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Michael Doherty is the PRO of the Mica Action Group.
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I was talking to Billy Kelleher in the last podcast about Ukraine, and the west’s reaction, and in particular the attitude of MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace.
Naomi O’Leary started and epic Twitter discussion over Easter about the contrasting attitude of Wallace and Daly to authoritarian regimes and to the west. My attitude to this is pretty simple, it’s that two separate things can be true at the same time. It can be true that the west is responsible for gross human rights abuses, resource extraction, environmental destruction in other parts of the world, it can be possible to condemn that, while still acknowledging that there are totalitarian regimes in different parts of the world that are worthy of being condemned, and that are, in fact, much, much worse. Saying that they are worse doesn’t undermine condemnations of actions by western governments that are bad, just not on the whole as bad. And condemning the abuses by western governments doesn’t undermine criticism of authoritarian governments elsewhere.
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