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 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

Philanthropy for the Lime Light

Breaking news: The richest man in the world whines that he can’t pay for his own satellite internet field test. Breaking news: The richest man in the world says that he’ll foot the bill anyway, because why the hell not.

Breaking news: The richest man in the world is a media slut.

Back in February, as Putin’s Russia was imperial marching toward Kyiv with aims for a quick domination victory over Ukraine, Elon Musk magnanimously donated his Starlink system to the invaded country. A low-orbit satellite system intended to deliver internet to remote areas. Which invalidated Russia’s attempts to knock out Ukraine communications, letting Zelensky bolster morale, coordinate defences, and project defiance across the world.

But that was eight months ago. Musk’s Starlink became taken for granted. The media coverage forgot about his grand benevolence. Of course he needs to bring his philanthropy back into the lime light. Otherwise, what’s the point of it?

Musk is the richest man in the world, currently leading with some 60B USD ahead of his closest competitors. A year ago, the South African billionaire cocked around at the expense of the UN World Food Program, mocking their claim that the richest people in the world could solve world hunger with just a fraction of their vast fortunes. A few months later, Fortune reported that Musk donated the 6B USD that the UNWFP had asked for.

The truth is, capitalists turned the world into a money game. Money is a representation of work, an owed effort, a debt of labour or energy. And the fact of the matter is that every single problem in this world can be solved with a bit of effort. And we stupidly made that effort, that labour, a question of money. And as private wealth inequality rockets away astronomically (quite literally as the richest man on the planet owns a space agency now ), the same system that allowed such gross accumulation of wealth also lands the responsibility to fix all those problems at the feet of those that have benefited from that system. Money begets money – generation of money begets problems – problems can only be solved with massive amounts of money – so it stands to reason that these problems needs to be solved by the people with all that money.

Elon Musk did not create capitalism. He doesn’t bear responsibility for hoisting this dehumanizing world religion upon our shoulders. But he is the winner of capitalism, if there ever was one. For the time being, he’s the single person on the planet that has won the most from this disgusting societal power structure. Other people will likely eclipse him in the future, but right now, Elon Musk is the unequivocal champion of capitalism.

He can afford anything. And if he says he can’t, he’s full of shit. Just ask Twitter.

/Sebastian Lindberg 18/10-2022

The Great Pipeline Whodunnit

Since Monday, the sea off the coast of Sweden has been churning. Coughing gas and regurgitating methane in a gaseous maelstrom. The Nord Stream pipelines, Russia’s great gas artery to the EU, are broken, and expunging its greenhouse gas through a hundred meters of ocean.

And everyone, Russia included, agrees that the rupture is no accident, natural or otherwise, but a deliberate demolition. And accusations, as always, are flying higher than greenhouse gases ever could.

Which leads us to the question of who would do such a thing…

As far as environmental disasters go, this isn’t that big a deal. A pipeline-full of methane gas isn’t great, but since it’d be burnt anyway, it’s really all the same. The ocean won’t even necessarily be terribly contaminated, since plenty of marine biology eat methane, quite literally, for breakfast. So, rationally, technically, the demolitions of the Nord Stream pipeline could be to the benefit of the environment, seeing as the sudden pollution can’t hold a candle to the pollution produced if the pipelines were to operate normally over a long period of time. But since no environmental organization has stepped forward to take responsibility, not to mention the fact that the sabotage seems to have been an expertly performed and difficult dive and execution, it seems unlikely that tree-huggers or motorway obstructionists could pull it off.

Which leaves us with state actors. Naturally, most of our suspicious eyes turned toward Russia in the wake of the rupture. Who vehemently refute any such suspicions (which tells us absolutely nothing) and instead turn the lime light toward the US. And the other EU countries around the Baltic aren’t in the habit of blowing up fuel pipelines in their backyards.

Yet, it seems reasonable to believe that the pipeline demolition is part of the Ukraine war. Russia has previously leveraged European dependencies on its gas as a diplomatic chip against the EU’s support for Ukraine. Throughout summer and early autumn, Russian gas pipeline operator Gazprom has cut back on gas delivery through Nord Stream. Ostensibly to perform maintenance.

And say what you will about Putin’s gambit to invade Ukraine being a dumbass move. But he is otherwise not known to be a dumb strategist. And the Nord Stream pipeline was a big bargaining card for him in his negotiations with the EU to stop supporting Ukraine. With winter looming, that diplomatic card would only grow.

And now, that bargaining chip is gone, ripped from Putin’s hands by some enterprising saboteur.

The loss of Nord Stream weakens Putin’s influence in “the West”, because it is now out of his hands to turn the gas on or off for a freezing Europe. Which makes me think it would not be the neo-imperialist’s hand on the button this time, but rather someone wanting to undermine his position.

Sure; it could be the US. But the US aren’t known for subtlety. And though they’ve been opposed to the EU’s Russian gas dependency, why would they bomb the pipelines now that the gas delivery is already on hold? Instead, it seems to me, more likely that the sabotage comes from the east; not the west.

Ukraine has proven resourceful in their war against Russian aggression. They’ve been given enough guns and bombs and western equipment to withstand against, bloody the nose of, and break the Russian advance. And whatever bargaining power Russia has with the West seems to me to look like a potential death threat to Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

But even more likely, I find, is that Putin’s house at the Kremlin is full of snakes. Putin’s paranoid behaviour during the invasion tells us as much; that he fears his own as much as the other. His draconic authoritarianism against opposition tells us the same story. It is almost as if he knows, damned well, that his reign will end from within and not from without. And now that his war is turning from a week-long field trip to a losing slog, Putin looks weak. Perhaps for the first time in thirty years. And he has bred a house of beasts, oligarchs eager to slice the throat of the slipping Tsar…

Would it be so unthinkable that Nord Stream exploded at the command of one such opportunist? Disappointed with their supreme emperor, disillusioned with Putin’s play for power, dispirited with this evil war of annexation.

Maybe, just maybe, Russia was behind the rupture. Just not Putin’s Russia.

/Sebastian Lindberg 3/10-2022

A Nazi Hunter’s Selective Aim

“De-nazification”, it’s called. A military operation of a scale of the largest military invasion in Europe since the second world war. To weed out nazis.

The term “nazi” has been somewhat devalued these past decades. Depending on the discussion, it may seem like one is a nazi as soon as one doesn’t agree with the zeitgeist. Yet, once upon, the term actually had meaning, namely; being a political proponent of “national-socialism”. A strange illegitimate authoritarian love-child between left-wing socialism and right-wing nationalism with its cradle in 1920’s Germany. Take care of our own (whether ethnically or nationally defined), but fuck everyone else.

Now, as opposed to what twitter twinks think, harbouring questions about… oh, I don’t know, trans people’s sporting, or opposing the defund the police movement, does not, in fact, make you a Nazi. Being an outright fascist does not necessarily make you one either.

But what about Ukraine? Across the internet, the Russian trolls and those funded by the Federation’s channels start showing their true colours by legitimizing a full-scale invasion of a sovereign country based on the claim that Ukraine is riddled with more Nazis than a wild dog is tapeworms. Which supposedly turns any support for Ukrainian self-determination into a… defence of national-socialism, somehow, I don’t fucking know how the brains of these cretin work…

But it prompted me to want to take a closer look at the claims of Ukrainian nazism. Most of which has been centered on the infamous Azov Battalion. A paramilitary movement who, prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and dissection of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories, were naught but a football hooligan group out of Kharkiv, with ties to a Moscow FC hooligan squad. The hooligans were militarized during the spring of 2014 when Russia came knocking, and since then have grown into a full-blown military organization, quickly getting incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine.

Are they nazis though? Well, their leadership prior to the incorporation into the National Guard certainly was. And still are, having moved on to found numerous neo-nazi political parties, the most successful of which has been the National Corps, which has failed to win any national parliament seats. During the 2019 parliamentary election, an ultra-right wing coalition spearheaded by the National Corps, got just 2.15 % of the national votes.

And as for the remnants of Azov, folded into the National Guard, numerous contemporary reports hows that some of them still exhibit neo-nazi affiliations and loyalties. Swastikas, white-supremacist ideologies, nationalism galore, even though a modicum of effort has been made to tidy it up.

The bottom line is this: There are nazis in Ukraine. Nazis that are fighting alongside and among the blue-and-yellow armed forces against the Russian invasion. That much seems verifiably true. And Ukraine is not alone in that regard. In Sweden, the Swedish Democrats have 12.9 % of the national vote (as of the 2018 general election). The Swedish Democrats have had plenty of white-supremacist ties, past and present, and run a nationalist platform and promote socialist policies as long as those policies target ethnic or “cultural” swedes. The current Tory leadership in Britain have overwhelming ties to the Brexit movement, a political madness of protectionism, isolationism, and xenophobia which is difficult to argue is anything but preservation of national resources through the exclusionary lens of nationalism. Likewise, the Republican party of the libertine US, as mutated by the Orange Hydra Trump, bear the particularly sickly stench of protectionism, nationalism, with a strange breed of insincere socialism aimed distinctly at some mythological working-class hero kind of white person.

Le Pen in France, the Mussolinis of Italy, the Erdogans of Turkey, the Bennetts of Israel, the Orbans of Hungary, the Bolsonaros of Brazil, the Modis of India, the Jinpings of China… the world is absolutely lousy with nationalism and supremacism, sometimes painted with a flaking layer of something akin to socialism. Or why not look at the Putin of Russia, who has expressed the explicit doctrine to militarily “protect” Russian minorities world-wide, and in so doing expanding the lebensraum of the Russian population back to their Soviet glory days.

If “de-nazification” is a legitimate reason for war, then there should be plenty more nations queueing behind Ukraine to get a thorough wash. And seeing as the wake of “de-nazification” looks something like this, or this, or this, or this, I will reserve my doubts as to whether there isn’t something much worse than Nazis prowling Ukraine…

/Sebastian Lindberg 5/4-2022

A Punished Public

Sanctions against Russia are hitting hard. Seemingly. We’re shown queues of citizens trying to take out cash, nervous business moguls and oligarchs asking for the war to stop, and unverified videos of Russian workers going on strike as their pay is withheld. Putin even went so far as to state that the western sanctions on Russia is an act of war.

Which, you know, seems to suggest that they’re working.

But as Russia’s economy may or may not be grinding to a halt, concerned voices are raised in the West (primarily in the US) whether it is fair to punish a country’s population for its leadership’s evils. The US pundit Nick Gillespie harumphed whether it was reasonable, as a parallel example, to hold the US public responsible for the war crimes that the US has committed. And let’s unpack that, shall we?

The point of a democracy is that the population rules the country. In a representative democracy, we streamline the process by electing representatives for us to run it in our stead. Y’know, so we can generate taxes, make dental appointments, and order cappuccinos instead of doing any of the actual ruling. We, the People, outsource the practical aspects of ruling. And if we’re unimpressed with the results of our sub-contractors, we elect new ones at the end of a set period of time.

As far as that ideal goes; yes. The public rules. And the public is responsible for the acts of the nation. If an elected official commits war crimes, the onus also lies upon the electorate. Maybe not so far as that all of the 330 million people living in a nation guilty of war crimes should be sent en masse to the Haague, but you can blame them all the same. So as far as the democratic ideal goes, it is absolutely fair and reasonable to hold a public accountable for the actions of its leadership. Maybe if we did, the public would be more inclined to tolerate less of the cruel and callous behaviour we see on the world stage.

But… that’s all assuming ideal circumstances. Nick Gillespie worried about the implications of holding the US voters responsible, but the US is far from an ideal democracy. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, the electoral college, the two party system, the parties congress control, the haywire lobbyism; all taken together it is very easy to argue that there’s no representative democracy left on the federal level of the US. Not only that, but that it in fact is a corporate oligarchy. And if so it’d be difficult to argue that it’s reasonable to blame the cattle in the grinder for the war machine they drive. Even more so in Russia, were election results are as predictable as the calendar, and the unruly opposition to the power of iron-fisted Putin get sent to jail. Or get poisoned.

And yet; all that is required for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing. Whether a population is responsible for the country’s leadership becomes a moot point when that government begins committing evils. Because when they do, it is easy to argue that it is every decent human being’s duty to stand against those evils. Whether elected official or tyrannical despot, theirs is to fear the ire of their citizens. Not the other way around.

At which point comes another kick in the deductive balls: Evil is a subjective. And what capacity does the general population have to evaluate what is an ill, a necessary, or a justified act. Because the longer our elected officials or tyrannical despots are dependent on an undereducated and uncritical population to rule as they see fit without our involvement, the harder it will be for the public to determine what’s tolerable and what’s not. Just look at the Capitol assault, where a bunch of yahoos decided (after they were told as such) that they had been preyed upon, and decided to take action.

Whether we want an accountable population is a matter of ideology. Whether we want to make the effort to keep billions of citizens educated enough to take valid actions in accordance with their tuned moral compasses is very much not a done-and-done debate. There are pros and cons to a dumbass public or an informed host of busybodies both.

And yet, even with all the back-and-forth on the public’s accountability, two things are undeniably true. A tyrant, a despot, a war criminal, cannot wield power without a population’s support, whether it’s freely willing or blissfully ignorant. And a people will inevitably suffer from the sins of their kaiser. Sanctions or no, one should think it’d be in the interest of every single Russian to give their Tsar a taste of his own proprietor blend of polonium earl grey to quench his imperialist War.

/Sebastian Lindberg 8/3-2022

No Fertile Soil For Truth

At night, the flare of rocket-fire light the night sky of Ukraine. A gloom occasionally pierced by the thunder and flare of explosions. He actually did it. The Kremlin mad-lad Putin, too comfortable beneath his imperial crown, initiated an invasion of Ukraine, and proved that Russia is still a poor neighbour.

Worse yet, as the Russian advance stalls against Ukraine opposition, the Tsar threatens thermonuclear war if anyone come to Ukraine’s aid. And with all eyes upon him, he grows desperate.

War is not as rare as we the coddled West like to think. But when it happens in Asia, in Africa, in some far away place, it is easy ignore it. To forget and go on. It’s not so easy when it occurs on your home lawn. But now the West looks on with bated breath and eager cheer in support of beleaguered and defiant Ukraine.

And with all that attention, all these civilian and journalistic eyes turned to Kyiv and Kharkiv, the 24-hour news cycle doesn’t rest in its eager depiction of brave Ukrainians holding back the predatory Russian.

In such a fever pitch of attention, however, it is important to remember that a war does not make fertile soil for the truth. People prefer fairytales as comrades in arms in the foxhole. And while it seems easy to dismiss Putin’s meandering denial of the Ukrainian ethnicity and culture, of an anti-nazi purge of its southern neighbour, as ham-fisted propaganda, it is important to remember that the Kremlin isn’t the only source of misinformation. Especially during a war.

Stories abound from the southern side of the front. About a mysterious fighter ace, the Ghost of Kyiv, that purportedly shot down six Russian fighters on the first day of the invasion. Or the valiant defenders of Snake Island in the Black Sea that are said to have told a Russian warship to “go fuck itself” before being bombed to oblivion (at first reported dead, then reported alive and well). We see pictures of rushed marriages so that the newly-weds could speed off to the bunker with an AK each. We see pictures of a former-comedian turned president participating in the war, telling the European Union that he won’t abandon his post. We hear of Russian soldiers feeling tricked and demoralized by having been lied to by their commanders. Stories abound of an occupied Chernobyl, and fears for the sarcophagus of Europe’s Near Miss with Oblivion. We are told the story of Vitaly Skakun Volodymyrovych who blew himself up with the bridge he was guarding, rather than let the Russian convoy pass it.

Inspiring stories. Used to galvanize a population against a murderous aggressor. And very little of it, if anything, verifiable. Some of it may be true. Some of it probably is. But we are ill equipped to figure out what is which. Military intelligence is canonically an oxymoron, and during a war, that’s all there is. The Truth does not grow in smouldering craters, but sprouts only afterward. When we return to the shells of buildings and wreckage and try to figure out what exactly happened.

So be careful. In our eagerness for information, and our fervent support for one side or another, it is oh so easy to want to believe the kernels and nuggets that come to our attention. But be mindful. Mindful that some of what you will see will be lies. Some of it will be legends in the making. Some of it will be curated snapshots. And since nothing can easily be verified, we need to take it all as propaganda until the dust settles.

/Sebastian Lindberg 1/3-2022

A War Begotten; A War Forgotten

War. It’s what’s been on everyone’s lips this week. War in Europe. A new blisteringly hot Cold One. Or maybe the beginning of a new cataclysmic one. War, war, war, and who’s to blame for it.

Western media is stoked with Russian fears. Imperialist expansionism, disregard for the sanctity of the sovereign state, worries of the reliance on Russian gas. And that’s not even taking into account the US narrative…

Lacking a better enemy than its own self, the US has been manic in vilifying Russia for years. And every modern president to date, paradoxically apart from the Trump, has bolstered faltering domestic popularity by starting wars. Drumming up a new war, on foreign soil, for short-term domestic political gains, is absolutely in keeping with their modus operandi.

Meanwhile, the Putin Doctrine has had Russia rattle its sabres across their Soviet-days stomping grounds relentlessly for years. From fighter-jet fly-bys across the Baltic Sea, to invasions into Georgia and assassinations (attempts and successes both) inside the European Union. Not to mention aggressive propaganda campaigns through internationally aimed news agencies, such as RT. And now the military build up along the Ukraine-Russia border. A mustering that the Russian media machine dismiss as self-defensive and totes not at all aggressive and threatening so long as Ukraine comes back to the post-Soviet fold and cease its dreams of self-determination and EU partnership.

Everyone seems to forget, though, that Russia’s war on Ukraine started eight years ago when they annexed Crimea and created splinter vassal states in the east of Ukraine. That war never ended. Never stopped. And has, as of May 2021, cost some 14’000 lives.

What we’re seeing today, what media outlets worry is the start of a war in Europe, is in actuality the escalation of an already running one. It is the opening of a new front. The question isn’t whether or not Russia will invade. They already did. The question isn’t whether Russia’s prepared to commit troops to subjugate Ukraine. They’re already doing it. The question isn’t even what the west, what Nato or the EU or the USA, will do about it. Because they’ve already shown that the answer is “pretty much not a god damned thing” except thoughts and prayers with some gifts of guns and bombs on top.

What’s the question then? Depends on the colour of your curiosity, I s’pose. I’m curious as to why the 24-hour news media cycle has the memory and perspective of goldfish. I’m curious how far Putin is prepared to go to reforge the Soviet Union under a neo-imperial Russia. I’m curious as to when the EU will stop hinging its security situation on the yoke of US domestic politics.

But I am most certainly not curious about whether or not there will or will not be a war in Ukraine. Because that’s already the case. Has been for years.

/Sebastian Lindberg 1/2-2022

The Ryanair Affront

Last weekend, the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko buckled down hard on his quest to become the most despicable strongman this side of the Urals. With the courtesy of an armed MiG-29, a Lithuania-bound Ryanair flight was diverted over Belarusian airspace, on the dictator’s direct orders, just so that he could nab the dissident journalist Raman Pratasyevich. Potentially, according to the Belarusian opposition, so that Lukashenko could execute him.

In short; a foreign dictator forced a European airline to breach their contract of confidence with their passengers, giving one of them up at the muzzle of a loaded air-to-air missile lock.

At first, Ryanair played down their gross dereliction of responsibility with a white-washed PR statement that completely neglected to mention the kidnapping of Raman on their watch. But then, as eye witness accounts began to pour forth from other passengers that were spared the Ryanair betrayal, indignation became the popular response. Indignation spreading across the EU like a political wildfire.

EU countries have recommended that airlines avoid Belarusian airspace altogether. Impotent condemnation come hailing in across the Belarusian regime. Meanwhile, Lukashenko hits back with Turkish threats of opening borders to migrants and drug-trafficking. And as an Austrian airline tries to avoid Belarusian airspace on its trip to Moscow, Russia steps in and defends its wee brother’s integrity and revokes the new flight plan.

Meanwhile, the world asks, how can we allow such an affront to occur? Not that it’s a new one. The US had foreign nationals stashed away under military lock and key for decades. Nor shall we ever forget the Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai that was kidnapped by Chinese secret police in 2015 and has yet to be returned to his family. This sort of shit happens regularly.

Why? Because the “civilized world” has de-fanged itself. Lukashenko will get away with this. Because Europe has turned itself into a war-exporter, without muscles of its own to dare and oppose its ornery neighbours. Europe has collectively turned into a spoilt boomer who counters violent affronts by threats of a wallet-whooping.

War is a filthy human practise. Young men and women dying for the benefit of a ruling elite. But there have been wars that warranted a fight. Nearly a century hence, Europe faced such a war. A war against a belligerent bully, poised to brow-beat every single one of its neighbours into an ethnically cleansed blurr. The Second World War stands not only as a testament to the horrors of war, but also that sometimes, just sometimes, there are fights worth having. And when the younger brother of the neighbourhood monster family starts waylaying your transports, kidnapping your friends, annexing your back yard, and beating their chests that you’re too weak to stop them, then it’s no time to merely meekly bark back that you’re not going to share your ice cream with them any more.

A bully only bullies as far as they can do so unopposed. And they will keep pushing that border until they encounter resistance. With every successive atrocity, the bully grows bolder, and you grow weaker. And if you do not resist, the bully will cut away at you until eventually there’s nothing left to mount any resistance with at all.

Because waging your wallet against a warplane just doesn’t cut it. Instead, it may be time to start letting those fangs grow out again…

/Sebastian Lindberg 1/6-2021

A Survivor’s (Un)Welcome Homecoming

Alexei Navalny‘s home again. Finally. After a six months stint in Germany for nerve toxin treatment that his government still refuses that he needed to survive, Navalny’s back home on Russian soil. Well, after his plane was redirected around Moscow airspace. Because his supporters were being manhandled by the Moscow cops. And, well, after he was been redirected to a jail cell as soon as he got to the passport checkpoint. Where he’ll be staying at least until mid-February, pending judgement because he skipped out of the country. Y’know, so that he wouldn’t die from the Novichok nerve toxin that the FSB laced his fucking underwear with. Then, after all those redirects, he’ll finally be home again. Well, unless the “courts” sentence him to three years in jail. And unless he gets “mysteriously” poisoned again. Then he gets to go home again. Finally.

Allegedly. All of that, allegedly. Naturally. Because of course the Putin puppet government of Russia wouldn’t dream of poisoning a political opponent to the gran’-daddy of post-Soviet Russia; Vladimir Putin. It’s apparently besides the point that the toxin that nearly killed Navalny was a Soviet military-grade chemical weapon designed in the dying days of the communist empire. Not to mention that this isn’t the first time that an ex-Russian dissident has contracted an acute case of Novichok contact. Because, completely naturally, Russia denies all of these accusations as perfectly groundless.

You’d think that the odds of Russian ex-pats just oops-ing into a rare and engineered nerve toxin would be pretty low, but apparently such an accident is almost a given! (According to the Russian government)

I mean, it’s possible! It’s possible that it’s a coincidence that Russian defectors and political opponents get poisoned by a Soviet chemical weapon when a former KGB-agent sits on the Russian throne. It could be completely unrelated to the Russian government that the identified culprits of the 2018 Skripal poisoning in Salisbury were two GRU officers. It is entirely possible that just because the nerve agent Novichok was created in Russia, that it wasn’t Russia that deployed it. I mean, does Russia really know where, like, half of its varied weapons of medium-to-mass destructions even are?

But to cut the gag short before the sarcasm flies over the head of the internet, of course it was the Russian government that tried to silence the opposition leader Navalny by lacing his tighty-whiteys with a Soviet chemical weapon. Just as it was the Russian government that supported separatists, armed insurrectionists, and just plain fucking invaded the Ukraine in 2014. And now, as Navalny returns cock-sure and swaggering, it sure as shit isn’t because he lapsed on a suspended sentence for embezzlement that he gets thrown into jail. It is because the opposition leader had the fucking gall to survive an attempt on his life when Czar Vladimirovich Putin deigned for him to just fucking die.

So what? What does this tell us, other than that Russians are equal parts bat-shit and badass? Well, for one that Navalny is an intimidating character to the Kremlin and to Putin. Which is sort of… notable. And furthermore, perhaps, that Navalny is even dangerous to the Kremlin and to Putin. Otherwise, why the very public stink and bother?

Which could lead us to another curious deduction: Namely that Putin, despite his referendum to the Russian constitution which basically grants him executive influence for life, just like the Czars of old, may not be as strong a leader as he seems intent on appearing. Maybe Russia’s new-and-improved form of autocracy isn’t as stable as they’d like it to look, after one failed invasion of Georgia, and a staggering occupation turned trench warfare over eastern Ukraine. Maybe Putin’s plan to extend Russia’s strong-arm influence across the old Warsaw Pact world didn’t turn out to be such a smashing idea as he once thought it would be. Maybe, just maybe, Putin’s iron fist isn’t clamping down on LBTQ-rights, political dissent, and neighbouring sovereign states because it feels assured in its power and position.

Because when an iron fist clenches, it never does so out of confidence. It does so out of fear.

/Sebastian Lindberg 19/1-2021