News Flash: Garuda Plane Crash in Yogyakarta

I was going to post something warm & fuzzy today for our general well being but now this happens. At least 49 people are killed in this plane crash and it was reported that there were up to 10 Australians on board. My first reaction was to feel sad about this tragedy. Then I read the reports on what the Australian Prime Minister John Howard (see my posting on Barbarians at the Gate) said about the tragedy and I was very hard pressed to feel any sympathy for the Australians.

This is what this white supremacist Prime Minister said about the incident:-

"There is something about the death of one of your fellow countrymen in a distant place that affects you a bit more..... Its further affected when its related in some way to being on service for the country. I feel a particular responsibility for people who are in the defence forces, in the federal police, in the diplomatic service....One has a special sense of concern when it does involve these people."

These comments are from the man who is responsible for sending the Australian troops to bomb and burn the people of Iraq. He feels sad that a handful of Aussies got burnt in a plane tragedy and has no feelings that he is responsible for the burning carnage that was once Iraq and the 500,000 Iraqi men, women & children he is responsible for killing. And he wants to send more troops over! What gives him the right to feel that only Australian lives are important and that only Australians who get killed abroad deserves special attention. What about other people who get killed in their own country by Australians abroad - Australians whom he sent abroad, these defence forces whom he has a particular affection for?

The only sadness I felt was that John Howard and his Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer was not in this burning carnage.