[5] Darkness As Seen Through Tiresias’ Eyes (2)

Preelection appearance of politicians running for office,

When President Karlis Ulmanis vanished from the government in Latvia, Spidola did not jump after him into the Daugava River as she had done after Lachplesis.

As Menesnīca, impersonated moonlight that illumines night and is said to have once guided proto-Latvians in night-fighting tactics, Spīdola did not see Ulmanis as a reincarnation of her mythic lover, Lachplesis.

The failure of Ulmanis/Lachplesis to mate in the netherworld with Spidola [who among other things represents the subjective (re democratic and populist) nature of the psyche] is at the root of the political troubles of Latvians in 2011.

As noted in many earlier blogs (see http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/  among others), the word “populist” is belittled and repressed by all officials and media in Latvia.

The Latvian state rules as a rhetorical democracy, one which uses rhetoric not as proto-Latvians had it by putting the endearing word in the forefront of communication, but by using rhetoric as a persecutorial (vajāšana) device. A lie is no less persecutorial even by another name.

The tactics of the Latvian government are imitative of the tactics of persecution practiced by the neo-Christian (Catholic, later also Protestant/ fundamentalist) church. That is to say, the subjectivity of the individual and collective (populists created such subjective language as is represented by the endearing word) is repressed in favor of an official story, the ‘good news’.

The first line of control of the state is government rhetoric with regard to history—history not as actual, but as created by government. Thus, for example, the betrayal of the Latvian myth and state by Karlis Ulmanis is never mentioned, but the brutality of the Soviet authorities is. The failure to mention the failure of the Latvian myth results in a cultural stutter and a further weakening of communal bonds.

The right course to pursue is....

The second line of control is rule of the country by “parliamentary” democracy. The rhetoric of the government insists that ‘parliamentary’ is synonymous with ‘democratic’, even while the government is democratic only for the ruling elites. Latvians essentially have no idea (either suggested or taught) that the greatest degree of democracy is identified with populism, which stands for the people (right, left, or center).

Thus, President Andris Berzins was elected and put in office without the participation of the Latvian people. Though as a former banker (he receives the highest retirement benefits in Latvia), Berzins is compromised by suspicions that he is a proxy of Swedish banks. There is no mention of the latter fact in public space.

Insofar the Lachplesis character is reflected in the highest office of Latvia, President Karlis Ulmanis effectively reduced the President’s mythic role to one of empty rhetoric. Indeed, the authority of the President since Ulmanis has not been confirmed as anything other than make-believe because unrealizable. At the same time, any potential leader from the ranks of the populists has been suppressed

There is nothing strange about the repression of democracy, if we remember that Lacplesis died fighting with the enemy, while Karlis Ulmanis died of circumstances created by the outbreak of WW2.

For all of Ulmanis’ achievements in raising the state of economic well-being among Latvians in the 1930s, Spidola, the helpmate of Lacplesis, refused to recognize the former President of Latvia as representative of the Latvian community and to this day has not found any Latvian leader to warm her bed.

These circumstances leave the Latvian soul (foundation rhetoric here) enduring a tense, essentially intolerable time.

The soul of the community (nationalist or no) wants to know if it, too, is but government rhetoric or whether behind the rhetoric stand men and women, leaders, who are willing the certify their rhetoric as meaningful authority by giving example. The example must necessarily include very real sacrifice if government officials ask the public to sacrifice. At this time the level of sacrifice among Latvian government officials is not even that of a car driver in a car race in Tunisia.

If I remember right, a Korean teenager projected Lachplesis http://www.eurotales.eril.net/quiz2/lat8.jpg as a character in a comic book. This—though never admitted by political authority or mentioned in the news and information media—is an accurate projection of the character of today’s politicians in Latvia and other countries.

The audience and the empty screen.

However, as acute as the problem of democracy and equality is in a country of 1.9 million people, our civilization has reached a time when its governments are basically without authority in all countries.

For Latvia, the political and economic suffering was first brought it by the ‘Harvard boys’, the club of academic ideologues, who in the early 1990’s instituted in the Baltics the official ideology of the West, re liberal neo-capitalism. I am sad to say that this came about through Latvian “exiles”, who after nearly fifty years abroad had lost their culture as ‘natives’, and had become missionaries on behalf of the West. Therefore, the Latvian people were encumbered by, both, the laws of their first republic and the post-Soviet “victors”. To this day they see “no exit”.

The exits continue to be sought by the Latvian people, while the officials play games of mirrors and sleigh of hand. While these tactics are evidently successful in terms of keeping government in office, communal chaos is the real result. What can be done to avert extinction?

How is one to change the economic system and the anarchistic civilization encouraged by corporations with the right to act as individuals, a presumption it borrowed from the church http://procinwarn.com/whatchurch.htm ? While one may always hope that a church has the authority of sacrifice to back it up, the corporation has replaced sacrifice with money.

The hard question no one is willing to answer.

Who is producing the irresponsible individual? Is the Federal Reserve and similar institutions a corporate individual?

In some respects Latvija is not all that different from Greece.

See STRATFOR report http://www.youtube.com/user/STRATFORvideo#p/u/0/zDINQ6k9jYQ

Complete text of post at http://rigacapital.blogspot.com/

One mother's Latvian condition.


[4] Darkness As Seen Through Tiresias’ Eyes (1)

The famous play by Sophocles known as “Oedipus Rex” or “Oedipus the King” has long been the amazing gelatin pudding that Sigmund Freud baked at the beginning of the 20^th century.

Freud’s interpretation of Sophocles’ play, taken as if from the frothy top layers of the pudding when not yet set, seemed for a time credible enough.

Summary of plot: A son is taken from his mother’s breast at an early age and transported to another country. He happens to return to the country of his origin, kills the dragon (Sphinx) that threatens the city, and gets—as his prize—to marry the Queen, who is a widow. As it happens the Queen turns out to be his mother.

The mirror of reality.

The question of what happened that Oedipus should be removed from his mother’s breast and taken to another country constitutes the early mystery of Sophocles’ play.



The traditional explanation (and the one apparently encouraged by Sophocles’ himself) is that the King of Thebes, Oedipus’s father, did not want the boy, and to be rid of him had him exposed to the elements on the highest mountain nearby.

The task of taking the infant to the mountain top and leaving him naked and ankles bound to the elements is entrusted to one of the shepherds  of the King. The shepherd however takes pity on the infant and takes him to the kingdom of Corinth on the other side of Mt. Citheron. The childless King and Queen of Corinth adopt the infant for their own.

To prove to King Laius that his son Oedipus did not survive the night, another infant is killed in his place and his body is shown to the king as that of his own son. The dead infant is of course from one of the infants that are periodically offered to the Sphinx, a composite of all the Gods who receive human sacrifice.

The light to light the cave of Dismal.

The loss to Oedipus is that while his life is not exposed to risk and therefore he stays alive for sure, he loses his chance to be raised as the next king of Thebes. He will have to be satisfied with being a prince in a neighboring country, but remain an orphan to the role he was born to in the city-kingdom of Thebes.

There is yet another version of why the infant Oedipus was exposed to the elements. This version is motivated by the need to expose the infant to the will of the Gods.

That is to say, if Oedipus survives the night and is found alive the next morning, the citizens of Thebes will believe that the Gods have given a sign. The message is that the King’s son is fit to become the next king of Thebes. [For my version of the play http://rigacapital.blogspot.com/ ]

What is it about this story of events at the city of Thebes that connects with events in Latvia in our time?



Something like a kitchen cuboard that was.



The answer is to be sought in myth, be it sourced in an actual event or a fantasy. If a fantasy becomes part of the rhetoric of a nation so much so that it is believed to be actual and people act on it if they are ever called to re-found their nation. If the heroism of the past is imitated today, then heroism remains operative in our own time.

The founding myth of Latvia—albeit more than artificial and well worn by the Age of Enlightenment, which emerging Latvians nevertheless felt compelled to adopt as their own—is “Lāčplēsis” (literally: Wripper of Bears).

Whatever this is.

While the poet’s (Pumpurs) mythic hero is claimed by the Earth, when he falls into the Daugava river hugging the Black Knight, he is reassured resurrection by his lover Spidola (Bright One). Spidola jumps into Daugava and shouts: “The battle, Lacplesi, is not over yet. Spidola is coming to help you.”

Reassured of a mating with Spidola on the other side of the Sun (Aizsaulē), the mythic hero is indeed called to a reawakening. Be that as it may, he is reborn as the President of Latvia, one Karlis Ulmanis.

What does Ulmanis do when the Soviets cross the border of Latvia?

The furnace and the chimney.

Ulmanis was forewarned of the event if only by reduction and deduction: the Baltic Germans by special arrangement between Stalin and Hitler were fleeing Latvia for Germany. This writer, who had a German nanny at the time (1940), should know. His nanny offered his parents to take him to Germany with her. Germany was presumed to offer relative safety in those uncertain times. His parents chose not to separate their children to favor one.

However, when show down time came, President Kārlis Ulmanis did not resist the Soviets.

He did not declare war on the Soviets; nor send armed men to resist Stalin without a declaration of war; nor offer a barrage of resistance rhetoric; nor put a pistol to his head when the first Soviet official dared enter his office without his permission and his guard was shot.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light!*

Instead, he took a job in the Soviet Union as manager of a collective farm. Had war not broken out, he would have lived many years yet. When the Soviets obliterated his grave, they had not premeditated his death, but took advantage of the circumstance.

(To be continued… )

*Photos are of an apartment assigned to a mother with three children--before renovation.



126 wild cranes circling above my house in Braslava on September 25, 2011



[3] Into the Tunnel without A Light; or

The Liberal Neo-capitalist Destruction of Latvia

It is unlikely that the political leadership of Latvia is unaware that its actions are destroying Latvia, because the destruction is occurring very visibly, not to say painfully, with lack of food causing ill health and often death being the logical result among all age groups, especially among the young and old.

This morning (Sunday) this email via my mobile phone:

“Good morning, Mr. A…. May I ask you for help? Can you lend me Ls 20 for food, because K. cannot at this time send me money? I also would like to know whether you are driving to V. on Thursday. I have to be at the court, and would like to go with you. In July, I submitted papers to have the father of my child provide support money. I will wait for your answer. Have a nice day (Jauku Jums dieniņu).”

I know the family for many years, thus, I have contacted the mother and will find the Ls 20. She also asked me to wait for her until the end of the court session, because the father of the child has said he would beat her up, but was not likely to do so if someone was with her.




It looks that the cranes are ligning up.

 

Be that as it may, after seventeen years in Latvia (after 46 in America), I am near broke. Living on a fixed income (SS from America) and a reserve from old family property sold during the ‘fat years’, the reserves have been depleted, both, due to some investments having urned ‘bad’ by the financial and economic fiasco in America and elsewhere and due to the great need among so-called lower economic classes in Latvia even during those ‘fat years’. I still have my shirt on and enough to find Ls 20 for the mother (if only because I know the family's circumstances personally), but this does not mean that I sleep easy. 

Needy families are in every corner of the Latvian countryside. The mother above is not the only one I know. Just a few weeks ago, I called and received help from a television program (“Without Tabu”) to monitor the progress of the renovation of a couple of mildewed rooms that a municipal government of a small town has assigned to a poor (trūcīga) mother and her three children (1.5, 4, & 8 years). The circle of people whom I help is a private and subjective one, but includes such mothers and children as above, alcoholics (believed by me to be rehabitable), not to mention occasional trips to take some kid to the hospital, and of course encouragement.

My tomato crop after a bath.

Why do I write about this? Some readers of my blogs may recall that I have called for the resignation of the President of Latvia Andris Berzins, one who receives the highest pension of anyone in Latvia, and one whose arrival to the office of the Presidency may be judged to be wholly illegal if one uses wholly honest (godigus) standards.

The way I see it: when the former President of Latvia Valdis Zatlers called for the dismissal of the Latvian Saeima on grounds of corruption, that same Saeima did not, as was to be expected, reelect Zatlers, but pulled out of the high hat of corruption one Andris Berzins. The Latvian people endorsed Zatlers’ judgment in a Referendum vote. However, the corrupt Saeima had already successfully projected itself forward through Berzins, a former bank president, who, though suspect of being a proxy of Swedish banks, is not questioned about it by the timid and the extreme right wing (i.e., almost the entire) Latvian media.

Among the people for whose resignation I have called is also the Minister of Finance Andris Vilks, another proxy of Swedish Banks. There are others who, given their liberal neo-capitalist views, should be resigning. The President of the Bank of Latvia Ilmārs Rimšēvičs should be given the boot. He is the first line enforcer of the “internal devaluation” program, which makes the Latvian lats an increasingly worthless piece of paper, not to say tool for pauperizing the Latvian people and facilitating the takeover of Latvia by Swedish/Scandinavian banks. At least one Norwegian politician has been caught using Riga as his house of prostitution.

An article in the Latvian newspaper “Diena” [(23.9.11) re ‘Latvijas veiksmes stāsts’ by Sandris Točs] brought my attention to an article in The Guardian by the economists Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson. Titled “Latvia and the disciples of ‘internal devaluation’”, the article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/16/latvia-anders-aslund-austerity bring to our attention the implicit complicity in the destruction of Latvia by PM Valdis Dombrovskis, who in collaboration with the liberal neo-capitalist Swedish ideologue Anders Aslund has authored a book called “How Latvia Came through the Political Crisis”. [Read the link to whiff the stink.]

We can only boo Aslund, but surely, PM Dombrovskis ought to be given the boot, too. Once a student of physics, he ought to bring up his perception of complexity to the level of instead of saying “abracadabra”, he will also know the meaning of cadabraabra or caradababra. The genee just may be hiding in the last two versions, because he surely is not with Dombrovskis.



Sunshine in the sink.



I do not deny that ideologically, I am opposed to liberal neo-capitalism and to the present Latvian government and those who constitute its leadership (ex-president Zatlers including). My opposition to the neo-liberal cabal of Latvian politicians and the media can be supported by economic and financial arguments. However, most convincing are the screams for help coming through the above cited letter from a poor mother on behalf of her child. I can assure the reader that such letters can be multiplied by the thousands—ultimately all of which testifies as to the physical and spiritual pains that come with the destruction of my nation.

A young oak in my garden last winter.

[2] A Letter to Elaine at

http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/germany-cant-bail-out-all-eu-banking-problems/

I agree with every pessimist concerning world finances and economy at this time starting with myself and going all the way to the edge of the horizon. On the other hand, I wonder if the fall from grace by liberal neo-capitalism and its eternal growth philosophy does not also signal the arrival of the age of shrink the overweight down to an affordable size.

I suppose everyone's thinking cap hides one's own favorite recepe for downsizing. Mine is as follows (I live in Latvia):

1. Rent out the capital city Riga to the Chinese, thus giving them a major port and airport in Europe whence to give globalization another significant leg forward. This step will also prevent the Latvians from being overly worried by a reoccupation of their country by Russia.

2. Since the demographics of Latvia (due to the country's leaders listening to and taking the advice of the 'Harvard boys' in the early 1990s) will reduce the population in the next ten years from the present 1.9 million to 1.2 million, a large part of the rest of Latvia (all of its east and north parts) can be let go fallow and return to forests.

3. Have Greenpeace and other "greeņ" orgs do studies of how to have urban people return to life in the forest. After all, one need meet in the city no more than twice every two weeks, while communications via computer can readily transmit signals over treetops.

4. Turn cities into high science and birthing centers via bringing cloning to humans, which will at last eliminate the greedy beast known as the 'family' and have society return to the household as its basic unit of society. Indeed, this was the basic social unit among proto-Latvians in the age of Livonia.

5. While my plan may seem "fantastic" to some (admittedly it needs a lot of adjusting), the forests will give the deforested parts of the country protection (a blanket) from the ice age expected to arrive with the next eruption of the gigantic calderas at Yellowstone and elsewhere by Elaine Suplis, the originator of “emsnews”.

6. Euthanasia or 'easy death' will be legalized at all urban centers of the world and help accelerate the end of chaos about to errupt. Human rights groups will oversee that human rights are respected and observed.

Pine trees will again grow for 350 years and oak trees will again grow to become giants.

It will be interesting for future historians to note that the reforestation of our planet began with people cast aside by the high and mighty of our day. This post from http://rigacapital.blogspot.com/

Riga, presently a bordertown of Europe, could become the capital city of Europe tomorrow. Brussels is not the only city to make the claim to be the leading city of Europe, even if it is Europe's capital at present.

A panoramic view of Riga.

[1] This blog is about Riga fighting its way from bordertown status to become one of the leading cities of Europe.
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The vision of Riga as painted by the Harmony Party and other political parties of Latvia (the Latvian mindset not excluding) is nearsighted. It does not enter the political mindset of the present leaders of Riga that Riga could be tomorrow's capital city of Europe. The party that will present Riga in its full potential has not yet been founded.

If a political party promoting Riga is formed, it's name is likely to be Riga Capital, or RC when abriviated. The initials rhyme with Royal Crown (of Europe). Perhaps this is not as profound as Riga Jerusalem, which Bishop Albert envisioned in the 13th century, but it is close enough in terms of elevation over present realities.

Brussels the frog.

At this time, the politicians of Riga and Latvia are diverting the minds of Latvians from taking a step into the future by trying to focus everyone's mind on the Latvian/Russian divide. The result is myopia, a perception of Riga as exclusively a major airport and/or a major shipping port. One of the results is a shrinking city in population as well as in wealth.

Riga of today has no geopolitical vision of itself. No one apparently has thought of renting Riga out to the Chinese--as the Chinese rented out Hongkong to the Brits--except for this blogger. If this is "way out in the left field", then this is what this blogger will attempt to right, and bring to the centre of attention. This blog will not exclude the Swedes, or Germans, or English, or Russians from upping the Chinese bid when it is made. Nor will the blogger evade the question of transferring the capital city of Latvia from Riga to Jelgava, a city that serves as shrinking Riga's bedroom not far to the south of it.

At the time of the writing (20th of September, 2011), a  few days after the election of the 11th Saeima of Latvia, a body politic of "the same old parliamentary crabs" is taking seats at the Parliament Building of Latvia. Presiding over the crab filled building is a President deeply compromised to the banking industry. Not far from the Parliament and the President is the Harmony Party, pretending to be a rooster with its legs in a honey pot, even as its nose is in an adjacent hole in the wall  http://www.officialpsds.com/images/thumbs/Hole-On-The-Wall-psd41797.png .