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”.
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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.
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I invite the readers’ special attention to the interview with Seymore Hersh at "Other Readings" link below.
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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
5 Reneging On Democracy

If of 1000 eligible voters, 500 vote (for whatever party), but 500 do not vote, then 50% of eligible voters have expressed—as the laws stand now—a disinterest in the state. As long as the voter is not formally identified by an electronic mark on h-h (his-her) ID papers, the 500 not-voters are anonymous and are collectively referred to as nonvoters. More accurately, they are abstentionists or even better—not-voters.

If the 500 nonvoters did not vote because the government in their opinion is so corrupt that in the name of good government h-h have no choice but to not-vote, their just reasons stands to be unjustly accused of disinterest in the state and government—because there is no mechanism that allows h-h to cast a not-vote. THIS IS WHY IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT WE SEE THE INSTITUTION OF A NOT-VOTE.

If the not-vote is formally recognized as a legitimate vote (and why should it not be?), then of the 1000 eligible voters, 500 will have voted for the government, but 500 will have cast not-votes for the government. Therefore, the result will be hung elections and 2nd elections will need to take place. Because a 100% accuracy of 500 vs 500 votes is unlikely, lawmakers and statisticians can work out the percentage of “error” that is allowed and will allow the elections to stand. Of course, those of the 1000 who did not vote and chose to remain nonvoters, risk a penalty. For example, a life-time 4x not-vote will cause one automatically to lose citizenship, which will effect, say, whether one is or is not eligible for a pension and certain expensive health care.

Given that we live in the IT age, and statistics has replaced the absolutism of a simplistic ON vs OFF and YES vs NO vote—an instrument which makes the Constitution an absolutist document—the time has come to institute a NOT-VOTE. The Latvians (the country of my birth) and the world at large are certainly in a great need of it.

How is a not-vote to be instituted in a state and nation (actually all modern states and nations), where the Constitution allows for no replacement of itself? This is a problem that must be solved. Because why would one not want to change or rework the Constitution that has outgrown its usefulness or its usefulness has been compromised by its capture by an autocratic power?

As stated earlier, the IT age makes it possible for this difficulty to be resolved. If you have a voter’s card imbedded in your mobile phone or home computer, your ID, besides for being a pro-vote, nonvote, and not-vote would also register the voting public’s instant reaction on a visual graph to all questions of importance to the society as a whole. If the percentage registered a 70-80% unity on a question, the issue would be automatically put to a formal referendum (in effect a seconding) that would then be put to a formal vote 3 or 4 months later.

The problem in Latvia is how to enable a disabled Constitution. The disabling of the Latvian Constitution has been brought about by an insufficient accounting for the nature of home sapiens and a stretch too far for the ideal that not always corresponds to the situation at hand. At the present time there is no law that allows the voters to unseat the government in toto, elect an authoritarian power for an interim period (which ought to include a thorough review of the Constitution), and then return to direct elections again. We all know that it is possible to legislate for adjustments, rather than go straight toward an abstraction called “progress”, the result of which may be a great success, but also a great disaster.

The only way that this blogger sees how such a Constitutional change may be brought about with mental rather than physical exercise is by way of the NOT-VOTE. Absent its institutionalization, the not-vote has to find itself by doing it, not-voting. The percentage of not-voters ought to ring bells. Today the bells would “ring”, as they used to say in the old days, “the phone off the hook.”

By letting the people know and understand that a not-vote, if organized, is effective political action, a not-violent act, the voters may, for a period (perhaps the seven years foreseen by the Weimar Constitution) empower an authoritarian government. It would be followed by a government subject to popular vote for a seven year term 3x perhaps. Then the Latvian uncle Kārlis Ulmanis would again look over the nation’s shoulders and offer some advice.

THIS IS WHY IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT THERE BE A NOT-VOTE.

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The snubbing by the Saeima of Dainis Īvāns—one of the spirits of Tautas Fronte (The People’s Front), the mover and shaker of “The Singing Revolution” two decades ago—as one to address the Latvian Saeima on the 4th of May was a telling act. The 4th of May is the date when Latvia formally declared the renewal of its independence from the Soviet Union. It has not gone unnoticed that by its act Saeima told the people that Īvāns represents few it knows or it cares what they think about Latvia’s future. It knows better.
This audacious snub occurs at a time of profound crisis, one that involves the economy, finance, jobs, a roof over the head, bread on the table, and not least education. Perhaps as many as 200,000 have left Latvia for what seems a better existence, a job, almost any job. Latvians are the optimists of Europe, because if Europe betrays them by failing to find the authority to unite Europe and help Latvia write a new Constitution, there will not be Latvians long left except as residents of any administrative district.

Things have arrived to this nub because of, for one, the atrocious IMF rules. Such once were known as “bulls”, divinely inspired directives that overrode any other way or constitution, democracy including. Of course the Saeima is doing all that it is doing as a saint, except a not-vote will let it know that the people dispute its self-ratings. In short, it is time for parliamentary democracy to be replaced by direct democracy. But it can only be instituted through the intervention of an authoritarian government.

With a Parliamentary system of government and a largely disempowered president at its helm (the Weimar Constitution acting as inspiration to the concoction), the cores of parties under control of oligarchs and corporations with rights of individuals, the partidocracy sees the world through eyes all its own. Latvia as a community limps forward under the charisma of irresolution come by a severe infection with Conspicuous Consumption, even as it leaves 250,000 of its 2.3 million inhabitants sans citizenship.

Yes, I understand the problem brought by demographic death spiral to a language and a community worth its name. However, a refusal to look the problem in the eye does not make it better. A government that sulks is hurting all of the inhabitants of the country. How does a voter discomfit a government enough to get it moving? This is where the “not-voting” citizen comes in.

Twice the political system has reached a point where it has put the state of Latvia in a flower pot. The excuse the first time around was that the authoritarian rule of Karlis Ulmanis was ended prematurely (the Weimar Constitution allows the President seven years in office) by the infamous Hitler-Ribentrop pact. Though officially such a seven year Presidency is not something that is part of the Latvian Constitution, its association with the Weimar Constitution gives Kārlis Ulmanis a legitimacy by an undertow of associations.

However, what is the legitimacy of the Saeima twenty years into the renewed republic of Latvia worth, when the forces that enabled its re-emergence from Soviet occupation are become of nuisance value to it? The populist spirit behind the People’s Front no longer interests the Saeima. In fact, it is obvious that it is rather in the way.

If most of the people who are not-voters at this time by way of opinions expressed, perhaps their breath will be better spent on a march to Riga to express NOT-VOTER sentiments. Such an event could reawaken the populist spirit that wants a vision of economic development that points not toward yesterday, but takes into account the likely circumstances of tomorrow and acts.

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
Eso's Chronicles, the beginnings of my blogs
http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

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
3 Democracy as Dictat (2)
History has become like jelly in a container that has been upended and now shakes on the plate before the dinner guests as desert. On the menu card, the cook has named this apparition “Original Research”, and has received accolades for his wit. History is indeed in flux these days. It shakes every time someone goes by the table, and whenever someone takes a bite of it, he-she exclaims: "How Original!" Indeed, this is a more serious shake than when Immanuel Velikovsky wrote his “Worlds in Colision” (1950) and Alfred Wegener proposed the theory (1912) that the continents were granite froth which had floated up from the iron heavy core and become plates were drifting apart or together again.

Today controversial theories have become even more so than in the 20th century, and some even say that they have got “out of hand”, especially when someone like this blogger questions the holy cow of Latvian history as officially constructed and suggests it compares well with jellied tongue at the Delicatessen shop.

When I recently clicked my Search button on "Weimar Constitution" and opened the window to Wikipedia’s explanation of it, before I got into the text, I was warned by the following top line: “This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed….”

If you do not know what is meant by “original research”, here is a clue: Wikipedia and the Chinese government are vying with each other as to who will be the first to stop the imagination of the public contradicting officialdom. For both Wikipedia and China the real of reality threatens to go to the beach swimming: a) for the China government “original research” among its citizens may find it (the government) in a leaky boat, whereas b) “original research” for Wiki changes history itself. Of course, Google is involved, too, as the facilitator of all this “original research”, whether for good or for bad.

As this blogger has pointed out in previous posts, the presentation of jelly on a plate as “original research”, rather than leaving it constrained in a cup, challenges the brain. The reason is that jelly on the loose cannot be neatly picked up and put back on the shelf again. To deal with it, it has to be eaten. And while this is still no guarantee that history will appear (as Walter Benjamin insisted) "in a flash" (see V & VI), it is ever so much more likely. Besides exclaiming “How original!” one is equally likely to exclaim: “Why did I not think of that!” In short, “original research” stands for a new story, not to mention a new story teller.

The new story, which soon may challenge the old chronology and way of looking at history, is opposed not only by the Chinese government (having got used to—irony of ironies—to the Catholic chronology), which rules over a country the size of an empire, but also the Latvian government, which rules over a small country in the northeast of Europe. For both China and Latvia the possibility of a new history unsettles the status quo that ruled while history had been spooned into plastic cups and was, thus, believed to be old. Today history has been upended on the plate for a closer look.

Said “upending” is the result of information technology made possible by the ubiquitous personal computer, and includes not only history but many other institutions, for example, the institution of voting. While clicking on little windows to determine your attitude to any number of trivia, it also involves more serious matters such as “not-voting”.

The “not-vote” campaign in Latvia (have you heard of it?), which attempts to break up the simplistic yes/no, voter/nonvoter infrastructure of the voting system has received, as is to be expected, the first anxious squawks from status quotists for whom compulsory elections are anathema, but which the trivia questions have already made inevitable.

The rejection by Latvian status quotists of compulsiory elections, when all is said and done, will discover that their argument is based on their opposition to my proposition that Latvian history needs to be restored to status quo ante bellum. In spite of all the Latin, the meaning of status quo ante bellumis is simple. It means “the way things were before the war”, and it would incorporate into contemporary Latvian history the old kingdom of Jersika, destroyed in a crusade in 1209. The status quotists have gotten used to thinking that Latvia emerges from Germanic Livonia. For this to hold up, however, it becomes necessary that Kaupo, the traitor of proto-Latvian tribes, is constantly renewed and revved up as real. The revving makes it possible to view Kaupo as an integral to Latvian history. His betrayal of proto-Latvians means that instead of simply being a traitor, he is presented as enabling Latvians (the contemporary kind) to see and enter unto the road of history as a never ending road of progress. Thus, “the stolen state of Latvia” (a ubiquitous phrase in Latvia these days) becomes a phrase of worthy veracity, because to the mind of the Latvian people the presence of Kaupo then becomes ever credible in its enabling.

The gap between this bloggers “original research” and the history in a plastic cup as presented by the officialdom of the Latvian government, registers itself as a neo-Christian construct identifying the Latvian mindset with an imaginary peasantry devoted to shamanism (paganism), even as my “original research” identifies Latvian proto-history with the world of arch-Christianity and most definitely not with neo-Christianity, i.e., everything that post dates the crusades.

Though the world of arch-Christianity has been obscured by wars and inquisitions aimed at subduing the “heretics”, it is a fact known well enough by most Europeans. All the same, the repressions aimed against the arch-Christian mindset continue to keep the real history of repression hid. The reason that was so and why itvremains so is to keep the original reason for the repression intact, that is, to keep the egalitarian or populist strata of the Latvian people subject to the Kaupos.

For example, it is rather obvious that most Latvians have no idea that the attack of the Roman Bishop Albert on Jersika in 1209 (the attack originating from Riga) is directly related to the attack of Pope Innocent III on Languedoc in the so-called Albigensian Crusade. Of course, the events are not associated with each other in France either. Still, the link is credible, because the neo-Christian repression of the Bogomils, Cathars, et al, which are traceable to the Crusade (against Constantinople in 1204), caused many of them to flee for their lives to the northeast of Europe, where dense forests provided protection to another arch-Christian sect, the “Children of Johns”. As it happens, the latter lived round about and in the small kingdom of Jersika (idiomatic Latvian for Jerusalem). The attacks against Languedoc and Jersika were meant to be a simultaneous two-pronged attack not only against arch-Christianity as an institution, but a mindset called “heretical” (today nearly a synonym of “populist”), because it was opposed to the then emerging secular princes, the prototypes for neo-capitalism and the oligarchs of today.

What does all this have to do with the “not-voter”, the subject of these blogs?

It ought not to be such a strange idea that a changed perspective (by way of “original research” untied from the moorings of academia) allows one to think more clearly, even if threatened by Wikipedia with removalt from Wikipedia files. In any event, this is why institutionalization of the NOT-VOTE is likely not only to slow down the process of disappearance of inspired flash perceptions of history and help radically change the mindset of neo-Christianity to status quo ante bellum, but permit Latvians (and of course anyone interested) to update their Constitution and show the door to the “!#*?”, aka Saeima.

How do we institutionalize a “not vote”? Here is how: by making voting compulsory and distinguishing between 1. a pro-voter, 2. a non-voter, and 3. a not-voter. To allow only pro-voters—that is to say, pro-establishment or pro-system voters—to vote is discriminatory against not-voters. In other words, the voting system as it is today in the EU (and its member countries) is not all that different from the days when the Alabama bus driver let whites sit in front of the bus, told those who he saw as blacks to go to the back of the bus, and of course those who chose not to get on the bus left by their own choice not to be part of organized society.

While it appears that the EU (its officialdom tilting toward a compulsory vote) may be open to listening to arguments why not-voting ought to be included as part of the voting process, the defenders of status quo governments such as in Latvia, see a big turnout of not-voters a threat to its corrupt institutionalized self.

Asterisk & of Interest:
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentyary elections  
The Populist Moment 
Electronic polls

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
Will Latvian IT experts discover how to solve electronic voting fraud?
Just a question. Is your answer NO?
http://www.physorg.com/news191779395.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/