The rot at the heart of the western system

There’s been wall to wall coverage in the western media about Alexei Navalny’s death.

But we don’t hear about the Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, 64, who has been in an Israeli jail for 20 years. Barghouti is popular and respected by secular and religious Palestinians and if he were released, would be the democratic choice to lead a national unity government if elections were ever possible.

Nor do we hear about Gonzalo Lira, a US citizen who criticised Ukrainian government corruption and viewed the conflict as a proxy war waged by the US against Russia, who was arrested and sent to a Ukrainian labour camp where he died in January.

And then there’s Julian Assange, who did what investigative journalists should do, expose US war crimes. He has been mercilessly persecuted for the last 12 years. His final extradition hearing is in a few days.  If he loses, he faces 175-years in a US maximum security prison.

US Secretary of State Blinken, reacting to Navalny’s death, said, “The fear of one man underscores the rot in the Russian system and the rot at the heart of Putin’s system.” I would contend that the treatment of Julian Assange exposes the rot at the heart of the US system, as does Blinken himself. He and Joe Biden are currently presiding over a genocide in Gaza. It takes chutzpah for this man, who is supposed to be a diplomat, to try to claim the moral high ground.

Now many members of Congress are using Navalny’s death to push a controversial $61 billion spending bill to send weapons to Ukraine. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly said “the best way to punish Putin is to give Ukraine the weapons and ammunition they need to continue decimating his army.” Never mind that Avdeevka, the last Ukrainian stronghold in the Donbass, has fallen to the Russians, and Ukrainian soldiers are deserting. Ukraine has lost at least half a million men in this avoidable war.

Here’s what will happen with that $61 billion if it passes the House – it has already passed the Senate. The money will be laundered through Ukraine, burned by Russian artillery, and funnelled into senate campaign coffers and the bank accounts of the arms industry executives. This is job creation in a financialised economy whose only productive base is to make weapons with which to kill vast numbers of people around the world. And it’s all done in the name of ‘defending democracy.’

In reality, these politicians detest democracy. A recent poll by the Quincy Institute showed that 70% of Americans want the Biden administration to push Ukraine towards a negotiated settlement with Russia as soon as possible. But the ravenous western war machine, encouraged by a compliant corporate media, must be fed, human costs be damned.

A few days ago, Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes told Jon Stewart that the fighting is being done by Ukrainians and it’s therefore a cheap way to push back against Putin. She claims that it’s the best way to protect [western] security but doesn’t say how, nor does Stewart bother to ask.