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

The Fears of a Weak State

Last week, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted through a new law permitting the violation of press freedoms of any foreign media network which may pose a “threat to national security”. Warmonger, hatemonger, fascist, and condemned corrupt politician, Benjamin Netanyahu spared no time to declare the Qatari news network Al Jazeera as public enemy number one and “terror channel” for its on-site reporting of Israeli war crimes and unrestricted murder of both civilians and international aid workers in Gaza.

Because a tyrant can never be tolerant of opposition. And since Al Jazeera is just about the only international news media still operating within Gazan borders, even though the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has been targetting journalists and those journalists’ families since long before the war (see, for example, the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh).

Some may be outraged by this new law. Some may get defensive, like zionists are wont to get. And some may be surprised. But the eradication of press freedoms are not news, nor isolated to Israel. Report after report, from organisation after organisation, sing the same tune: The freedom of the press is dwindling, far and wide. From Russia to the US, from Israel to Iran, and even from the “liberal capital” of the world – the European Union – news networks are being diminished. For much the same arguments, no matter where you go. Whether it’s the US presidential office hunting down Assange for exposing US war crimes, Russia targetting dissenting voices, Turkey jailing anyone who disagrees with Erdogan, or the EU trying (and failing) to ban Russia Today and Sputnik news channels, they all argue the same thing: That they’re fighting a war against misinformation.

Naturally, it’s the reigning regime which defines what’s misinformation and not. Which is understandable. Every weak government since the dawn of history has made great efforts to gain a monopoly of the country’s propaganda, from Rome to Nazi Germany, and beyond.

So instead of just decrying Israel as another apartheid rogue state, let us take a look at the very explicable mechanics behind the erosion of press freedoms, the loss of transparency of government, and the diminishing of public access to reliable and fact-checked information:

Let’s begin our journey with an informed public. Such a population is knowledgable of the minutiae of governance, and the implications of foreign policy and relations. Such a public is difficult to control by ruling parties, and hold their government accountable. They are a demanding sort, holding their leaders accountable and responsible, and aren’t easily swayed by ideological red herrings.

But it is difficult to find people who are willing to lead such a public, for people capable of taking responsibility are prone to avoid it. Instead, cowards and opportunists fill the ranks, who absolutely do not want an informed and knowledgable public. How much easier for them would it not be if the public were malleable and easily herded toward whatever new shiny thing that was dangled in front of them.

So as the quality of the leadership inevitably falter, the will to erode the intellectual capacity of its public is conversely increased. And with enough desire to undermine, or at the very least cease the maintenance of, the informed nature of the public, the institutions of upholding that virtue are slowly picked apart. Schools decline, news networks are turned into partisan propaganda machines, and science is being debated by people who never understood the scientific method. And as a result, people are made ignorant.

And though an ignorant public is easier to be herded by its government, it turns out that they’re also easier to be manipulated by other governments.

And once facts and knowledge becomes increasingly subservient to emotion and belief, that control becomes a tug-of-war with other puppeteers. Some of those outside voices may even maintain a modicum of integrity and offer facts and knowledge to the undermined public, but they’re easily rationalized into the same corner as belligerent foreign interests.

And so “national security” replaces “accountability”, and press freedoms are curbed to maintain the slipping control of the failing regime.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

If a government had a public which could tell truth from lies, then misinformation, foreign or otherwise, would be no threat. But which capitalist government could maintain its power with such a public to begin with? And so, the eradication of a free press inevitably follows, not as a sign of foreign threats or a destabilized geopolitical landscape, but as the consequence of domestic corruption of both the public and the elite.

For it is a weak state which fears information.

/Sebastian Lindberg 9/4-2024

Postmodern Politics

Four gunmen walk into a concert hall and start firing at any and all they find within. With assault weapons and grenades they slaughter, topping the destruction off by setting the building on fire.

And though people mourn, while loved ones are in shock, the politicians spin the attack to their best benefit. Because in our postmodern world, ‘seeming’ is more important than ‘being’, and any situation is obfuscated by enough plausible suspicion that what’s real and not becomes a fickle point of view.

An Afghanistan offshoot of ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. A claim that’s hard to verify, either by its own virtue or that of the ones capable of actually confirming it aren’t trustworthy themselves. Regardless, the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP, cheer for what’s broadcast as a proof-of-concept for their capacity to export their violence (which of course they would consider an organizational success, if but for naught but a promotional victory). Meanwhile, the US claims to verify the responsibility of the attack, by supposedly having intercepted information of the impending assault, which they promptly handed over to Russia (which of course they would want to claim, because it suits the US to prod Russia to open a new front in the east). Supposedly, Russia ignored the tip, no doubt not trusting anything that comes out of the mouth of their on-again-off-again cold war nemesis. And as for Russia, Putin claims the attack was orchestrated by Ukraine, keeping the country’s military focus squarely fixed on their resilient little David-opponent (which of course he would, to avoid facing the fact that Russia’s globalist military initiatives on Muslim soil, such as in Syria or Africa, bears consequences).

The truth? Muddled in there somewhere. It’s difficult to trust an Islamic fundamentalist propaganda machine. Just as it’s difficult to trust the US in anything they say. And we know just how highly the truth is valued within and without the Kremlin’s bloodied walls.

The ISKP claim makes more sense than Putin’s effort to attach blame to Ukraine. Russia’s been meddling with the destabilization of Muslim nations for a long time. Their fateful invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 gave birth to the modern Mujahideen, and thus, the Taliban and modern Islamic fundamentalism. And that’s not even accounting for the Wagner group’s forays around the globe.

Then again, if Russia was pulled into the same kind of prolonged War on Terror that has bogged down the US for over two decades, that would certainly benefit Ukraine.

Cicero’s argument ‘cui bono’ (who benefits) has been a staple of political analysis just as much as in criminal investigations since Rome rose, and long after it fell. But today, when everyone spins everything to benefit politically and personally from every possible tragedy, collective as well as personal, it only serves to paint everyone as guilty.

And maybe that’s the key? Maybe while we operate within the cynical confines of a postmodern political landscape, where nothing has ‘a priori’ value, where the name of the game is spin-spin-spin and all the tails are wagging the dog, maybe Cicero is more right than he ever intended to be. Maybe when integrity is lost in the eaves of The House, everyone really becomes guilty, if not by deed, then by profiteering.

/Sebastian Lindberg 26/3-2024

Just Like Tyranny, But Real

The Overlord is on the brink of dominating the land. His armies sweep across the last vestiges of resistance, and we’re playing the part of a martial justiciar enforcing his law in his new domain.

We commit war crimes, we torture prisoners of war, we call civilians subversives to let us murder them, we burn towns to the ground, and we feed captives and friends alike to the insatiable mouth of military intelligence. Make no mistake; we’re the baddies. That’s the intent of the experience. It is an effort to explore how people and society functions under authoritarian rule, and how cruel and vicious that rule’s machine of war is on the ground it churns to bloody mud.

In this 7 year old game, and we are the bad people. There’s no controversy to it – no discussion – it’s an obvious mission statement. We work for an evil dictatorship and we commit evil acts in its name.

Which makes it feel very strange to live through the current state of the real world, where murdering civilians, torturing PoWs, and levelling entire cities for the sake of conquest, is somehow legible for moral debate. Atrocities which turn my stomach and are considered “evil” in make-belief, are then transposed verbatim into the real world where those very same acts are somehow… supposed to be interpreted as… anything but?

The human capacity of self-delusion has always been… let’s be generous and call it “impressive”. We put much cognitive and verbal effort into rationalizing our bad decisions and cruel acts as somehow otherwise, and once we entrench enough of them into our identity, we become particularly sensitive to other people not sharing in our delusions. We commit more and more atrocities, if only to somehow prove to ourselves and others that the deed was in fact not all that bad, if nothing else by sheer dilution. We convince ourselves that if we just keep doing worse and worse things, the “evil” we make manifest in the world will somehow become less pungent or potent.

It doesn’t.

We are what we do. Our actions define us. If we commit ourselves to “evil” acts, to ruthlessness and cruelty and violence and sadism, then that is what we are no matter what psychopathic polish we put on it.

/Sebastian Lindberg 19/3-2024

Bringing the Fire Home

The west is clever (or perhaps lucky) to have exported its warfare for the past eighty years. It is easy to tell yourselves that war is the proper way of the world, the proper way to defend your way of life, when you send that war off to foreign parts so that you do not have to see how the protection of your way of life obliterates another.

Distance makes it easy to convince yourself that this is the sane way that the a world works.

Maybe it’s that disconnection that makes war such an easy sell to voters. Because they do not have to see it. They do not have to clean up the bodies of family members from the rubble of their homes. They do not have to watch a husband or wife or child go from individual to meat in the blink of an eye.

They do not have to smell how flesh bubbles and fat boils. I guess that stench doesn’t carry across an ocean.

Perhaps that’s the way to make them stop sending war abroad? To make them smell it. To make them see it.

It is disingenuous to assume the rationale of the wilful dead. I won’t, unlike corpo media, try to rationalize U.S. Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell’s demonstration in any other language than his own; “I will no longer be complicit in genocide”. I won’t belittle him like corpo media or emergency services are wont to do by implying mental health issues to extremism. Bushnell explained his actions in the only way he himself saw fit.

He killed himself in a self-made inferno, wanting a ‘free Palestine’, while a cop pointed a gun at him so that he would “lay down on the ground”. That makes the same kind of sense that genocide does, whether exported or imported.

It obviously made sense to him to light himself on fire in front of the Israel embassy in Washington D.C.. He was only 25-years old, and yet this was the moral course of action in an immoral world. He took what “our ruling class has decided to be normal” out of the abstract and illustrated the grim reality of it. He thought it was important enough to push you out of your comfortable deniability so that you could wake up to the same smell that the victims of your elected officials’ policies do every day.

It’s hard to say whether it’ll do any difference. Thich Quang Duc’s famous self-immolation on the streets of Saigon didn’t end the Vietnam war. When another protester did the same in Atlanta back in December it sure didn’t stop Israel’s genocide. Abstraction is a powerful tool. So too is dehumanization. Not even the smell of napalm in the morning might be capable of breaking those delusions.

But by Odin does the sacrifice of self, the likes of Bushnell’s send a loud message!

It’s just a shame that to deaf people, it doesn’t matter how loud your message is…

/Sebastian Lindberg 27/2-2024

The Man Who Poked Putin in the Eye

Alexei Navalny is dead.

To be fair, it comes as little surprise. The Kremlin has been trying to kill Navalny since 2020, and the most surprising thing is that it’s taken them three years to do it. Which makes it no less a loss. A foreseeable tragedy is no less tragic, but more so, than a surprising one.

Because if a tragic future can be foretold, why didn’t we change it?

So what? Who was Navalny? Why should you care, when in truth you really care about so very little?

A lawyer and anti-corruption investigator, turned regime critic and opposition leader, prospective mayor of Moscow and hopeful presidential candidate of the Russian Federation – Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny earned international fame when he became another target of the Russian developed, military grade nerve agent Novichok – the same toxin that killed Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England, back in 2018. Y’know, the murder that Bellingcat traced back to GRU (the Russian military spy organization). Just so you know whose MO Novichok belongs to.

But! Navalny survived the attack, by emergency treatment in Germany. But despite the obvious suspect of the poisoning being Russia itself, Navalny refused to go into exile. That would’ve been a defeat in his eyes. Equivalent to being chased out by Putin. And Alexei wouldn’t – couldn’t – have that. He returned to his country and was immediately seized by authorities (for having violated his parole in a country which just forced him out of it for treatment for a poisoning that it itself perpetuated).

Alexei went to jail. In the north of Siberia. Y’know – the same place where Russia’s sent its best and bravest to die in gulags since there’s been best and brave people who dare to say No to Power.

Navalny’s demise was reported by the Russian prison service, claiming that the opposition leader and Russian icon had “felt unwell after a walk”… in the arctic circle in February in the condition of a man who’s spent the past three years in a Russian maximum-security facility.

… the facade of plausible deniability is thin enough here to be considered positively ectoplasmic …

As of the time of writing, the family (or the family’s lawyer) has yet to be allowed near Alexei’s body.

And now, at Alexei’s death, his people are rising. No telling if they’ll stay risen long enough to make a difference, but they are rising nonetheless. They’re mourning in Europe, standing in vigil in places like Paris and London. They’re shouting after Navalny’s murderers in the post-Soviet states, such as Armenia and Georgia. And they’re holding vigils in Russian cities, prominently in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, where, incidentally, the police are busy with mass arrests.

The death of Alexei Navalny came as no surprise, not least of which by himself. He knew what he was doing. He went back to Russia, after the Novichok attempt on his life, with open eyes. And he left “his people” (the people who wish to see an honest and respectable Russia) a message:

“If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”

Fear makes men kill. If it weren’t for fear, the Kremlin would never have targetted Navalny. But it wasn’t the man they feared. No one man topples a regime. No, what they fear is the symbol that the man makes. And a symbol is a power not to the man himself, but to the people who look up to that symbol. Ergo; the Kremlin didn’t fear Navalny the man, but Navalny the symbol, and for what that symbol meant to his people – and the power those people can bring to bear.

Just like the man said – his murder is a sign that you, his people, are strong, and that the regime is weak.

Alexei Navalny is dead. Alexei Navalny was a brave man, with an indefatigable dream. Integrity is a rare thing these days. Mourn him. Miss him. But most importantly; honour him.

/Sebastian Lindberg 20/2-2024

A Bunch of Frogs in a Very Big Pot

Evergrande is court mandated to melt.

China’s seventh largest real estate developer (eighth largest in the world, by the by), the default Evergrande Group, has been ordered to liquefy its assets by a Hong Kong court.

So what? Evergrande’s been in default since 2021 and rotting from the inside, all the while it keeps churning out empty houses for China’s crumbling real estate market. Of course they’ve been ordered to go liquid to pay their debts – their substantial debts, mind – and besides; it’s only a Hong Kong court who ordered it. We know damn well who wears the pants between Hong Kong and mainland China.

That the company is being ordered to cash out is nothing surprising (after a default and failure to provide a reconstruction plan), the circumstances of that default are rather awe-inspiring… and a shape of things to come for China’s struggling economy. Evergrande’s good for some 240 billion USD, but has, reportedly, unpaid debts to the tune of some 300 billion USD.

Savour that for a second, will you? 300 billion USD is more money than most countries’ GDP. It’s 25% more than the entire company’s worth. And still, the real estate developer is trucking on, building more condos which’ll stay empty because of the collapsing Chinese housing market.

Boo-hoo, a big-deal developer is rotted. Who cares. Well, considering the Chinese economy is one of the keystones to the global one, a collapse there will inevitably have consequences world wide. Not to mention that it’s not just the Chinese Communist Party which has a stake in the company, but foreign investors as well. And seeing as China has previously proven… hesitant to repay foreign debt, the death throes of Evergrande could send cold shivers into every single mofo who ever put a single cent into the Chinese market. Speaking of which, trading was immediately halted with Evergrande stock once the announcement of liquefaction was made. So there’s exit strategy for the stock market traders right now.

The bottom line is this: Evergrande’s drawn out death is a sign of the times of the Chinese boomer economy. Y’know, that little thing that’s been the main cause of the climate crisis for twenty years. And since almost every globally connected economy on the planet is hitched on China’s expansion, it’s MAD to think the splash won’t get you wet. This would also explain China’s sabre-rattling vis-a-vis the sovereign neighbouring nation of Taiwan, seeing as there’s nothing’s as pathetic, weak, and effective to rally a failing domestic support as the Rally Round the Flag syndrome.

Did you hear the one about how you cook a frog alive?

If you throw a frog into boiling water, it’s just gonna jump out. But… if you progressively raise the temperature, the frog won’t notice a thing until its skin is popping and muscle fibres are hardening.

The global economy is a pretty big bowl of water. It’ll take some time to get the water simmering. But then again, there’s no rush, is there? There’s nowhere else to go, no edge to jump over to save ourselves, because the first thing to pot did was to make sure it reached everywhere. And we’ve been progressively raising the temperature for a very long time now…

/Sebastian Lindberg 30/1-2024

Punching Nazis Isn’t Enough

They come out in Dresden, they come out in Leipzig. They take a stand in Munich and Cologne, they stand in Berlin. They reject the populist, they reject the nationalist and the racist. They reject, loudly and proudly, the Nazi, screaming for the exclusion of them from Germany’s politics.

It reads like a strange reflection of times past… because you do not come out in force and protest a thing if the thing isn’t a problem, do you?

Germany is by no means alone, or this time the epicentre, of the blossoming of right-wing extremism. Poland, France, Italy, UK, the States, Russia, Denmark, and not least of which Sweden, just to mention a few, suffer the rot of neo-nationalism. And though speaking loudly in opposition to right-wing hatemongers is by no means unimportant, I fear it also misses the point.

Because it is not sustainable to keep fighting right-wing extremism every generation or two. Its virulent spread is not a natural state of things which democratic nations should ever have to get used to battling. If all you do is fight populism, protectionism, and nationalism where it crops up, then you’ll sentence yourself to a Sisyphean task. One must, not instead, but also, labour at understanding why it spreads at all, and combat the roots of the cause.

No; the root isn’t immigration or crime. None of the reasons that the demagogues repeat like broken records, century after century, are the real reasons for the virulent spread of their ideals.

The real reason is fear.

Sure; on the surface it’s fear of the other. Fear of opposition, fear of being wrong; fear of appearing weak. A layer below, it’s the fear of not having enough. Enough space, enough money, enough jobs, enough food, enough shelter. It is fear of losing grasp of privileges, of losing touch with what was when things inevitably change, fear of muddied identity when different kinds of identity crop up.

The root problem is Fear itself. Because like Herbert wrote, fear really is the mind killer. Fear really is the little death, the death of reason, which brings total obliteration, of sanity and clarity. Fear makes you dumb. Fear makes you cruel. Fear makes you callous and ruthless and heartless and mean. Fear is the problem, and people’s lacking capacity to manage their fear.

We live in a fearful age. Even if it weren’t for the fear-mongers of the 24-hour news cycle, scientific realizations that we’ve lived on borrowed resources and the bill’s coming due, or all those soulless cretins playing on people’s fears to gain power through politics. We’ve spent decades, centuries, at making people dumber and dumber, less and less resistant against fear, and now all the myriad lurking catastrophes are making the kettle literally boil over. And large parts of the population are absolutely incapable of meeting those fears, rational and not. Of course they turn to simple, dumb, responses to that fear, like building walls or ejecting the other.

We live in a fearful age. The caps are melting, sleeping deaths are reviving, climates are changing, deserts are spreading, our garbage is coming back to choke us, the blood of the earth is boiling, and things we’ve held dear are coming to an end. None of all those hundreds of reasons to be afraid are likely to automagically go away any time soon.

So if you really want to get rid of Nazis, punching them once they’ve sprouted just isn’t enough…

/Sebastian Lindberg 23/1-2024

Honour’s Sullied Name

A father, mother, and brother are sentenced to jail in Sweden for abusing, beating, and effectively torturing their daughter and sister. All because she wanted a life of her own. Which “Honour” disallowed.

A landmark verdict, overdue, which drives a nail into primitive habits that has no place in a liberal society. About the verdict itself, I have little else to say but “good”. The family’s excuse, however, is of much more interest to me: Honour.

It’s important to note that Honour has no intrinsic meaning. No a priori representation in reality. Honour only means what we infer from it. Like Good & Evil. Or Soon. There is no way to quantify Honour into physical laws, neurological impulses, or transactional rates. Honour is nothing but an amorphous mortar that once upon helped shape societal norms before we had a central system of governance.

And as with any kind of mortar, its devilishness is all in how its used…

As it turns out, Virtues are effective tools with which to control a population. Instil in them the need for, or the punishment without, a handful of traits which you believe will control their behaviour to align with the status quo. It’s in essence a system of self-policing. Make a population believe that Humility, Patience, and Temperance are traits which shall be rewarded post-mortem, and that their opposites are divinely punishable offences, and you have effectively molded your population into obedient sheep.

Culturally ingrained Honour works much the same: A popular word for the indoctrination of tribal and familial patterns of behaviour. But that realisation isn’t the conversation; only the framework needed to have one.

A daughter, after a long time of isolation from her conservative family, finally agrees to meet with her mother and sisters. Tyranny does not necessarily kill love. While there, her father knocks on the door. Raises a gun. And shoots the daughter in the head. Because she would not “bring Honour” to her family like she was supposed to. The honour-killing of Fadime Sahindal wasn’t Sweden’s first such, nor its last, but it became its most famous. A young, promising woman, with academic and political ambitions, murdered because she didn’t do her family’s bidding. All for “Honour”.

Since Honour isn’t one definite thing, it’s difficult to authoritatively say that this family, and many others like it, are wrong. But I have a different word which I think fits better for what they’re white-washing. And that’s Tyranny.

Honour, in Cambridge’s eyes, is a quality that combines being worthy of respect, being proud, and being honest. Honour, to me, is not something you impose on others. It is a measure of how you interact with the world. Not a demand for how the world must interact with you. If your Honour needs protecting from ridicule or blotches, then it is a weak Honour prone to breaking under the least bit of strain. If anything, the murderous need to defend your Honour lets us know that yours is frail. That you’ve cultivated none on your own. Honour, in mine eyes, is self-assurance sturdy enough to easily withstand derision and mockery. It weathers the wind, the onslaught, and still stands tall even in the wake of a storm.

To believe that your Honour stems from your capacity to control, dominate, and subjugate others to your will… are signs of weakness. Of being brittle. Of not just not having any Honour of your own, but being a coward to boot. Because you’re so deadly afraid of anyone perceiving you as less than you’re trying to project that you’re willing to murder to maintain the illusion.

Honour is no ugly thing, in my eyes. It is an introverted order of operations, of how you behave outward to the world with decency. It’s how well you uphold your own truth, in your own body and soul, and walk the walk of your own talk. Honour is the labour of making yourself into the ideal you have for yourself.

Honour is the gift you give unto yourself.

When people speak of their Honour as a reflection of how other people treat them, or disobey them, I feel they should use a different word. Because there’s nothing Honourable about controlling or threatening another human being. That is not Honour, but Tyranny; naked villainy clothed with odd old ends stolen forth from holy writ.

Pasternak wrote that there is virtue in “calling each thing by its true name”. Conversely, there must be sin in warping a thing to seem like another. Humanity needs to display more Honour. We sorely need it…

So do not let primitive Tyrants sully Honour’s good name.

/Sebastian Lindberg 22/8-2023

Yanking Justice’s Leash

The United States are happy to report that they’re supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its investigations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Both festering sides of the US political fence seem to be in agreement. Go get them damned Ruskies, they’re cheering.

It’s good to know that the dying old hegemon of western civilisation has the ICC’s back, isn’t it? Y’know, so long as the ICC don’t take a look at US war crimes. Because that would just be unconscionable.

See, since the ICC’s inception in 1998, while the US was a leading advocate for an international court, they never wanted to subject themselves to it. Almost like they wanted other people to be punished for war crimes, but never be forced to follow the same rules themselves. And boy howdy, how lucky they were that they never agreed to recognize the ICC’s authority! Considering all the war crimes that the US have been guilty of since then. Imagine having to actually be held accountable for your actions. How’s a global superpower supposed to maintain the status quo if it was ever judged, huh?

In 2020, Trump even signed an executive order to sanction the ICC, and two of it’s prosecutors in particular, for their investigations of war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine. I mean, Biden later reversed the sanctions, true. Still though; it gives a good indication as to how the US feels about the prosecution of war crimes: So long as no one looks at them, they’re all for it.

War crimes are bad. Yeah? While it might look a bit silly to dictate just how humanely people are allowed and not allowed to murder each other for political gains and hegemonic designs, we don’t really want to roll that back. Whether or not combatants actually follow the rules of war, it is nice that they exist at all. Russia’s warmongerers should be investigated. Likely prosecuted, tried, and sentenced too (pending results). Same probably goes for Ukraine military officials too. War is hell, as they say, and one atrocity tends to breed another.

But it leaves an ill taste in one’s mouth when the biggest criminal in the world pats Justice on her back to goad her on with her crusade against the kingpin’s rivals. It’s quite frankly sickening. And though it’s no one’s place to kink-shame, I really wish Justice be off her leash…

/Sebastian Lindberg 1/8-2023