Eso’s Chronicles 204/ 4
47 Pensioners (5)
© Eso A.B.

Many years ago (~1973), while protesting the building of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire, a number of protesters, myself including, undertook a fast that lasted for two weeks. If I remember right,  the Boston Globe gave us passing notice. Today, I have passed that small self-disciplinary act by several days and am now on day 17. So far so good, except that the store bought juices which I have been drinking are sickeningly sweet and tasteless. Since the apples in my orchard are coming ripe, I am now gathering a few sacks full of them, and a neighbor of mine has promised to press them into apple juice.

A person who is well acquainted with Latvian politics and to whom I have sent blogs 200 & 201 of my Chronicle series, inquired what it was that I was asking of the government. I responded by mentioning several demands (I have written of them in my blogs and in these posts): a quick restoration of the Riga Castle as a symbol of Latvia’s sovereignty. Among a number of other requests, are included a request for a quick passage of the necessary changes to Amendment 68., which will enable Latvia to maintain its sovereignty in the face of expected changes in the Lisbon Treaty moving Europe to become a Federation; and the resignation of the Minister of Justice Bordans who through his actions and words has given strong indications of his indifference to Latvia as a sovereign nation and hints of his tacit agreement to Latvia’s inclusion in Federated Europe.

Way back then—forty years ago—I eventually left the Clamshell Alliance when a small group of people felt that “direct action non-violent protest” included cutting fences at the Seabrook worksite. I felt that such actions nullified non-violent protests such as marching with signs, fasting, or sitting in a tree for a few weeks, which is how one resident of  New Hampshire got the protest movement going. I got back something of a sneer from the more aggressive group, because my reaction to its breaking the consensus vow was verbally explosive, and perhaps because the group felt its tactics were more likely to stop the construction project. It did not.

Because today I am repeating my fasting ‘act’, I am better prepared to explain it than I was then. First, another brief remembrance of the times back in Boston. At the time, I was working as a typesetter for a small newspaper publishing company out of Brookline that published a weekly newspaper called The Boston Ledger and Brookline Chronicle. The editor of the papers, John Van Scoyoc, gave me the opportunity to write a short weekly column. This may have had something to do with the fact that even then, I was much complaining about the state of politics. However, when the opportunity arose to actually write about it, I discovered that I could not bring myself to say anything relevant, and thus my column quickly turned into a rather ordinary kind of ‘chronicle’. The reason for clamming up was a very simple one: American politics was rather like the politics of Latvia are today—positivist, non-controversial, in a rut, and to say anything contradictory would turn anyone into an ogre, he-she was not prepared to be or play.

In the context of the current economic and financial crisis, politics has become potentially more controversial. This is borne out in that a recovery from the economic and financial crisis is not only in doubt, but the very fact that it is in doubt, allows one to think of the consequences of failure. Not just any failure, but a failure with catastrophic consequences.

The presumption of the current Latvian government of PM Valdis Dombrovskis, the Unity Party, and coalition of Nationalist partners to navigate toward a Federal Europe without consulting the nation by holding a referendum (allowed for by the Constitution) violates in a traitorous manner the Latvian Constitution (an understanding between the citizens of the nation and its government). Latvia gained sovereignty (1918) after a hard and bloody fight and paid the price in tens of thousands of lives. Moreover several hundred thousand Latvians escaped from death by fleeing to Russia and other war related events by the skin of their teeth. Later during the Bolshevik times, many were deported to the Gulags. Those who found new homes in the West did not remain loyal to Latvia in their memories or ‘fantasize’ about a free Latvia in the expectation that it would be surrendered to and take orders from an unelected government in Brussels.

While acceding with the arguments of some sociologists that the politics of ‘democratic’ Europe today supersede (by means of methods of a dictatorship) the communities established by nations in earlier times, it is clear that the modern individual will not stand up for the community he-she arise from. Nevertheless, an individual of a differing mind may hope to awaken an asleep community that has forgot its roots or is so attached to fiat currency that it is all that he-she is capable of being loyal to. That individual has the help of current crisis, possibly bringing a new reserve currency within a very short span of time and the inevitable chaos and war this may lead to.

In times when the community was not yet subject to the hegemonic choke of old killer empires that have survived to the present day, situations like those facing Latvia and other nations, met with determined resistance. One telling example comes from Japan, an actual event that involved 47 ronin , i.e. samurai. The story of how they saved Japan from loss of honor (actually as a nation) remains as an inspiration to this day.

I suggest that the story is as applicable to not-violent actions today as it was in the 18^th century. To understand what I am about to suggest next the reader should read the story at the above link.

It is possible that--but for the hypnotist’s snap of his fingers to awaken his subjects--such 47 individuals are still to be found today and are awaiting the signal. I am not proposing that these 47 indispensible ones are samurai or soldiers, or subscribe to some Japanese code of honor, but are individuals with a spirit not unlike that residing within any organic community that yet remains. Indeed, given the decentered individual of our time, the untested culture of the cult of youth, the candidate for one of the 47 may, more likely, be found in a nursing home or among pensioners.

The mode of protest on behalf of a nation’s sovereignty was best known in the West before neo-Christianity repressed those Christians who had existed long before the arrival of Catholicism and its state serving offshoots. These early Christians were known as Cathars. While the Cathars were murdered by fire, and though no record remains that they escaped their fate by taking resort to their well known ritual known as the  endura  (after taking consolamentum  from their own priests or by divine inspiration, one begins a fast that ends in death), the precedent is there (was practiced for many centuries if not longer) and its potential remains an option.

I am convinced that in spite of the falsehoods and contempt filled propaganda still surrounding the kind of Christianity practiced by the Cathars, the reawakening of such a spirit is not only a necessity, but remains the only way that will put the arrogance of today’s ‘democratic’ dictatorships back were it and they belongs—in the resort town for the living dead.

Paul Craig Roberts on Role Reversal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqJP7y115s