FROM VALHALLA

TWO MEN. TWO deaths in custody. Two prefabricated martyrs.

Gonzalo Lira was working as a journalist in Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities didn’t dig what he said about the country. They called him a Russian stooge. He was actually a Chilean-American sometime novelist and film maker, who once even worked as a dating coach. He wound up in Ukraine, married a local woman, had children, and began writing about the conflict in that country. He was not kind to Ukraine, or its regime. The authorities began to consider him a threat. Finally he was arrested. He was given bail. Fearing for his safety, he tried to flee Ukraine but was caught and was arrested for skipping bail. He was imprisoned, where he died aged 55. Apart from the Chilean Government, not too many people in the West, media or politicians, showed too much interest in the fate of Gonzalo Lira. The general silence around the death of a journalist in Ukrainian custody was pretty deafening. Elon Musk was one exception. And there were others. Those who don’t accept the Ukrainian narrative as presented in the West see Lira as an independent journalist silenced because he would not toe the line. He is their martyr.

Alexei Navalny was a Russian politician who opposed Vladimir Putin. He was either a paragon of democratic virtue, brave enough to return to Russia to fight the rule of a tyrant, or he was a man whose general views were originally similar to Putin’s, it’s just that he was in another camp. His views changed over the years. He appeared to become more liberal. He accused the Putin camp of corruption. He condemned its actions in Ukraine. They accused him of fraud and embezzlement. He said they tried to poison him. Then he was called an extremist. And finally, he was imprisoned in a special Gulag-type institution, and he died in prison. The Russians say he just died. The West and his supporters say he was murdered, some even specifically saying he was killed by what’s known as a “KGB punch” to the heart. Anyway, he’s dead too and ripe for martyrdom. He has a pretty wife who has committed herself to carrying the torch for her husband’s crusade. He is being hailed in the West as a great Russian democratic hope snuffed out by evil tyranny.

Neither Navalny nor Lira had anything in common except their deaths in custody and their use as pawns.

*Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

*It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country – ED