The fact is that once again, the Irish Government has made a fairly big and emotional commitment to people without considering, even for a moment, the practicality of their plan.
With the digitalisation and globalisation of the world, we now have countless companies who have truly global power. Power which, we have just discovered, they are willing and able to deploy for explicitly political goals.
If this happened to an Irish embassy in, say, Tel Aviv, how would Ireland react? With outrage, one might suspect.
President Zelensky, the toast of the western world, is not a perfect Democrat. But we cannot be blinded by contrarianism.
It is hard to see any case, at this stage, other than that this whole thing has been a monumental strategic disaster for the Russians, from start to finish
At its best, sport is magic, and the late Shane Warne was the king of the magicians.
The truth is that from a purely nationalist perspective, the calculations do not change much whether an aggressor considers us neutral or not
They are a party that pretends to represent the working people, but actually represent the concerns of the ruling class, almost in their entirety.
The Irish State funds this kind of thing because it reflects the view that Irish civil servants and decision makers have of themselves, and the country: A bit of a cut above.
We should not use the war as an excuse to abandon our own values, and embrace what is effectively state censorship.
After all, what does a right to housing mean?
The alternative to a negotiated settlement of this war is not pretty.