The leaning barn.

[20] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (8)

Part 1.

Warren Buffet on a buying spree here.

The failure of Latvia as a viable economy, whether guided by Latvian Latvians or Latvian Russians or a coalition of same is that both parties look toward the future in the outdated terms of a “growth” economy.

The financial and economic disaster enveloping the world today (and Latvia in particular) is thought of in terms of a “short lived” event—even if the event is presumed to last for ten or more years. The mindset of our times appears to have been occupied by the interests of urbanites who cannot get off the Shoals of Growth.

The urbanites are permanently immobile, captured by brain-lock, metallic rock band entertainment and all.

On the other hand, all around the Shoals of Growth are the Digital Floating Islands, which though limited to their given size, can readily help those stranded on sand bars. The art of getting off a shoal is to untie one’s mind from the knot of "growth" and tie it to a "tree" on one of the Digital Islands.

Indeed, the Digital Islands allow one to leave the urban scene and its permanent state of Turrets like turbulences and get to move one’s computer onto earthquake proof woodland. The compulsion that forced the conquistadores to destroy the Inca garden of gold can be controlled by letting the Earth go fallow and seeing it covered with “green gold” again.

The presumption of the Union Party (consisting mostly of Latvian Latvians) is that every Latvian naturally gets all tied up in knots and suffers of Turrets for the sake of always being and always remaining a good patriot. The Union Party’s particular knot is known as The West.

The Harmony Party, on the other hand, is knotted to The East, because it believes that the East’s Gaslands will solidify into pure gold if one but wishes this to happen strongly enough.

The Digital Islands can get Harmony Party off its shoal, too, by reminding it that the language of business is English and Gaslands spelled in Russian cannot blow a bubble around the Earth as English can.

So, this is where the Latvian Latvians and Russian Latvians get to fulfill their need for “growth”. Like in the days of the Hansa League, Riga (within certain limits) gets to become like the Wild West which the medieval knights sought in the East. One way to “grow” Riga (now shrinking down to 600,000 inhabitants) is to rent it out to the highest bidder, say, Beijing, and repeat the experience of Hongkong on the Baltic.

Out of a union of Union and Harmony parties—which union has potential, because both are agreed to rent themselves out to the highest bidder—a new post-Latvian Latvian society, one that is truly Latvian, is born. Surprisingly, this society may move to live in the Latvian woodlands.

Sounds like a joke?  Go to the next blog to find out.

Part 2 follows.


The leaning barn and what used to be a roof.


[20] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (8)

Part 2.

A Latvian politologue’s opinion (transl. from Latvian) on what makes him a political observer: “The author of these lines in not an economist. The window sill of geopolitics is also too high for him…. Therefore...." The above is followed by a defense and praise of a politically unstable blob known as the European Union or EU.

The presumption of our “civilized” world is that all geopolitically significant human movement is for ever toward urban centers. What used to be cities, entities owned by oligarchs trading with other oligarchs in ‘their’ cities (they did not trade with the countryside), have been erased and become said "unstable blobs" .

Whether the blob is the EU, a mega city, or a "grausts"  in Riga (a city which the tourist industry touts as a tourist’s must) in Riga, Riga gets to go where it is going as a result of its supporters.

The supporters of Riga may be loyalists, but more likely they are "blobbies". One can begin with the unstable blobby that is the President of Latvia and work down to the countryside poor full of envy of the blobbies in the city who seem to have it all.

Of course, cities like London, cause the Thames River, which has to pass through it, to emerge into the English Channel looking like green piss that turns the North Sea a pale green. Riga has only the Bay of Riga to pollute. For all that, the blobbies try to present the blobs as shimmrering stars.

Who is to blame? Why is such uni-polar view ruling over Latvia?

Before one despairs of such uni-polarity, it may be actually be good for Latvia, at least now that it has happened. Bank driven “fools gold”, imprinted as a permanent advertisement on the brain of all “good Latvian people” who have bought into it, is driving the wild boars from forests to dig my garden. As I do not shoot wild boars, I would make them my soldiers—if I could but outlaw boar hunting.

If it was forbidden to shoot the wild boars, humankind would have its forests back in shape soon. Driven from their forests by the magic of the chainsaw, the wild boars cannot help but come and dig up my garden. If the law forbade boar hunting, and if the “farmer” was to return the boar-dug land to forest and retreat to another field, lost forests and forest landscape would come back in a hundred to two hundred years.

Part 3 follows.

The other end of the leaning barn.

[20] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (8)

Part 3.

Latvians, who create and live in the geopolitical environment of post-Riga Latvia, ought to adjust the arrow on the face their compass from “deforest Earth” to “accommodate the boar”. A practical way of doing this is to dedicate Latvia to the service industries of emerging tomorrow rather than a declining yesteryear.

I see boars as front line warriors against urban dwelling farmers for who the earth is but to exploit and “growth” their pockets.  

The farmer as homesteader is long gone or has become an exception. It is not difficult to persuade the farm worker who needs a job that exploitation of planet Earth is needed if he is to eat. One almost never hears that letting land go fallow and re-grow into a forest brings income sufficient unto the day.

Some such (as described above) must be the future of our planet if humankind is to survive. In other words, growth in the future can only happen through “de-growth”.

While Riga rented, say, to Berlin (Latvians have a historic relationship with the German people) brings enough “growth” to keep happy those born to city life, Latvians can establish headquarters for their own “Green tree” Party in Jelgava, by which process Jelgava becomes the capital city of Latvia.

There are people who are anxious that renting Riga means to prostitute Latvian ideals (whatever these as yet seldom discussed ideals may be). I am happy to say that I am not suggesting anyone prostitute themselves, but diminish their prejudices.

Clearly, it is in the interest of the Earth and all its nations to belong to an Earth-protecting union. The present unstable blobs, which we find dot the map, are not sustainable.

By nature human beings are creatures that are cautious in the extreme, and will keep making unstable blobs their living spaces—if this has become a seemingly sustainable event—until they are struck by an irreversible catastrophe.

Traditionally, in many pre-modern societies a “reminder” of the reality that lay at as foundation of society was human sacrifice. Society sensed that this was a reality that cannot be fudged. While exemplified by likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus, or St. John, reality became ever more unreal after the cities led humankind into a warp of virtual reality. We are still caught up in this warp and do not seem to be able to get out of.

For this reason, I would like to suggest that it is time for the Latvian public (such as remains) to come out from behind the trees and suggest that by virtue of the computer city folk can also live in the countryside that is let to become forest again.

How are we going to do that? What are you going to live on? Will there be butter on our bread?

The answer is as simple as it is complicated. The ways of a Latvia fully dedicated to a post-growth de-growth economy are many. But here is one: Latvians declare all of Latvia a biosphere for trees.

No one can enter and live in the Latvian forest without express permission of the Jelgava government [let us remember that Riga has been rented to Austria (?)]. Because Latvians keep their own numbers low, which by the way they can do, because their population is presently said to be in a death spiral, the transition ought not to be all that difficult.

When the Latvians (Latvian Latvians, Latvian Russians, Latvian Germans, Latvian Swedes, etc.) will have rented Riga and re-founded their capital in Jelgava, then Latvia will no longer be an unknown country. The whole world will have been watching and taking example.

This property, 17.9 ha for sale. See http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

[18] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (6)

Part 1.

The current dream of Latvian nationalist coalition parties to control Riga is based on the fact that Riga has been the capital city of Latvia since the foundation of Latvia in 1918.

Though Riga remained the capital of Soviet Latvia during the Soviet occupation, “occupied” Riga underwent significant changes. For one, the Latvian population, which had replaced a largely German population at the beginning of the 20^th century and constituted a majority of the Riga population by 1940, decreased as Riga became the domicile of many Russians in the fifty year period under the occupation of the  USSR.

Today the seats in the Latvian Saeima are roughly proportional to the ethnic divide in Latvia, even as Riga--with roughly 42% of Latvian Russians--remains a major centre of Latvian Russians.  

From the point of view of tactical manuverability and  geopolitical advantage, the Latvian nationalist dream and the consequences of their attempt to realize it, have proven as unrealistic as disastrous (currently fait accompli) to the interests of Latvians. There are two reasons for this:

a)     The Latvian Latvians who were forced to leave the countryside due to neo-capitalist agricultural policy of the EU (largely favored by Latvian nationalists) did not result in an increase of Latvian population in Riga. This is because of the corruption in the Latvian Latvian government (which uses ethnic jingoism to bamboozle the rest of Latvians into a deadlock vote) and misguided economic policies. In real-life, most Latvians bypass Riga for Ireland, England, and other countries offering competitively better job opportunities.

b)    The corruption of Latvian Latvian politicians resulted in straight-jacketed Latvian economic policies, which led to a take-over of Latvia by foreign (largely Swedish) banking operations. The infiltration of Latvian interests by the “West” (a term used to avoid using such terms as “Swedish”, NATO, or Brussels) has turned Latvian economic policies into a Ouija board like exercise. The Latvian Ouija board works, because the forces that guide the pointer remain largely unknown to Latvians and turns them into easily duped believers in magic.

The deadlock vote--the result of a never-ending stoking of jingoism (encouraged by the “West” of course)--has allowed the nationalists to create a dogma of sufficiently long duration to engineer an inter-Latvian geopolitical advantage for Riga. That is to say, a reapportionment of the territories of the earlier four regions of Latvia (formerly a mythic three) into five, created the new Region of Riga.

The Region of Riga expanded Riga’s territorial influence at the expense of the three regions surrounding it, re Vidzeme, Zemgale, and Kurzeme. With the exception of Kurzeme, all other regions were deprived of access to the sea.

In effect, the three landlocked Latvian regions (formerly only the region of Latgale had suffered from such disadvantage) have been forced to become economically dependent on Riga.

No wonder that Riga can so readily misspend 130 million to build a totally useless (I call it ‘broken wing’) glass frame for its library. [I have my ideas about its uses, but that for another time.]

Were it not for the self-induced ineptness of the Latvian Russian controlled Harmony Centre [its ineptness clearly a result of knee-jerk reaction to the Latvian Latvian coalition (thus failing to unite all Latvians], Riga might have fought off the penetration of Latvia by foreign banks and the weakening of its sovereignity.

Part 2 follows. The original at http://rigacapital.blogspot.com/

[18] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (6)

Part 2.

An  offer of Riga to the highest bidder will result in disaster (except for the Region of Kurzeme) if it is done with the Latvian hypernationalist map of inter-Latvian geopolitical advantages intact.

If the reapportionment of Latvia’s regions is not deconstructed and Riga is not forced back into less expansive presumptions (for example, a 30 km radius from the flagpole on the tower of the President’s castle), a planto rent it would not result in an advantage to Latvians. The construction of the current map falls into the trap favored by the Unity Party (Vienotība) and Latvian geopoliticos advised by a Oija board controled by the “West”.

Although the Riga region is not the creation of the after- or post-‘fired’ government in office, it was created by the same forces. Also, the President of Latvia, AndrisBerzins) was still only the President of the Swedish afiliate in Latvia, Unibanka. He had not yet become a Swedish poke in Latvian ribs in the office of Latvia’s president. The President, therefore, deserves to recuse  himself from the office even at this late date.

[Parenthethetically, the reconstruction of the Riga region could begin by returning the formerly administratively unified region of “The Northern Vidzeme Biosphere" its unity and give it more generous legal powers to enforce a true biosphere, i.e., one protected from human predators cutting down its forests and killing the wildboars/pigs.

A map of the biosphere: here.  

In other words, in the process of deconstructing the Riga region back down to size, it should be kept in mind that Riga is a sweet. Riga has the potential of being rented to business under limited, but more or less sovereign authority of its own–for an agreed period of time. Latvians want investors to come to Riga and begin working at their business, but only by staying within boundaries drawn with the consent of the Latvian people. Those boundaries include limitations as to Riga’s extent on land and respect for the rights of the inhabitants of the rest of Latvia, not least for Latvia's “forest green” heritage.]

This is a good time for the Harmony Party to speak not only for Latvian Russians (the party’s majority membership), but to speak up on behalf of Latvian Latvian interests that have not been well served by Latvian nationalist destructiveness of Latvian interests.

It takes too long to tell all the reasons why a 3-way split of interests in Latvia and Riga (the deadlock between Latvian-Latvians and Latvian Russians) serves all three parties concerned, but one can reasily percieve that the language issue so troubling to the unity of Latvian citizens is replaced with English as the language of everyday social intercourse, while Latvian and Russian remains a subjective issue among the speakers when home.

In Jelgava, the next Latvian capital city, Latvian will of course prevail.

Latvian will also prevail in the rest of Latvia where “forest green” rather than the chainsaw or plow rules. As for the latter, it is misleading (as an ad on television loudly claims) that for the last seven hundred years the Latvians have been a peasant (zemnieku) people.

For more than half the above mentioned 700 years, Latvians were forest dwellers, who cultivated a patch of land (sokle) to enhance their forest diet with turnip and beet. The term "brotherhood of the forest" (Mezha brahlyi) was a popular term until even after the end of World War 2. The sense of freedom for a Latvian comes from the forest, not from plowing the land for the barons.

It is only after 1933 (the arrival of the so-called Ulmanis regime, that Latvians officially become descendants of peasants. They stay locked into this mistaken perception of themselves to this day.

[17] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (5)

Part 1.

One way to describe cruelty is as violence hidden. Hiding behind the milder word “cruelty”, violence and savagery can be obfuscated and hid in a mist. Such cruelty, i.e., savagery-violence, is the way of the Latvian government with the Latvian people.

I am writing about the savagery-cruelty-violence by the Latvian government as it expresses itself through economic cruelty-violence. For more detailed and sensate proof see Michael Hudson’s and Jeffrey Sommers article in the Guardian.

As a result of the government’s economic violence, hundreds and possibly thousands of Latvian pensioners and children will die a premature death due to health problems, poor nutrition, and outright despair. Thousands more will leave Latvia as economic refugees. Suicide rates driven by despair in Latvia are among the world’s highest. Unfortunately, the Latvian media are in the habit of ascribing suicide to alcoholism, rather than to despair that results from unemployment, lack of money, and not least, a lack of educational facilities for potable skills.

One of the potable-useable skills that Latvian country folk possess is, unfortunately, the ability to use the simpleton’s tool, the chain saw. This barbaric instrument is then used to cut down Latvia’s forests, which procedure keeps Swedish bankers in plenty of spending money, while Latvians stay barely alive.

To obscure the cruelty of the Latvian PM’s, Valdis Dombrovskis, and emphasize the “cure”, Latvians are presented the Estonian economic model. Alas, according to Jeffrey Sommers and Markku Sippola, both economists, the Estonian example demands that Estonians accept economic serfdom to Swedish banks and submit to Swedish geopolitical interests. The Latvian PM is making sure that Latvians ‘accept’ serfdom similar to the Estonians by peddling an intellectually questionable product authored for him by Andres Aslund , a Swedish hack working for Swedish banking interests.

Of course, one may argue that cruel measures—as in unavoidable and necessary measures—can be justified if at stake is the existence of, say, a nation. It may be argued that such is the situation of Latvia today.

Having suffered under the delusion that to be “free” of the Soviet Union means to become truly free and—the next delusion—that prosperity will arrive automatically, Latvians are now again faced with  circumscribed freedoms and forced delusions regarding their sovereignty.

In blunt words, the circumscription (or hair cut) of Latvia’s sovereignty comes as a result of the ideology of the oligarch-owned West outfitted to serve Swedish banks and Swedish ways of spreading disinformation about themselves and their foreign policies.

End part 1. Part 2 follows. 

[17] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (5)

Part 2.

Way back in 1991, the then emerging political leadership of Latvia was faced with American sent ‘“Harvard boys” . These  agents charlatans (one example here), sanctified by credentials from one of America’s most prestigious universities,  proposed to reverse economic direction from Soviet-style socialism to American style neo-liberal capitalism. Naturally, the Boys favored to see (my intelligent guess) a Latvian government controlled by Latvia’s own charlatans.

The instant privatization of Latvia, the economic shock policy advised by the Boys, favored the entry into Latvian government offices folks who practiced empty rhetoric and prepared to utilize it to rise to a quick and privatized prominence.

One such prominent riser is the current President of Latvia, Andris Berzins. Selected to become President of Latvia by forces that used a pocket thief’s sleigh of hand to maneuver (how did they do it?) this white rabbit into the office at Riga pils (the presidential castle), remains everyone’s mystery. The government supported Latvian news media refuses to look into the matter. For them a "mysterious joker" in Latvian government hands is a given.

If the Latvian media does not look into the matter, write, and educate the public about it, it is unlikely that many readers, viewers, and followers of news know of the infiltration of Swedish lobbyists into Latvian government. This is why the Latvian intelligentsia does not even note this phenomenon with regard to the governments in Estonia and Denmark. The PM’s of the last mentioned countries just visited Latvia to reassure and strengthen the Swedish ministrants in Latvia. The Lord’s wardrobe attendants brush the dust off the Lord’s shoulders unselfconsciously, proving they do not know what they are doing—even if their doing harms Latvia.

The collaboration of the Latvian media with the Latvian led Swedish lobby in the Latvian government, leaves the Latvian-Russian led Harmony Centre the only force of opposition to the Western-and-Swedish bank-led attempt to “occupy” Latvia.

It is in the interest of Latvians (other than those compromised by Sweden) to have a government of their own, a government that is able to become the 3^rd force, the force that controls the geopolitical interests of Latvia with an undiminished sense of Latvia’s sovereign self.

One of the ways to achieve the status of the 3^rd force is to isolate Riga. The isolation is best done by offering Riga for bid to the highest bidder. The beginning bid may be set at a repayment of Latvia’s current debts; financing (paying for) the move of the capital of Latvia to Jelgava; and a yet to be determined annual rent, payable to the Latvian people through the Latvian government in Jelgava.

[16] Harmony Centre &
Its Geopolitical Uses (4)

In the September 2011 elections, the Harmony Centre received 28+% of the total vote, which gave it 31 deputees at a Saeima consisting of 100. Excluded from participating in government by a coalition of the nationalist block, Harmony Centre now sits in opposition. From all signs, the party is for a loss of what to do next.

The lost look in the eyes of Harmony Party leadership (led by the Ushakovs-Urbanovich team) is nothing new. With its centre of power located in the municipal government of Riga, the party has never seriously projected for public consideration a geopolitical plan for either Riga or Latvia that is more than superficial.

Like the nationalist block [concentrated in the Union (Vienotība) Party)], Harmony Centre is a single issue gathering of jingoists. While Latvian nationalist jingoism expresses itself in a gnashing of teeth over whether the Latvian language will prevail as the language of Latvia, for Harmony Centre the issue is whether the Latvian government will relent and allow schools for Russian-speaking students teach their subject matter in Russian.

This one-issue conflict conflicts with the reason for the dismissal of the 10^th Saeima by now ex-President Zatlers, 
which reason was verified by a Referendum by the Latvian people. The issue at hand was and remains government corruption, the mismanagement of the Latvian economy and its collapse. However, when it came to the election of the 11^th Saeima, the successor to the dismissed 10^th—the issues brought to the debating table did not concern an economic-social-cultural vision of the fututre, but the divisive issue of who speaks Latvian, where, when, other.

No doubt there is considerable justification for the emotions indulged in by the Latvian nationalists when it comes to the Latvian language. The language has endured for thousands of years and, as I have often mentioned, projects great spiritual harisma by way of the ‘endearing word’, misnamed ‘diminutive’ by modern grammarians. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons the language may be dying. The following are some of the reasons:

1.     The Latvian people are in the middle of a demographic crisis engineered by Latvian politicians during the past twenty years. Up to 500,000 Latvians have become economic refugees to Ireland, England, and other countries.
2.     The demographic crisis creates a literary and cultural crisis. The number of ethnic Latvians hovers around the 1.2 million mark. If a century ago Latvia had one of the highest literacy rates in Europe, today the rate is among the lowest. Latvian publishing houses are not only being taxed by government out of business, but the decline in literary demographic has created a snake chasing its own tail situation: diminished literacy is threatening publishing with bancruptcy. The earnings of a writer of an original work, a book, does not justify the time spent to write a book in Latvian. It is almost certain that publishing business is kept in business by publishing books for Latvian schools. The other writers who can perhaps earn a living are translators of foreign literature.

3.     Points 1 and 2 (above) diminish the harisma of the Latvian language and put it on artificial life-suppor—the government. This makes the Latvian language less a real language than a virtual one. In other words, once the government collapses [and it is, arguably, in the process of collapsing (denied of course)], the language will face the ‘real world’, i.e. competition, unprepared.

4.     The Russian speaking Latvians, many of whom do speak Latvian, see the disadvantages of the Latvian language. Weakness is never persuasive, especially when it is surrounded by Latvians who create conditions that make the weak even weaker. Among the Latvian agents of weakness are Latvian Culture Ministers. Among the last four that come immediately to mind, there is not one who persuades that he-she understands the words “Latvian people” other than “Riga Latvians”. This results in a situation where lovers of opera and simphony music, who could easily travel to Stockholm, Vienna, Berlin, etc. to fill their cultural needs, receive more government support than the theatre. The theatre, the tool of mimesis-mime par excellance and the foremost teaching medium (from folk to high kitch to folk-metal) goes unnoticed. The theatre, mimicry, the art that transmits culture above all teaching aids, receives least government support and becomes culturally ineffective.

5.     Just a few days ago the President of Latvia, Andris Berzins, traveled to Daugavpils, the easternmost city in Latvia, and made a donation of a month of his salary to schools and “to keep local culture alive”. This act by the President makes “the act of pity for Latvia” the official way of how to deal with the current crisis of the economy and community. I.e., there is no direct action by the Latvian government on the public stage vis a vis the Brussels monster, Swedish bank repression of Latvian interests, or demand debt forgiveness as recommended by many economists. The establishment’s wolves in sheeps clothing do not get mentioned by government or the anally retentive Latvian media. Instead, the equally anally retentive Harmony Centre gets to enjoy all the nationalist blame.

The Harmony Centre—while claiming to be fully committed to Latvia’s interests, at the same time does all it can to keep alive Russian jingoism. It keeps a more expansive vision of Latvia’s future out of sight of Latvian-Russians lest they lose sight of Moscow. This myopic view is also witness to and cause of Riga’s disintegration.

These jingoists on behalf of their respective languages are well matched, and are one of the reason why this check-mate may not be resolved by arriving at a commonsensical solution. A radical mimesis is required instead.

I have argued for quite some time that we must visualize Riga as an object to be exchanged by Latvians for Jelgava as their national capital. As the nation debates, Latvian Latvians and Russian Latvians ought to explore the possibilities of renting Riga to the highest bidder for the next hundred years. If the rent offer raises realistic interest, a national referendum should be held. People may be surprised that the vote may agree that Riga is put up for bid.

In fact, renting Riga may be a great deal for Latvia if the monies received pay off the Latvian national debt, allow Latvians to get rid of the Latvian political lobby that works on behalf of self-interest, and not least on behalf of the interests of the half million Latvian economic refugees, who may get a chance to return to Latvia.

The Russian Latvians, too, will be happy, because no one (whether Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, or Beijing) who rents Riga will do so for any other reason than making money. At least, such should be a precondition to any deal. The lingua franca of Riga of course will be English, the language of business.

PS A must read analysis by Stratfor of Russian geopolitical interests: click here.



Lake Burtnieki (Magicmaker) looking west I.

 [14] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (2)

The leadership of Harmony Centre, the party with the numerically largest number of voters in Latvia, was not included in the present government of Latvia by the Latvian nationalist wing.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the geopolitical orientation of the nationalist wing is currently playing on the populist sentiments of dedicated Latvian communitarians, which is a noble sentiment.

The Latvian communitarian sentiment however is knotted by several so-called “ties”, which like the Gordian knot will not untie and let breathe.

Lake Burtnieki (Magicmaker) looking west II.

The first of these ties is the Latvian language. The 1.9 million Latvians, minus some six hundred thousand Russian speaking inhabitants http://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/policy/4641/4642/Muznieks/ , are committed to their language, even though the lingua franca after nearly five decades of Soviet occupation was the Russian language. Russian still remains the lingua franca at the work place among many Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, etc. economic refugees in England and Ireland

While this writer does not dispute the importance of the Latvian language as a bond among Latvian communitarians, the practical aspects, never mind the negative ones, are hardly ever discussed due to the exploitation of populist jingoism by Latvian governments in office since 1991.

One of the practical aspects that profoundly affects the role of the Latvian language are the limitations imposed on it by demography and the nature of the vehicle by which language is communicated. Since the total number of allegedly ethnic Latvians is likely to hover just above one million mark, the practical effects have a marked influence on Latvian authorship on the materials being read.

Lake Burtnieki (Magicmaker) looking west III.

For example, this author experienced quite a shock, when a manuscript that he offered to a publisher received an offer of Ls 189 (about $350). Imagine such an offer being made to an established Latvian writer (not me)! Such monies amount to a one month salary for unskilled labor. No wonder that most books that appear these days in Latvian are translations of foreign authors, translation being a far quicker process than creating an original work, even as one may wonder about the quality of such translations. Of course, editing an original work is an expense that publishers cannot afford except at a superficial level.

As this writer has pointed out before, the spiritual aspects of the Latvian language, the notable spiritual role of the endearing word (misnamed ‘diminutive’) goes virtually unnoticed. Compare the role of the Latvian folk songs or dainas with the Japanese haiku. While the Japanese honor their haiku with an annual festival and even the emperor writes a haiku poem for the occasion, the Latvian daina is hardly noticed and for all practical purposes is dead.

The demographic handicap experienced by the Latvian language has been long exploited by the Harmony Centre Party through its many requests that Russian speaking Latvians (most of them of Russian descent) be allowed Russian language schools. This point of view has been best expressed by Igor Pimanov, a deputy from Harmony Centre at the Latvian Saeima. See http://rt.com/politics/latvia-russian-language-universities/ .

[This writer remains an anglophile in so far as the Latvian lingua franca of tomorrow is concerned. What language you and I speak at home is your and my personal business. When my English speaking relatives visit Latvia, I tend to speak in English with them, even as with my neighbors I speak Latvian, and with Russian speaking people, I communicate through a dictionary or by way of sign language.]

The second Gordean knot for Latvian communitarians comes within the jingoistic context is the Nationalist block’s (represented by the Unity Party) exclusive orientation to the West and represents the McCarthyite (an American Senator from Wisconsin in the 1950s) wing in European politics.

As understandable as an anti-Soviet stance among those once occupied by the Soviet Union may be, it is this near exclusively West orientation that has harmed Latvia’s economic development most.

The orientation West has caused the Latvian people to think of themselves as a border state of the West, and, therefore, the geopolitical thinking among Latvians remains limited to the West, even as a strong pro-NATO bias bolsters the jingoist stance against the East and Russia.

As a result, it is not surprising that the Latvian government has no forward looking economic program or “vision” for Latvia.

Admittedly, there is some ‘noise’ due to the economic pressures now facing the Latvian people about the Latvian government being more cooperative with Russia. However, this is likely to be an initiative of the Swedish banks, which ‘occupy’ Latvia by way of bank ownership, forcing Latvians debt, then forcing them to deforest their lands, then buying the land at a fraction of its real price when the owners have spent their money. As the  news item (in Latvian) shows, the Swedes top off their ‘victory’ by selling Latvians cheap Swedish potatoes http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/254154. 

Lake Burtnieki (Magicmaker) looking west IV.

It does not take much to realize that Swedish interests may be trying to force Russia to recognize the Swedish ‘occupation’ of Latvia as de facto. If so, the Harmony Centre Party, in so far as its membership also has Latvians aboard, may be the only vehicle of resistance to such an ‘occupation’, both, in the interest of Latvians and as possible check mate for Russia.

If you wish to keep Latvian land for Latvians, here is a ‘For Sale’ offer http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ If you cut down the oaks on the land, you may well recover a part of your investment. The present owner refuses to destroy the 25 or so oak trees.

Highly recommended article by Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers: Latvia and the disciples of 'internal devaluation'  To quote: "Latvia; a country that has imposed one of the world's most brutal austerity regimes on its people and whose policies have pushed it to near demographic collapse."

[13] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (1)

Leaving home, the beginning of a journey from Latvia.

No Latvian who is aware that Latvia has a Foreign Ministry is unawares that the ministry is hardly a part of public consciousness, because it is profoundly dysfunctional, if it has any function at all other than a mouthpiece for NATO.

Moreover, the Latvian media hardly ever discusses the uses of geopolitics in Latvia, because it is brain dead when it comes to geopolitical thinking other than being anti anything East and serving as a distributor of NATO’s viewpoint. Being brain dead to geopolitics applies to both Latvian and Russian language media, because both are navel gazers of their particular ying, whatever the homunculus of their yang may be at the other end.

If someone wishes to dispute with me on the above, I will concede that the geopolitcs that I am bringing up is that it happens in the deep background, for example, in my brain and its image screen. As one Latvian to whom I mentioned the lack of geopolitical thought among Latvians told me: “Unfortunately, we have not yet progressed to geopolitical awareness”.

Tom Thumb, 2 years old, setting out from Latvia.

So, where does my geopolitical awareness come from? I presume that it comes from my maternal grandfather, who was one of Latvia’s first ambassadors to the Soviet Union/Russia, who theorized that the nations from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea ought to form a co-operative alliance for the sake of creating its own economic and political zone of influence.

Ambassador Karlis Ozols http://www.mfa.gov.lv/lv/Ministrija/vesture/4439/4476/  was profoundly pro-American. He was sent by the tsar’s war machinery from the famed Putilov factory in St. Petersburg, where he was an engineer, to Canada as an inspector of railroad wagons. KO became deeply involved in Latvian Relief when the fortunes of war changed. Subsequently, he met with then President Hoover, and when he was in semi-retirement, he recorded in his memoirs his ideas about the alliance which he saw possible between the nations that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea

[A sideline: ambassador Karlis Ozols claimed that he had seen men hung from lamp posts in St. Peterburg (at the Putilov factory in 1917).

Sister of Tom Thumb, Laura, leaving Latvia, too.

[While serving as Latvia’s ambassador in Moscow, Stalin declared him a person non grata, and he returned to Latvia. His hopes to further participate in the diplomatic field were dashed, when the Soviet Finance Minister Tsurupa stopped by to visit with him in Riga on his return from cancer treatment in Germany.

[Karlis Ozols' wife, my grandmother (Marija b. Ral  http://pipl.com/directory/name/Ozols/Marija ) a descendant of that tsar and tsar Kugushov), was close friends with the wife of Tsurupa, and Mrs. Tsurupa wanted to visit her friend. The women had met on Marija Ral’s uncle’s Kushov’s estate near Tombova. Tsurupa had served as knaz Kugushov’s bookkeeper, after they met in Siberia, where both were serving prison sentences for unfriendly acts vis a vis the tsar. Knaz Kugushov had not lifted his cap to the tsar during a student inspection visit.

Mother and Baby Thumb leaving Latvia behind.

[Karlis  Ozols agreed to the visit of the Tsurupas as their personal guests, even as he knew how ticklish politically it was. The Latvian media got hold of the news, created a public atmosphere that suggested that KO was a pro-communist, and this terminated for him a further career in the Latvian diplomatic corps. His personal tragedy was that he had hoped to become Latvia’s Foreign Minister in the future as he was in good standing with then President Chakste. As the link to the Latvian Foreign Ministry tells us, he was shot in a Moscow prison in 1941; so much for the Latvian press.]

Krishyan, left, arriving at RIX.

The death of geopolitical thought in Latvia is one of the accomplishments of the Latvian Trimda-Exile, the McCarthyite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy wing of Latvian politics. While the McCarthy perspective on communism was a natural for those who had fled the communist holocaust and arrived in the United States of America in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it destroyed the possibility of a variety of geopolitical views among Latvians. When the Soviet Empire fell in 1991, all Latvians had for a geopolitical perspective was the one that was Trimda-Exile bred, fed, and sanctioned.

Karlis Ozols geopolitical perspective was sabotaged by the immaturity grown of navel gazing narcissism infecting the nations in the north-south corridor containing the nations that run from the Baltic region to the Black Sea. The instruments of brain deadness or at best of brain atrophy persist to this day in the Latvian government, even while KO’s perspective is probably moot at this point in time and history.

While the Latvian Foreign Ministry during President Karlis Ulmanis time was neither forward looking or had an imaginary worth speaking of, the Latvian intelligentsia was not yet so repressed and bereft of views on Latvian geopolitics as it is under today’s NATO regime.

Krishyan, Emil, and Laura, fingers crossed, on October 24, 2011.

It is interesting that in the fall of 2011, at the very time that a political coalition is being created to form the next Latvian government, the McCarthyite viewpoint remains prominent, this time not fingering possible communists in Holywood, but the Unity Party led Nationalist čoalition government in Riga fingering the Harmony Centre.