If Only, Vol. 1

These columns have been severely lacking for positivity as of late.

And when even I can feel that lack, you know it’s gotten bad. But what’s a chronicler to do when the world is so full of care and every headline screams despair; and all is rape, starvation, war, and life seems vile?

Maybe this is how old beat cops feel – so worn down by the sheer tragedy of it all that the only recourse for their worn out neanderthal brains is to go home and beat on the wife or strangle a black kid. But y’know what! There’s a better way. There’s got to be. So for the benefit of our sanity, let’s make like a Canadian bank and go loonie, shall we?

So let us indulge in some wish fulfilment instead!

Putin’s dead. He died in his marble bunker during an autoerotic asphyxiation-accident while watching the Teletubbies on repeat. And although the Kremlin is in turmoil of where to extort this year’s Christmas Party’s funding, federated states across the nation break away into self-governance – which has turned out a surprisingly unbloody affair, seeing as the vast majority of local government officials proved vacant from their posts in favour of their Cyprus villas.

In solidarity, or perhaps fearing for his own health, Xi Jinping brokered a deal with Tibet to be allowed into a life-affirming, non-masturbatory monastery, spelling the end of Chinese occupation of the mountainous country. Analysts believe this will usher in a wave of declarations of independence, citing Commie the Pooh’s exit from public life as a sign of a swift turn for the region’s imperial nation.

Meanwhile, in India, the nationalist driving his country to ethnic cleansing, Narendra Modi, has, for the first time in recorded history, faltered in spreading hate on camera when his son came out of the closet on live television while converting to Islam. As the RSS reels from the unexpected reveal, both Hindus and Muslims across the country rejoice at the, perhaps, most honest moment in Modi’s aggressive political media campaign yet, and rally around the hope that this will affect a benevolent turn in the old bigot’s soul.

On the other side of the world, Elon finally left on his rocket. America sighs a sigh of relief as the mogul finalized his bid to take his vision of “the best and brightest” to the stars. Post-launch, prosecutors find Mar-A-Lago empty, Hollywood quiet, and most of the federal and corporate government devoid of shareholders. Although this will no doubt spell economic woes in the years ahead, the Pentagon has promised to unlock Fort Knox, and the launch engineers of the departed “Space Force Super-One!!!” generational space ark reassure us that they have included a Voyager-style gold plate on the tip of the craft apologizing most sincerely and profusely to any and all intelligences that the travellers may encounter and please ask them not to judge us leftovers by what they may find aboard the spacefaring phallus.

In closing, a convoy of a million children were observed marching out of Ashkelon and crossing over into northern Gaza, carrying with them everything from clean water and first aid supplies to Cheeto’s and mommy’s Valium, taking the besieging IDF forces by surprise. In public statements, recorded and released across multiple platforms at the time of the first border crossings, the children proclaim that they refuse to let the sins of their parents become their own and elect instead to stand with the oppressed. The confusion of IDF soldiers only increased as startled marksmen are accused of anti-Semitism for no longer being able to tell Jewish and Palestinian children apart. A public condemnation and resolution against further ethnic cleansing in Gaza or any remaining Palestinian territory was signed during an emergency meeting at the UN Security Council after the initial hour of the march, suspected only to have passed because the US secretary to the Security Council is believed to be currently drinking Mai Tai’s on Elon’s rocket.

If only the world was sane, eh…

/Sebastian Lindberg 16/5-2024

A Democracy for Three Wise Monkeys

“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news.”

Last week, we spoke of would-be democracies and their despots who cloth their naked villainy with odd old ends stolen forth from holy writ; and seem like saints when most they play the devil.

I alluded then that Turkey’s Erdogan was not alone. And indeed he’s not, when India’s Narendra Modi tries to close his country to a BBC documentary claiming that he is otherwise than he lets on.

India: The Modi Question aired on BBC over the past two weeks, gut-shooting the Indian Prime Minister’s self image. Quite frankly not by saying anything new. It is an old tale that the PM was the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002 during the riots, just like the documented rumours that he told the regional police to turn a blind eye to murder, pillage, and rape committed by Hindus against Muslims. Nor is it news how Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pushed an apartheid state solution regarding its Muslim population, as a final period to the century old Partition problem.

Nothing of which is news. The BBC just said it loud enough not to be ignored. And the powers of India certainly don’t want it printed.

University students in India, fervent to watch the documentary, are being threatened with punishment for breaking the Prime Minister’s ban on the film. Universities cut power just to prevent people from watching the documentary on campus. Riots have erupted. Police have taken kids away in vans. All because the Prime Minister does not like what he hears.

Power abhors truth. Because truth cannot be controlled. Only lies can be twisted and warped and maliciously spread in accordance to their will. That is not to say that any piece of journalism, no matter how well documented, researched, and well-intended, can be truth itself. But it can look for it. Search for that glimmer in the deadpan of gutter trash lies, misconceptions, and delusions. And though journalism rarely finds the whole lot of the kernel at the centre of the scum on the surface, even a shining sliver can be dangerous to those that have spent career lifetimes trying to hide it.

And hen someone really doesn’t want you to see what hides beneath their scum, when they levy a country’s entire institutional powers against people seeing through their manifest insincerity, you know that they hide truth.

Last week we spoke of the democratic principles of freedom of expression. Principles which as often serve to undermine the structural integrity of a society as they strengthen it. This time we’re talking about transparency. Because how can you have a government for the whole population if that whole population are not allowed to witness what that government does? What that government is? How can a democracy function if they are not allowed to look and behold the calibre of their leaders; what kernels of truth that lay beneath the crud and scum of their projections?

The simple answer is that a democracy cannot. But some would prefer a democracy for Three Monkeys to one for thinking people. A democracy where you hear no truth that may disturb the consoling lies; see no truth so that your Gods will not die, and speak no truth for which you will be condemned and tortured and crucified.

And so another vaunted leader of the world, this time the democratically elected leader of the second largest country per capita in the world, proclaims themselves an autocrat. By forbidding a documentary telling people what he did (or told others not to do) twenty winters past. His name is Narendra Damodardas Modi, Prime Minister of India of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and he’s an autocrat pretending to be a democrat who stoked an ethnic cleanse.

/Sebastian Lindberg 31/1-2023

The Predictable Pyres of India

The pyres of India are burning on overtime. Each day is a new record of people dead or infected. Battles rage over medical oxygen. People reportedly die in the streets. Things aren’t going very well, to say the least…

It’s a travesty. A tragedy. Naturally. But I have a hard time feeling sad about it. I find sympathy in short supply for the beleaguered Indians. Because this development isn’t surprising to me. Not one bit.

Seeing as the memory of the public, and the internet even more so, is spotty and inconsistent at best, let’s remind ourselves of a few of the scenes we’ve seen out of India for the past few months. Religious holidays attended by tens of thousands. Bathing in the Ganges, as just one example. Or why not look at the ongoing farming protests outside New Delhi, that have been crowded and tumultuous since September. Or the sometimes raucus demonstrations against violence on women.

If there’s one painfully apparent lesson to all these occurrences, it’s that it has proven near impossible to instill a practice of social distancing upon the subcontinent. For practical, financial, religious, habitual, and demographical reasons, surely. But also for a lack of leadership and discipline. I loathe to use the s-word, but it seems clear that India has failed to adapt to the current pandemic. And now, the country is paying for it.

And all the while, the Bharatiya Janata Party, with prime minister Narendra Modi channeling the same wavelengths as Bolsanaro or Trump, beats its chest and proclaim the pandemic defeated through sheer force of cultural virtue.

It’s easy to condemn, from up here in a Norse ivory tower, as a privileged westerner. It’s easy to judge when we here have the opportunity and capacity to properly socially distance until the vaccines are doled out sufficiently. But no matter how easy it is to sneer at foreign social norms that have been unable to adapt to a new world order, the facts stay the same. India is on its knees. On Friday, India sported nearly 400’000 daily cases. Nearly half a million people in just one, single, solitary, day. And those are confirmed cases, mind you. I imagine there being quite a few unconfirmed ones as well in a nation as financially and socially diverse as India.

And I have not a tear to shed. I’m sorry, maybe I’m callous, but I can’t. Because from what we’ve seen out of that nation, this seems naught but fair. No; people don’t deserve to die in droves because they’re unable or unwilling to distance themselves from each other. No; people don’t deserve to die because their elected leadership is a criminally belligerent nationalistic mess. But what do you expect? The virus doesn’t care whether you’re too poor to socially distance, too pious to avoid public gatherings, too easily fooled to elect capable leadership, or too uninformed to undertake proper precautions. Those are all relative terms which an absolute plague doesn’t give a fig about. And if it can get you, it will get you, regardless of your finances, education, religion, or intelligence.

To add insult to injury, with every unnecessary or easily preventable infection, the state of the war on Covid deteriorates with new mutations, creating a steeper challenge for governments and doctors and nurses to stop the spread. So, not only is it a tragedy that Indians are dying en masse, but also that by doing so, they’re putting everyone else at greater risk too.

So in lieu of sadness or sympathy, I feel frustration and anger. And it doesn’t matter if that’s unfair or cruel or mean. Because the plague’s running rampant in India. The implications of which are thousands of dead, and an increased risk for the rest of the world. The reasons for which is a population of people incapable or unwilling to take precautions. Which in turn can be traced back to a government or society that has proven utterly unprepared to handle and unwilling to adapt to handling a pestilence like this. Whoever you want to blame, be it Modi’s and the BJP’s leadership, the socially dependent and tight-knit communities, the dense demographical and socioeconomical circumstances, or the recklessness of an uninformed public, the results are the same. Dead people, and a biological wild-fire out of control. All of which we could see coming a mile away.

/Sebastian Lindberg 5/4-2021

May Ares Sleep Tonight

What do you get when you mash up a neo-fascist, ultra-nationalist demagogue on one side, and an imperialistic authoritarian hell-bent on bending the world to his will on the other? Well, last week, on June 15^th, we got a deadly border dispute the likes which we haven’t seen in 40 years.

No, for once it’s not the US that fucked things up. This time, the price of turning the doomsday clock towards midnight goes to India and China. Some twenty Indian soldiers and an untold number of Chinese regular troops died in an honest-to-Gods melee, as a result of a conflict over some tents and a listening outpost on the disputed border between the two countries. A border dispute turned bar brawl with iron rods and spiked clubs (srsly…) that has inflamed the Indian population to the point of demanding boycotts against the world trade giant China.

Now, most people with half an insight into the global market will quickly realize that effectively boycotting China isn’t feasible, seeing as Chinese economic influence has snaked its way into almost everything. Well, most people except for the spokesperson of the “Confederation of All Indian Traders”, Praveen Khandelwan, who demanded a nation-wide termination of Chinese trade on the rhetoric that allowing trade with the red giant was tantamount to treason. In the same interview he denied that his iPhone was largely China-made, which goes to show his… capacity. But most of us understand that such a hard line is doubly hard to follow through on. A noble gesture, but too little too late to stop the onslaught of Chinese economical influence. And even though the loss of the Indian market would surely upset an already shaky Chinese economy, it won’t possibly kill the beast.

But limp threats aside, both nations have plenty of potential to cause absolute havoc…

In the north-eastern red corner: China! The most populous country in the world with a whooping 1.439 billion people. A nuclear armed, communist nation with absolutely zero tolerance for dissent. The home of the dreaded Covid-19, of dog-dick sandwiches, and a truly global force projection with funding and development efforts spanning every corner of the globe. With sweatshop production centres that have become the very backbone of the global economy, bringing us such morally questionable vices as fashionfactured consumer electronics and social media software developed to hook and exploit the young. A sovereign nation state that doesn’t mind wiping away half a generation just to put a political point across, with absolutely shameless ambitions of expansion and forceful assimilation. With concentration camps for Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, crackdowns against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and a penchant for threats of invasion against neighbours such as the island nation of Taiwan unless it prostrates itself before the Mighty “People’s” Republic of Imperial China. Poised to become the one true country of the world; the One Country to rule it all.

And in the south-western orange corner; India! The second most populous country in the world with a just-as-whooping 1.380 billion people. Also brandishing a nuclear arsenal, with a military vetted on years of border disputes and wars with its Muslim-majority neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan. With a growing militarization as seen in its harsh treatment of its disputed Kashmir region. Ruled by a neo-nationalist state under the sway of the corrupt and murderous BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party) and its sponsor, the paramilitary RSS (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), with the demagogue and nationalist Narendra Modi at its head. The epic home to mob violence and a global source for low-cost service industries. A nation where it can be fashionable to gang-rape and murder young women, a nation from which the west sourced its obnoxious new-ageism philosophy, and a nation which sports one of the oldest religions and civilizations still around on the face of the planet.

We feared a third War when the Orange Taint in Washington pounded his flappy chest at Iran. That was just an antagonistic wet fart in comparison to the cataclysmic potential between these two giants.

May Ares sleep soundly tonight…

/Sebastian Lindberg 23/6-2020

Every Shade of Racism

This week, some two million people were robbed of their citizen status in the ethnically diverse north-eastern Indian state of Assam. Two million people, just like that, being branded foreigners, a “hostile infestation” according to India’s ruling political party. And now, those that after years, generations, of living their lives on Indian soil, fear for their lives.

Racism is an ugly thing. This should not be a contentious point. But it is. It’s become one, with the likes of Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the US, Johnson in England, and many more being elected or near enough being elected all across the world. And the nation state of India is no different. Not since Narendra Modi‘s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014.

Since the BJPs rise to power, quotes have practically flooded the news archives, of Modi and his cohorts rousing ethnic sentiment against India’s massive Muslim minority. Modi himself has a background, when he was the administrative head of the Gujarat region, of instructing police to incite Muslim unrest to warrant killing as many as possible. Narendra Modi is a proven racist, willing to wield his administrative power to exclude, harass, incarcerate, and even kill, those that he views as “foreigners”.

And now, nearly two million people have been stripped of their citizenship, as their names and photos have been taken out of Assam’s NCR (National Citizen Registry). And they fear that they will be deported. Or jailed. Or simply killed by Modi’s increasingly nationalist police forces or the lurking Bajrang Dal, a Nazi S.A. wannabe offshoot of the BJPs parent organization, the right-wing, ultra nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). And yes, don’t worry, I’m also having a hard time keeping all the branches of this sprawling tree of organized Hindu nationalism straight…

Stripping the citizenship from minorities isn’t a new tactic on the road to enact ethnic cleansings. Europe mostly remembers the fascist antics of ole’ boy Hitler the most, but there are plenty of other examples that allow us to avoid Godwin’s Law. Take the Ivory Coast for example.

In 2010, the Ivory Coast was trying to regain a semblance of stability, following a bloody civil war some six years prior. Divisions remained between the north and the south of the country. And as election time came around, the ruling political elite in the south, headed by Laurent Gbagbo, wanted to eliminate their greatest rival; the soon-to-be president Alassane Ouattara. How did they do this? They declared that if you were to be considered a true Ivorian, you had to prove your lineage some two generations back. Otherwise, you weren’t considered a citizen. Guess who couldn’t prove that his family, going back to his grandmother (who was accused post-mortem of being from Mali descent)? You guessed it; the leading presidential candidate Ouattara.

Ouattara won the election. Gbagbo refused to relinquish power. His rhetoric had stirred up racist sentiment with his followers. Civil war broke out. Again. Because that’s what happens when you stoke the flames of racism and nationalism to disenfranchise parts of your population.

Modi’s Hinduist nationalist support is much stronger than that of Ivorian Gbagbo. The fractures between Hindus and Muslims in India is a crack going back centuries. It’s not going to get healed soon. And it’ll certainly only grow more and more infected as long as Modi endorses racism, discrimination and ethnic violence.

With the Orange Hydra stoking white supremacy in the States, it is easy for western discourse to only focus on that part of the racist equation. Even more so in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter. But racism is everywhere. It’s in the US. It’s in Europe. It’s in Brazil. And it most certainly is in India.

But hey! Maybe they’ll finally ‘take back’ the swastika…

/Sebastian Lindberg 2/9-2019