The Low Bar of Commendation

Late last week, Eritrea finally admitted to be participating in the Tigrayan genocide on the Ethiopian side of the border. After months of reports, claims, and denials, the east African country finally buckled, folded, and fessed up to taking part in what the UN has described as a meticulous effort to erase the Tigrayan people.

I wanted to try and write something positive for this week. I’ve been all about doom and gloom for a long time, and it’s getting tiresome. Even for me. And this is what I decide to write about.

I’m great at parties…

But behind the ghastly details of the aftermath of the Tigray war, there’s this silver lining to observe (and I’m going to glomp onto this silver lining like a wet tongue to dry ice in lieu of sunnier news because there’s fuck all else to be glad about): Eritrea has owned up to its blunder of sending in troops across a sovereign border to help a neighbour government commit mass murder on a minority.

We’re still talking genocide over here. Ethnic cleansing. Sectarian vengeance. We’re talking about a holocaust, according to reports filtering out of the media black-out of the region. And there’s not a lot for me to say about this sad story at the ass end of a civil war. It’s on the news. Look it up. There’re no snarky takes or funny quips to be made of it. But let’s take a breath and appreciate it when a government that has taken part of a genocide take even a sliver of responsibility and at least say that they’re going to back off. Eritrea owned to their crimes against humanity, even if only because they got caught red handed.

Because accepting your bummer, even of such nightmarish proportions, when you’re caught red-handed is not even close to something we can expect of governments in this day and age of the “fake news”.

Let me present to you some examples that will indicate just how rare this poodle, as we call it in media terms, has become…

The US has decided to start sanctioning and undermining the International Criminal Court because the ICC wants to investigate war crimes in Palestine and Afghanistan. Not even a shimmer of admittance of guilt can be found in the sullied White House. And rather than admit that they’ve behaved poorly, they prefer instead to prosecute and hunt those that tell the tale. Julian Assange. Edward Snowden. Reality Winner. Chelsea Manning. Et al.

In eastern Ukraine in 2014, local media began referring to “little green men” and “polite people” in Russian Federation military gear. Russia always denied involvement in the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, they still do to this day. But I yet remember a Swedish reporter on site that managed to exchange a few sentences with a small group of these “polite people” at a fresh separatist check-point. The reporter asked them what they were doing, to which they responded that they were establishing a new border. When she asked where they came from, seeing as their uniforms were without insignias, they just laughed at her and told her that “we’ll never tell”.

Russia still denies involvement in the creation of the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. Russia also denies that it’s anyone’s business that they’re currently, some seven years later, amassing military might across the Ukraine border. Just as they’ve denied the Skripal and Navalny poisonings. And just as they deny involvement in the 2014 ammunition depot explosion in the Czech Republic. Russia does its best Nixon-impression and denies everything, no matter how brazen they behave.

And let us not forget China. Let us not forget the Uighur concentration camps, which the Chinese Communist Party vehemently denied the existence of. Until the evidence got too much for them, and they changed their tune and tried to rebrand their genocide as re-education. Because there is no war in Ba Sing Se.

But this was going to be a positive column! Yes! Positivity!

As we can see, denial runs deep in international politics these days. If you deny something long and hard enough, you can hope to create enough buzz about it to mask your actions in a bubble of plausible deniability. It’s bullshit, but the perverted trend of “fake news” will carry it enough to give your internet trolls some elbow room. It’s a short-term effective strategy, though history is unlikely to look kindly upon the practise.

But Eritrea didn’t do that. They could have kept denying they were involved in the mass-rape and executions of the Tigrayan people in Ethiopia. But they didn’t. After multitude reports and witness accounts from the Tigray region, they owned up to it. At least to being there, on the wrong side of the border.

That’s how low the bar of commendable behaviour is set nowadays. All you have to do is to admit that you’re behaving like scum to get a pat on the back. So, pat-pat, Eritrea. You’ve earned yourself a cookie. Hope you’re proud.

Never tell me I can’t look at the bright side of life.

/Sebastian Lindberg 19/4-2021

Just let them have more Kool-Aid

Quarantine’s rough on everyone. Jobs are lost, people are getting the jitters staying at home, and mental health is even harder to maintain when you’re locked up inside than it was before. But Social Distancing seems to be working to slow the spread, even if it’s not nearly enough for some health care services around the world.

It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how things could get worse. Unless you’re living in the Fragmented States of America. Then, over the weekend, it got real easy to imagine how things could get worse, as the most belligerent parts of the nation brought guns to a epidemiological fight.

All across the US, people took to their cars and their MAGA shirts and hats to close down their cities and towns in an effort to protest and threaten their leaders to cease the shut-down in effect. Some even brought their obscene automatic rifles on display on the steps of civic buildings, chanting that not even a global pandemic and international health crisis would stand in the way of their corn-syrup-soaked privileges. In Denver, Colorado, it even went so far that the already beleaguered health worker professionals had to leave their posts to perform a silent counter-protest; blocking the Trump-fanatics in their rage-filled, slow-moving cavalcades.

Nurses and doctors who labour day and night to stem the tide had to go on strike to take a stand against the most putrid people of the Republic. That is absolutely staggering.

“Give me Liberty or give me Covid-19”, one plaque in Olympia, Washington, said. “Freedom or Death”, another one cried.

Okay then. Sure. These bible-humping, Trump-totting, ignoble ignoramuses can have it. It is just a shame that the Wuhan Virus isn’t lethal enough to plausibly make a dent in their numbers. Or discriminating enough to target these gaps in the gene pool. If people want to make themselves a part of the problem, then let them. I’m liberal enough to see the philosophical virtue in letting people put themselves at whatever risk they want. You can’t force people to not become part of the problem. All you can do in such circumstance is to also treat them as part of the problem…

Deny people health care if they won’t follow quarantine protocol. The US has already proven that it has no inherent problem with letting people die on the doorsteps of hospitals, and that its health care administrations are woefully unprepared to meet this challenge. I am sure that the insurance industry would just absolutely love to void a whole lot of flimsy insurance claims because the claimants have disobeyed the stay-home ordinances of many states. Cordon these cretin off from all the horrified masses that prefer not to subject their health services to back-breaking pressure. With any luck, the stress of having broken their contract with their government will send these profanely armed death-cultists and Rapture-chanters into a mindless frenzy and kill each other off.

You think I’m being too harsh? What we have here is a sizeable minority of the population that have turned ignorance and indignant rage into a revered virtue. Galvanized by a criminal and unconscionable president. These creatures are a threat to every single other being that comes close to them. As if their evangelical fanaticism wasn’t bad enough. As if their armaments and love for The Gun wasn’t bad enough. As if their rage and stupidity weren’t bad enough. Now they are on the verge of taking up arms against their elected leaders just because they want to make themselves carriers of a potentially lethal, nation-breaking virus…

Is it really I who am too harsh when I think that a vast majority of the US population would be better off without them? Am I the one being too harsh when I think the world would be better off without them? I am humanist and liberal enough to see the ethical problem of just smothering them like the political wild-fires that they are, but here we have a circumstance where they want to expose themselves and their loved ones to a decimation. To me, it seems like a problem that comes with its own solution.

Sure, the virus isn’t all that lethal. But its lethality increases with obesity, nicotine use, underlying health concerns, and when official health guidelines get ignored. Maybe Lady Luck and her a-romantic companion Statistical Probability would be on our side this time.

Of course, we would never be that lucky. No excommunication is going to happen. If they have to, I bet Jared Kushner and the Orange House would even use their “own federal medical reserves” to save a good portion of their precious base. No, with so many military grade guns in so many belligerent and angry hands, with white supremacist support from an orange despot and his converted political establishment, with a soft-core plague running rampant and supply shortages abound, with overworked government staff and idle hands among an insanely armed population, odds are instead high of insurrection. Civil war. Just like what the Orange Hydra has insinuated calls for from his ivory throne. Just like all the great Empires of Earth’s days passed, so do the Discordant States of America seem to be fated. In fire and blood, and not a clean sweep.

Either way, all us international onlookers can do is to by proxy experience all the shame that the ruling minority of the US seem completely alien to feel on their own, and to keep face-palming our way through the new millennium.

/Sebastian Lindberg 20/4-2020