Another Navalny Travesty

https://www.politico.eu/article/alexei-navalny-sakharov-prize-freedom-thought-eu-russia/

The campaign to promote Alexei Navalny continues. He is but a component of the expansive Western campaign against the regime of Vladimir Putin in Moscow. You literally cannot interact with Western news media anymore without some kind of daily (and at times hourly) attack on Russia even if it's just a quick thirty second 'dig' – It must be remembered that in most American news venues a proper 'Two-Minute Hate' would exceed the attention span of their audience.

Navalny's past is continually being obscured and re-written. Clearly an asset of Western interests, the media ignores the fact that he's an on-the-record racist, a nationalist, and in other political contexts would be considered a member of the Far Right – not the type of person associated with championing human rights.

People change to be sure, but Navalny's record would have taken down or discredited most Western politicians. An advocate of Great Russia he utterly despises the people of the Caucasus and has argued for Russian irredentism both in the southern region as well as Belarus and Ukraine.

In some respects none of this really matters. It doesn't tell us much about Navalny and we must freely grant that his views may have changed. I don't really care about Navalny because like Juan Guaido in Venezuela he's essentially a non-entity, a front-man, a creature of the forces which back him. The real story here is the Western media campaign regarding him and its deliberate whitewashing of his background. And now he's received a prestigious award burnishing his profile and credentials.

Another aspect of the disinformation campaign involves his identification as opposition leader. He's no such thing. In fact neither he nor his party are even serious contenders in Russian politics. He's not very popular and has little political support. But he's the darling of the West and so the perception is that he's the leader of a significant opposition movement that would (apart from state tyranny and corruption) be democratically empowered. It just isn't so.

And as I've stated before, I guess the Russian state should fire its assassins because apparently they are incompetent. They keep poisoning people but they can't seem to finish the job.

The evidence of Novichok has been obscured and in other cases hidden – we're supposed to trust government and intelligence agency reports. It's one thing to listen to state labs when there's a pandemic that's killing people by the thousands, it's something else when the line being promoted is directly, conveniently, (and suspiciously) tied to a foreign policy goal. Contrary to Right-wing pundits I do not believe Western governments want their economies shut down and people locked up at home. It's ridiculous. They most certainly want people working (preferably like dogs) and the economic machines in high gear. The medical measures (right or wrong) are (despite the bumbling, confusion, and sometimes incompetence) in relatively good faith. This is not to say that there aren't schemers, hangers on, and those who would use these episodes to expand their power and the like. This is certain and to be expected.

But when states are pushing a foreign policy agenda – especially with regard to the poisoning of Navalny and Russia, or the Wuhan Lab Covid conspiracy and China, I'm pretty sceptical.

And all the more so when agencies like Bellingcat are leading the charge and are the most active in spreading and promoting these reports. It stinks of an intelligence operation as does just about everything surrounding Navalny and the charges of Russian poisoning with Novichok.

The USSR developed Novichok during the Cold War but in the 1990's samples were passed on to other countries and it's known that NATO members were involved in its production. It's out there in the world of intelligence agency and military affiliated laboratories. Additionally there are many variants and disputes over the formulae – who has made what, and for that matter which formula was used on the Skripals or on Navalny.

Vladimir Putin is an evil man and completely capable of killing off enemies. He's that type of person and his being engaged in such activities is a surprise to no one. So then we must ask to what end are these botched poisonings? All it has done is create media optics and high drama – all used by the West to work up public support for anti-Putin sentiment and policy. It stinks from almost every angle and I can't accept the narrative. This is all the more true when one considers what the West has been doing vis-à-vis Russia since the 1990's. If you know the larger story and have been following it for the past twenty-five to thirty years then it's not hard to contextualise the saga of Alexei Navalny. For those who haven't and for those who (due to ideological commitments) cannot even entertain the possibility of Western-NATO imperialist expansionist schemes not to mention large-scale deceit, then the propaganda campaign will prove very effective.

As far as the Sakharov Prize – it's now akin to the Nobel Peace Prize, a political football no longer rooted in reality and not worthy of respect or serious moral standing. Given the nature of the award (especially in the past decade or so) it has already been discredited and is clearly yet another tool of the Western Establishment and one the media will use to increase Navalny's profile.