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

The Gorman Detachment

Last week, the US left fell in love with the young poet Amanda Gorman. Standing before a wary Washington D.C. with soldiers patrolling the city streets, the young black woman recited a poem dedicated to the dawn of the next political phase of US politics.

But across an ocean, her words chilled me to my core.

“We seek harm to none, and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true”, the poet spoke convincingly. “That even as we grieved, we grew. Even as we hurt, we hoped. Even as we tired, we tried. [That we’ll forever] be tied; victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.”

In wrapping up, Ms. Gorman sagely declared that; “One thing is certain; If we merge mercy with might, and might with right; then love becomes our legacy.”

Pretty words. Good delivery. A proud moment for a nation that has teetered on the brink of autocracy for the past years. And yet, these beautiful words, confidently delivered, seem to me to be utterly disconnected with the state of the united territories of North America and their context with the rest of the world.

Gorman speaks a hymn to harmony. She sings a song of never again sowing division. And that the world, if it were to say anything to describe the USA, should describe it thusly. Meanwhile, an aircraft carrier sails into the South China Sea to promote “freedom of the seas” in the face of Imperial Chinese expansion into the region. Meanwhile, the USA arm and foster division between Taiwan and mainland China. Meanwhile, the US feeds a civil war in Yemen that has killed more than 100’000 people. Meanwhile, the US supports an increasingly apartheid Israel which has surgically divided, oppressed, and murdered the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the US hunt down the people (Assange, Snowden, Winner, Manning, et. al.) that have given voice to and provided proof of the USA’s war crimes for the rest of the world to see. Meanwhile, the USA sanction any prosecution that tries to hold the nation state accountable for its wartime sins.

While all these atrocities are committed in the name of US-branded “freedom and harmony”, Ms. Gorman speaks of a merger of Might and Right that shall write Love as the legacy of one of the most warlike nations in modern history.

And all of these tone-deaf promises come from a young activist. A person that should seem like a glimmer of hope in an decreasingly impressive US population. A lauded poet, feminist, and civil rights advocate already by the age of twenty two. This is, according to a liberal state of mind, of which I despite my many bitter grievances still am of, one of the good guys. And yet, even one so promising as her, validates the return of the warmongering status quo of the American World Police with a poem of Harmony and Mercy made Might as Right.

Fine. Her words are a hope; not a track record. And truth be told, I’m not much one for spoken word poetry. And maybe her words just aren’t for the rest of the world (even though she references our supposed reverences once or twice like some American Exceptionalistic wet dream). And we know that the Overton window has been tilted off its axis in US discourse for the past years, in large part due to you know who…

But if this is the young, progressive hope for the future of US politics and activism? Then I fear. I fear for the world. I fear that the US warmongering establishment were the true victors after four years of Trump. I fear that the insincere labours and promises to fix homelessness, joblessness, healthlessness within the American experiment’s borders will lure the population to turn a blind eye at how the nation acts outwards.

Because if Ms. Amanda Gorman’s words are representative of the ray of hope that the decent half of the US population craves, if her praise of any kind of Might as Right is to be listened to, if the next generation of US progressive activists is this out of touch with the US’ role vis-a-vis the rest of the world… then things will inevitably get a whole lot darker before there’s even a chance of them becoming brighter again.

And at 100 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, I doubt we can tolerate much more darkness before there’ll be no one left to see the dawn.

/Sebastian Lindberg 26/1-2021

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

Even Saints Sin

”I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko that action would be taken against a state prosecutor, and they didn’t! Then I said, I’m not going to give the billion dollars. I said, we’re leaving in six hours, and if the prosecutor isn’t fired by then, you’re not getting the billion dollars. So they fired him, and replaced him with someone who was solid at the time.” /Former US VP Joe Biden at a US Conference of Foreign Relations, just this past week.

Those Machiavellian words there are of Biden, the vanilla side of the Internet’s once and future favourite bromance. The right hand of the past US messiah, who’s been hailed and hated as something close to a modern day JFK. Bragging at a meeting on Foreign Relations about how he and his leash-holder bullied their way into another sovereign state’s internal judicial business.

We’ve heard of this sort of behaviour more recently, when Nikki Haley, with the full support of her Orange Hydra overlord, did the same to the whole UN General Assembly regarding the vote on Jerusalem’s status as the capital of Israel. The only fundamental difference between Nikki’s and Joe’s behaviour was that he did it behind closed doors, when the microphones were turned off. She did it out in the open.

Big surprise, right? High and mighty politicians, using their muscle, financial or otherwise, to bully lesser nations into doing their bidding. Might makes undeniable Right. We’ve come to expect this sort of shit from the Orange House this past year, but many seem to believe that the previous hegemonic administration was better than this. People seem fast to forget that Obama signed the death sentence of US citizens without them being tried by a jury of their peers. Extra-judicial assassinations, as it were.

Bullies wear many colours. Many shapes, dress’ and forms. They may try to seem saintly, or appear monstrous, and they most certainly aren’t all American. But their one defining feature is that they try to force others to do their bidding. To submit and do their will. We used to call them Gods. Monarchs or Caesars. Sometimes we’ve looked up to them. Sometimes we excuse their behaviour, because at least they seem nicer than the last one. Because what would the world be without their iron will to guide it? To guide us?

So what’s my point? That the US and it’s breed of politician are worse than others? For lack of a better word, evil? That all leaders are? Or that we, the people, have allowed and wilfully promoted a system of election and governance that promote these kinds of people to power. That the way things are isn’t only because of us, but that we deserve it. Either that humans need these kinds of people to rule them, or that we just don’t know any other way…

At the end of the day, the reason doesn’t really matter. Not unless it’s paired with a remedial suggestion. But in the meantime, as Pasternak wrote, there is value in calling each thing by its true name. To see behaviours and people for what they really are, unclouded by the fog of subjectivity, bias, or childish political alliances and reliances. For even our heroes can be assholes. Even heroes can be monsters.

There is power in being able, with forethought and moral authority, to stand up to your leaders and your heroes, no matter if you like them or not, when they behave monstrously and say; “You are a Bully.”

/Sebastian Lindberg 30/1-2018