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 + 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
11 Positively Brainwashed

In Blog 10, I introduced the reader to Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay “Why Forced Positive Thinking Is a Total Crock”.* Perhaps some will have read the essay and are ready to appreciate the fact that “positive self-spinning” may result in right wing politics and demographic extinction.

What does this have to do with NOT-VOTING? Let me continue with Ehrenreich’s trend of thought: [The late billionaire Templeton who founded The Templeton Foundation was also a political ideologue, which ideology waited for its full expression through his son, his successor at the Foundation, who…] “…helped found Let Freedom Ring, which worked to get out the evangelical vote for George Bush in 2004. In 2007 he contributed to Freedom’s Watch, which paid for television commercials supporting the war in Iraq, often conflating Iraq with al Queda.” In short, The Templeton Foundation is for getting out the vote to support the political system in power, and against the NOT-VOTE that would present a political alternative.

The Templeton Foundation is also a major supporter of positive thinking, contributing as much as $2.2 million to the Seligman Positive Psychology Center in the first decade of the 21st century. Ehrenreich herself does not suggest that positive psychology is part of a right wing conspiracy, though positive psychology leans heavily toward outspoken conservatism. However, Ehrenreich points out that “The real conservativism of positive psychology lies in its attachment to the status quo, with all its inequalities and abuses of power. Positive psychologists’ tests of happiness and well-being, for example, rest heavily on measures of personal contentment with things as they are.”

I suggest that pro-vote campaigns of Latvian organizations such as the PBLA and ALA, not to mention the current government of Latvia, are political institutions heavily committed to positivist thinking and the status quo, and, thus, attempt to intimidate the public against protesting in any meaningful way against establishmentarian corruption. Better a corrupt Latvia than a changed Latvia. Better loose 200,000 of the population to emigration than permit the people in the countryside raise Johns Grass that would keep Latvians in the countryside, have them raise children, and be able to educate them. Ehrenreich’s goes on to list five propositions of the so-called “Satisfaction with Life Scale” developed by positive psychologists. If I substitute the world “my life” with “Latvian politics”, I arrive at the following:

• In most ways Latvian politics is close to my ideal.
• The conditions of Latvian politics are excellent.
• I am satisfied with Latvian politics.
• So far I have gotten the things I want out of Latvian politics.
• If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing [in Latvian politics].

Positivist psychology supports Latvian politicians and media in their stock answer to criticism from the Latvian public that it tilts toward the NOT-VOTE. The political and media rant goes: You (the public) are to be blamed for who you elect. You deserve what you get, because your leadership comes from your midst, which is no better than the midst of the leadership currently in office. We know no such thing as leadership by example. There is no better state than being happy with the way things are, that is, with the status quo.

There is no denying that the NOT-VOTE campaign is at odds with the peddlers of happiness and status quo. Indeed, the NOT-VOTE campaign arises out of unhappiness and unease with the way politics is in Latvia, especially its anti-populist leadership and media establishment.

The populists (the boundaries of this group not yet identified except by thousands of individual subjectivities) nevertheless find themselves becoming the Latvian Jews of the 21st century. As one email respondent at Politika.lv wrote: “Eiropā monarhijas ir tas pats kas LV Jāņi—tradīciju nesējas.” (My transl.: In Europe monarchies are the same what the Festival of Johns is about in Latvia—a bearer of traditions.) In effect, the vehicle of Latvian traditions, the Children of Johns (now repressed), by a curious inversion of mimesis by oligarchs and their media supporters, find themselves identified as monarchists, the latter often falsely presented as totalitarians.

I have thought of the monarch in Latvian politics in passing (mostly in the context of sacred kings of the past), but the theme may be worth exploring. It may turn out that government with a monarch at its head is still relevant in our day, because while the state (valsts) may be corrupt, the monarch perhaps is not.

The Latvian populace (read populists) finds itself linked by its liberal democratic leadership and media to the disenfranchised Children of Johns (Jahnis). Who are the Johns? The traveling Johns were once the teachers and healers of the proto-Latvian people. The Festival of Johns was (as late as the middle of the 20th century) the Latvian equivalent of Community Day. The festival coincided with the Summer solstice, and John was thought of as a God or Demi-god. As a God, John is related to the Jewish Yahweh, though this parallel is neglected with determination lest it be investigated. But the parallels becomes apparent when we note that the “h” in Yahweh need not be read as “ā” (Yāweh), but may represent the letter “n”, thus Yanwen; just as King Arthur’s right hand man Gawain echoes to Yawain.

If some readers are not aware that the name John is a cognate to the names above and many others, let them draw courage not only from my interpretation, but from a reader at Politika.lv, whose response to the observation that “In Europe monarchies are the same what the Festival of Johns is about in Latvia—bearer of traditions” is even more far reaching: “Vēl vairāk—latvieši ir tie, kuru tradīciju, paradumu un vērtību grozu ilustrē Jāņi visā to modernajā kompozīcijā….” (My transl.: Additionally —the Latvians are the ones whose traditions, habits, and values are illustrated by the Johns Festival in all its modern varieties….)

Interestingly, the forces of secularization (the advertising dependent media) are renaming the Johns Festival as the Midsummer Festival, Solstice Festival, Great Picnic Festival, Family Festival, Lihgo Festival, etc. The mention of John (Jahnis) is being erased. Equally, the Children of Johns [those identified now as “tauta” (folk) by those born outside the traditions of the Children of Johns] are no less discriminated against by positivist psychology (displacing the word religion) than by the crusaders. While voting for a partidocratic democracy is proclaimed by the establishment to be everyone’s civic duty and responsibility, casting a NOT-VOTE on behalf of John (the populist leader) and as an alternative to partidocracy is said to be irresponsible.

Of course, when we think of it, the existent system of voting with no opportunity to cast a NOT-VOTE is a system with no scientific basis. As a positivist psychologists interviewed by Ehrenreich said: “The science of positive psychology has not necessarily caught up with the promise of positive psychology.”

The same unfulfilled promise is reflected in the so-called democratic system of voting. This is why it is not only Latvia, but every country in Europe and beyond, that needs to reform the voting system and include the NOT-VOTE.

Latvians may show the way, because all they have to do is fight their way out from under the paper bag pulled over their heads by a succession of positivist thinkers. Just tear the bag off your head and NOT-VOTE!

Asterisks & Other Readings
* Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-sided Bright-Sided
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
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stm
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
Click here 


These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.

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
10 The 4th Awakening=NOT-VOTE
The TenthAmendment of the American Constitution states that “The powers not delegated to the United States  by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

To see what the Tenth Amendment means look here.  In brief, as states Professor Thomas DiLorenzo: “The real purpose of the [American Civil] war was to end once and for all the ability of American citizens to control the federal government by possessing the powers given to them by the Tenth Amendment, including the power of nullifying unconstitutional federal laws, and secession or the threat of secession.”

On the “Big Stakes” playing fields, President Abraham Lincoln was against state powers and the people’s right to escape a centralized government, while Thomas Jefferson believed that the Tenth Amendment was the cornerstone of the Constitution. In effect, it was Lincoln, according to Professor DiLorenzo, who broke the back of democracy. This created conditions that would give corporations the rights of individuals, which enabled these “individuals” to use corporate money to create individuals in the image of merciless giants.

The Tenth Amendment for the United States is currently dead de facto if not to the nth degree yet, though there are people who still struggle to keep it alive de jure. I support them and even insist that the rights to de jure be always alive to become de facto when the time arrives.

What needs to come to the surface by some kind of mass action that is not-violent—yet at the same time brings terror to government officials—that signals that the days when the suppression of the people’s sovereign right over themselves are over. On the political arena this right may be asserted by building a successful NOT-V0TE campaign that reduces the number of votes on voting day to below 50%, preferably bringing % down to 20% or lower. After years of calling for reform of government and receiving vacuous support from politicians who know that “reform” is an empty word, the time is for the least of direct actions that citizens may perform: NOT-VOTE; yet achieve a revolutionary result. The silence of the media over alternatives to the existing system—for example, one in which the NOT-VOTE is a guaranteed freedom—will find the pinprick that breaks the silence.

The prick is likely to come from the people, the populace, the feared Populismus Tyrannus Rex, which has replaced the once despised Jew in as the enemy of real or would be Oligarchs Club.

While it may be difficult to achieve a NOT-VOTE in the USA with 300 million people, it is easier done in a smaller state with relatively few citizens. Latvia is ideal for becoming the spark that initiates the reawakening of the political systems. Great changes must come to the Great “Civilizaciya”. In Latvia there may be around 700,000 eager NOT-VOTERS. All that needs to be done is to persuade the zeitgeist that the NOT-VOTE is not a cup cake, but a pinprick that hurts all the longer one sits on it. This is why the scream is ready to break out—even if it has been held behind the vocal cords for a few centuries. Once the NOT-VOTE has been successfully tested in Latvia, others will gain courage to do likewise. The time has come to nullify the system captured by democracy dictated by oligarchies. In other words, first is the question, then the NOT-VOTE. The democracy that became a democracy in state of self-denial and pretentiousness ought to go “Puff!”

True, there is no guarantee that the present government (wherever a NOT-V0TE is attempted) may not turn dictatorial. But the risk is commensurable with the reward.

A globalized NOT-VOTE will end the perverse fantasy that creates a system frozen in goodness and positivism.  It will become clear or clearer who THE PEOPLE are, when we meet at “The Constitutional Assembly for The Rewriting of The Constitution”.

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/
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.stm
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

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
9 The Informed Not-Voter

It is long overdue that the voter be given the opportunity to exercise hh (his-her) right to vote according to hh political orientation. The so-called democratic voting system today has long been flawed by repressing the full extent of a voter’s voting rights by way of holding voting to within a single political system and forbidding citizens to vote against it.

That is to say, the liberal democratic voting system has distinct parallels with the voting system of former Soviet Union, which, too, restricted the voter’s right to vote to a given set of candidates.

The present so-called “democratic” vote is limited to voting for a previously registered group of parties, which are legitimated if on Election Day they receive a given percentage of the public’s vote . In Latvia this percentage is 5% or more. However, it the voter decides that there are no parties that hh cares for (for whatever reasons of personal choice), hh is not given the opportunity to cast a NOT-VOTE. In other words, the voter is not given the opportunity to cast a vote against the ruling government system per se.

Whatever the merits of the Latvian Constitution (Satversme, a translation of the German word “Verfassung”), its capture by a partidocratic government, that is to say, a government whose inner core has been captured by certain corporate interests, has been compromised. Thus, the Latvian electorate has been manipulated by a government, which, to use the voters’ expression, “has stolen the nation”.

The particular “democratic system” of government in Latvia has been limited to “Parliamentary Democracy” and to the exclusion of a directly elected Democratic government. In short, the Government and not the electors control the Constitution by the method of institutionalized capture. However, democracy—if it is to have more than a cynical meaning—means that the sovereigns of the State and the Constitution are the people, the electors. The government is but the representative of the electors for a limited time, usually, four to five years.

As the system in Latvia stands at the present time, a voter cannot through hh vote bring about a truly changed government, but must, to use another people’s idiom, repeatedly “vote for the same old crabs”. It is time that the voters of Latvia understood that after twenty years of their “freedom” controlled by a captured government, they owe it to themselves to cast a NOT-VOTE. If they fail to do so, they not only vote themselves yet another corrupt government, but declare them selves as less sovereigns, more cowards.

Notwithstanding attempts by the “old crabs” to form a Unity Party (for an “honest” government of course), said coalition is simply another game of musical chairs. While the Unity Party ought to be working to institute the NOT-VOTE, it has manifested no such intentions. Indeed, the Unity may be planning to seize the Constitution in an even tighter grip than heretofore. They may borrow an action form the British government newly in office.
The coalition of Liberal Democrats and Tories in England wish to institute a law that would require that 55% of British MPs must approve any move to dissolve the Parliament. The plan to check a sovereign people’s right to request and dissolve the government (by going to the Queen) is in the name of “strong and stable government”. In the British case, this amounts to a gerrymander of the Constitution, because the dismissal of government would not be possible unless a large number of the ruling government’s deputies rebelled and voted against their own party. As an opposition member to the British government has stated, the institution of a de facto “fixed term parliament” will result in a "zombie government".

That the “stolen government of Latvia”, long in a zombie state all its own, may—by way of a gerrymander of yet another “new” Unity—attempt to seize control of a dysfunctional Latvian Constitution is probable, though no such a move has been announced. Such power-over moves often simply happen. This is why Latvians need to be on their guard and come October 2, 2010 chose to NOT-VOTE, to deny the government authority and force it to call a Constitutional Convention.

Why would Unity wish to capture and hold the dysfunctional Latvian Constitution in an tighter grip than before?

The answer is rather plain. The opposition to Unity happens to be a political party that, given the current political situation, has a potential of becoming a political movement, perhaps has already become such.

What this blogger called “The Tuned Center Party” (see Blog 4), re Saskaņas Centrs, despite my awkward translation, has its origins in an attempt to “atune” the political forces in post-Soviet Latvia. The Soviet Union had its own form of “globalization” of the people under its centralized control. As a result, the Baltic countries, Latvian including, saw an influx of Russians and Russian-speaking people. By some estimates this influx constitutes up to 35% of the current Latvian population. The Atune Party was formed to attempt to bridge the “people’s gap” in the renewed Latvian republic. However, a tight control over the Latvian Constitution checked the attempt, leaving many inhabitants of Latvia (about 250,000 out of a total population of 2.3 million) without Latvian citizenship even if many here are now living three generations.

Whatever the fears of ethnic Latvians of being swallowed by the Russian-speaking part of the public, the Parliamentary system under the control of Latvian was captured and corrupted by their own liberal capitalists. The latter are responsible for a capitalism of such clumsy nature that its “few rich-many poor Latvians” social order put the ethnic population into a death spiral. This fact is of course being ignored by not talking about it.
The failure of the Latvian partidocratic government has not gone unnoticed among the Latvians who indeed never favored Latvia as an apartheid State. In the opinion of the latter, the Atuned Party has an important political role to play. Only through dismissing a government with a dismal, even catastrophic record,, may Latvia recover both its identity and economy. However, the future cannot be more of the same no vision of the past twenty years or the no vision of the newly arrived Unity "reformers". The failed state must be taken down and rebuilt anew, but without peddling fear of Moscow only to have its neck collared by a leash of the West.

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
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.stm

These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.
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/  

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
8 An Eye Popper or
To Whom It May Concern
(a brief interruption on the theme of not-voting)

I wonder if Jānis Domburs comment in his column [Delphi], {re: “… ekonomikas recesijas konsekvences, kas šobrīd būtu jāanalizē iespējami plaši, šobrīd ir "piezemējušās" uz Neo aizturēšanas un Ilze Naglas kratīšanas skandāla radīta "informatīvā spilvena”
[My trans.: …the consequences of the economic recession, which we ought to analyze with great thoroughness, are now interrupted by the arrest of Neo and the scandal that surrounds (the police search of) reporter Ilze Nagla’s apartment.]}

has certain echoes also at LatviansOnline. I was amazed to read a poster who frequently harries my posts, posting the following at another site at LO, re:

Posted: 13 May 2010 10:48 AM I was inside of the MK building when all this happened, had no idea that it was going on. You might recognize someone in the pictures: http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/202971/galery/5/article

Really, no idea and in the building (MK—Ministru Kabinets) at that? Is [Tom] just voicing his personal insecurities by presenting himself as a VIP (Very Important Person) yet once again (he has previously associated himself with unnamed NGOs) at the right place at the right moment (?) or is Tom indeed a VI undercover Person at LO, a hired gun to harass people who have other than conformist views with regard to Latvia, especially its politics and history?

Another poster, who signs himself /P (sometimes also as Peteris Cedrins) has similar traits to that of Tom. /P harasses posters, spends enormous amounts of time On Air, brags of being a speech writer for a Latvian President, tells of having worked for the Chancery, and having been commissioned by Ojārs Kalnins, the Director of the Latvian Information Institute, to write a history pamphlet on Latvia. After being harassed by /P over a blog entry and told at an earlier time that my entries would be “mocked”, I posted the following:

Posted: 22 March 2010 10:08 AM This site leads to Blog 92: http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/  For transition from proto-Latvian Kingdom of Jersika to modern state of Latvia [the image of which is currently under the direction (or is it sabotage?) of … the Chicago School of Latvia] see blogs from 58 on. As for Peteris Cedrins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Peteris_Cedrins. I am not sure if he works for the Latvian Institute or only wrote some history “text” for it. However, I clearly remember the director of the institute asking him in a post at LatviansOnline if PC should not be elsewhere at the time he was posting. I found the connection puzzling at the time. Perhaps it is not so puzzling after all if it is all in a day’s work.

Peteris Cendrins responded: Posted: 22 March 2010 10:24 AM I can solve the puzzle for you. I don’t work for anybody anymore, in the sense of direct employment. I do contract work. OK the PR Man was being quite justifiably nasty because I was being intensely unreliable and he was waiting for the history text I contracted with LI for. I was late by a grand stretch. I never claimed to work for LI—nor would I want to; working for the Chancery was quite enough. If you have concrete beefs, please throw some cement. If not—enjoy a song. Vysu lobu, /P

Does calling OK (Ojars Kalnins, Director of the Latvian Institute) a PR Man make /P somehow a man less that 30 whom the readers at LO can trust? (In fact, /P is 46, an age when men who seek a second life-career if the first misfired are likely doomed to do as they did before.) Does “intensely unreliable” dismiss suspicions of /P acting as a government censor—more accurately disruptor of flow of thought—at LatviansOnline? Of course, I have no way of telling what other “contract work” /P does, but I certainly would not take his word for it. Perhaps someone else at LO will recollect Ojars Kalnins post asking whether /P ought not to be harassing posters at LatviansOnline, but ought to be elsewhere. Perhaps similar exchanges exist at other posts. Perhaps other posters at LO remember such posts.

The readers of my posts at LO know that I have posted many blogs there. Some of these I have posted at LO exclusively, some I have posted at my own blogsite, but taken advantage of LO platform to notify its readers of such posts. One obvious reason for not posting at LO exclusively is that the site limits a post to 4000 characters, but my blogs often exceed that number many times over.

Over approximately three years, I have created a rough outline of a different past for the people who once lived in the territory now known as Latvia. One difference is that I interpret the term “pagan” as belonging to a long outdated version of history of proto-Latvians, but a version (a myth really) still being peddled to Latvians at home and abroad by a Latvian government that—as the saying goes—fell out of the wheelbarrow yesterday or certainly has acted as if it did. Mr. /P has been a peddler of the orthodox version of Latvian history (one that on occasion I have referred to as zionationalist) with a fanaticism that only a Latvian by conversion (in this case by way of the Chicago School of Latvianism) can muster. I was exposed to this modern improved interpretation of Latvian history as long as seventy years ago. Still, I found enough holes in the “pagan” myth version to wonder about its accuracy, at least with regard to history that happened before the 16th century.

Since I can trace my paternal history in Latvia to about 1740 (and by way of DNA analysis to Croatia and thereabout in the centuries preceding), I was especially curious why there were dates of birth and death and hints about occupation, but silence regarding specifics. Perhaps the silence is explainable by poor, limited, and lost records. Subsequently, based on a considerable amount of reading of events that occurred round about the 11th to 15th centuries and the voluminous work done by the Russian mathematician Anatoly Fomenko, I worked out a rough sketch for an alternate history, which I call the “Children of Johns” (Jāņu bērni) history of Latvia. The paranoia manifested by “Tom” and “/P” by way of behaviour that interrupts others, suggests that—as in the case of modern Israel—the current government of Latvia can comfortably legitimate itself only by insisting on an orthodox “Christian” past preceded by backward paganism.

I expect that other Latvians may criticize my version of Latvian history, and indeed I may learn from it. On the other hand, the fact that two posters should continue hammering with sometimes abusive and always interruptive posts, makes me wonder if they are under contract to the current Latvian government with which I, for one, have my differences.

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
On Constitutional Outrage in the West
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stm

These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter. Partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnlin + 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/

President Valdis Zatlers of Latvia blames financial failure of Latvia on Latvian children. (in Latvian, alas!) A summary: Apollo news service reports that at an international conference on the subject of “The Education of Latvians in Finance at the Private Level”, the President of Latvia blamed Latvians as a people who are not able to handle money. The Apollo news service gives no hint that the President blamed either the current or previous Latvian governments for Latvia’s financial troubles, but suggested instead that children ought to be taught how to handle money. Link at http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/202975 Further commentary below.  

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/ 

The cherry trees and wild cherry (Ieva or Eva's Bloom) are blooming. And so are the populists, the dandilions.


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
7 Save the Children of Latvia
[On the trail of Why “The-Not-Vote”.]

Sometimes someone writes a wonderful essay, says the right things, but when a reader is done, hh (he-her) would like to rewrite it their way. This happened to me recently after I read an insightful essay by Per Bylund “On the Meaning of Voting”. I give the relevant link below at “Asterisks & Other Readings”. What follows is my reset and some additions to Bylund’s arguments.

If one votes because one feels one has the responsibility to vote because hh is a responsible citizen, but at the same time votes not because hh likes any of the candidates, but because one is “a lesser evil”, this choice may be likened to a choice of either shooting one’s self in the foot or the head. Thus, a vote for a lesser evil means that one will shoot one’s self in the foot. An utterly cynical vote is to shoot one’s self in the head.

There is however a third choice: let the bullet fly at a target, the individual who set up the system, or if the individual has since died to let the bullet fly at the system itself. Let is imagine this third choice as a target and call it THE-NOT-VOTE. A shot at THE-NOT-VOTE and hitting it in the bull’s eye (re, getting the majority of voters to “not-vote”) results in loud bells ringing.

The voting systems the world over are at this time on the system, which we call “eager for the lesser evil system”. Nevertheless, we could also call it the “Vetoless voting system”. The system of voting that serves “liberal democracy” is surely a Vetoless voting system. When you vote at any of the voting events of the world today, you vote for liberal democracy as well. In short, you give the “liberal democracy system” the power to veto any other system. If you would rather not vote for liberal system, there is no choice today. You either become a nonvoter or shoot yourself in the foot. Some would call the latter to be practically the same as shooting one’s self in the head.

So, if you wish to take away from the present system its monopoly over violence, you must NOT-VOTE. You must shoot at the target, try to hit the bull’s eye, and set all the bells ringing. It will wake everyone up, and the system will be angrier than hell, but at least the people will have exercised their sovereign right to NOT-VOTE.

A traditional vote cast for the present system is an offensive act on behalf of the present system (yes, support for corruption including). Your vote for the present system allows the police in black masks to push peaceful demonstrators off the bridges at Bauska, Latvia, and the break-ins of the same at a late night hour into a journalist’s apartment to confiscate a personal computer. It allows for an assortment of intrusive acts with no validity if the system were truly a democracy, i.e., one that provided that the outcome of voting results is one of three, not just two choices.

Interestingly, a voting system that serves liberal democracy, the unisystem that rules the West today and will be ruling over it tomorrow (so it is presumed), has set itself up as an enemy of the people. The argument that one hears on the behalf of this system is that it is capitalist, thus oriented toward a self-regulating market economy, which for all its problems remains as Churchill is alleged to have said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” (from a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947)

Churchill is quoted tirelessly, because his statement seconds the liberal democratic system in its self-regulating ways, and vetoes any defensive action by the people other than a vote for “a lesser evil”. In short, to vote today—whether the vote by on October 2 in Latvia or anywhere else—means, as Per Bylund  has it: “…the solicitation of violent services offering as only payment an anonymous statement of support for an unenforceable advertised political program”.
………………………………………………………..
The President of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers, has hit upon a wonderful solution for the financial crisis in Latvia: teach the children how to save money. This is a fine idea, except that President Zatlers is asking the savings from those whose relatives (somewhere around 200,000) have left Latvia to work in other countries and send some of their savings home to support those relatives who have remained in Latvia. Re: Save the Children of Latvia

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
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
Save the Children of Latvia
http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/202975

These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.
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/  

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at Latvians Online + 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
6 The Importance of The-Not-Vote (Cont.)


Even as Mick Hume wrote his pre-election blog essay "The abstentionist elephant in the room"  at “Spiked”, a site about English politics, Latvian politics (elitely handled by government and Latvian media hacks) waddles (a sort of balancing act) toward October 2, the election day on which Latvian voters are supposed to discharge their pent up rage against a corrupt government in a NO CHOICE orgasm on the behalf of a dysfunctional government.


That the government has well earned the contempt of the public for its corruption and inability to carry through a reform of itself (the so-called ‘structural reforms’) is a fact. It was worse than a sad day though when the Latvian media became anti-populist in its political orientation. Such an orientation is best illustrated by the endless flow of anti-populist references embedded in off-hand negative references to “populism”. Such an orientation is also observable in the media shows known as “What Is Happening in Latvia?” (Kas notiek Latvijā?), where Mr. Domburs, the host of the show—now seemingly for an eternity—interviews government officials, ministers, party officials, NGO chairpersons, and an assortment of “politologues” about everything under the sun, but what is happening in Latvia.


One such elitely irrelevant “Mr. Domburs Show” (as the show ought to be more properly called) occurred last night as the host interrogated a half a dozen economists and bankers on the subject "Whether the economy in Latvia has reached its low point". Those who understand Latvian can judge for themselves the irresolute (vapidly inconclusive chatter) offered, while the catastrophe of unemployment thrust on top of an already dire economic condition known as mass poverty marches on unnoticed by the show.
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What appears to be an illegal intrusion by the Latvian Security Police (Drošības Policija) into a highly respected journalist’s apartment [the intrusion into the apartment of Ilze Nagle, an investigative journalist of the Latvian TV program known as “De Facto”, occurred on the evening the intrusion was approved by a Latvian procurator, but before it was approved by the Court; the Court approved the intrusion post-fact, that is, the following morning] is being followed by Juris Kaža at his blog site, re here. I suspect that Mr. Kaža will have lots more to write on the subject.
……………………………………..
I invite the readers’ special attention to the interview with Seymore Hersh at "Other Readings" link below.
..........................................................
For blogs on the subject of THE-NOT-VOTER, please see blogs below. The links below are worth viewing or reading.


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
One country, two systems
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8667871.stm
Bill Moyers last interview. The Populist Moment
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/watch2.html
Why Kennedy was assassinated?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2010/05/13/150-why-was-jfk-murdered/
What is a nice Latvian boy like you doing in Afghanistan?
New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh on what’s happening in Afghanistan.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/us-troops-executing-prisoners-in-afghanistan-journalist-says.html


These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.
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/  

We suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs as an integral part of our argument.


THE-NOT-VOTER
4 Democracy Unleashed

A disunited leadership almost always steps into a ditch instead of finding a path across what seem insurmountable mountains. Once the leaders fall into the ditch, the natives spear them and have a cookout. Indeed, this is what justice looks like; unfortunately, it leaves the people who followed the leaders at a loss of what to do next.

In the mind of this blogger, the situation of Latvians under the present leadership has them marching under the banner of “Salvation is just around the corner!” However, the first corner they came to turned to the right, but it did not turn out to be the right right turn. So, they turned left, but discovered that a left turn from a right turn still leaves them on the right side of the center, which is why they turned left again, which took them back to the center.

So, should the Latvian leadership move left once more to be sure that they are in fact where they began? The Latvian PM  recently confirmed that Latvians were now indeed where they began twenty years ago.

The latter is the direction taken by the political party known as “The Tuned Center Party”, re Saskaņas Centrs. Having first taken a right turn—something that all Latvian political parties did when they broke loose from the very left Soviet Union—the party, feeling that it was different for all that, turned left. This still left it a left-right party. So they took another left. This put them in a neutral-center position, which is where they started from. So they have now taken further steps to the left. Which makes everyone ask: So, just where is it that “The Tuned Center-Left Party” is really at?

To answer the question, we must first find out why the party, now back where it started from, is tilting center-left.

For one, “The Tuned Center Party” has promised that given the financial and economic crisis caused by the right wing parties through excessive borrowing (which process allowed them to briefly feel they were on the road of perpetual wealth), it would not reduce the pensioners’ pensions come what may. This declaration leaves one to imagine that the party will reduce child support instead. A Latvian mother with four children who now receives Ls 32 ($64) total monthly support may receive even less and, thus, accelerate the demographic death spiral of Latvia’s population, while the pensioners or elderly will perhaps not freeze in the winter and live a little longer.

Such political positioning leaves “The Tuned Center-Left Party” now technically to the center-left and hoping to receive a majority of pensioner’s votes.

Meanwhile, the center-right parties have confirmed that they are not only looking Westward, but may renege (in a move that is implicitly oppositionary to the West) on the IMF (International Monetary Fund) loan. To put it in plain English: “Shkehle and Shlesers [literally “Slice” and “Turnkey”, the first a former PM, the latter Vicemayor of Riga] are convinced that for the sake of economic development of Latvia it is essential to attract investors, and to better utilize the aid from the European Union Fund [lit. transl.; ?European Central Bank? (ECB)]. The goal according the two leaders should be to earn (money) and not cut the budget.” Blogger’s translation. Technically speaking, this ought to get these two “business” candidates the vote of everyone who does not wish to see the budget cut for health, retirement, childcare, etc.

Recently this blogger received an email from “Embassy in USA” (Latvian Embassy; with an email rather than a website address imbedded). It sends the following with regard to the upcoming elections: “Good day! With regard to the election of the 10th Saeima, it will be appreciated if [citizens] will recommend to [to their respective Latvian] organizations (?) an “October 2” working group [whose goal it will be?] reaching the maximum participation of citizens in the elections of the 10th Saeima and, if possible, to declare [citizen] readiness to participate, within time constraints, in said group”. Blogger’s translation; see original at * asterisk below.

The letter is politically neutral. However, there is at least one important reason for abstaining from “October 2”.

“October 2” will not include not-voters, that is to say, it will not include people who would like to vote but will not vote because there are no Parliamentary parties worth the vote. Not-voters are not nonvoters. Not-voters are voters with no one to vote for. They are smart enough to figure out what the above mentioned “Slice” and “Turnkey” and “The Tuned Center Party” are saying or not saying, and that they are likely to do the same as they did before: when in office ignore the voters.

“October 2” does is (or soon will be) a pro-parliamentary government group that excludes not-voters, citizens who will not-vote for parliamentary government on the sacred principle that there is never a government system, whether it is all-pro-democratic or not, because to every movement to the right (and a one-of-a-kind government is such), there is also a movement in the opposite direction. Of course, it is unlikely that not-voters will always be 50:50 with pro-voters, or 33:66 with pro-voters and nonvoters as 2nd and 3rd parties. The percentage of not-voters will swing from a minority to a majority with the performance of the government, i.e., how much care the government has taken to be egalitarian on the egalitarian or populist side of the parliamentary system.

If in some places of the world a minority of 2% of a nation’s inhabitants own 50% or more of the nation’s resources and wealth, then not-voters are likely to be 98%, with pro-voters only 2%. However, in the voting system of today, which includes activists in “October 2”, egalitarianism has a built-in swing in favor of the “princely” parliamentarians who form the establishment at least since the Magna Carta in England. Revolutionary at its time, the parliamentary system has essentially imitated the democracy established by the Magna Carta and leaves it to the elites. If today’s elites are no longer “princes”, they are oligarchs and corporations-with-the-rights-of-individuals that oligarchs own. Such a built-in millennia long prejudice automatically excludes “heretics”, “pagans”, and now also “Christians”. [See comments of former Latvian FM and member of Saeima Janis Jurkans on religion in Latvia here or at asterisk ** below.]

Parliamentary democracy in Latvia does not allow a direct democracy, that is, a government elected by the electors directly. It disallows the state a governmental infrastructure that differs from a parliamentary system. Moreover, the present Constitution makes itself a dictatorship and provides no tools with which to replace it with a direct democracy or any other governmental infrastructure, say, one where a government elected by direct elections for twenty years is followed by five years of an authoritarian government. The last would come into being to set things of the previous twenty years aright or fine-tune them.

This blogger believes that it is time we begin to imagine that we live in times that end parliamentary government and transit to a government elected by the voters directly. This is a good time to switch the gears and excit a corrupt parliamentary government for an authoritarian government for, say, the next five years. The authoritarian government would be responsible for calling together a Constitutional Convention.

The circumstances that encourage voters to do original research are rife. The people are near 98% not-voters (in this bloggers opinion)—whatever the “October 2” group may think. In short, “October 2” will not unleash an epic pro-voter surge as establishmentarians think, but are likely to soon become self-conscious of being an exclusionary group.

Asterisks & Other
* “Labdien! 10. Saeimas vēlēšanas sakarā, ir vēlams savā tuvākajā centrā nekavējoties ieteikt organizācijām kopīgi attīstīt ārkārtēju "2. oktobra" darba grupu ar mērķi sasniegt maksimālo apkārtnes pilsoņu līdzdalību 10. Saeimas vēlēšanās un, ja iespējams, brīvprātīgi pieteikt savu gatavību līdzdarboties darba grupā iespēju robežās.”
** - Jūs taču piederat pie Pujata baznīcas. - Es piederēju,.. bet vairs nepiederu un negribu piederēt. Šlesers ir nopircis gan baznīcu, gan pujatus. Baznīca tautai ir nozagta, tā vairs nav autoritāte, kādai tai vajadzētu būt. Komunistu laikos mācītājus neredzēja sēžam partiju kongresos un slavējam partiju vadoņus. Tagad es dzirdu, ka luterāņu baznīca grib pārdod savus īpašumus, lai samaksātu algu mācītājiem. Man tas šķiet noziedzīgi. Ja kāda draudze nespēj uzturēt baznīcu, tad tā draudzei nav vajadzīga.
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections.
Electronicpolls 
Will Latvian IT experts discover how to solve electronic voting fraud?
Just a question. Is your answer Yes, No?
http://www.physorg.com/news191779395.html
Bill Moyers last interview. The Populist Moment
Jurkāns intervija, LA 


These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.
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/