i need to fight the government

Metaphorically.

I came across this sticker (image above) recently and it spoke to my very soul.

I think a lot of us are feeling lost at the minute.

Especially for those of us who work in/study international law, the world seems to have gone completely - moreso than usual - off the rails.

The key tenets that we learned in Introduction to Public International Law are somewhat missing in action. We even seem to have a news media and political establishment that can't seem to state clearly that 'kidnapping is bad' - a principle which should be understood by most first-year law students, or five-year-olds.

Our illustrious Prime Minister here in the UK, who will seize the opportunity every five minutes to remind you that He Is A Lawyer, can't disavow the country's mercurially dangerous 'ally' when it performs extraordinary rendition on the head of state of a non-bellicose Latin American country. He has also has had to be dragged step by step into stating that perhaps said ally shouldn't annex the territory of a NATO member and a neighbouring state to the UK (Denmark).

I've often wondered who taught Keir Starmer law and precisely how high their blood pressure rises at seeing what he does with it.

Joking through gritted teeth aside, here's the thing. We still live in an age of Empire. The West's coloniality complex allows it to think that it will be just fine to do whatever it likes to any country outside the global centres of power, more especially when that country has resources - like oil - that the West could exploit and benefit from.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 have seen this playbook run its course before. Create the conditions for permission to invade the country because its extant leadership are the 'bad guys.' Position the invading force as the 'good guys' or 'liberators.' Invade. Exploit. Rule. Exit. Leave chaos behind.

Back then it was Bush, Saddam, and the WMDs. Now it's Trump, Maduro, and the War on Drugs. Will it be Greenland and its access to the Arctic next?

It's already being pitched that America 'needs' Greenland to hold off threats from Russia and China. Nevermind, if you're into that kind of thing, that Denmark is already part of two strong international alliances and defence forces in NATO and the EU. American exceptionalism demands that America is the only one to hold global power and to manage all other countries' relations to one another.

Both of these things are true:

• international law and the international order has created this situation of American exceptionalism and coloniality-as-praxis for powerful countries, and
• international law and the international order were created to stop this kind of thing once it happens.

And you have to hold both of those truths in your mind, carefully, not allowing one to obscure the other - because we have to live in this timeline, apparently - because what keeps any power in the law, any power whatsoever, is for enough people to demand consequences for those who break it.

I don't know if it's possible for any international law to have power any more. I just don't know what else we've got, so I've got to think there's something.

I was awake early the other morning and watched reporting of the bombing of Caracas roll in across first social media and then traditional media, and watched as the angry and horrified reactions of eyewitnesses and personal commentators slowly morphed into the more sedate, bet-hedging, and 'well, actually,' responses of journalists and politicians. And I thought - I need to fight the government.

Here's Mary Oliver on a different moment, but also the current moment: