This week may go down as the week that saw the collective Western leadership being self-indicted as criminally insane.

First of all, we see United States President Joe Biden declaring that the massacre of civilians in Gaza does not “cross any red lines” that might bar further crucial American support for the Israeli regime.

Then we have Biden and other Western political figures declaring their permission for the Ukrainian regime to strike Russian territory with long-range NATO weapons. This is the same regime that glorifies the Nazi Third Reich and collaborators in World War Two genocide, and whose president canceled elections, now becoming a dictator.

It is entirely fitting – and heinous – that accomplices to genocide in Gaza are also recklessly pushing for global nuclear conflagration.

The abhorrent public position of Biden and other Western leaders should be a shocking wake-up call for citizens all around the world as to the criminal nature of these powers. It is all the more sickening given the arrogant claims of the US to be the “leader of the free world” and narcissistic notions about “Western, American, European values”.

Biden has personally taken up a crusade based on a narrative of “leading democracy against autocracy” and promoting a “rules-based global order”.

The conceited Western powers routinely vilify Russia, China, Iran, and others as “autocracies” that are threatening supposedly precious freedoms of democracy and international law.

However, the world can vividly see how bankrupt the US and its Western partners are. Never before has the ugly truth been so naked.

This week witnessed a particularly horrific massacre in Gaza after more than eight months of countless atrocities by the Israeli regime against Palestinian civilians. A refugee camp in Rafah was bombed with incendiary explosives that killed at least 45 mainly women and children in refugee tents. The area had been designated a safe zone by the Israelis.

The scenes of death and mutilation were nearly beyond belief. Women and children were incinerated as they lay sleeping in their tents. Infants were decapitated in the air strikes.

Despite an international outcry against the monstrous barbarity, two days later the Israelis bombed more refugee camps in Rafah again murdering dozens of civilians.

Indeed, the world has reached a crisis in conscience, morality and international law when such wanton, mass murder of innocents is permitted to happen over and over again with impunity.

The United Nations-affiliated International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly called on the Israeli regime to halt its genocidal offensive on Gaza.

Another court, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.

Multiple international human rights organizations and respected scholars have determined that Israel is committing genocide which so far has killed over 40,000 people amid a starvation siege threatening the existence of two million Palestinians.

The actions of the United States and its Western allies throughout this genocide amount to nauseating complicity.

The nadir of Washington’s hypocrisy and collusion was seen following the massacres in Rafah this week. The Biden White House said the mass murder did not cross any supposed red lines that might cause Washington to end its huge military and financial support for the Israeli regime. Only a few weeks ago, the Biden administration was ostensibly warning Israel not to proceed with its offensive plans in southern Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken exhibited depraved psychopathy when he spoke during a visit to Moldova and claimed that it wasn’t clear if American weapons were used in the Rafah bloodbath. He went on to use weasel words to justify mass murder, saying: “I think we also see that even limited, focused, targeted attacks designed to deal with terrorists who killed innocent civilians that are plotting to kill more, even those kinds of operations can have terrible, horrific, unintended consequences.”

European powers are equally contemptible. Following the Israeli onslaught in Rafah, European figures like French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Union’s foreign affairs minister Josep Borrell voiced criticism of Israeli violence. Nevertheless, the European Union and its main members continue to provide vital military support and political cover for the Israeli regime to perpetuate the slaughter.

In the news this week were moves by European states Ireland, Norway and Spain to recognize Palestinian statehood. However, such moves are tokenism and ineffective in halting the genocide. European “values” are worthless, if ambiguous.

Ambiguity on Gaza is not for the Americans though. US complicity is flagrant and barbaric. The White House and Congress have boorishly dismissed the orders by the International Court of Justice and ICC as “outrageous”, insisting with barefaced perversion that “there is no genocide” in Gaza. Washington has even threatened to impose sanctions on these legal bodies for daring to hold the Israeli regime to account. No doubt, part of the logic here is a concern that the United States and its Western accomplices could also eventually be indicted for complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

The double standards and hypocrisy of the United States and its European partners are off the charts. Only a few months ago, they were hailing the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. There is no credible basis for such an indictment against the Russian leader unlike the overwhelming evidence for genocide by Israel in Gaza with full support from the US and Europe.

There are very sound reasons why Biden has become known as “Genocide Joe” in the eyes of a large section of the American and European population.

Further mocking his credentials as “leader of the free world”, Biden has overseen the arrests of thousands of American students who have bravely held protests on university campuses across the US against the genocide that their government and taxes are enabling.

The moral bankruptcy of Biden and the rest of the ruling elite in the United States and Europe is proven beyond all doubt by the ongoing support for genocide in Gaza. Not one of these self-proclaimed champions of the “rules-based order” has stood up unequivocally on the side of justice.

Confirming their moral decrepitude, Biden and virtually all of the Western establishment are moving to escalate the NATO proxy war in Ukraine by sponsoring a NeoNazi regime to hit Russia with long-range ballistic weapons. The criminals have become insane in their warmongering and gambling with a potential nuclear conflagration.

President Putin warned that such relentless escalation would have dire consequences. That’s not a bluff or idle warning.

The savagery of Western imperialism has become a full-blown disease – again. World War One and Two were earlier pandemics of this disease. It is threatening the world once more in the obscene disguise of “democracy, freedom and rule of law”. But that threadbare disguise is as transparent as it is grotesque.

The diabolical image of a distraught Palestinian father holding up the body of a decapitated baby is the horrific reality of Western imperialism. There is no restraint in what this psychopathic system is capable of permitting – the genocide of millions and ultimately global annihilation.

If there is any hope, it may be that the abominable reality galvanizes the world to rise up against this criminal system and the war criminals that lord it in high office.