Sabina Higgins Letter to Irish Times calling for ceasefire on Ukraine

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415346#Comment_119415346

And you had the option to scroll by, but you couldn't resist.

Lesson learnt mark? etc etc

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415342#Comment_119415342

Did she?

I can't see her sitting down and web mastering myself. Have you any proof that she did this?

Personally, when I seen it removed I reckoned it was put there by mistake. If it wasn't a mistake, why remove it?

Yes I agree that being the wife of the President gives you more notice. I don't agree that should silence anyone, it's 2022 not 1822

It's odd there was no controversy about a man (the President) making almost similar comments recently don't you think?

stevedublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119405217#Comment_119405217

Oh!, the irony!

batman75

She is entitled to her opinion however due to being the President's wife she would have been wise to exercise her entitlement not to voice it. The irony is, if we hadn't fought for our independence and to kick Britain out of what is now the Republic, then her husband wouldn't be in office. Given our history her take on Ukraine is even more bonkers and it might otherwise be. It's bonkers either way.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415186#Comment_119415186

The thread is going around in circles. For the anti-negotiated peace crowd I’d like to hear if they think that other nations (including ourselves presumably) should be joining Ukraine on the battlefield. Or how this war is going to end other than fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian” ?

It really pisses me off that the highest paid Public Servant in Ireland is too bloody arrogant to explain to the people whose taxes pay both his fat salary and his many pensions how Sabina's witless scribblings managed to end up on his website. So much for public accountability; something that the likes of Francie are always rabbiting about.

If it was a mistake (which its subsequent removal from the website suggests is the case) then why has the conceited old git not simply stated that, so we can close the file and move on to other business?

Yurt2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415607#Comment_119415607

Negotiations will happen at the option of the Ukrainian government when the Russians are suitably humiliated. When Ukrainian soil is suitably nourished by Russian troops' blood.

Until such a time, the West will continue to arm Ukraine as they so demand, and they will continue to extinguish the lives of Russian invaders. It will continue until the wails of Russian mothers in mourning extinguish the fascists in the Kremlin.

That's the calculus of war, and that's exactly what Putin has chosen. He'll be made eat it. And his cheerleaders and snaking regarders in the democratic world will have to swallow it too.

And FYI, the end is coming sooner than you think - which is why the gormless tankies are so concerned with peace talks all of a sudden. From clapping like seals at the start of the invasion talking about NATO "gameplaying", to latter-day self-anointed Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, because Russians are dying by the bushel and lying unburied in Ukraine being eaten by crows.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415641#Comment_119415641

When it was removed was it not self explanatory? If it wasn't a 'mistake' it would have been left there.

I'd assume he's not going there because he doesn't want to get the Presidency into the shitshow the likes of McGahon wants to drag it into. 'It was really you that wrote the letter wasn't it' or insinuations to that effect.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415641#Comment_119415641

Perhaps it is a statement being made for him? It wouldn't do to refer to the letter being posted on the president.ie website and the possible endorsement of the opinions expressed. From reading the coverage, this statement is a reaffirmation of the government position. They are still trying to kill the story.

Regards...jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415713#Comment_119415713

Bottom line is that the highest paid public servant in Ireland is skulking in the kennel with his two big dogs and isn't man enough to come out and say "sorry folks, we got it wrong and we'll try not to do it again" - and he could even add the revolting: "lessons have been learned"!

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415713#Comment_119415713

How so when FG's McGahon is all over it like a rash online and on RTE etc?

If they were trying to kill it then why allow him off the leash?

Doesn't make much sense in fairness jmcc

EDIT: Add Malcolm Bynre FF to that, who is about to contribute on Drive Time.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415756#Comment_119415756

It is an attempt to kill the story and mentioning the problem would just shift the focus back to the Sabina Higgins letter. When politicians are explaining, they are losing.

Regards...jmcc

We’ll know shortly if the govt is going to turn the screw on Higgins. His statement is clever, just repeating his vehement condemnation of Putin’s war and sidelining the rest.

They know it’s not a resigning matter (much as they want that for the kicking he gave them over the Armagh fiasco). I’ll stick by my belief that they don’t want to draw anymore attention to it. MM “moves on” so much he qualifies as the first peripatetic Taoiseach. It must have rattled them to see the tweet from Ukraine (see above) that specifically linked Higgins letter to NI, even while insisting they weren’t connected. Ya gotta love it.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415759#Comment_119415759

They want to kill the story and having McGahon and Byrne highlight the problem effectively shows that the government's position is the official one. It also demonstrates to MDH what happens when he or his wife go off-script. Perhaps for the last few years of the Higgins presidency, the Aras will become a gilded cage for them with no more comments on political matters. MDH may have got away with his comemnts on the Housing crisis (they were meant to deflect from his Nigeria massacre comments) but once that letter appeared on the president.ie website and Russian ambassador picked it up, it was a serious problem for the government. McGahon is not a major political player and Byrne/FF is also just a senator. The government needed to kill the story. Rather than having cabinet members criticise the president, having two senators was a more effective way of demonstrating the limitations of the presidency.

Regards...jmcc

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415821#Comment_119415821

Complicated.

Still not seeing it tbh.

John Doe1

Message to Russia: Cease fire and take over Donetsk/Luhansk, wait for 4/5 years for everyone to forget and try again in Estonia/Latvia. Rinse and Repeat.

Ten of Swords

@FrancieBrady do not post in this thread again

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415607#Comment_119415607

Threads generally go around in circles when there are trolls who spend the entirety of their waking hours pushing pro-Russia bullshit talking points for kicks.

Other nations should absolutely be joining Ukraine on the battlefield in the same way that Allied forces fighting the Nazis in World War II were made up of many nationalities. This is the world's fight. It's a fight for the survival of freedom in its most basic sense. If Ukraine does not win this fight, and if the Putin regime is not crushed, the idea of freedom in its most basic sense will have taken a likely mortal blow. Russia cannot remain free to peddle its evil influence in the west through its many fifth columnists.

Russia needs to be crushed and Putin and his cronies need to hang from meat hooks. Russia likely needs to be broken up too. It is a rotten, rotten society which needs to have the sort of reckoning Germany experienced after World War II. Russia is the crocodile that threatens humanity, and China is hot on its heels.

World War II had to be a total victory and this war has to be as well. If it is not we will face the consequences.

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415436#Comment_119415436

Francie, constantly derailling and justifying it by saying it can be ignored is disingenuous at best. You gave a bee in your bonnet about the North. We know.

There's little incentive to add a comment when you keep twisting it to a comparison with Northern Ireland.

Edit: Sorry just saw the thread ban. Point proven so.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415211#Comment_119415211

The Sunday Independent did indeed vilify John Hume and they did so over the course of several years. What is absolutely hilarious is seeing a Shinnerbot equate the Provisional IRA to the genocidal Nazi state of Russia. I can't stand Sinn Fein but not in a million years would I make that comparison.

Francie is historically illiterate and the worst propagandist for Sinn Fein that I've ever seen. Maybe he could actually be a secret Fine Gael bot?

The thick plottens.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415647#Comment_119415647

Nourished by blood? You are such an unbelievable creep.

Anyway you gave out stink that MDH wouldn't be bullied by FF TDs in cheap suits so it's a grand old result for you.

growleaves

The gormless tankies like your hero MDH. Well did you not vote this gormless tankie into office?

Yurt2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416040#Comment_119416040

Like a give a crap. People need to wake up a little bit. If Russia wants to start a war like this it means tens of thousands of dead young Russian men before it gets anywhere near the negotiating table.

If you want nice words about this from me you'll be waiting. The West, EU, NATO etc are up against an irredentist fascism.

This means Russian soldiers heads on pikes until Ukraine is restored to her people's satisfaction and the European peace re-established free from the threat of Russian fascism.

You need to deal with that - and the only creeps are the ones disguising their support for Putinism under fake peacenik language as the Russians go backwards with their army torched.

busunderer

^ keyboard warrior classic

Yurt2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416048#Comment_119416048

I didn't vote in the last Presidential election. I was out of the country.

Geoffrey Roberts referenced by Sabina is a classic textbook Tankie. He's a joke. She needs a lobotomy and a rocking chair if she thought she'd get that moron past people.

Seriously brain-dead stuff from her.

She's entitled to write to the Times, and we're all entitled to proffer our opinion on it.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416078#Comment_119416078

Roberts has literally gone to Moscow and been honoured by the Russians for his "work".

Look at the absolute crap he wrote a year ago. The "academic" version of that Kremlin funded rag The Grayzone, or Russia Today.

Anybody with any self respect who has been so quickly proven completely out of touch with reality would just shut up, although I suppose the lack of self respect and completely out of touch with reality bit explains why he hasn't.

https://twitter.com/LiamQuaide/status/1553494899919552512

growleaves

@Yurt2 You sound like Patrick Pearse when he said ‘the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed by the red wine of the battlefield’. 

How many Western Europeans in 2022 have a mystical belief in bloodshed? Your rhetoric sounds really creepy to me.

You're a noncombatant LARPer so stop laying it on so thick. You aren't going to be massacring any Russian soldiers yourself.

I'm happy for Ukraine to fight on if that's what they think they should do.

Snooker Loopy

Here's another doozy by Geoffrey Roberts, who Sabina Higgins admiringly quotes in her Irish Times letter.

https://twitter.com/susanl_author/status/1547514358460203010

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415647#Comment_119415647

What in the....?

Negotiations will happen when the EU decides that the noise from its populations about the heating bills and energy cutbacks is too loud to ignore anymore. At that point, Zelensky will be told to do a deal - a deal which will likely leave Russia in control of the areas they currently have.

Putin knows this. It's why gas supplies to Europe have been weaponised and cut back steadily. He's timed it perfectly too - just in time for the spring weather and in the aftermath of Covid, and at the same time as much of Europe is tearing itself apart over Green policies and demands. He knows well that the general support for Ukraine has fallen away as more pressing and immediate matters closer to home have taken centre stage in European countries.

All he has to do is wait them out - and he has the political will and manpower to do it, regardless of the loss of life to his own side as well as the Ukrainians. By winter it'll be done and there'll be a new border in place. That'll be the price for turning the gas supply back on.

Yurt2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416127#Comment_119416127

Not only are Ukrainians happy to fight on, they are fighting on and are increasingly in the ascendancy. They will be supported fully by anyone with half a brain rattling in their skull. Roberts knows what he is doing, and that's the classic Tankie play of attempting to demoralise those supporting Ukraine. Sabina is most likely an unwitting idiot in all this.

I really don't care a jot if you don't like my rhetoric. The tankies infesting these threads need to reconcile themselves that there is a tariff for Russian fascism, and it's a human tariff that will be paid for in the lives of young Russian men with no good return for the morally bankrupt state. They best start dealing with it.

NATO, the West, the EU (of which we as Irish citizens are a part) should not and will not take a single step backwards in this. The likes of Roberts, Daly and any other edgelord dummy can go do one.