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."

[12] Darkness Seen Through Tiresias’ Eyes (9)





On the list of lobyists in Latvian government who are suspect of collusion with Swedish banks now comes Zatler’s Reform Party with Daniels Pavluts, currently employed by Swedbank.

While the Swedish lobbyist (possible) President Andris Berzins put a sheet of celophane between Pavluts and himself by saying that he was not so certain about Pavluts, he did not say what the uncertainty was about. Avoiding mention of Pavļus Curriculum Vitae leads to such absurdities as wondering if the reason is the candidate's sex.

So much for a president who does not know that he is standing on a silver platter that shines like a mirror and projects doubles for the benefit of the public.

Nevertheless, how about coming to high office under the suspicion that one is a lobbyist for a foreign country? Surely that is a suspicion that should be closely examined, one that cannot be turned away by any maneuvre. This is why in democratic countries the presidency has several nominees, and they are closely examined and discussed by the media—unless it is in Latvia.

The Latvian media is as opposed to Russian bankers as it is in favor of Swedish banks and Swedish profits. The exploitable and underserving Latvians are not ever a corporation, but pushed in a pile under a blanket featuring the title--“populists”.

Cloud II

The Latvian media hangs populists out to dry by the means of the neet trick of referring to them without any suggestion what it is referring to. Even so, by a nose-down inuendo,“Populist” and “populism” are words that ryhme well with “evil” or “dirty hungry unemployed alcoholic” and worse. It should not be hard for the Latvian televised media to find every Latvian politician today denouce “populism” many times over.

In short, the parliamentary democracy practiced in Latvia is led by pure white washed directors of presumptions. The directors—the President, the Prime Minister, Ministers and other favorites—have their “fractions”, which word conveniently masks the absence of any political parties.

One “fraction” phenomenon is the ZZS (Greens and Farmers) solidarity party. The unique thing about this is that the Greens are completely subject to the Farmers. This is one reason why the forests of Latvia are being cut down with little sense of responsibility. There are no Greens in the Green fraction, and many farmers do not much care about forests if only because forests take land from those who mime the hunger of a goat.

Cloud III

The same applies to Latvian politicians and their fractions vs the Latvian populists, whoever they may be.

In any event, the nomination of Pavluts by the Zatler’s Reform Party is one of those awkward give-away hickups made by people who are heart and soul liberal neo-capitalists with a heart full of crocodile tears.

This is not to say the President Andris Berzins cannot make himself a hero by resigning (it would be a surprise and certainly trump former President Zatler’s Presidential Directive #2) and calling for direct elections of the President. Incidentally, it would be worth while for Latvia to hold Presidiantial Primaries as they are in the United States.

Cloud, south of Burtnieku lake, Friday, October 21, 2011 IV

It is past time to winnow from office those of suspect reliability, as they are suspect witnesses to office responsibilities. The evaluation of that responsibility is not for today’s political fractions, but for the populist eqivalencies currently being denied existence.

PS An interesting article from Stratfor, click here. Especially interesting and informative is the part relating to the Baltic countries toward the end of the article, re the new banking 'empires', Sweden including. Significant geopolitical observations.

[9] Darkness As Seen Through Tiresias’ Eyes (6)

Tiresias' eye over Tiresias' house.

The perfect Latvian lobby for Swedish bank interests:

Latvian President Andris Berzins

Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis

Latvian Speaker of the Saeima Valdis Zatlers

Latvia Bank President Ilmars Rimševics

Latvian Finance Minister Andris Vilks

Latvian Economic Minister Vjaceslav Dombrovskis; utt.

The above lobby is the dream team of Swedish banks. The qualifications of said as lobbyists have been written about in previous blogs.

The readers should also note that the above mentioned have their local headquarters in Riga. Their ‘far abroad’ headquarters are likely in Stockholm, Brussels, London, Washington, and not surprisingly other places, among which surprising other is Tallin, Estonia.

Tiresias in his car.

The latter emerged during the past week, when Tomass Ilvess, the newly elected President of Estonia, arrived in Riga for a visit with the Latvian President Andris Berzins a bare seventeen hours after he was elected for the second term to the office.

While the Estonian President insisted that he did not mess in Latvian internal politics, the themes that he brought up for discussion in the press proved anti-populist in the extreme http://www.diena.lv/diena-tv/politika/ilvess-velas-lai-latvijas-valdiba-stradatu-ar-skatu-uz-eiropu-13908597. In other words, I love the Latvian government and want to make sure it loves me, but only on the condition that the Latvian government does not play populist footsee with its people [which maybe contrary to the interests of the Estonian elite].

For one, President Ilvess told the Latvian President and the Latvian people (via the media) that the Estonians had the European Union and NATO dear to their hearts, and would be unpleasantly surprised if the Latvians were to begin to think otherwise http://www.delfi.lv/news/national/politics/ilvess-igaunijas-intereses-ir-latvijas-sadarbiba-ar-es.d?id=41122153 .

Ilvess also came to lobby for the Rail Baltic line, making no mention on the Riga-Moscow line http://bizness.delfi.lv/biznesa_vide/levitins-riga-maskava-projekts-nav-politisks-tam-ir-ekonomisks-pamatojums.d?id=37875151 , the latter which—an East-West orientation—is of greater economic importance for Latvia http://bizness.delfi.lv/biznesa_vide/igaunijas-prezidents-apliecina-rail-baltica-svarigumu-un-mudina-latviju-iesaistities-aktivak.d?id=41197953 .

Tiresias is not completely blind I.

While the Estonian President did not present himself as a messenger of Swedish interests in a direct manner, the message was clear in his elitist and  overtly anti-populist http://ltvzinas.lv/?n=video&id=5452 stance. In short, if the Latvian government does not follow his point of view, which is likely the Swedish point of view, then the Latvian government ought take an as anti-populist stance as his own.

At issue is of course the fact that an improved (fast) Riga-Moscow railway link is more important to the Latvian people than providing the Stockholm-Helsinki-Tallin trail an extension through Riga to Warsaw and the rest of Europe. At the expense of being crude: Surely the state of the Latvian peoples pocketbooks comes before that of Tallin.

The Latvian and Estonian, not to mention Swedish, elitist interest inroads into the interests of the populists of Latvia is what the current coalition forming among political parties is all  about.

President Ilvess of Estonia has many Latvian friends in the Latvian government and media in that they also are anti-populists in extreme.

Let me make a note here about the meaning of “populism”.

Tiresias is not completely blind II.

According to some political experts, the word ‘populism’ is fuzzy in the extreme in most circumstances (the Latvian politicians and media being a case in point in which the word takes on its ‘fuzzy’ meaning). On the other hand, the word takes on a precise meaning the moment its underlying fuzzy meaning connects with a budding or mature antagonism among various groups that may or may not make alliances among themselves as political equivalencies. These political equivalencies may be either right or left leaning. 

In the Latvian case, the establishmentarian anti-populist orientation is based on a fear of populism-left, while it is paradoxically bolstered by accusations of being populist-right by groups that are not ‘native’ to the land for anymore than two generations. Ipso facto, ‘populism’ becomes a word beat upon by the Latvian ‘elites’ rather than the ‘elites’ being criticised and opposed by Latvian populists.

Thus, the 1% of Latvian elites are able to repress 99% of Latvians, so to speak, without much trouble. One reason is that the majority of the 99% continues to identify with the ‘the natives’ who have inhabited Latvia for three generations or more.

Tiresias alive and murdered.

However, suddenly, there comes one President Tomass Ilvess of Estonia to tell the Latvian populists that Estonian-Swedish interests come before theirs; moreover, the Latvian government agrees with the Estonian President because it is oriented much like him. For proof, go to the beginning of the blog and read the list of direct and indirect Swedish lobyists in the Latvian government.

What in the world do the Latvian people do now? Are they not between a rock and a hard place? If they now turn from the ‘right’ where they are accused of being, do they not run into the no less false ‘left’ that has been assigned to the people who are in Latvia two generations or less?

May not the interests of the Latvian people demand an altogether different orientation than the one being pushed on them by Riga, Tallin, Stockholm, not to mention Brussels et al? And what about the pressures from Moscow?

The Destroyer of Forests on the rack.

Incidentally, Latvia has lost about 500,000 inhabitants since it became an independent country. The government’s policy in not encouraging motherhood, is not only a direct cause of suffering to mothers and their children today, but is a guarantee that the number of Latvians, whether right or left, whether one two or more generations in Latvia, will become 1.2 million in the next decade.

The house with the rainbow again.

Caught between the East and the West, must Latvians necessarily lean West? If the terminology keeps insisting in giving the “right” and “left” a traditional economic-sociological meaning, might not the Latvian populists find their own “left”, because at stake is not sociology but the survival of Latvians as a people, a culture?

# ...........................................

[6] Darkness As Seen Through Tiresias’ Eyes (3)

The Backyard Theatre opens with "This is my birthday"

If the reader takes time to review “Meltdown” (click on link) http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/2011914105518615434.html , a series of four 40+ minute clips about the mindset and events on the cusp of the 2^nd to 3^rd millennium of “our era” on Wall Street, he-she should have a pretty good reference from which to reflect not only on the arrogance prevailing in the financial markets in America and the world, but be able to correlate it to and have a ‘feel’ for the arrogance of the political leadership of the Latvian government from the moment of its renewal in 1991 until its collapse in cynical amorality and financial disaster in 2008. The disaster is of course ongoing.

In a peculiar way, the events on Wall Street were echoed in Riga, Latvia, not to mention all over Europe.

I am queen for a day.

Strange as it may seem, during the first twenty years after the rebirth of Latvia as an independent nation, its government has been little more than a squirming bundle of former Soviet apparatchiks confessing the sins of a failed Soviet economic system by kowtowing to the alleged wisdom embodied by the Harvard Business School and its alumni, the ‘Harvard boys’ http://www.thenation.com/article/harvard-boys-do-russia . No doubt, the hubris of Latvian-Americans smoothed the way of all things American slipping into Latvia without analysis of what the results of it could be.

Thus, like it or not, Latvian-Americans (and of course Latvian-Australians and Canadians et al) facilitated Latvian post-Soviet apparatchiks buying into the liberal neo-capitalist system. For their part, the apparatchiks did so not because they had any idea what the capitalist system was about, but because they were at the levers of power and, so it appeared, could leverage into their and friends accounts a great amount of unattached (not yet privatized) wealth.

My daughter-in-law is cook today.

The kolhoznic-apparatchics were left to their own devices. As a result of their acquisitiveness and lack of communitarianism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/ (no less lacking in Latvians abroad, except as memory of utopia), something like 300,000 to 500,000 Latvians left Latvia and sought economic refuge in other countries. Large areas of Latvia now stand empty or half-empty of people as a result.

My husband is cook today.

As one who once worked in a brokerage house in Boston and noted the cynical behavior of people in the business as early as the mid-1960s, this writer is not astonished by the sense of Armageddon that now accompanies the system’s collapse. The amorality and prevalent cynicism that came with the free market system astounded the writer even then.

If World Wars 1 and 2 had destroyed millions of lives in Europe and Asia, America had gone largely unscathed by them. While soldiers returning home from the battlefields abroad brought their psychic traumas with them, the American population as a whole knew of the violence only by way of newsreels. When the “iron curtain”, the “cold war”, Senator McCarthy and his communist witch hunts, and prosperity all took hold of the consciousness of America at the same time, violence was forgotten and replaced by a “never again” philosophy for the holders of which violence became a rhetorical device. In short, America was no longer cognizant of violence in real terms, but as something that happened elsewhere to others.

Latvians who arrived in America as refugees of war, at the same time as they fled Soviet occupation of their country, soon joined the American rhetorical war against violence. Though the Latvians had seen and experienced the violence of war first hand, they soon took advantage of the American dilemma of being entrapped in a perception of violence as a vicarious phenomenon.

We make a nice couple, don't we?

The Latvian-Americans, too, were soon fans of cowboys and Indians ‘bang ‘em up’ movies. And though they did not forget their experiences of war or lost memory of their lost loved ones, the Latvians abroad relatively soon became former refugees, American (or other) citizens, and their countrymen under the Soviets increasingly became a fiction. Idealized as more than real, the Latvians in Latvia http://www.flickr.com/photos/58596345@N04/5382738196/  became to the Latvians abroad http://www.weeklyvolcano.com/events/werecommend/2011/08/wingman -brewers-beer-fest-at-pastiche-in-tacoma/uploads/articles/15291-banner-pastiche625.jpg  a pastiche, and also more virtual than real.

It was during this time that the Latvian “populists” were lost to view and were presumed to have gone out of existence. A contemporary Latvian populist, an antagonist of the corrupt government in existence in our day   https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmQTVLcoPbCri_piINHuzabAOB-RebagqcmCbIa3wYib6SzcsXitebnUpPkbnsRRm1BD1m1-SZwELMrvdjaULu3NDirWKbLpaHn7T3OGnEvdgPUhFcTzRqi_9Lp0TtZ4Oub9XTPL9u-Q/s1600/Riga19%252C2011+050.jpg is never shown but as a vandal or worse. That is to say, according to the Latvian media, government, and most Latvians abroad to be a populist is to be un-Latvian in Latvia. To agitate for the populists “not [to] vote” is condemned as unpatriotic. Populists are presumed not to exist. Just a few days ago some Latvians from the North  American continent were calling on all Latvians to do their “It’s a Latvian thang” as if there are no populists who would resist the call.

This is my day to enjoy. No one can say "no".

In spite of the ‘heavy’ opposition to them , the populists in Latvia have actually been not in the background, but very much in the foreground as émigrés to Ireland, England, China, and all kinds of countries the world over. For most part, these populists are the poor of Latvia.

My son thinks he was born in Argentina.

Is this why the populist Latvians do not exist? Or is it that they are populist antagonists to the Latvians abroad, the very ones who bring them the delights of the West in ways that literally chases the natives out of their country? Do the post-Soviet politicians and media deny populists because these are the true not-voters from day one?

Today the piggy is the queen's!

Which of course leaves the question: What is the validity of the political coalitions currently being formed to take over the Latvian government if it and they do not recognize, let alone represent populists?

[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/