Australian PM Strangelove

As a citizen of Australia I was horrified to hear the irresponsible, ignorant, inflammatory, and divisive speech by Prime Minister Tony Abbott on the subject of the recent downing of MH17 in Eastern Ukraine. The consequences could be enormous in helping to drag humanity closer to World War Three. Why on earth is he making such inflammatory remarks?

Although there has been absolutely no evidence revealed to implicate a Russian hand in this probable missile attack, Mr Tony Abbott spoke as if he was in no doubt that Russia was responsible. He said that he had called the Russian ambassador in Australia for an explanation and claimed to be disappointed that the Russian ambassador had pointed out that the incident had happened in Ukraine and sensibly suggested that the Ukranians were probably responsible.

Mr Abbott did not seem to know, or if he knows, did not care to educate Australians, about how the Ukraine Government in Kiev is currently responsible for multiple atrocities and launching of surface to surface missiles on Eastern Ukraine, with massive destruction of infrastructure and substantial loss of life, causing a stream of hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee into Russia. Ukraine has surface to air capability and equipment. It was responsible in 2001 for an accidental downing of a large aeroplane with a surface to air missile. At the time it attempted to deny its responsibility, although this was eventually made clear. In its very short life, the Kiev government of Ukraine,already has a substantial record of barbarous acts in the civil war it has.

Russia, meanwhile, has demonstrably refused to get involved in this fight because it obviously does not want to inflame the situation and give the United States and its NATO allies an the excuse they crave to invade it.

There is now a claim that Eastern Ukrainians (who want independence from Ukraine) might have used a 'Buk surface to air missile launcher', which they are supposed to have captured from the Ukrainian Government. But why would the Ukraine Government would have had a reason to bring surface to air missile launching apparatus close enough to East Ukraine for separatists to capture it? It is preposterous.

Mr Abbott's empty insinuations could have very grave results. His attitude could help to create an environment for a third world war. A third world war is obviously what a lot of people with political influence in the United States want. It was appalling to hear Hilary Clinton suggest that the Russians must be responsible just because she thought it was their style.

One hopes that the Europeans may bring some restraint to this crude witch-hunt. Although European NATO members have recently been quite cynically aligned with the predatory United States as it goes about its illegal resource wars, they are not likely to want to get into a world scale conflagration in the region. The European states have experienced war on their own territory, whereas the gung ho United States has not. Does the Australian Prime Minister believe that Australia is so out of the way that it would not be hurt by a nuclear war?

It is hard to believe that the Australian Prime Minister was a priest, except if you believe, as many people do, that the Catholic Church is at heart an utterly corrupt and cynical organisation, very heavily involved in world finances and perhaps invested in war.

The whole area around the Caspian region is like a tinder-box, with the US/NATO forces invading and unsettling one country after another with almost full support of their establishment press, with Ukraine the most recent recipient of their destabilising attentions. Their aim seems to be to isolate Russia and Iran with these antics. Both these countries have deeply established interests in this region.

Tony Abbott's ill-judged speech

“I can inform you that the Russian ambassador was called in in Sydney by Foreign Minister Bishop and asked for a categorical assurance that Russia would fully cooperate with this investigation. I have to tell you that the initial response of the Russian ambassador was to blame Ukraine for this. And I have to say that this is deeply unsatisfactory. We all know that there are problems in Ukraine. We also know who is very substantially to blame for those problems. And the idea that Russia can somehow say that none of this has anything to do with them because it happened in Ukrainian airspace frankly does not stand up to any serious scrutiny. I want to say to the Australian people that, as far as I am concerned, when you have a situation where Russian-backed rebels appear to have killed Australians, using – it may well turn out to be – Russian-supplied heavy weaponry, Australia takes a very dim view indeed. And we want the fullest possible investigation.

[Indistinct question from the audience]

[…] Well, based on what we’re hearing from Russia, it’s hard to have much confidence that there will be the kind of open and honest and transparent cooperation that you would expect and this really is a test for Russia. It really is a test for Russia. How transparent and fair dinkum is it going to be? And there can be no excuses, no buck-passing, no blame-shifting. There has to be absolute full cooperation with an impartial international inquiry.”

Add comment