifice” among its political representatives. Such an oath will constitute a break with the amoral presumption of previous Latvian governments that government officials have the right over the life and death of the citizen, while they themselves bear no consequences of their decisions.

The outstanding example of power-over is of course the presumption to devote 2% of national income to the building up of military forces and sending of Latvian soldiers to serve in Afghanistan at a time when the country can ill afford such expenditure. The latter surely is better spent on education of Latvia's young and old.

The Not-Voter would like to see that the politicians of the 10th Latvian Saeima make an oath to the nation of Latvia that as a condition of becoming the political servants of Latvia, they become a no lesser self-sacrifice than a soldier on the front line.

As the previous two blogs (34 & 35) point our, one of the critical issues for Latvia in the upcoming years is the reanalysis (by independent historians and anthropologists) of its cultural history. The failure to allocate resources to this end by Latvian governments of the previous twenty years is not only a moral failure, but the source of government corruption at the present.

The previous Latvian governments considered it “nothin’ special” if their ministers sent their children to schools abroad with their left hand, while their right hand was deep in the till of government, and other children suffered from rotting teeth, generally ill health, poor food, poor schools, inadequately prepared teachers and teaching facilities, and had to suffer sacrifices no government official bore in equal measure.

An oath of self-sacrifice on behalf of Latvia by all government officials, elected or appointed, is a must.* Note below item italicized by this writer. It is from the LR laws regarding its Defense Forces:

[10. pants. Karavīra zvērests

«Es, Latvijas karavīrs, apzinoties atbildību savas tautas un likuma priekšā, apsolos un zvēru:
- būt uzticīgs Latvijas Republikai, tās Satversmei un likumīgajai valdībai;
- netaupot spēkus, veselību un dzīvību, sargāt Latvijas valsti un tās neatkarību;
- pēc labākās sirdsapziņas veikt man uzticētos karavīra pienākumus;
- bez ierunām pakļauties militārajai disciplīnai, vienmēr pildīt savu priekšnieku pavēles un rīkojumus atbilstoši Latvijas Republikas likumiem.»

A quick translation of the loath: "I, a Latvian soldier, aware of my responsibility before my nation and the law, promise and make this oath: --to be faithful to the Latvian Republic, its Saeima and lawful government; --without reservation expend my strength, health and life, to protect the Latvian nation and its independence; --with the greatest of consciousness to fulfill my soldierly responsibilities; --without protest surrender myself to military discipline, and always execute the orders and tasks given me by my superiors reflecting the laws of the Latvian Republic."]

As this writer has said before, the economic sacrifices that government will impose on the citizens of Latvia in the near future, the same powered to the nth degree by further declines in the world economy, spells a potential end to Latvia. To survive the economic catastrophe, even to marshal the nation’s will to survive and flower, one cannot continue along the path of least resistance a la Pop politics.

The Not-Voter blog does not expect to disappear. As pointed out by blogs 34 and 35, we will continue to examine the alternatives to the Latvian character that were repressed with the Herrnhuter religious movement in Livonia in the 18th and 19th centuries. We suspect that a neo-Herrnhuter or Children of Johns movement may capture the flag of a 4th Latvian Awakening.

Therefore, we take leave today reminding the reader that the very word “Awakening” originates with the Herrnhuters. While the Children of Johns of tomorrow will not be identical with the Moravian Brotherhood, it is that brotherhood, which, nevertheless, was responsible for Awakening the Children of Johns to their Latvian heritage. With some theological adjustments (the Children of Johns would like to see John returned to Earth), their example continues to be serviceable in our day.

The Not-Voter takes courage in the knowledge that the Children of Johns were removed from the political stage by means of collaboration of Latvian government with orthodox religious churches, because neither the government nor the churches would suffer their willingness to suffer self-sacrifice. The removal of the Children of Johns from the political scene was no accident; it was deliberate. The denial of the essential characteristic of the Latvian community--self-sacrifice--is what ails the community. A reinstatement of the Children of Johns is what will heal the community.

LATE POSTSCRIPT: The following link (click here) suggests that Latvian zionationalism has established a real base. The occasional Latvian AntiSemite surviving today has his-her roots in the AntiHerrnhutism of orthodox Christianity, specifically that of Lutheranism. The Lutherans repressed the Herrnhuters once it became apparent that they would succeed in Awakening Latvians and/or the Estonians, which was counter the interests of Baltic barons. By 1857 the Herrnhuters were effectively shut down in what is Estonia and Latvia today.

The Latvian AntiHerrnhutist movement was essentially a parallel movement to German AntiSemitism, which is why--once Latvians forgot the historic roots of the AntiAwakening forces in their midst--a significant number simply jumped to a parallel running track and became AntiSemitic and allegedly ever more patriotic.

Today the Folk Myth is seeing a revival in the vote count received Saturday by Visu Latvijai. While more about this in a future blog, at this moment it seems that Latvian zionationalism is seeing something of a revival.

Asterisks & Links of Interest
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/
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic
On the Moravian Brotherhood
http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/edmund-alexander-de-schweinitz/the-history-of-the-church-known-as-the-unitas-fratrum-or-the-unity-of-the-bret-cse/page-33-the-history-of-the-church-known-as-the-unitas-fratrum-or-the-unity-of-the-bret-cse.shtml

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/  + 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 http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, or http://the-not-voter.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
35 The Compromised Latvian Self

In blog 34 this writer discussed how not only was the history of the Latvian people compromised and changed into a fairy tale by the German and Latvian orthodox Christian religions, but how the psyche of the Latvian people was repressed and has ever since suffered from a stunted growth syndrome.

What ought to be the foundation stones of Latvia are unfortunately not widely known and therefore are not discussed. In this bloggers opinion these "unknown" stones speak of the fact that

a) The Latvian community was created with the help of the Herrnhuters (originating in the Moravian Brotherhood);

b) The Herrnhuters accomplished the bringing together of Latvians by introducing choirs and community singing;

c) The practice of democracy was introduced by selecting office holders through the drawing lottery tickets from among qualified participants;

d) The very name of Latvia arises from the Herrnhuter community in Latowice (established 1565), which upon its disassembly by the Lutherans was forced to move on, thus taking the name of Latowice with them to Livonia.

Already in 1585, Possevino, a legate of the Pope, who mediated between the Russians, Poles, and Swedes, referred to Latvians as lotavica.

In short, IF the Herrnhuter community of Latvians had not been repressed by the Lutheran church, and Latvian Herrnhuters had been let evolve as a community free from interference by orthodox Christianity, the character of the Latvian people would have evolved rather differently. It would have been much more comfortable with itself today than it in fact is.

The absence of a Self rooted in real history, rather than its replacement by religious fiction and nationalist myth, prevents many Latvians from seeing themselves as living in a continuum with in-depth roots. The absence of historic depth is unfortunately replaced by a psychic syndrome that visits one who perceives his-her birth as an act of falling out of a wheelbarrow: one blames either the driver or the stone that caused the bump, never one’s self for falling asleep and failing to see the true cause.

To repeat, the true cause of the myopia of the Latvian people--so effectively manipulated by their “democratic” politicians, ethnic prejudice et al,--is to be sought in the suppression of their history.

This is why the accusations of fascism that bedevil the image of Latvians continue to contain an element of truth. While Luther is long dead and his anti-Semitism long forgotten, his prejudice against the Herrnhutians (and in so far it has been adopted by orthodox Lutheranism and other Christian sects) continues to strand the spirit of Latvians in shallow waters.

This is a time of crisis in Latvia and—for reasons stated above—involves to a greater or lesser degree Latvians of all national origins and all political parties. Whatever the outcome of the elections this coming Saturday (October 2), the crisis of Latvian self-consciousness is far from over.

Indeed, one hopes that the crisis of Self continues to gather momentum and forces the government to invite independent historians to do research and reanalyze the history of Livonia whence the Latvians emerged.

This writer hopes that such a reanalysis by historians and cultural anthropologists will place Latvians on a historical stage that has much greater depth and breadth than the present one--the one that has led them to the dead-end of this impoverished day.

Postscript: As most everyone knows, the Latvian media are controlled by political interests and are not independent as they ought to be. It is not surprising therefore that the only media outlet interested in this writer’s point of view has been a Riga Russian newspaper, re Telegraf  Click the translate button if you do not read Russian.

Asterisks & Links of Interest
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/
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic
On the Moravian Brotherhood

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + 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 http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, or http://the-not-voter.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
34 The Payans of Latvia

As argued by this writer in another blog, the original pronunciation of the word “pagan” was, most likely, “payan”. While the origin of the word is disputed by scholars, “payan” fits nicely with the Latvian sense of its meaning.

Payan = pa + yan; a prefix + the Latvian name for John, Jahnis. The prefix “pa” precedes many Latvian words, for example, pa-dot (to hand over), pa-skriet (to make a run for it), pa-domāt (to think it over), etc. Rather than say “dot”, “skriet”, or “domāt”, the prefix “pa” softens the act. Like the postfix that endears the noun, [as in “gald-inysh” (dear table), “akment-inysh” (dear stone), “saul-īte” (dear sun), “Jānītis” (dear Johnny)], the prefix “pa-” is more often used in spoken than written language. This is because “pa-” inflects the word with subjective judgement.

An interesting side effect of the inflected word is that it not only enables conversation to progress more easily, because it tends to avoid speech as a command [for example, “dod man” (give me) vs “pa-dod” (half-a-please give me)], but it may also inflect the word with irony, especially if the prefix “pa-” precedes a name. Thus, if we put the prefix “pa-” before Yahn (John), it suggests that somehow something is not right with John or Yahn.

“Pa-yahn”, thus, suggests that John is somehow not fully John, but only half a John, so to speak. Because the consonant J may slip-slide and be pronounced as a G or Dzh, it becomes possible for one pa-yahn to be pronounced as pagan. Because of this tendency toward different pronunciations, once upon a time the name “Jesus”, in order to avoid being pronounced “Gesus” (or Geez) was written “Iasu”, where “Ia” is sure to be pronounced as a Y.

So, what has this to do with NOT-VOTING?

The answer lies in the fact that to fully participate in the act of voting, you must know a little more than nothing about history, and you must know enough of history not to be blindsided by lies about what happened in the past.

For example, did you know that proto-Latvians—those Latvians who made up a “people” before the Latvians made themselves a nation—also knew themselves as The Children of Johns (Jāņu bērni)? This is not to say that Livonia or Livland went without the Letowici [from the Moravian (Herrnhuter) parishes of the Brethren at  Letowic], but that the name of Livonia originates with the Livs and not Latvians. The names Lett or Latvis came in use later, after the Great Northern War (ended 1721, Peace of Nystadt) killed off most of the Livs in Vidzeme, for example, where they were replaced by the Latgalians.

True, this is not the place to write a history book. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that today the history books of Latvia approximate what actually happened only after 1860 or thereabout. This is one reason why the present government of Latvia is reluctant to allocate funds for a new history book for Latvians, and why the state and church in Latvia are not truly separated, but continue to be intertwined with a reactionary orthodox Christian world view. In short, if a history book of Latvia were to be written today, it would, most likely, be a lie about what happened during the first half of the nineteenth century and earlier.

If you care a whit about the Latvian psyche as it was before a hundred and fifty years and want help the Latvian people to untwist the effects of sad repression that keeps their outlook on the world from developing, cast a NOT-VOTE.

The act of NOT-VOTING consists of going to the voting poll and dropping an empty envelope into the box. All the dire warnings that this is an “evil” act, or sabotage, or lets the Russians or commies come and rule over Latvia are but attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of the Latvian people. Rather, a NOT-VOTE will help the psyche of the Children of Johns free the psyche of Latvians today.
Asterisks & Links of Interest
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/
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
Ground Zero for Thought

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
The Trap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic