Some War Criminals Are More Equal Than Others

“The American principle that ‘no one is above the law‘ has been affirmed”, uncle Joe solemnly says, standing up there at the podium in front of those beloved stars and stripes, in reference to the historic conviction of ex-president Trump. “This is a cornerstone of America – our justice system!”, he continues, like explaining American Exceptionalism to a toddler.

Which is a beautiful sentiment. Shame though that the same “American Principle” doesn’t apply to Biden’s friends. For only the week prior, after the International Criminal Court sent out a warrant for the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden called the summons to answer the allegations of war crimes “outrageous“.

I’d list the war crimes that Israel is accused of committing in Gaza since October 7th (ignoring all the crimes committed for the past 70 years before that for brevity’s sake), but I can’t honestly be arsed. There are plenty. Targetting civilians, using starvation as a weapon, making land intentionally uninhabitable, displacing people, murdering children, et al. Just… search for “israel war crimes in gaza” and you’ll get plenty of responses from the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, and onwards. If you can’t see it; you’re closing your eyes. And though Bibi probably never pulled any triggers himself, or cranked the throttle of tanks to run over children, a country’s commander in chief is effectively responsible for its armed forces’ behaviour.

Bibi belongs in the Haague.

But it comes as little surprise that Biden doesn’t respect the international rule of law. His “American Principle” only applies where he is in control. Outside America’s borders, the US can, will, and should be permitted to act without any principles at all, according to the White House. Biden’s is not the first disdainful behaviour that the US has committed against the international community and the ICC in particular. And woe betide any sorry-ass motherfucker who ever even dares to suggest that US soldiers do evil things in the name of their sacred star-spangled banner while abroad.

All of which leaves us with just one question: What is Joe Biden? Is he simply a man so blinded by ego that he cannot conceive of himself as the villain in any drama, who rules by single-minded hypocritical tribalism without the fragrance of a thought as to right or wrong so long as he and his prevail? Or is uncle Joe quite simply a clueless idiot?

/Sebastian Lindberg 11/6-2024

A Hammer Always in Search for a Nail

Ding-dong, the terrorist is dead, yells the town crier. Another notch in the belt of the defenders of freedom in the twenty year old War on Terror. Another name crossed out on the infamous kill list. A big name. Al-Qaeda ideologue, strategist, and leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is dead.

And it won’t make a lick of difference.

I’ve come to understand that people have forgot the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the watershed moment that sparked this War on Terror we’ve had running for two decades now. Not so much those that were around, it was our Kennedy assassination after all, but most younger than I don’t understand what happened. They have taken the fallout as a status quo. Simply how the world works now. They don’t bother to know how a militant fundamentalist group opposing US imperialism hijacked four commercial airliners, slammed one into the Pentagon, one each into the two World Trade Center towers, and lost one supposedly on its way to the White House. It was a shock to the US. To the western world at large. A “fuck you” the size of the Pearl Harbour sneak attack that sparked the country’s involvement in World War II. And the US couldn’t handle it. So the War on Terror – a dirty, dirty war as portrayed by Jeremy Scahill – was started to compensate for their bruised ego, because I can’t fathom how exported death and untold destruction could ever bring back the 2’977 dead of the 9/11 attacks.

The US revenge machine produced a list. A list of justice. A list spanning decades, generations, and continents. During the Iraq invasion, a list of 52 people, from 2’s to aces, clubs to hearts, circled US army camps. But a list of 52 evolved, just as the US invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein for his alleged support of the 9/11 attacks and possession of WMDs evolved into an occupation of Afghanistan and a war on the world. A list of 52 became a hundred. A hundred became two hundred. Two hundred became legion. Every head struck from the list grew two new in its place. Failure, if your intent was to fulfil retribution. Success, if your intent is never ending war.

In 2011, then-US president Obama, ten years after the War started, could proudly announce that they had struck al-Qaeda poster-child Osama bin Laden from their swollen and swelling list of vengeance. Just ahead of a general election. In 2019, the Orange Hydra could stutter out at a press conference that the ISIS leader, and former Abu Ghraib prisoner, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been slain. Another big name off the list, also just ahead of a big US election. And now, Biden can mumble congratulations to himself and his administration for striking off another big name.

But the list never ends. US vengeance has become not an act, but a way of life. A murderous – a lucrative way of life. And with the death of al-Zawahiri I am prone to ask how many names will be added to the list to fill his void.

/Sebastian Lindberg 2/8-2022

A Voter’s Priority

So, some number of Americans survived Election Day. Well done. I bet that some will even survive the coming month of exhaustive media analysis, Republican legal complaints and lawsuits, not to mention evangelical numbnuts praying in front of election offices.

And as the votes get tallied, as the Biden campaign seems to be rushing ahead on the back of mail-in ballots, and as the Republican base can’t fathom the late surge in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, or even Georgia, the US may be turning the page on a very dark chapter of its short life span.

That is assuming, of course, that the gung-ho supremacist groups that the Orange Administration has been courting, like the Boogaloo Boys or the Proud Boys, because apparently it’s always “boys” with this chuckle-fucks, don’t up-end the prototype democracy with a dash of civil insurrection. Which is still a big assumption.

But on the back of this relief and disappointment of an election, one factor has cropped up as particularly interesting to me. Most polls just straight assumed that the Orange Hydra would be swiftly and unceremoniously punted out of office at the polls. It turns out though that most swing states were an awfully tight race. In some of them, the difference is but a few thousand, even a few hundred votes. After the Covid-travesty, the tens of thousands of lies, the “good people on both sides” overt support of racism, the Orange monster still held onto a lot of confidence among US voters. Which should, but certainly won’t, prompt the Democratic Party to do some serious soul-searching. How is it that their neoliberal politics and policies could just barely win by the skin of its teeth against a compulsive liar, a sycophant, a criminal, an authoritarian, a demagogue, a cognitively impaired chauvinistic pig?

It seems, according to some pundits, to stem from the fact that to the average US voter, none of those travesties are their biggest concerns. Because to the average voter, a global pandemic that kills some and leaves others potentially permanently brain damaged isn’t the biggest problem of their lives. Galvanized racism, sexism, and lgbtq-phobia isn’t their greatest concern. A destabilized world order, a trade war with China, and the squandering of diplomatic reputation isn’t their greatest concerns. Even the failing environment, causing storms, draughts, and continent-spanning wildfires isn’t their single most urgent concern. No, what turns out is the absolutely most important issue during an election for oh so many US citizens turns out to be the state of their personal wallets. Their own private bank accounts. Their income security. All other concerns are distant seconds, even the viability of the planet and their country as a habitat.

I think that says a lot about the condition of the nation state of the US. It is a society that is so desperately dependent on an income, on jobs and private assets, that not even a global plague can compete. That the US is so engorged in haywire capitalism that the average voter doesn’t give a shit how despicable you are as a leader, so long as you promise them a pay cheque…

Must be nice, non? Must be nice to have turned your citizenry into such desperate pawns that you can do whatever you want to them, treat them however callously as you wish, lie and cheat and steal from them, so long as they believe you can provide them with an income. Must be nice to have taught them that the only decent, the only truly “American” way to live is to slaver and beg for a slip of money at the end of a month or week of hard labour. It must be nice to lord over such an Objectivist utopia. Because as it turns out, if you’ve imprinted that notion hard enough into the mind of the average voter, you won’t have to supply any other services as a government. You don’t need to make sure that everyone’s fed, that everyone has a roof over their heads, or that everyone can get medical care if they need it. Give them a pay cheque, even minimum wage, and their desperation for another slip of credit will make them blind to anything else.

Perhaps this is why the projected nightmare of socialism haunts the mind of the “True American” as it does. The vilified notion of the “Handout” stalks among the downtrodden, threatening to turn the able-bodied worker into a beggar. Pay no mind to the fact that you’re just as much a beggar under the ultra-capitalist boot of the “American Dream”. Pay no mind to the fact that paying taxes can earn you subsidised healthcare just as well as you can “earn” it by remortgaging your house. Or by pawning off your kidney to afford a new liver for your husband, which has failed over the course of decades of eating corporate garbage food originally intended to keep livestock stupid and pliant.

No wonder “socialism” is so demonized in the US discourse. Even though public healthcare, education, housing, are all “socialist” ideas that have been adopted by otherwise capitalist governments and societies across the globe. But not in the US. Never in the US. Because if you undermined the desperation of the US voter, perhaps their leaders wouldn’t be able to lie, cheat, steal, grab a woman by the pussy, or fondle pre-pubescent children the way that they do. Perhaps, if the average voter didn’t have to fear for their life and well being, constantly worry that their inherently unhealthy lifestyle might send them into crushing medical debt, or slave away at the plant, or stress out over their private business endeavour, then they might notice such abhorrent behaviour. Maybe they’d even take umbrage with it? And maybe, just maybe, the pliant and gullible masses would start making demands of their government.

But of course, that’s not the reality of the United States of America. For so long as the average voter is more concerned with the state of their private finances, none of the details will bother them. Raging wildfires, unrelenting storms, pandemic plagues, senile and insane leaders, none of it will come close to the very private concern of the wallet.

Must be nice…

/Sebastian Lindberg 10/11-2020

An Open Letter to the USA on Election Day

It’s the first week of November, which makes it difficult to talk about anything other than one singular topic. Amidst earthquakes in Turkey, terrorist attacks against France, and Chinese “non-hostile” threats against Swedish business’, a typhoon wiping away the Philippines, and yet there’s one topic that irrevocably draws the attention. Namely; the garbage fire that is the US presidential elections.

Look, I’m not saying that the US presidential election of 2020 isn’t important. It is. I’m not saying that it’s not relevant to the rest of the world, because it is. Maybe it’s not on the top of the list for the million people fleeing the typhoon Goni, but it’s still a big deal. What I’m absolutely exhausted about is why it’s such a big deal.

US politics has been a shit-show for a long time. We in the rest of the world got tired of rolling our eyes at the ass-ended pageantry of the US’ prototype democracy decades ago. We’re really fucking tired of your shit. And whenever we’ve thought you’ve hit a new low, you deliriously lower the bar even further. Four years ago, we all thought you were having a Monty Python-esque giggle when you even entertained the notion of electing the Orange Hydra. And now, you’ve got a brand new chance to disappoint once more. And even in the best of circumstances, you’ll be electing someone who represents the old, dysfunctional, status quo all over again. The same dysfunctional status quo that brought us the war on terror, extra-judicial killings, and hushed-up environmental disasters.

Hark, US of A: You suck at democracy.

Which in itself is fine. Sort of. Democracy is hard. No one’s really very good at it. No one has managed to iron out the kinks and make it corruption-proof. Representative democracy carries with it issues that humanity seem absolutely incapable of dealing with.

No, the fact that the USA suck at democracy isn’t exclusively why it’s so fucking tiresome to keep being brought into your sickly loop every four years. It’s also the fact that you just can’t seem to stick to your lane. Mind your own business. It’s not just that you keep shitting your bed; it’s that you also seem hell-bent on soiling everyone else’s. You’re like a toxic relationship that just won’t go away. And even if it’s your Gods-given right to make a mockery of yourself, the rest of us, from the Middle-East to Europe to South-East Asia, are so fucking tired of being dragged down with you.

If we tie your squat of North America to a rocket and launch you to the moon, where you could throw your own faeces around like you seem want to do, we would. In a heartbeat. But even though you seem intent on believing that the world revolves around you, it doesn’t. You don’t make a mockery of yourself in a vacuum. And if you imploded like by all rights you appear intent to, it would leave an awful space on the world scene. A space that both Russia and China are salivating over. And I hate to admit it, but I believe those options are worse. Even worse than you, USA.

By the time this column goes up, election day will be upon you, USA. Whether I like it or not, it’s not just an important day for you, but for all of us. So, kindly; please get a grip. Don’t implode. Turn the page. Stop painting with orange. Do better. Stop digging.

For even though most signs point to your imminent demise in a cataclysmic civil war, we would very much like for you to surprise us at a moment in time when very little that you do seems to be able to surprise us any more…

/Sebastian Lindberg 3/11-2020

The TikTok Takeover

So, Microsoft wants to buy the new golden child of social media; TikTok. Right as the Orange House is threatening to ban the service for US users. Right as TikTok’s owner, Chinese ByteDance wants to flee the imperial dominion of the “People’s” Reoublic of China for a London HQ. TikTok, and ByteDance with it, having been accused of gobbling up big data for the exclusive use of the Chinese Imperial propaganda machine. A national security concern, the Orange House calls it…

There’s a lot to unpack there. A lot of very murky water…

So, for anyone that’s older than 25, what the fuck is TikTok and why the fuck should we care? Well, it’s the new hotness. What all the kids’re into these days, along with sniffing glue and setting fire to tire swings. What the hell do I know. It’s a social media short video app. If you’ve seen Sarah Cooper‘s spot-on Trump-impersonations, you’ve seen a TikTok video and influencer/comedian at their best. It’s the international version of Chinese “Douyin”, owned and operated by the Chinese software company ByteDance. It’s a big hit with the kids, enjoying a 2 billion global downloads benchmark, having absolutely exploded in Q1 2020.

Sounds like a big hit, so what’s the problem? Well, as with everything Chinese, there’re rumours, reports, and grapevine prattle that TikTok is collecting massive amounts of user data, even outside the app itself, and sending it to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS for short). Just like what the American NSA has been doing for near on 20 years now. It seems common knowledge among industry giants and international businessmen that if you ever do business with Chinese companies, you should expect a decent chunk of industrial espionage. It’s just part of the cost of doing business with the country, and getting into its 1.4 billion people market.

So, yeah, it stands to reason that TikTok, just like any social media, is using your patronage to let governments manipulate and control you. That’s just how social media operates. Regardless if it’s Chinese or American social media.

So what does Microsoft want with your funny vids dispensary? Supposedly, according to public media reports, it’s the ad revenue they’re after. Microsoft has been lagging behind IT giants such as Facebook and Google in recent years, and haven’t quite been able to compete with their own platforms and efforts to insinuate themselves in the social media frenzy. In 2016, Microsoft bought professional social network LinkedIn in a risky bid to get into the racket. Now, the old beast seems poised to snatch up TikTok as well (with the vague posturing and support of the Trump family, for whatever reason they’re involved).

But the economic analysis we hear of such an aquisition from mainstream media only concerns itself with the ad revenue side of making money off of social media. And fair dinkum, that’s the main source of revenue that social media has been open with. But no one seems interested in the other side of the business. The potientially much, much, MUCH, bigger business of Big Data. Big Data to shape and mold countries and demographics to control elections, opinions, and the general zeitgeist.

Seems weird? It is. But it is happening. We saw it with the Brexit election, and Cambridge Analytica’s involvement therein. We saw it in the 2016 US general election. And it is surely used and utilized world wide. It turns out that Big Data, the massive amount of statistics that social media platforms seem uniquely positioned to collect from us, may be the true Orwellian way to predictably control large demographics that suffer from the misconcieved impression that they live in a democracy.

And Microsoft is bidding big on getting into that game. For it is not ad revenue that makes social media big business. It is personal data that makes it big business. And Microsoft must be gagging to become a big player again.

So what? Google and Facebook are already thinly veiled extensions of the US political establishment, poised and active in trying to shape world demographics to benefit US interests. What’s the difference, whether China or another American interest sources our lives for their political benefit? None too big, truth be told. US and China both are authoritarian bullies, monsters and imperialists that vie for world domination. But it is curious, that no matter how many talk about a possible merger, about TikTok’s and ByteDance’s efforts to westernize and escape suspicion of Chinese espionage, about Microsoft’s social media initiative, we hear nothing about the pink elephant in the room: Big Data. And what Satya Nadella and his executive officers might do with comparative influence of right-wing Zuckerberg or US State Department co-pilot Sundar Pichai, we can only curiously guess at. But one bet that seems reasonable is that he’ll avail Microsoft’s growing social media data reserves to the highest bidder, as opposed to China’s singular greed. And frankly, I can’t tell which is worse…

/Sebastian Lindberg 4/8-2020

A Clean House?

Trump just flipped off the International Criminal Court, ICC for short. Which is not to be confused with the International Cricket Council, which is a very different thing. They are the safeguards against crimes against humanity, the supposedly real-life Justice League. The International Criminal Court that is; not the International Cricket Council, because that’d be silly. And the Orange Hydra just flipped them off last Thursday, and his foreign policy-guy, Pompeo(us), threatened sanctions against individuals within the court.

So what?

So… war crimes are bad, m’kay? Although it might take some philosophical wrangling to come to the conclusion that there can be agreed-upon rules to something so barbaric as war, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to agree that some jerky stunts are just simply BM and shouldn’t be condoned. Firing at people with 50 cal., using chemical weapons, targetting civilian populations, rape-and-pillage tactics, all a real bad look for humanity at large. Certainly behaviour that run tantamount to whatever we consider the civilized human creature to be. And just after the “War to end all wars”, and then one that came right after that, we all sat down and agreed on what methods of mass murder we would keep and which we would punt into history. Seemed like a good plan. Everyone agreed. And that was that.

Well, at least right up unto the point where people started doing all the real bad things again, not being satisfied to stick with the just-sort-of-bad things we agreed to keep doing to each other. And thus, the ICC was founded. To round up whatever cretins broke our rules of war, try them, and sentence them.

Turns out, there are few certain someones in the world that never ratified the ICC’s authority back in the day. The US is one such nation, despite the fact that the US was instrumental in forging the ICC in its work with the Nuremberg trials, which may have been the watershed moment for an international court of law. But the US has never subjected themselves to the court they helped start.

So, why is this a problem now, that the Orange Hydra has to address it? Well, one might assume that he’s trying to rally support from his military, a military increasingly disgusted with their commander in chief, as it’s being deployed in Sith-like style against its own population. Or maybe he’s just using the controversy to shift focus away from his sinking domestic political ship. Or maybe it’s the fact that an ICC prosecutor and investigator is getting mighty curious about the US activities in Afghanistan post-9/11. Either case, just as the ICC are finally beginning to investigate Team America, World Police, for war crimes, Trump tries to levy economic sanctions against affiliated individuals.

What’s the defence? Well, according to the Orange House, the ICC has become politicized. That the Court subverts American sovereignty (despite the fact that alleged war crimes were committed in a dubious invasion against a foreign sovereignty). That the ICC is just intended to mete out justice in failed states; states that cannot be trusted to keep their own house clean. Basically, the Orange House is levelling the same kinds of criticisms against the ICC like any authoritarian bully would, echoing the tantrumtastic mewlings that you might expect from countries such as China, North Korea, or Russia.

Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq, early 2000’s: A US-run detention camp in the forge-hot aftermath of 9/11, where prisoners were tortured, raped, sodomized, and murdered by the US servicemen and women stationed there. A travesty after which 17 soldiers and officers where removed from duty and court-martialed. Two of which were sentenced to prison. But only after the conditions at Abu Ghraib broke publicly. Even though internal memos surfaced, that had been reviewed by the contemporary US president Bush Jr. that explicitly described and sanctioned above mentioned “enhanced interrogation methods”.

A little township, Yemen, 2011: Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki is killed by a US drone strike. Cause of death is listed as “AGM-114 Hellfire”. Just another name stricken from the dreaded kill-list that the US had begun after 9/11, but which only grew and grew with each military assassination. All done under the cover of the unassailable “War on Terror”. What was so different with al-Awlaki? He was a US citizen. Born in 1971, Las Cruces, New Mexiko. He was never tried in a court of law. He was never judged by his peers. The US government has never provided proof of al-Awlaki’s relationship with any terrorist organization. And the national hero Barack Obama personally signed the kill order, despite years of judicial protests that killing a US citizen without a trial would disqualify the very tenets that the nation was built on. Two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman, born in Denver, Colorado, was also killed. 6 years later, Obama’s successor, Donny Trump, would order the murder of al-Awlaki’s then 8-year old daughter. Another name scratched off the infamous kill-list.

Balad, Iraq, 2005: 19 year-old LaVena Lynn Johnson, private first class of the US Army, was found dead in her tent at the army barracks. The coroner’s report stated that she had a broken nose, black eye, loose teeth, a gun-shot wound, and her genitals had been burned away with corrosive chemicals. The US Department of Defence ruled LaVena’s death as “suicide”, closed the case, and moved on with their day.

America. Would you say that you keep a clean house?

/Sebastian Lindberg 15/6-2020

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

The American Way: A Two Lane Street in Just One Direction

American democratic radio host Howard Stern and Hillary Clinton had a bit of a giggle this week, hadn’t they? In a long-form chat session on Stern’s show, uploaded to Youtube on the 6^th of December, they, among other nuggets, made fun of progressive Bernie Sanders.

“Chocolate milk for everyone!”, they laugh as the liken Sander’s drive for free college to the disingenuous chanting of an elementary school council nominee.

Pretty tone-deaf and out-of-touch with the reality of most Americans – fuck, most people world-wide – if you ask me. There they lounged, a multi-million dollar multimedia celebrity with a political juggernaut the likes of which hasn’t really been seen since the Kennedy’s, reminiscing that when their children went to college, the costs never really made a dent in their vast fortunes. Millionaires that chuckled that it’s easy to promise everything for nothing.

Wow.

To give a short explanation, since neither a radio-host or a political legend seem to understand political theory: A government provides basic human services through taxation. Okay Hillary? Alright Howard?

It’s such a fucking shame, isn’t it. That the American people only have two choices in leadership. One; neo-liberal, neo-decadent, hogs that wallow in their uncounted wealth, completely disassociated from the economical plight of their subjects, stuffing their faces with grapes like what the ancient senators of Rome were still doing while the city burned around them. And on the other hand, racists and molesters that cling onto power by any means necessary, draping themselves in family values and Christianity to hide their naked villainy, not dissimilar to something out of a Shakespearian fever nightmare.

And that’s not taking into account all the sins these two seemingly disparate camps of political forces share, like warmongering, neo-colonialism, and prospects of dominion over an ecologically failing world.

Between these two rotting thrones, it’s not easy for an American with even a sliver of decency to elect a four-year-reign-king or queen. You might almost think that the Republicans and Democrats have syndicated being greedy pricks, joining forces to discredit and disbar anyone from either respective camps with an honourable point of view. Even more so since it seems to be in both parties self-interest to stoke the fires of partisanship, to polarize the population against one another, to make every issue a “for us or against us”-argument.

But it’s easy to complain about politics. Not to mention politicians… But what can a poor voter do? It’s not like you can shame these shameless cretins off their podiums by deciding not to vote. That’s how you get the likes of the Orange Hydra oozing on the throne.

Maybe, an American voter should take a step back. Try to dislodge themselves from the identity politics that the two parties have gorged themselves on for so long. Try to separate what one thinks is important in life, and what one thinks that a government should and should not do. Why we should have a government at all. Is the point of a government to provide a framework for clever entrepreneurs to fatten themselves on those with less initiative? Is it to provide legal assistance and support for basic services to gouge the citizens? Is it to project force out across the globe to shape and mold the many culture’s on this planet according to its own benefit?

Or is a government’s job to supply the citizens with conditions and services that the people want and need to carry on living with a little bit of dignity? Like clean water, electricity, medical assistance in times of need, education, or protection and security without destabilizing the rest of the world or demonizing and hunting certain domestic demographics in the process of providing it? Because the American government, under the flipping administrations of the two-party system isn’t doing most of that stuff any more…

Maybe, in this coming king-election, the American voter shouldn’t decide between one of these two complicit and fetid husks. Maybe the American voter shouldn’t be dazzled and blinded by all the identity politics and showmanship on display, but rather ask themselves what exactly they want out of their government. Whether or not they want a government that features their own personal preference in corruption, or if they want a government that does what a government should do. One that supplies the citizens with basic services and freedoms.

I get it. It’s scary to chose something new. I mean, look at the mess you’re in right now, with the Orange Hydra mucking absolutely everything up. Truth be told though, Trump was never something new. He just said he was, and a little less than half of America bought into the charade. It can be scary to make another venture outside of the true-and-tested filthery that is the American political pageantry.

But try to, even though it’s scary. Try to ask yourself if you really want to empower disconnected rich pricks in ivory towers to laugh at your crippling economical hardships? Do you really want to elect supremacist pigs that strive to outlaw basic human rights?

Or, do you want your children to breathe clean air? Do you want your medical treatments not to send you into debt? Do you want knowledge, wisdom, and learning not just to be a privilege for the rich? Do you want to be able to hold possession of your own body, and not be lynched from a lamp-post just because you didn’t want subject yourself to religious extremists, or maybe just a unwanted pregnancy?

If you like any of those things that I mentioned, maybe don’t vote for people that say that those things are impossible. Maybe don’t vote for people that say that those things will make you less “American”, whatever that is.

But maybe you like the US status quo? Maybe you like the prospect of bleeding out on the side-walk, not being able to afford an ambulance ride, shot with a Wal-Mart bullet, from a discount-bin firearm, by an angry child that’s been deemed ineligible for basic education, because its family is broke and/or dead; a father dead to leukaemia from drinking well-water tainted by an upstream pesticide factory, a mother knocked flat from pain-relief addiction, and a sister having been beaten to death outside an LGBT-club by unprosecuted religious extremists. Maybe you think all that is the American Way. What do I know…

/Sebastian Lindberg 9/12-2019

Filling out the Roster

That moment when the Orange Hydra flipped a table and rage quit a meeting of the US’ closest allies. And so, the once mighty G7 lost in all practicality another member, bumping it down to a measly G6.

There’s a lot to unpack following the botched G-”a number to be inserted pending global developments”-meeting that took place last week. Looming trade wars, suggesting the re-admittance of an excluded warmongerer, a crumbling collection of American states alienating themselves further from the international community, and the Orange Hydra distancing himself and his belligerent administration from a treaties dedicated to ensure stability and sustainability. Not to mention a name-calling tizzy fit between two neighbouring nations.

The Middle-east, a long-time subject to western involvement and destabilization, must be watching with glee. Because something’s cooking within the western world. For shit’s sake, this is how the Phantom Menace began.

But instead of joining the media hype, engrossing myself in the simmering animosity between the US and their once-upon allies, I want to try to be supportive. Constructive. For once. For to me, it’s about time that the Ulcered Sphincters of Arse-erica fell off it’s imaginary western throne.

So, I want to give advice as to what to do when you’re informal collection of major powers is looking a bit weak. When your roster is looking a bit thinner than usual, and you’re feeling the massive superpowers of old (Russia, the US, and China) loom above you. It is time to draft some new members!

And who better to give a seat to than your old commonwealth subjects; Africa.

Yes, I know that Africa isn’t a nation. But it just so happens that Africa has come together in a union similar to that of the EU. The African Union includes every country on the continent, has regular assemblies, and a signed aspiration declaration not dissimilar to that of the G7. Not that anyone, western or African alike, seems to give a shit about declarations of sustainable development. But technically it’s still there!

”Oh, you can’t give a flimsy continental union a seat at the G7!”, you say. Of course you fucking can! The European Union already holds not just one, but TWO seats at the G-”a number”! That’s on top of four out of seven nations being European already. And if there ever was a continental union that could be described as ”flimsy”, it sure is the European one.

”But the G7(previously G8) is a collection of the most powerful and developed economies in the world. African nations aren’t even close”, you keep whining with that particularly bitchy tone of voice you primarily use when you tell your spouse that you don’t want to go up to the Hampshire estate for the weekend, because you need to polish the phallic feline ornament on the top of the hood of your fancy fucking sports car. To you, I say, where do you think all that wealth came from? Where do you think the western markets draw their resources from?

Though exact numbers vary greatly depending on your source, according to the US Energy Information Administration 2017 survey (sporting some of the lowest available numbers on African oil production), African countries supply ten percent of the world’s oil. Reserves most of which are still untapped due to conflicts. Don’t like oil as a measure of wealth? Fair tokes! Africa as a continent is one of the world’s largest concentration of gold, diamond, aluminium ore, cobalt, copper, and all the other precious metals that we western cretins require for our IT revolution and technological development. Africa is rich. It has simply been restricted from utilizing its natural wealth.

The continent is rife with strife and instability. Sure. But what greater way is there to ensure the stabilization of a region than to involve them in the affairs of the ”big bois” of the world? Making them a partner in world affairs rather than a teet to be milked.

By giving the AU a G-”a number”-seat, you would strengthen the G-partnership, make it more economically relevant. Strengthen the prospect of sustainable development in one of the world’s most developing markets. And stand all the taller in the face of imperialistic aggression from the likes of China, Russia, and the Orange US.

/Sebastian Lindberg 12/6-2018

The Rally ‘Round the Flag Syndrome

The drums of global war are sounding again. Again.

No longer very great Britain have made the call to bomb the Syrian Assad regime. The Orange Hydra administration is tagging along, and are itching to send troops. Putin’s Russia are eager to defend their Assad ally from American attack.

Why now? What’s new? You don’t just go break the “in-case-of-emergency-need-for-WW3”-glass without good reason, right? Well, supposedly, Wicked Witch May and the Orange Hydra have had enough of Assad using chemical weapons against his domestic opponents.

But that’s not news…

Since the Arab Spring sent Syria into civil war in 2011, there have been 73 reported chemical weapon attacks in the conflict. There have been U.N. investigations, a Syrian Army disarmament program, and still these chemical attacks keep happening. Governments and the U.N. have reported both rebels and government forces using mustard, chlorine, and sarin gas. And we can only assume that there have been at least a dozen or so such attacks done unto IS-forces, though no record or complaint of such have surfaced with the international community (go figure).

There are chemical weapons being used in the Syrian civil war. There have been from the start. All sides seem to be using them, even if they were initially stockpiled by the Syrian government. Even the Turks and Kurds have been accused of using them.

So why does May and the Orange Hydra care all of a sudden?

Because foreign intervention wars can be great for domestic approval ratings. As long as you can excuse them on, for example, WMDs or chemical weapons. And the US hasn’t had a good offensive, full scale war since they trundled into Iraq. The second time. That’s 15 years ago now.

It is a commonly known theory among political scientists that a well managed foreign war can be great for domestic approval ratings, referred to as the “rally ’round the flag”-syndrome. Both May and the Orange Hydra can feel their administrations sinking. They’d have to by now. And desperate times call for desperate measures. Sending people to die in a foreign war is just the sort of gamble that might be the last one available to either of them. And you can be sure that Putin’s not going to let Trump trump all over one of his allies or miss the chance to trump the US.

After seven years of civil war, it looks like the Syrian conflict might escalate rather than not. Finally attracting the participation of failing superpowers. Not for oil. Not for chemical weapons. But because of a desperate need for red herrings to distract from their utter failures to manage their own states.

/Sebastian Lindberg 14/4-2018