Eso’s Chronicles 270 / 10
30—Decharismatized...
© Eso A.B.

Sometimes I have difficulty concluding a series, because once the ‘last’ blog gets written, there come yet another idea that needs saying. In this case it is my objection to Slavoy Žižek’s attempts to destroy human subjectivity by making it synonymous with irrationality. While I find Žižek quotable, I also discover him often enough an opportunist, who will not hesitate to in-verse his own arguments to further his ‘pop’ fame, as he does when he defends the anarchistic Pussy Riot (…”They are conceptual artists in the noblest sense of the word: artists who embody an Idea.”) with a government he calls Prick Riot simply because he likes to kiss with the West for pursuing the war against the East. Here is a quote (at length) from the ‘pop star’ in which, when all is said, he ends up supporting the Prick Rioters:

“Constitutional monarchy is a rational Whole, at whose head is a strictly ‘irrational’ moment: the person of the monarch. The essential thing, here, is the irreducible abyss between the organically articulated rational Whole of the rational State, at whose head is a strictly ‘irrational’ moment: the person of he monarch. The essential thing here, is the irrationality of the person who incarnates supreme Power, by which the Power receives the form of subjectivity….” Žižek concludes: “The essential thing… is the irreducible abyss between the organically articulated rational Whole of the constitution of the State, and the irrationality of the person who incarnates supreme Power, by which the Power receives the form of subjectivity….” Žižek ends his argument by quoting Hegel: “….in a well ordered monarchy, the objective aspect is solely the concern of the law, to which the monarchy merely has to add its subjective ‘I will’.” In short, let monarchy be dictated by a ‘democracy’ or, to put it another way: “Chaos, Thy will be done!”

Since Žižek is retained by the Birkbeck Institute in London, I presume that the closest example he has in mind with regard to the ‘irrational’ is the British monarchyas represented by Queen Elizabeth and her son Charles. This writer is more interested in Charles than his mother, because Charles, in an establishmentarian way (the same as Al Gore), is interested (subjectively no doubt) in protecting the environment, which includes forests, such as the Amazon, England’s own, and perhaps in an indirect way also that of Latvia. My trouble with Prince Charles subjective interests is that I do not sense him projecting the kind of charisma and attention, which I feel the subject requires and that his office accords him. In other words, being King within a ‘democratic’ establishment means nothing today.

I assume that Prince Charles is merely implementing his passive “I will” that Hegel and Žižek say he is good for. Nevertheless, the constraints put on a monarch’s subjectivity by Hegel and Žižek and the bureaucratic totalitarianism they both support acts as a constraints on all who would just as soon be rid of all three, which takes me back to the idea expressed by Carl Schmitt that the nature of democracy posits the identity of the ruler and the ruled as one—even if in practical terms the unity may be blurred in favor of the elite (the bureaucracy in this case). This is why in the event of an emergency or exceptional case, the bureaucracy can only deliver Chaos, while the King’s ‘exceptional’ and decisive word, is dismissed by the ‘mechanics’ (the lawgivers) of democracy.

Our time has quite forgot that a King’s decision was called ‘divinely inspired’ because at the end of his life the King nullified his  transgressions (incurring of ‘wrong’ decisions) through a no lesser sovereign and charismatic act--self-sacrifice of his life.

This course of action chrism (charismatic action) was followed by the ‘damned and vilified’ German Reich’s Chancellor Hitler in 1945, but was not followed by the ‘damned and vilified’ Stalin (1953) who may have been assassinated (1953) by someone of his inner court, likely the head of the secret services Beria http://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1953/beria-purge.htm . The possibility that Stalin was assassinated, just as the fact that Lenin requested poison to end his life, despite their failure to execute a clear-cut self-sacrifice, saves their reputation from clear-cut condemnation as murderers (which slur is typical of  the political elite of our times).

Protest as much as we may against the acts perpetrated by either of the mentioned dictators, their death as a self-sacrifice in one case, and a self-sacrifice denied in the other, cannot be judged any individual’s personal and ‘obscene’ judgment (a word Žižek uses often). The act of self-sacrifice straddles the word ‘sacer’, in the sense that it encompasses the meaning ‘sacred’ and ‘accursed’, and denies anyone the authority to judge either Stalin or Hitler, even when placing them at the edge of ‘obscenity’, the mass graves that evidence the results of their wills.

As in the last paragraph of the following link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt  its anonymous writer states: “The direction all this leads, and the reason why Schmitt has been taken so seriously by political theory, is to the theorization of the crisis and state of emergency not as exceptional moments in political life, opposed to some stable normality, but as themselves the predominant form of the life of modern nations.”

This writer agrees that ‘political life’ in our times projects a state of ‘crisis and state of emergency’ and predominates in the life of nations. The desertification of the biosphere and elimination of ‘naked life’ by technology continues at an ever greater pace http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25599249 .

Political life today—as evidenced by the Soviet Union, the German Reich, the United States of America, and China--is too much for any bureaucracy to handle. While the U.S. emerges as the last of the crisis obsessed and state of emergency torn super states, it has been able to survive only as a result of taking part and being an obscene ‘victor’ in the annihilation of the German Reich and Soviet Union. By making an attempt to ‘globalize’ (the better word would be to ‘catholicize’) the planet under its one ‘democratic’ political system, which is little more than finding another name for slogans synonymous with: “workers of the world unite” and “Lebensraum”, the U.S. confirms itself as ‘Chaos in Charge’. If Žižek’s argument on behalf of repressing subjectivity has discovered some instrument that makes appear that ‘democraacy’ can prevail for a while longer, we may be sure that death will number in the  billions.

 

 

 

Eso’s Chronicles 262 / 2
22—Pimping for Freedom
© Eso A.B.

Lovers of ‘freedom’ have much to cheer about these days. The amnesty issued by Russia’s President Putin has given them a ‘victory’ that the

Young women of Pussy Riot fame managed to quickly defame as a ‘publicity stunt’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2528259/Pussy-Riot-band-member-freed-Russian-prison-Putin-signs-sweeping-amnesty-ahead-Olympics.html and rename a ‘profanation’. One of them appeared to want to stay in jail, except she had to leave because the ‘law’ (?Putin) said so. To my mind, the young women provide the public with a clear example of nihilism.

As for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 16^th richest man in the world, who poured Russian oil money in his own pockets, he was more circumspect, though joined the nihilistic punk group in so far as he, too, said that he would work for prison reform. After spending ten years in prison and being, in effect, expelled from Russia http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/russia-supreme-court-review-mikhail-khodorkovsky Khodorkovsky is applying for a visa to live in Switzerland, and says he will not return to Moscow as long as a 335 mil pound fine imposed by the government looms over his head. He says he will be working toward the release of ‘other’ political prisoners. Not surprisingly, he is appealing for sympathy to the West and not the Russian people, because the Russian people would likely prefer to hang him.

Both, the cases of Pussy Riot and Khodorkovsky are interesting for reasons other than the persons immediately involved. To this writer’s mind, they stand out as highlighted examples of the ‘affluenza’ epidemic that after infecting, first, the West, has spread to infect the world. If we look at the disease closely, it is every bit as deadly as the ‘black death’ of the Middle Ages. The word ‘affluenza’ most recently gained public attention through a Florida youth http://jacksonville.com/breaking-news/2013-12-11/story/affluenza-defense-rich-teen-gets-probation-after-killing-4-crash , who in a drunken stupor killed four people and injured many in the State of Florida.

The highlight is especially interesting, because it touches on a philosophical question that philosophers have not been able to explain away on purely rational grounds.

In his book “Interrogating the Real”, Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoy Zizek discusses the problem under the title “The King and the Bureaucracy” (Ch. 6). Zizek basically divides the problem in two parts: 1) ‘the irrational moment’ as represented by the office of the King; and 2) “totalitarian bureaucracy” as represented by the State.

The ‘irrational moment’ of the King is unavoidable, so to speak, because without him there is nothing around whom or what for the community to coalesce. According to Zizek, ‘totalitarian bureaucracy’ comes into existence after the community has gained experience, maturity, and is politically knowledgeable. It is at this latter point when the King creates a bureaucracy (or, rather, it creates itself) with which government comes to resemble, more or less, what we know as ‘government’ today.

The ‘irrational moment’ is absolutely indispensable for governing, because only ‘it’ is capable to resolve the irresolvable bind with which all societies are faced at some point in their existence. It is the King who gives the deciding ‘yes’ or ‘no’, to the live or die (war or no war) situation that is more than likely the issue. A group cannot make such a decision, because it can never be unanimous and resolve all doubts beyond all doubts.

On the other hand, a ‘totalitarian bureaucracy’ arises out of the assumption that government is rational and that the concept of Reason presumes that Reason should not get into a bind that becomes irresolvable. Yet Reason does get into irresolvable situations because the very reasoning behind reason causes a government bureaucracy to become totalitarian. A proto-classical example of bureaucratic totalitarianism is the bureaucracy (on behalf of communism) created by Stalin in the Soviet Union. A post-classical example of bureaucratic totalitarianism is the bureaucracy of the government of the United States, because of the presumption (on behalf of commercial interests) that ‘democracy’ is the only possible rational form of government—whether it in fact is rational or not. This presumption of ‘democracy’ actually is not all that different from the presumption of bureaucratic totalitarianism under Stalin.

A not dissimilar situation exists in my own country of Latvia, which is a tiny State entity when compared the above hegemonies. While Latvia, too, claims itself to be a ‘democracy’, the claim is given the lie by the fact that here ‘democracy’ is qualified by the term ‘parliamentary’. It is the latter which is presumed to give the Latvian democracy its authority to describe itself as a ‘free’ society, whereas the very term ‘parliamentary’ gets this ‘democracy’ in no less a bind than the Soviet and American regimes of government get themselves into under Reason.

Having Zizek (and others) do the necessary close analysis, I will venture to say that the problem for all States are the unreal ‘presumptions’ of Reason, while in reality the very tool of totalitarianism is this very presumption and the various ‘reasons’ (of power) that got it to come into existence. In the instance of Latvia, the Reason behinds its government’s ‘democratic’ totalitarianism is the authority of the hegemony of the European Union (on behalf of American type of affluenza), which ‘presumes’ that it needs Latvia (for whatever bureaucratic reasons) to join not only the EU, but function under its unitary financial system and the European Central Bank (ECB). Therefore, the Latvian ‘parliamentary democracy’, in spite of the fact that the Latvian constitution foresees a referendum that would let the people decide the issue of the Euro, decreed not to hold a referendum, and continually fudges the question of whether it is imitating the totalitarianism at the heart of the EU, and rather—like it—pimps for affluenza as a desirable constituent of its limited and American style democracy.

Eso’s Chronicles 222 / 8
Fascist Autarkies (8)
© Eso A.B.

In the preceding blog, I asked by way of a quote if a flood of words can “…cleanse the sordid and polluted Earth...”?

Up until the ‘true democratic’ government unleashed the NSA https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/polls-continue-show-majority-americans-against-nsa-spying to abolish privacy and intimidate uncensored thought on the internet, there were people who believed this was possible even if the ‘populist’ contributions from the ‘underground’ (a la Gogol’s “Dead Souls” http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/232932.Nikolai_Gogol ) were almost intolerably vulgar. Yet, the internet can be controlled to the ends of making a point if the platforms are willing to control excessive vulgarity. As everyone ought to know, vulgarity may be used to inhibit the evolution of a thread of thought and destroy creative communications.

It was Marx who coined the phrase about “brave words” used by the petty bourgeois “about freedom in general”. This was said by Marx in the context of “private property [being] already done away with for nine-tenths of the population.” And while America has been a haven for the “private propertied”, in our day this exception has been turned against the bourgeois by the 0.01% of billionaires and millionaires (see: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/10/Open%20Letter.jpg ­). Nevertheless, in so far as words suggest potential action, “a waterless flood” may well be necessary to initiate action that may lead to cleansing.

To return to the subject of geopolitics, however, which is where opponents of federalisms and centralization of power may still have a role to play. Though verbally adept populists are turned to ‘sheeple’ by the intrusive vulgarity of dumbed down supporters of ‘individualism’ such as Madonna offering herself for a ‘naked lunch’ or Pussy Riot twittering crotches for the delectation of saints, perhaps there yet remain a crumb for the day of wrath.

The ‘democratic’ leaders of our era, dependent on the donations of the wealthy and  no longer needing the citizen who has no job or money on a planet exhausted of ‘free’ natural resources, believe that the solution to the problem of being human in a world dominated by power and violence is still to be sought in the continued corruption of the ideas of Rousseau http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/  (18^th century) and the French Revolution http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_Rousseau_inspire_the_French_Revolution  brought to its knees by liberal Capitalism  in combination with the best of all political systems, i.e., ‘democracy’ and individual rights in control of community interests. According to the best (?) academic and political minds, Enlightenment won a significant victory when during WW2 the opponents of Hitler’s Reich beat the Nazis into submission.

This may be so if the critics of fascism are right that a community’s interest in ‘progress’ without end forces it to find an enemy either within, without, or both. Finding an enemy justifies the presumption that ‘progress’ is a phenomenon without end or bounds experienced by all liberal societies. This was true when Nazi Germany, emerging from an economic abyss due to the imposition of war reparations, discovered the enemy in Jews, who were then mercilessly slaughtered because of the inability of the Nazi’s to find a rationale that for all of their trouble they were unable to end the social and economic crisis as an egalitarian society, but like all ‘good’ capitalist countries had recreated themselves in the image of a pyramid of wealth. When the enemy within the Nazi state no longer was enough of an excuse, it was found without in other states. Having lived the last months of WW2 in Weimar, not all that far from Buchenwald, I am aware of what a concentration camp does to those it blames for causing the ills of the national community.

Nevertheless, I have always been conflicted about the rights of a community and the trumping of these rights by vandals on behalf of liberal capitalism, individual rights defenders and crusaders such as Pussy Riot. With regard to the urbanites, who on the whole favor liberalism over traditionalism of the countryside, I belong among those, who in time of troubes wish to become absolutes rulers with powers to eliminate the evident centre of the infection—the city. In my opinion, the city excels as nature’s dictator ever since we’ve known that the marketplace of the city has its origins in the court of the castle of the first capitalist and is a whyfore why the people of the city, have tended to identify with its king or president.

What I find peculiar about the attitudes of urbanites is that contrary to fact, they presume to have the right to prior attention over rural people and nature.

This leads me to the question if a fascist state, one that (presumably necessarily) cannot escape seeking an enemy to survive is inevitable? To which my answer is a NO, the only reason for a YES being that it is ‘democratic’ rule that is predetermined to discover ‘endless progress’ to be among its political genes. Interestingly, ever since the rise of the Age of Enlightenment, the same ‘democracy’ has driven most European countries to fulfill themselves in a violent state.

Was then ever in Europe or anywhere else in the world a non-violent fascist state? The numerous nation communities in which Europe excels would lead one to conclude that indeed—at one time or another—this was so.

Yet here we have a completely non-democratic and mindlessly presumptions leadership of a presumed European Union telling all the nation states that are at Europe’s foundation that they must be working toward the elimination of their sovereignty for the sake of a centralized ‘federalized’ Empire that is to play second fiddle as a ‘regional’ power to an obviously failed and violent American Empire (or its offshoots in Russia and China).

I have presented the alternative ‘fascist’ state before; pointing out that such a state is the ‘autarky’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky . Of course, this alternative state is simply invoked as a dictatorship, with no consideration given to the fact that it is a static state rather than one with an inbuilt mechanism toward violence, dominance, and progress of a ‘democratic’ state.

An autarky solved the problem of violence by turning it inward rather than extroverting it as our crusading democracies do it. Everyone, who has ever studied anthropology or read the founding myths of ancient communities and cultures, knows that an autarkic community was ruled by a ‘sacrificial king’, the kings function being not only that of a ruler, but of a ‘sacrificial goat’, who dies for the sins that were expended on the community in order to maintain it viable, enduring, and peaceful.



The Prayer of a House. Goldenlocks (2)

 August 3, 2012
The Prince and Princess Goldenlocks (2)

A Rewritten Fairy Tale.
See Part 1 in previous blog.


Posted by © Eso A.B.
a.k.a. Eso Antons Benjamins


“Tell me, wise Giant of the Wood,” cried the Prince (when he and King Jiant met), “what medicine will cure my father?”

“Two apples from the Garden of Paradise,” promptly answered Jiant. "One already cured me."

“How do I get the apples?” asked Prince Jean Goldenlocks.

“Whack the big rock over there with a knotted oak stump!” answered Jiant. “Grab the apples the moment you see them. Do not linger no matter how nice everything around you may seem. Else, Paradise will keep you and not let you go.”

Prince Jean struck a large stone with the mace he had in hand. Only yesterday it had served him as his garden plow.

The stone opened, and before Prince Goldenlocks's eyes stretched a space of unpolluted air and the Garden of Paradise. It was a panoramic landscape with the sun at about 3 o’clock and a rainbow to the left behind a golden apple tree that stood in the middle. The moment the stone was open, two apples fell from the tree and rolled up to Goldenlocks feet..

Prince Goldenlocks grabbed the apples and ran for the real world. It was a close call. Prince Goldenlocks had to squeeze himself as thin as he could to get out of the rock in time.

When in the evening he arrived at an inn and wanted to slake his thurst, as he walked to the table, he was engulfed by an aroma of apples. Everyone looked up from their beers as he went by. The aroma was just like the one that the prince remembered from the time when he met the kitchen maid in the apple cellar and they gathered apples for apple pie.

By coincidence, Prince Goldenlocks happened to sit down at the same table at which sat his brothers-in-law, princes Jengland and Cornwall. They had come to discuss how best to take King Lear's kingdom not only from him, but also their wives. While Goldenlocks recognized the men, they did not recognize him. After the table mates, had toasted a mug of beer to each other, the brothers-in-law asked Goldenlocks what smelled so good.

Goldenlocks pulled out from his backpack the two apples and showed them to the princes. The princes wished to examine the apples more closely. The moment the princess held an apple in their hand, nothing could persuade them from wanting to buy them. There was a good reason for this: The moment they held an apple, it felt like they were having a orgasm that would not let go of them.

Prince Jean Goldenlocks did not ask the princes for money, but if they would allow him to tatoo on their backs the picture of a gallows. (The inn had a resident tatoo artist.) The princes agreed that it was a fair bargain, and, considering the wonder of the apples from Paradise, a cheap deal. As long as they could hold the apples, they were ready to endure the tattoo artist puncture their skin with needles from the top of their heads down to their toes. When the gallows were drawn, the brothers-in-law grabbed an apple each and ran for the door.

There was one big problem, however.

Prize Winning Nature Design in Latvia.

Because the apples were never delivered to King Lear’s bedside, the King’s condition never improved.

In fact, the King had to get used to not only to being ill, but many unpleasant ideas besides.

One almost intolerable idea was that the swine herd Goldenlocks would get to sleep with his daughter Goldenlocks Struvelpeter, but he, the king, would not.
Another tormenting idea was that King Lear could not deny that he had ordered his son, Prince Goldenlocks, to be taken to the woods, and that he perhaps had been or perhaps was not killed there. This is why he was never sure that the swine herd was not the real Goldenlocks.

Despite these difficulties, the kingdom of Thebes struggled on. For all of his troubles, which actually began with his capture of the Giant of the Wood, King Lear was still the kingdom's King, and neither of his daughters, Jonerill or Le Zhan, or their respective husbands, princes Jengland or Cornwall had unseated him--yet. The best part of it all was, that the King was still alive and not dead.

This was probably the reason why the Kingdom of Thebes had not yet fallen down to the level, where a swineherd could afford it. The threat was real though: after he married Princes Goldenlocks, the swine herd now claimed to have always been a prince named Prince Goldenlocks.

Despite his illness, the old king was keen enough to hear about what had happened to the medicine that he was to receive from the Garden of Paradise.

The strange twist that the king gave to the story was that he did not blame princes Jengland and Cornwall for taking the apples from Prince Goldenlocks, but, but he was dumbfounded that Goldenlocks pretended to be such a saint that he could do without orgasms and would betray the king  by forcing him to execute his own close relatives, and had even threatened his brothers-in-law with the gallows.

However, because the king did not die of an illness, everyone in Thebes came to believe that he was indeed cured.

Life went on. The princes Jengland and Cornwall became immensely popular, at least in their respective courts, because they not only let the apples be held by their wives, but these were happy to pass them around to their friends in the court. For a time, everyone got quite a Bang out of life. What later everyone said was that this is what true democracy should be like.

One day, King Lear, however, got hold of one of the apples of Paradise. It happened by an accident. A young lady of his court, was standing before him as if to ask a favour. She was batting her long eyelashes in such an obvious way that the king decided to take hold of her hand to see if he could waken her from her seizure. It was at that moment that the king also touched the apple of Paradise.

Bang, Bang went the king’s heart. He took the young lady by her hand, making sure that the apple stayed in it, and took her into his private study. No apples ever so lived up to their reputation as the one’s taken by Prince Goldenlocks from the Garden of Paradise.

King Lear took the apple from the young lady and made it his own==at last. He then asked his first secretary to bring him the next available maiden, and thereafter the next, and then the next. This is how eventually King Lear got to be called King Lear Bluebeard, the devourer of maidens.

Again, the Kingdom of Thebes was suffering a plague.

This time Prince Goldenlocks went to consult with the court magician. The magician’s name was Tiresias. Tiresias told Prince Jean Goldenlocks that only the milk from the breasts of the Snake Queen could cure King Lear this time.

Prince Goldenlocks ran into the wood for a second time. He again called for Jiant to help him.

“Hit the rock with your plow once again!” advised Jiant, “after he had heard the story”. For a moment he wondered if he would enjoy exchanging places with King Lear.

This time , however, the rock did not open to the Garden of Paradise, but to a scene out of ancient Egypt next to the pyramids. At the foot of a large pyramid sat the Snake Queen. Her breasts were bared and the milk of Cobra seeped from her nipples as when a child has just been removed from them. No child could be seen, but perhaps he lay somewhere about the nearby desert palms.

Prince Goldenlocks gathered the overflow of the Snake Queen's milk in two cups, which he had with him. Then, again, he ran for the exit. As he ran, he noticed that at the foot of the great Sphinx, which in those days was surrounded by a great wood, King Lear had brought a group of children and was about to sacrificing them to make him feel better. The unexpected vision made Goldenlocks run back for the exit and to the castle all the faster.

But, again, Goldenlocks met his brothers-in-law at the inn. Again they did not recognize him. Again they were meeting to plot a coup. Some fellow called Julian Assange was listening in on their conversations on the sly.

This time, the princes, asked to dip their fingers into the snake’s milk. They waned to make sure that it was real. It was. After they had licked their fingers, they could not be dissuaded not to buy the milk. Goldenlocks again took no money, but had the princes tatoo on their backs a wheel that is used to break the bones of dead men.

What makes the milk of the Snake Queen so desirable?

Actually, the milk of the Snake Queen makes one feel as if one is embraced by a porn movie. The television set is switched on for 24 hours. There is so much sex that it makes one believe that sex may be had even after death. It is not for nothing that dead Johns, who have tasted of the milk, are said to hang with an erection.

When the sons’ in-law of King Lear had drunk of the Snake Queen’s Milk, they were no longer satisfied with just sex and a kingdom. They wanted more. They wanted the world. They persuaded their wives to tell King Lear every day that he was getting increasingly senile.

King Lear resisted as long as he could and argued that one kingdom was enough. “Only one who is totally senile would think so”, answered hhis daughters. There was nothing even Assange could do. One day King Lear broke down and cried as he had read the playwright Shakeseare cry):

“'Tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburden'd crawl toward death."


The Latvian Version of a Tunnel of Love.

Prince Goldenhair, however, remained untouched by the wonders of Paradise and Egypt. Though he had held the apples of Paradise and tasted the Milk of the Queen of Snakes, it was just long enough to learn how a permanent supply of such experiences was likely to be. He did not wish to commit or sacrifice his life for it.
What being in possession of the apples and the milk meant, he was soon able to witness with his own eyes.

Soon after having they had all the sex they could handle, Princess Jengland and Cornwall turned their attentions to asset accumulation. Each prince in turn came to the conclusion that neither wanted to see tKing Lear’s kingdom divided, but that he would have it an undivided whole for himself alone. Moreover, the kingdom would then become, eventually, an empire.

It became inevitable, that the brothers-in-law, though neither one had yet drawn blood, declared war on each other. Each had the support of their wives, Princesses Goneril and Regan, which is why the sisters became friendlier with their husbands than with each other. When the sisters passed each other, they bared their teeth and hissed as real snakes.

The time had come for Goldenlocks to call Giant to come help again.

This time, Jiant gave Prince Goldenlocks an axe that danced in the hands, of whoever held it, as if it had a life of its own. Jiant advised, however, the young prince not to let the axe have its own will. The Prince was to use the sword just enough to ensure that if the feud among the brothers-in-law broke into the open, the fight ended in a draw.

Such a fight came about two times, and both times it ended in a draw.

The third time the brothers-in-law went to war with each other, Jiant told the Goldenlocks that the time had come for a victory. The sword was to be given a free hand. Prince Goldenlocks was to seize the kingdom of king Lear for his sister Princess Goldenlocks Struvelpeter.

Prince Goldenlocks won the battle and then handed the kingdom to his sister. The Princes then returned the kingdom of Thebes to her father.

To celebrate the regaining of his kingdom, the King decided to host another Celebration. Since this time the table arrangements were decided by the king. King Lear sat Prince Goldenlocks in a seat between his brothers-in-law. “Knowing how smart you are, Prince Goldenlocks, let me see how you do” said King Lear and wincked.

Again there came the moment that struck the princes Jengland and Cornwall mute. When they saw that their lives were in the hands of the swine herd Goldenlocks, the princes fell on their knees and begged him to spare their lives.

What was Goldenlocks to do?

Goldenlocks then lifted up his left arm in such a way that everyone could see that it was missing the small finger.

“This is what you cost me!” he said to princes Jengland and Cornwall. “Do you remember the time you chased me into the forest and wanted to sacrifice me because I tried to help the King of the Wood? I want no lesser sacrifice from both of you.”

The ambassador of the United States of America then stood up to defend Jengland and Cornwall. He turned to Prince Goldenlocks and said: “You, Sir, are—by the evidence of your missing little finger—a terrorist.”

“Go tell it to the Giant of the Wood,” answered Prince Goldenlocks, “Your country is the cause of draught and fires. Besides, why are you sending the FBI to Thebes? Wood and grass here are believed to be true gifts of eternity.”

Then the ambassador of Equador spoke up: “Why is Julian Assange hinding in the Embassy of Equador in London? Why is England, edged on by the U.S., threatening to break into our embassy and arrest Assange? Is that not state terrorism?”

Princes Jengland and Cornwall continued to make a yammer as if they were the Pussy Riot team from Moscow. However, this time Goldenlocks’s heart was as if made of iron. He had his guards separate Jengland and Cornwall from their cushioned seats. He then had the guards stretch out the left arms of the princes and place the little fingers of the hand on a butcher block. King Lear’s court executioner raised his axe, and it went “Chop!” and “Chop! ” twice.

After the ‘pinkies’ of the Princes fell to the ground, the executioner wrapped them in a white handkerchief. With ceremony the two handkerchiefs were then taken to Thebe’s central marketplace and placed on an eye-high stone slab.

For a whole week, whenever the Thebans’ went to the marketplace and passed by the stande they had to smell the rot of the princes’ flesh.

"That will teach them respect," said the people as they went buy. They also squeezed their noses. Still, the children wanted their parents to raise them up to see.

On the second week, the executioner was called again. This time, it was to untie the hankerchiefs and expose the fingers. Not surprisingly, the fingers soon disappeared. Attracted by the smell, they had long bee watched by a pair of ravens sitting in nearby trees. Now they were picked up and discposed of in a way only ravens can.

But it was not many days later, that Thebans were surprised to hear that, Alas!, King Lear had died.

Princess Goldenlocks being the one who had with the help of Prince Goldenlocks salvaged the kingdom, announced that it was only right that the next King of Thebes be her husband Goldenlocks, while she would be happy to be the Queen.

Jiant of the Wood would be the guest of honor at the wedding. King Goldenlocks also announced that henceforth there was to be no hunting of wild animals, and wild pigs were to be officially enlisted as soldiers fighting on behalf of the Kingdom of the Wood.

Jiant lived up to his reputation as wondermaker. He brought to the wedding a thousand bees' wax candles into which were imbedded the bristles of a thousand wild pigs. While the candles burned, the incense was so strong that ever since they have been used to overcome the stench of death the world over.


'A Display of Nature' sponsored by the Latvian State Forestry Service [LVM']

[The End—for the time being.] For part 1 scroll to previous blog. Remember that in this part only the swineherd, the one who saves Prince Goldenlocks, has sacrificed something--the little finger of his left hand--while all others are only promised the possibility of losing their fingers. Now his brothers-in-law, too, join the 'selects'. Now there are three who in the eyes of the American government a re‘terrorists’ http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/dec2011/jeffb126.htm .]