Yes and no, Tom. If you pay attention to the LOL format, it allows for staying on the topic. Of course, anyone may side-slip and then pull back, or one may even sabotage a thread. When the latter happens, the originator may try pull the readers back to the theme (when he-she is at home) or restart the theme as if it is another topic. See how the latter will work with everyone running away from people who cannot stay with the topic.

Blog 45 on view at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Hopefully, I will be able to enter the rest of “Tiresias’ Revenge” over the weekend. Note that Thebes = Latvia (for argument’s sake). I hope to resume on the subject of populism more directly after “Tiresias’ Revenge” becomes reference material.

Directly on topic - someone (Džons) challenged your assertion about deforestation. You chose to not address that challenge directly other than to say that (my paraphrase) in a normal country ” someone” else would hunt up the numbers.

You made a serious assertion about deforestation and its impact on LV and Latvian rural life. Please back that up with something other than your anecdotes. I saw the same cut area and it barely registered. It certainly isn’t unusual to see cut forest in LV.

I then added my own little evidence/anecdote about how a client of mine (not on your rich side of that spectrum) had done two remarkable (from my perspective) things:
1. He chose (against inclination) to be totally legal in selling timber from/on his property.
2. He is selling the timber to invest in a business that will bring jobs and taxes to LV.

Please tell me how that is off topic? It is absolutely germane to your first assertion regarding deforestation and its results in LV.

Seems to me that you have a selection bias that is pretty common to the LV intelligentsia. You only see the things that reinforce what you want to believe already. When our friends at the IZM do that we call it “finding the evidence to suit the conclusion.” Doesn’t conclusion usually follow from evidence?

Non-ferrous metal extrusion can pollute the environment, especially ground water from its runoffs. You have not given any specifics about this great object of industry you are interested in, like where it is to be located, what materials will be used (aluminum? Plastic?), etc. So, I assume that you are a supporter of a potential polluter wanting to buy off the interests of Latvians as a whole (other nationalities of origin including) and deforestation of Latvia while pawning yourself off as goodie-gumdrops. No one who is not blind and can drive by and not see hundreds of hectares of empty space is a credible witness. Incidentally, absent more info, I assume your acquaintance will deforest 100 hectares of (oak, pine, spruce, birch?) and not replant it with new trees as is the wont these days.

Populism is not a political party. Populism is a presumptive hegemonic society, so created by the presumptions of government creating circumstances that divide a given society to a degree that a significant part of it finds it necessary to create a hegemony of its own. One of the greatest presumptions of the Latvian government is to rule without sacrifice, but with stuff lighter than air, such abstinence from sacrifice resulting in Alfa special unit being sent against peaceful if naïve protesters—as in Bauska. Is it not 91% of Latvians who distrust their government? You may consult the latest Delna study at http://www.politika.lv/temas/politikas_kvalitate/17657/

Blog 45 on view at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/  Hopefully, I will be able to enter the rest of “Tiresias’ Revenge” over the weekend. Note that Thebes = Latvia (for argument’s sake) and is suffering from a terrible plague. I hope to resume on the subject of populism more directly after “Tiresias’ Revenge” becomes reference material.

jandžs - write a ******** iesniegums to the forestry officials and ask what happened to the particular property that you are interested in. Make sure that you register the letter. They have to answer you. Take an action. If you are right about what you are saying, make a real public stink, using real information not assumptions.

I have lived here for 8 years and seen and see lots of cleared land. No more now than a few years ago. In fact, my brother-in-law who owns timber carrying trucks is complaining that work is way down. He is a LV too, trying to make a living and take care of his family. They live in Gulbene. Care to explain to them why you hate them so much? Are they elites?

Big assumptions (about stealing from LV and pollution) on your part, on what the hell do you base them? Please tell me what concrete info leads you to that. If you actually knew anything, you would know that a condition of my client getting legal certification for his timber is that he MUST replant. Did you get tickets and replant when you cut down trees to make your “temple”? Probably not.. just an assumption without any evidence.

Ya know, what? I do stuff. Arvis (my client) does stuff. We take actual, honest to god concrete action. No blogs with impossible to follow metaphors and mythical webs, actual honest to god work. Catch up please.

Your baseless attack are incredibly angering. You no more know me, than I know you. When I first read you, I really respected you and what you seemed to be trying to do. Today you seem closed off from anything that contradicts what you want to believe.

This site discusses the populism as it pertains to Latvian politics today. The following is a blog found at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
46 Tiresias Revenge (VI)

This blog continues a play called “Tiresias Revenge”.
The play runs from blog 40 through 47.  I wrote it many years ago using various English sources to arrive at my own text.  The reader will soon discover that I equate the plague that plagues Thebes with the plague currently infecting Riga and Latvia. While most people know Sophocles “King Oedipus ” in its Freudian interpretation, I present it from the point of view of profound political truths the play means to bring forward, but which for political reasons have been long repressed. For blogs discussing populism, go to blog 40 and before, then return read from #40 on up. Following blog 47, I will resume a less oblique discussion of populism and related subjects.

Scene Five

(The stage as before. Enter guards with goatherd.)

Guard: King Oedipus, here is your man.

King Oedipus: An old bony goat, is he not?
No matter. All I need is pluck his memory.

Strophe: We sacrificed our children,
then built Riga to their memory.
The city was sacred to us.
But sacrifice has ended now.
The Gods are offered a goat instead.
Poor goat! Betrayed Gods!

Antistrophe: Death comes when it will.
We die unknowing into unknowing.
We leave behind yet more unknowing.

King Oedipus: You, messenger from Lithuania!
Is this the man you spoke of?

Messenger: It is.

King Oedipus: Old man, what is your name?
Were you a goatherd working for King Laius?

Goatherd: My name is Gans.
Some call me Yahn. I was.

King Oedipus: Where did you herd the goats?

Gans: It was some distance from here,
near Latvia’s border with Lithuania,
in the dales of Mt. Citheron.

King Oedipus: Yahn, did you ever meet the man standing next to me?

Yahn: I don’t know.
I don’t remember.

To see the entire blog, play, or all blogs link to http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

This site discusses the populism as it pertains to Latvian politics today. The following is a blog found at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

Blog 47 now available: Tiresias Revenge (VII)

This blog continues a play called “Tiresias Revenge”. The play runs from blog 40 through 47. I wrote it many years ago using various sources for the text of King Oedipus, all scholarly books as I remember. Who would read this stuff? Yech! Nevertheless, I hope you read it. The people of Latvia and their descendants abroad should find it interesting and pertaining to them. For blogs discussing populism, go to blog 40 or before and following 47.

Scene Five (Continued)

(Tiresias crawls forward.)

Tiresias: Do you, King Oedipus,
really believe that a man untested by fate
has an eye for truth and is worthy to be King?
You may pretend,
but unless you offer
yourself in self-sacrifice,
Latvia will lose respect for truth
and live in a world out of touch.
A plague plagues Latvia,
because of you, King Oedipus.
You killed not only our Gods,
but King Laius, your father, to top it.
To cleanse the world of your crime,
you must offer your life in payment.
You have not done so.

King Oedipus: I rescued Latvia’s children from the Sphinx.
All Latvians are grateful to me.
What do you mean, I killed my father?

Tiresias: You were born,
King Oedipus, son to a king
to be his heir if you had accepted
the sacrificial role of a God.
This is how cities are made and people bonded.
We, even I whose eyes you destroyed—
welcomed and welcome still
your rescue of our children.
But you refused further responsibility.
You have not kept your promises
to keep Latvia a country
that serves its people.
You have no authority over us,
but such as you may coerce from us.
You are no living memorial to your forebears.
I am come to call you
unworthy of such great glory.

King Oedipus: Monster theologian!

Tiresias: Had you survived on the mountaintop,
you would have had claim
to become King Laius’ heir.
Instead, your mother feared for you.
When I carried you to the mountain,
she screamed as one who had near lost her mind.

King Oedipus: You took me to be sacrificed?

Tiresias: As tradition required and
as your father asked me to do.
Your mother insisted I let her watch over you.
I agreed—if she sat naked
and offered herself to the Sphinx
if the Sphinx came and found her pleasing.

To see the entire blog, play, or all blogs link to http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

The people of Latvia and their descendants abroad should find it interesting and pertaining to them.

Why should they find it interesting and pertaining?

The blogs 40-47 concluded my interpretation and rewrite of Sophocles’  Oedipus Rex. The discussion of Populism vs the hegemonistic Latvian Right Wing resumes with the following.

NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
48 Latvians Demand

As we see from “Tiresias’ Revenge” (blogs 40-47), Oedipus is the main personage in a play-story about the whence of political authority. The mother and son relationship that is featured so prominently in the West because the relationship includes a sexual relationship as well, is but to illustrate that in a spectrum of relationships this is also possible. More important, however, is the fact that when Anyone (in this instance Oedipus) is born into a cultural space that allows anyone to become President, the consequences will be catastrophic unless the President in return for his privilege to office, sacrifices his-her life to secure for the next President the trust necessary to govern the country (Thebes-Latvia).

Oedipus’ failure to understand the reasons for the plague that is haunting Thebes brings on the plague with increasing intensity, particularly in his own extended family relationships. Because of Oedipus failure to risk sacrifice and as a result of ignoring arguments that claim the indispensability of self-sacrifice, twelve deaths take place.

The dead are

1. the baby who is left in place of Oedipus on Mt. Citheron;
2. King Laius, unknowingly killed by Oedipus, but the clash most likely arranged by Iocaste, wife and mother;
3. King Laius’ bodyguard who witnessed the King’s killing—murdered arranged by Iocaste;
4. the king of Corinth, probably poisoned by Merope, his wife, upon her concurrence with Iocaste’s suggestion;
5. Tiresias, the seer, probably killed by Iocaste’s hirelings;
6-7. Otus and Ephialtes, the sons of Iocasta and Oedipus, twins, dead by each other’s hand;
8-9. Antigone, Oedipus’ daughter, and Haemon, son of Creon, poisoned by Creon;
10. Creon’s wife and Haemon’s mother;
11. Iocaste, Oedipus’ mother and wife;
12. Oedipus.

The story can be further restructured after these deaths, by having the new king, Creon, marry the surviving queen of Corinth, Merope. The reemergence of Ismene, the one survivor of the clan, can only occur after Creon and Merope are dead, too. Ismene, of course, symbolizes the ‘people’—whatever it is they emerge as after their continued exploitation (think of the sacrifice of children) by the Sphinx who contrary to impression never went away.

In blog 38, I wrote on the failure of the “more equal than others” group to lead society successfully, because though our civilization originated in an assumption that all human beings are economically equal, the group would remain more equal among the members of its club than outsiders would want it to become. Since perfect economic equality is an assumption that cannot be realized in society (outside the family circle) without self-sacrifice, that is to say, without a maturing of the individual into one who takes charge of his life including his death, society cannot be created except through violence. This is to explain why the “more-equal-than-others” group rules through violence.

Just a few days ago, I saw the following statement appear on a site on the internet: “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” said Brian Griffiths of Goldman Sachs.  http://tiny.cc/RRviK  As tolerated as this truism may be when the balance is guaranteed by a self-sacrificial Sacred King, the Latvian government has sent the majority of the people of Latvia into poverty by having put the leadership of the country into the hands of corporations. Indeed, this is why there is no “vision” of Latvia, but as a place for quick and short-term exploitation.

Continued at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

Tom,

I started another reply to Jandžs about his absurd comments on deforestation but after reading your recent exchanges with him have decided he is a loony and isn’t worth the energy to depress the keys.  Thanks for inserting a little more sanity into the debate.

To the forum administrators,

Isn’t there some sort of rule about engaging in the discussions here, and not just using this forum as a mirror site of one’s personal blog?

Džons

Džon Braun,

“I started another reply to Tom about his absurd comments on deforestation but after reading your recent exchanges with him have decided he is a loony and isn’t worth the energy to depress the keys. “

What took you so long.

Visu labu,

[size=3]This is blog 49. The theme will be continued on blog 50. The photos are of not infrequent sights from along the Latvian roadsides. Next blog photos of deforestation near Riga.

NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
49 A Floating Dead Fish (I)

It was W.C. Fields, the humorist, who had the line that a dead fish can float down river, but only a live one can swim upstream. The humorist also knew, as the photo at the link shows, that the way to get any government to spit out the ping-pong ball stuck in its mouth is to whack it on the back of the head with a ping-pong paddle. http://tiny.cc/rUb00 In this instance, the ping-pong ball stands for Latvia, which—one hopes—has turned out to be not to be quite as thin-shelled and crushable as the oligarchs first imagined, but a teeth-cracking stone egg instead.

No ‘normal’ Latvian would whack the head of a ‘live and normal’ Latvian government, of course. Nevertheless, given that the current government of Latvia can easily be recognized by the smell of corruption, a ‘normal’ Latvian (whoever he-she may be) may be turning to populism for help. Populism, like ancestor Gods, generally comes with a dozen heads or more. http://tiny.cc/lgocS  The heads are what in the language of political theory is known as ‘equivalences’. Equivalences are interests, who while generally going their own way, come together—align themselves as a single force—when some other group presumes to threaten their interests, maybe even existence.

The question of whether the heads of the Hydra can agree on who is their nemesis and focus their antagonism on the real target, is at this time an unknown. Unfortunately, up to now ......  ( for continuation see http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/  )

/size]

NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
50 A Floating Dead Fish (II)

The photos are of the “harvesting” of forests about 6 km from Riga on A2, the highway to Pleskava. The many gaps, some most likely hundreds of hectares, are clearly visible from the road.

(Continued from blog 49)

How did a people teaching themselves and those around them through their language a culture of endearment (a form of blessing everything that they came in contact with) become crushed by the gears of the ‘more-equal-than-others’ machine?

The answer is as simple as its history is lost: militant strangers coming from the west http://tiny.cc/nX7Vt , which put their faith in the sword and (in the case of today) the nuclear bomb, occupied the lands of the Balts and the Slavs. The Evangelist (re: Yang-elist), imbedded in the language and life-style of the arch-Christians through the endearing word (and, therefore, the very opposite of a militant manner of proselytizing “faith” was turned into a passive agent through the aggressiveness of neo-Christian evangelism. The faith of the culture of endearment that it would survive through abiding cultural consensus is, if not dead, then certainly critically challenged.

I noted in earlier blogs that the college of neo-Christians engineered the cultural shift when its members removed Jesus—once an arch-Christian priest of the college of Johns—to Heaven. Jesus went to Heaven because it makes a better prison. The princes and barons needed no Johns in Latvia or elsewhere in Europe blessing the people, making them into trusted members of Visums or Viss (Allness or All, respectively) or the Day (whence the name of Dievs/God) which included all Johns. Those “more-equal-than-others” needed their own God, even if he was to be put forward and defended with violence.

Visums as such was never God among Latvians, because it was taken for granted. Indeed, the inhabitants of Visums so reverenced and endeared it to themselves that endearment was embedded in the social fabric. Many will recall the fairy-tale about the ‘table’ (‘galds’ in Latvian) that become a ‘dear table’ (galdinsh). It is the same table or tablecloth (galdautiņš) that magically spread itself before a hungry saime and food drops out of the sky to fill everyone’s empty stomachs. The reverence for life and all that Visums contains attaches itself to all objects as another (a second) way of naming it: dear bread (maize = maizīte), dear honey (medus = medutiņš), dear butter (sviests = sviestiņš), dear roast (cepetis = cepetītis), etc. In other words, the endearing word is a word of prayer and hope that comes from a hidden but self-assured resident in us all.

Alas, this used to be true, but is no longer. Today no one knows what….

If you copy this blog for your own files, or to be forwarded, or its content is otherwise mentioned, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

The photos are of the “harvesting” of forests about 6 km from Riga on A2, the highway to Pleskava. The many gaps, some most likely hundreds of hectares, are clearly visible from the road.

You really are living in your own fantasy world - I see the same clearances and they are only a few hectares each.  It’s actually illegal to clear more than 5 hectares of contiguous forest at one time.  After such a clearance you need to wait 5 years before clearing adjacent forest.  I asked you before what evidence you had that the state was selling this timber, and you responded with anecdotal evidence that it was private individuals being forced to sell for financial reasons.

If one sits in a car that has the driver’s seat low, almost scraping the asphalt, one will see only the grass on the shoulders of the road, but if one drives a small van or sits in a bus, one will easily see through the Potempkin forests lining Latvia’s roadsides.

NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
51 A Floating Dead Fish (III)

On the 31st of October, the newly founded “novads” of Aloja, now a constituency of several former “pagasts”, came together for a “Citizens Forum” and listed what in their opinion were some of the most important issues for the new jurisdiction. The photos are of the Citizens Forums event in Vilzehni. About fourteen people were in attendance. Those attending split into small work groups. After listing the issues they believed to be important, the participants viewed what issues had been listed by other work groups.

(The following continued from blog 50)

It would be a mistake to see populism as some kind of a political party. It is not a political party, because it is much more. Unfortunately, in Europe, where parliamentary rather than direct democracy is the norm, dismissal of populism as a notion of cranks is common. However, there are times when populism becomes the enemy of all political parties, and parties become irrelevant to the steps people are struggling to make to break loose from the embrace of status quo, such as is currently holding the reigns of power in Latvia. http://tiny.cc/2zeWw

Populism is a genetically charged creature within a social body forever struggling for economic equality. This is because populism is rooted in human nature, while society other than the family is always an artificial construct and therefore virtual. Populism is of course also struggling for other things, too, but economic equality is the one desire all humans share in from the moment they seek their mother’s breast….

Given today’s political and economic situation in Latvia, the country has an opportunity to return to the most natural constituency—the smallest social unit—that nature provides humankind with, i.e., mother and child. Or is it the abandoned child? Can there be any other cause for Latvia’s precipitous fall (anyway you turn it) than an absence of moral intelligence in government? ….

These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you have read—you are encouraged to consider reading my blogs before and blogs hereafter. The following links reflect how I see matters a little more subjectively. http://tiny.cc/TEqkH ;  http://tiny.cc/eanvb ; http://tiny.cc/CJMtG 

If you copy this blog for your own files, or to be forwarded, or its content is otherwise mentioned, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/

jandžs -
In my eight years here I have seen lots of forest harvesting, some legal and a very little illegal. The view that you have seen is, and has been, pretty darn common in the backroads of LV. I could show you some places near Gulbene if you like. Places logged very legally and responsibly.

The pictures that you posted (and I have seen it from the high seat of a bus too) look like legal harvesting. Please provide some actual evidence of illegal harvesting. Have you petitioned authorities for info? Have you gone to the appropriate authorities to review documents? Have you reported your suspicions?

If you want more info on the state of illegal logging in LV, you might consider contacting WWF LV. A few years ago I helped edit a report in which the concluded that, because of end-user demand, illegal logging was a marginal factor. Maybe you should contact them, they continue to be very interested in this issue.