This WSWS report is able to say what Weir, writing for a mainstream Western publication, could not:
The death of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny Alex Lantier ( https://www.wsws.org/en/authors/Alex-Lantier ) , Joseph Kishore ( https://www.wsws.org/en/authors/Joseph-Kishore ) World Socialist Web Site February 17 2024 [...] ...it is first necessary to stress that there is no precise knowledge as to how Navalny died. Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service reported that Navalny lost consciousness after a walk, and efforts to revive him were not successful. Navalny, according to these reports, may have died of a blood clot.This would not absolve the Russian government of culpability. Navalny died in a Russian prison, and the Putin regime was responsible for his well-being and safety. This, however, does not warrant the claim, in the absence of evidence, that Navalny was murdered. [...] One element of the propaganda campaign is the glorification of the deceased. Alexei Navalny was a “champion of democracy,” declared the Washington Post editorial board. “The greatest advocate for Russian democracy is dead,” ran an opinion piece in the British Telegraph. The Atlantic Council , which is closely connected to the US State Department, proclaimed that Navalny’s “martyrdom” will “magnify [his] moral leadership immeasurably.” Navalny, however, was not a representative of a “democratic” faction of the Russian political system. [...]He entered politics on the far right, joining the free market Yabloko party and its Union of Right Forces in 2000. In 2007, he co-founded the National Russian Liberation Movement, an anti-immigrant chauvinist outfit. In 2021, Amnesty International temporarily stripped Navalny of the designation it had given him as a “prisoner of conscience,” for advocating racial killings of people from Central Asia and the Caucasus, whom he once referred to as “cockroaches.” Only after he entered into opposition to Putin did Navalny decide, for political reasons to find another more politically palatable basis, to choose the all-purpose banner of “anti-corruption.” [...] If Navalny was murdered, there are many possible suspects, including some agency of the Russian state, acting with or without Putin’s knowledge...However, one would have to ask: Why would Putin take action against Navalny now? The Russian president has been working to ingratiate himself with a faction of the political establishment in the United States. His recent interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was devoted largely to pleading for a negotiated settlement over the war in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the interview, Putin went out of his way to praise Biden, saying he would prefer his election to that of Trump. [...] All of this, however, is entirely speculative. More important is how it is being used by the US and NATO powers, above all, the Biden administration, to intensify the campaign for an escalation of the war against Russia.The immediate demand from the Biden administration, the Democrats and sections of the Republican Party is for the passage by Congress of a bill containing tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself has seized on Navalny’s death to call for more military assistance, amidst an intensifying crisis of the far-right government, which has been bled white by the imperialist-backed war against Russia. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/17/fzsb-f17.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#28966): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/28966 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104413418/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
