© Eso Antons Benjamins, aka Jaņdžs

THE NOT-UNTHINKABLE
91 Gridlocked in Latvia (10)

The future of Latvia is unknown. At the present the country is adrift. The country exists, but turns like a falling leaf caught by no current of air. Perhaps this is the result of Latvia’s leadership having run to capitalism for succor. It advised them to follow the Chicago, Georgetown, and Harvard economists’ advice and sign up for economic shock therapy. It worked. The hammer hit the pin and it bounced to the bell, but then—as things are wont to do at the circus—it as quickly fell back and resulted in a double shock.

The government of Latvia is putting up quite a show how to create a disaster, except it hurts to watch. It hurts in the real. Even the few oligarchs are complaining—though they are much the cause of the disaster.

The drift of Latvia comes without the pleasures of playing casino on an old fashioned riverboat. Unfortunately, the boat drifted onto a sandbank, and the players must now drag it off the dune. As one donkey said to another: “It was a gamble, and this is the payoff ”. Chances are they will get another chance to go downriver, but with no pleasure. The Latvian girls used their mobile phones, called a limousine, and are gone.

Most Latvians can hardly believe what is happening. Did they not suffer the years 1940, 1949, and all the pain that a government by force can deal? Do they now have to watch their own extinction? Have Latvians not proven Thomas Jefferson’s axiom twice over: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Well, there is enough manure of Latvians to last some time. The trouble is that while there is a “soft” tyrant in the form of a Latvian neo-capitalist partidocratic government, there is no blood of patriots, not even symbolic. Jesus and Mary are waiting to be burnt as heretics, while the pope tries to think of who other can take on the sacrifice.

The political leadership of Latvia, whether in office or hoping to come into office come October (2010) elections is talking the talk with brain contorted in a neo-Christian seizure: no more living wills, but orthodoxy to the hilt. The cramp snakes through the brain like soup made of starched strawberry jam. It is not nutritious, but it is sweet. People are pulled to it like flies to sugared flycagaric. The soup needs to be removed from the table and dumped into the garbage bucket. But who will do it?

Like the pope, the government and its ministers are thinking about it, but at this time the effort has brought no fruit. The Latvian media—the same that ought to be holding the broom that sweeps the dirt out the door and whacks the power inebriated partidocrats—is compromised by having drunk too much urine of the shamans who fly about the offices of Latvia’s ministries. Boiled juice of fly agaric is said to work wonders even after several passages through the bladder. Nepotism by intoxication is a form of political Ponzi scheme. One editor of a now defunct newspaper, filling in as an interviewer on a news show this past Friday evening, managed to ask Valdis Dombrovskis, the Latvian Prime Minister, whether it was true that he meditated. When the PM confirmed that he did, the editor enthused about his inane question by commenting how this was all to the good.

As this blogger searches through the links of the internet for Ariadnes’ silver thread to get through the labyrinth of economic bull, the following struck me as coming from the keys of one who has expertise both in forest fire fighting and economics. The writer writes: “Find a professional in wildland fire science. Speak the phrase, ‘Long periods of drought, followed by high winds.’ A sane response by a seasoned professional in that field would be, “Oh, CR*P!" That is to say, someone will light a match and the entire surround will burst into fire.

Another quote from the same link, noteworthy given the fact that the President of Latvia is a professional surgeon:

“This is like surgeons in the 1840’s strutting around, ‘Hey, we’re surgeons… and hand washing is stupid, because we’ve never heard of these things called germs!’ Surgeons continued to kill over a quarter of their patients for decades, including women delivering babies in hospitals, until the 1880’s when Pasteur extended Koch’s germ theory of disease.” Only after thousands of unnecessary deaths and Pasteur’s studies did surgeons begin to wash their hands.

Will the partidocrats and those who manipulate them learn about the real that turns the economic wheels? A solid case can be made for the tourist industry as an export business. Even so, the export is not only to bring to Riga Las Vegas gambling casinos. After the priming cap burns off, its place must be taken by a more solid fuel. Johns Grass in the countryside may be one of the attractors even for all those over seventy years old who believe that their lives have come to completion. Stem cell research that leads to cloning is the booster that puts the traveler from one civilization into another.

Is Latvia being rescued by a bailout of Swedish and Danish banks? Here is a link to some CR*P! from the president of the Bank of Latvia Ilmārs Rimšēvičs. Says Rimšēvičs: “As trust [in the Bank of Latvia] increases, there is a notable decline, still ongoing, of the percentage [we] have to pay to sell the lats. The rate has fallen from 14% three months ago, to 2.5% today.” (My translation, admittedly not verbatim.) Not a cent of IMF money goes to the Latvian people or Latvian business?

A convincing contrary view to that of the President of the Bank of Latvia can be found at  this'address. Pay special attention to the 2nd paragraph (in Latvian), which identifies Ilmārs Rimšēvičs and Einars Repše, Latvia’s minister of Finance, with Georgetown, Chicago, and Harvard schools of economics  theories. These came from the late monetarist Milton Friedman. Not surprisingly, the theorists were known as the “monetarist school”. I believe that this means that they like to spend money.

Does Latvia have a chance of ever crawling from the crater of debt? The answer, given the present leadership, is no. Of course, there will be a few exceptions, but Latvians as a community of people are slaves to banks and their paper. It is time to change tack and break through to the future by daring to think even the not-unthinkable.

Asterisk & Notes of Interest:
On material depravation in Latvia.
On the theme of “more-equal-than-others” see George Orwell's fable, "Animal Farm"
A recommended read: “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” by Emmanuel Goldstein (A book within a book from George Orwell's "1984").
Of great interest to me is this and like articles. It presents some of my reasons for supporting the growing of Johns Grass in Latvia.
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 –ONLATVIANPOPULISM vs LATVIJASLABEJIE. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

© Eso Antons Benjamins, aka Jaņdžs

THE NOT-UNTHINKABLE  
90 Gridlocked in Latvia (9)

Dawn, day, dusk.

When history is forgotten and replaced by a shallow myth, everyone who lends the myth a credulous ear puts one foot in the zionationalist camp. This is not to say that battles to overthrow the yoke of oppression cease to be heroic deeds or that shallow myths fail to mention them. Even so, the nation needs a history of sufficient depth of credibility to discover its bearings and not resort to tortured persuasions that do not persuade.

Unfortunately, Latvia ends the first decade of the 21st century as a nation absent a persuasive leadership. To have to listen to the leaders of Latvia insist that the priority of Latvia in 2010 is “providing employment” to those whom previous administrations of the government failed and are still failing is like telling the nation go dig another crater for a meteor or go and deforest your country. The current government of Latvia, in short, has not only no idea what to do with itself in the future but exists for no other reason that the people of Latvia have not yet given it a “not-vote”. One may think that the Latvian people are as much a crater in the ground their government.

Is perhaps the passivity of Latvia due to a myth of origins that is a crater, too? It is a question worthy of attention.

As pointed out in earlier blogs, the subjugation of arch-Christian beliefs and the destruction of the 11th century proto-Latvian Children of Johns—along with the Cathars of Lanquedoc—culminated for both in the coordinated crusades of 1209. One pincer of the crusade sacked the hilltop castle of the Cathars at Montsegur, Languedoc; the other burnt down the castle of King Visvaldis of Jersika. “Visvaldis” is of course a Latvian name with ontological meaning, which is why the king may also have been a high priest. While King Visvaldis and the kingdom of Jersika are known to Latvians, their importance has rather compulsively been replaced by the figure of Kaupo (d. 1217). Historians and literati have tortured the hell out of the figure of Kaupo trying to avoid calling him one of their own. Who was Kaupo—such an unavoidable, yet unmentionable figure?

If one follows CaterineBruschi's argument (see p. 88 ff) that the Catholic Church used spies, also known as “explorers”, to intimidate and “…loosen(ed) the heretics’ bonds of loyalty and secrecy, introducing suspicion and fear….”, Kaupo may be seen to be a member of the Children of Johns arch-Christian tradition, who betrays not some vague “religious views of Baltic tribes” (“baltu cilšu reliģiskos uzskatus”) as Latvian philologues are wont to refer to the Children of Johns, but serves in unmentioned ways to undermine the history of a people and a region. Indeed, by failing to see Kaupo as a spy who is intimidated by the Inquisition to spy on his own, but by presenting him instead as a figure that lends itself to the interpretation of various “meta-narrations”* (all presenting Latvians from a neo-Christian perspective), the history of Latvia is made invisible, not to say false.

If some radical economists today bemoan the inability of consumers to wean themselves off consuming unnecessary goods and polluting the planet and guess that the weakness of the consumer is hid in some Lacanian paradox (mirror stage), a radicalized Latvian ought bemoan the inability of the orthodoxy-mired state of Latvia to divorce itself from the figure of a christianized Kaupo, the spy for the West, and constructing from the flattened ruin of Jersika an economically viable and mind enlightening surround for Latvians and all who come to visit.

As things stand, the zionationalist government of Latvia dreams of positioning itself—in a geopolitical sense—in a manner not unlike that of Israel . While the harbor of Riga presents Latvia as an important geopolitical location, the question remains—to what ends is it for? Will Latvia (along with Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, et al) serve as the eastern wall to NATO, and, thus, become a forward military base of NATO? Or will Latvia become a major research, technology, medicine, cloning, and social anthropology research center for Europe—East and West? If the orientation is toward the West only, remaining a border zone may not be safe enough for a long term investment.

We have been witnesses to how a zionationalist state may secure for the state and the people living within its borders a negative image. The Latvian government of the last twenty years has dreamt its time away by doing little more than Kaupo. It, too, has presumed itself before its sisters and brothers as more “Christian” neo-Christian than the Children of Johns could aspire to be. This isolationist neo-Christian voice has played a certain voice among the down beaten. In an impromptu survey conducted by the television show “What is happening in Latvia?” (“Kas notiek Latvijā”—Wed., 7/3/10), the answer to “whether you support changes in the immigration laws of Latvia (in effect liberalizing them)”, the answer that won most votes was “—No, there are too many uncontrollable risks”. After being boiled, dunked, well orthodoxed, then stir fried, it is no mystery why the Latvian people prefer 16:1 self-isolation. Yet this is hardly the condition to be in if one sees ahead for Latvia a future that embraces and is embraced by the world.

The zionationalists know where to find their “enemy”. They find the “enemy” in the internal 6:3:1 (roughly) ratio of Balts to Slavs to Others. That is to say, the “enemy” is found in the minority that reads 3+1. One result of such a posture is provided by the unsurprising appearance of various symbols of Russia—starting with youths wearing pullover hats with “RUSSIA” spelled in Cyrilic alphabet on it to the tsar’s eagle on the wheel covers of at least one car—on Riga streets. For several weeks the Latvian media has gone ga-ga over these simple if direct expressions of protest over the neglect of the Russian and Other communities in Latvia. Zionationalist divisionism (not necessarily excluding Russian political circles) hopes and trusts that the result will be a heterogenous Latvia overgrown by a homogenous reactionary mindset.

The problem for a zionationalist government in Latvia is that while most NATO countries agree with the U.S. policy of securing Oil and whatever other goodies in the Middle East for the West, the EU countries in spite of being members of NATO, do not wish to destroy Russia, but merely weaken it by hooking its people to over consumption of European rather than Chinese products. In moves clearly in opposition to Baltic zionationalists, Germany and Russia are about to circumvent the Baltic countries by laying a gas pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Furthermore, France has negotiated with Russia a deal that sells it four Mistral class warships and purchases from Russia 14 Soyuz rocket boosters.

The Baltic zionationalists are countering the projects of Germany and France by puffing up NATO military exercises. [Is this not like digging a hole for a meteriorite to fall in?] Starting Saturday, March 17th (to 20th) various types of fighter planes will thunder over my head in the Latvian countryside to impress an unmentioned antagonist. Will these exercises impress at a time when the zionationalism in Latvia has suffered the people huge economic losses not only due to corruption in the government and business circles, but because of a failure to integrate the nation’s 6:3:1 ethnic ratio into 1? The propaganda that tells the public that the zionationalist government in office is the bridge that spans economic failures in the past and present to economic success in the near future has the smell of something rotten in Riga about it.

Asterisk & Notes of Interest:
* My comments on Kaupo are based on a paper by Renate Kākliņa, “Vēstītāja perspektīva Kaupo tēla interpretācijās”, Kultūras Forums, January 22-29.
On material depravation in Latvia.
On the theme of “more-equal-than-others” see George Orwell's "Animal Farm". 
A recommended read: “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” by Emmanuel Goldstein (A book within a book from George Orwell's "1984"). 
Of great interest to me is this and like articles. It presents some of my reasons for supporting the growing of Johns Grass in Latvia.
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 –ONLATVIANPOPULISM vs LATVIJASLABEJIE. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/