A sombre note-MH17.Shame on you Russia.

I feel enormous sadness for the victims of MH17.Completely innocent people going about their lives and brutally murdered by evil and probably drunken thugs.Thugs who if they were not Russian technically were Russian in spirit.
I also feel enormous empathy with the passengers as I flew back from Paris just last weekend on Malaysia Airlines and we flew exactly the same corridor over Ukraine.
Malaysia is a good airline which has suffered enormous bad luck .I can only feel sympathy for the staff of the airline.
I cannot understand the appalling behaviour of Russia and the jumped up little ex-KGB agent Putin.A man who surely is suffering from a lack of self-esteem and/or serious mental health issues.
As someone who lived through the height of the cold war--I can tell you exactly what I was doing in October 1962 when the Soviet Union and the USA faced off over the Cuban missile crisis and it really did look as if we were all "on the eve of destruction" I had naively thought that with the end of communism Russia would emerge as a responsible world citizen whose people would want their children and grandchildren to grow up in peace.What have we got instead? A potential Hitler.A vile little vicious thug who has created a gangster state where the only law is the law of the gun and who does everything he can to disrupt harmony around the world.
The last 24 hours have established new lows in international behaviour.Not only is Putin denying what is bleeding obvious to the rest of the world-that Russia or its proxies shot down MH17-and making himself look like an even bigger liar and fool by doing so- but his proxy thugs-many of them drunk- are looting the bodies of the victims and not allowing rescuers to even access the crash site to recover the bodies.What hell must the relatives of the victims be going through?Full responsibility rests with Putin.
Australia's Prime Minister has had very tough words to say about Putin in the last 24 hours (28 Australians died in MH17).For once -and it a very rare event-I applaud Abbott's position.The big world talkfest ,the G20 meeting,is being held in Brisbane ,Australia in a few weeks.There is no way Putin should be allowed to attend.Russa has disqualified itself from a place at the table with civilised countries and all Russians should be ashamed of their country's appalling behaviour.Collectively they have blood on their hands.