Sabina Higgins Letter to Irish Times calling for ceasefire on Ukraine

Cheese toasties? Where are we going with this one?

I'm lactose intolerant as it happens.

What does not make sense to me is this. If you consider yourself to be on the "left" politically, by default you should be fervently against imperial oppression and pro the right to fight back against it.

I consider myself firmly on the left politically and this seems axiomatic to me.

Yet there is a strain of highly vocal ideology which claims to be on the "left" which is now egging on imperial oppression, merely because it is not coming from the US or a western European country, and the victim is a country which seeks to ally with the free world.

This segment of the "left" have run wholesale with the shameless lies of Putin. This is utterly batshit crazy. It is a repudiation, a two fingers gesture, to everything the left should stand for. It is morally bankrupt, depraved, decadent, dripping with western privilege. It is brain dead. In this country, Mick Wallace, Clare Daly, Paul Murphy, Catherine Connolly etc., and now Sabina Higgins epitomise this. Large sections of the vocal pro-Corbyn online presence epitomise it in Britain. Some of the self styled "progressive" movement in the US are running with it too. I have serious questions in particular about Cori Bush, a high profile congresswoman, part of the group known as "The Squad", especially after what I've been reading today about her links to a thing called the African People's Socialist Party, which is now under FBI investigation as being a Russian influence operation.

The real left in the European countries which are near to Russia and thus threatened by Russia are telling this section of the self styled western "left" in no uncertain terms that they are dead wrong. And this section of the western left refuses to listen. They apparently know better than people with real skin in the game. A very imperialist attitude, one might say.

The only way this makes sense is if this section of the "left" either understands the world entirely through dumb slogans and does not truly believe in anything, ie. that's it's just cosplaying at politics, or if some influential opinion formers within this segment of the "left" of it really are bought off by Russia. Unfortunately I think both of these things are playing out.

We all know that the far right internationally most obviously Trump and his whole mass cult and much of right wing America are allies of Russia. But it seems to me Vladislav Surkov's tactics of choreographing the entirety of Russian political life extends across the spectrum of politics internationally as well. It has to. It would make no sense if it didn't, and the evidence of our eyes and ears is telling us that it is happening.

No one is surprised by right wing muppets mounting a defence of Putin, but a lot of 'the left' are making clowns of themselves as well.

They spend their political and intellectual life warning of the dangers of fascism, and when it finally arrives and clubs them over the head, they refuse to call it what it is because it's eminating from Moscow - a country that has spent it's time cultivating these idiots for decades.

Oh I would be happy to live under USA uncle joe, British uncle joe, or even EU uncle joe vs any Communist uncle joe. It's a no brainer. It's odd thinking with some of the younger ones. Like them picking up a mein kampf and deciding hey you know what he was right. I have no idea what the older ones are thinking though they have no excuse. Forgot about the old checkpoint charlie threat of nuclear annihilation.