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As the bloody carnage unfolds daily in Gaza, my thoughts drift to the ‘western values’ that drive the mayhem and misery of modern times.
As the USA and its vassals progressed their imperialist gambit in Ukraine, a proxy war cloaked in dishonest moralising and faux respect for international law; Ursula von der leyen beamed happily that Ukrainians were “willing to die for the European perspective“.
Over 250,000 conscripts are dead already with Ukrainian lives as demonstrably expendable to the collective West as Ukraine itself. The only value that drives western ‘support’ for Ukraine is geopolitical expediency – it suits them to hurl other people’s fathers and sons against Russia.
The ‘European values’ that Ukrainians must martyr themselves over didn’t apply in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen or Syria and certainly not in Palestine. Angels of death like von der leyen, don’t care to explain how their vaunted values square with the moral blank cheque long afforded to Israel, a nation routinely guilty of every crime against humanity we a have law for.
Sure enough as Israel used the the attacks of October 7th to justify a new spasm of crypto-fascist atrocities in Gaza, Ursula von der leyen was on the first plane to Tel Aviv to re-issue the blank cheque – making it crystal clear to Israel and the world that the European Union would support whatever Netanyahu had planned. Joe Biden rushed over to pledge more weapons and the European political and media establishment dutifully draped itself in the Israeli flag.
Israel has since dropped twice the munitions on the densely populated concentration camp of Gaza than fell on Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, most women and children are already dead and millions now face starvation.
But still the depths of immorality that underpin ‘western values’ have yet to be plumbed, there is no bloodbath beyond the pale, nothing that stirs their compassion or conscience; while it remains geopolitically expedient to permit a genocide in Gaza…nothing else matters.
International law, morality, compassion and truth are all just game mechanics to some. As Caitlin Johnson points out, it is standard U.S. policy to downplay the sins of allies while playing up those of enemies. In games of empire only winning matters – human values are weaponised as methods of control.
Nothing has highlighted more clearly the sheer depth of cynicism that underpins ‘western values’ than Gaza. As Israel indiscriminately kills innocent civilians on an industrial scale and proceeds onwards with a modern day holocaust, the West’s sole concern has been the PR, deploying every propaganda trick in the book to obfuscate, conceal and excuse its complicity in mass murder.
What are the western values that supposedly give us the right to act as the world’s moral police force? What elevates us exactly?
Nothing.
The West values precisely and absolutely nothing except power and money for its own sake. Go along with this nihilism and you will get along – try to fight for human values and you will be sidelined and attacked.
Small wonder that climate vandalism and biodiversity loss threaten us all with a mass extinction event – but if you imagine that our much vaunted western civilisation will give a damn about the onrushing horrors of mass displacement and starvation then dream on. One need only look to Gaza to see how much our lives will be valued when this cult of nihilism finally prompts a global ecological collapse.
It may not be possible to save the Palestinians of Gaza nor the climate change refugees of the near future – but if you don’t try and fight for them… you will most certainly lose your own soul.
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