Funny how it took the imminent threat of World War Three to convince the globe that Russia was a kleptocracy and Vladimir Putin the mafia boss running it.
As the murder of innocent civilians and the systematic destruction of Ukrainian cities continues it appears to be business as usual in diplomatic circles and down at the Irish Financial Services Centre.
It has been claimed that between 2005 and 2017 Russian oligarchs channelled around €118billion through the IFSC.
The fact that much of this cash may have been looted from the Russian people by pals of Putin was neither here nor there.
In the last few days we’ve been hearing plenty in the way of condemnation from the Taoiseach and his ministers.
Ireland has maintained full diplomatic relations with Russia allowing Putin’s spies to continue gathering intelligence from its sprawling embassy in Dublin.
And despite all the rhetoric there’s reason to believe billions of euros in Russian cash is still sloshing through the IFSC’s facilities.
Last week former Labour leader Alan Kelly warned that Ireland risks being “the best small country in the world to funnel corrupt dirty Russian oligarchs’ money”. He is not wrong on that count. For years Ireland has facilitated the laundering of billions of euro in dirty Russian money and it is unclear if atrocities being committed in Ukraine will put an end to this.
If someone goes into their local credit union to lodge a couple of grand they have to sign anti-money laundering forms to explain where they got the cash. But the oligarchs can move two billion through the IFCS and there’s no questions asked.
Under Putin, Russia had become a mafia state where the national resources were being plundered and distributed to a chosen elite. Across the water, where Putin’s golden boy Roman Abramovich had become a pillar of the establishment, the Tory party was being funded by Russian oligarchs.
It took Putin’s unprovoked attack on a sovereign state along with war crimes and possible genocide for the world to question where this ill-gotten cash was coming from.
On the subject of genocide, we continue to do business with China although that country has been accused of crimes against humanity against the Uyghur people.
Nazi-type concentration camps, executions and the forced sterilisation of women are deemed not to be serious enough offences to allow the interruption of trade.
Far from condemning China for its human rights abuses the Ceann Comhairle of the Dail Sean O Fearghail sent an email to TDs warning them not to offend Beijing by showing support for Taiwan.
Indeed Taiwan is in a similar position to Ukraine as it is under imminent threat of an invasion from China which, like Putin, claims it has no right to exist.
Will it take similar scenes and the loss of life being witnessed in Kyiv and Kherson before Ireland and the international community realise that you can’t appease tyrants. Why is there no call for sanctions against Saudi Arabia when the warplanes of this evil kingdom pulverise cities in Yemen killing thousands of women and children?
As for Israel, it knows it has a free hand to bomb any sovereign state it wants without the fear of repercussions and can rely on America to supply the planes and munitions to do it with for free.
Anyone who dares point out it is not on to drop white phosphorus – which causes horrific burns – on civilian targets in Gaza runs the risk of being labelled antisemitic.
It has also become an upside down world for political allegiances as the old certainties between left and right disappear.
How do you explain the gun-toting loonies of the American hard right cheering on an ex-KGB spy who wants to restore the communist USSR though a murderous campaign against freedom-loving armed civilians?
Meanwhile they are threatening an insurrection at home against a so-called “big Government”. This is a model of freedom compared to the dictatorship run by control freak Putin who has privatised his country’s industry and national resources and handed them to his pals.
If anything has been learned from the attack on Ukraine, it’s that the likes of Putin and their apologists must be confronted head on as they, like Hitler, view appeasement as a sign of weakness.
It has also been pointed out that in the past the West has spent tens of billions trying to impose democracy on countries that didn’t necessarily want it yet was unwilling to spend big to defend democracies like Ukraine who do.
That has to change and the courageous people of Ukraine must be given every support to carry on their fight for freedom.
