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President Barack Obama said today the crash of a Malaysian airliner in eastern Ukraine was a “terrible tragedy” and said US officials were trying to establish if any Americans were on board.
“The world is watching reports of a downed passenger jet near the Russia/Ukraine border. And it looks like it may be a terrible tragedy,” Obama said, before going ahead with a previously scheduled event in Wilmington, Delaware.
Obama said his first priority was to determine whether there were any US citizens aboard the crashed jet.
“I have directed my national security team to stay in close contact with the Ukrainian government,” Obama said.
“The United States will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why.
“And as a country, our thoughts and prayers are with all the families of the passengers, wherever they call home,” Obama said, before continuing with his remarks highlighting plans to revive America’s transportation infrastructure.
Earlier, the White House said that reports that the Malaysia Airlines plane had crashed in eastern Ukraine had come through while Obama was on the phone with President Vladimir Putin, and that the Russian leader had noted them during their conversation.
Meanwhile the British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted:
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 came down near the town of Shaktarsk, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said it may have been shot down.
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Well done on completing the film. Will seek it out.
The unfortunate thing is, politicians only pretend to care what people think at one time. Election time. The rest of the time, people are an annoyance to be kept at a distance. They have police keeping the public well away from the public servants and a media to keep them dumb. No amount of protest was going to stop that, or any other war. As long as there’s profit to be made, the march of war will continue.
It didn’t make a blind bit of difference which shows that it is a mirage of democKracy that those who we ‘elect’ to be in charge or ‘represent’ our view are not in charge at all. It is the military-industrial might that is and it doesn’t give a tinker’s curse about civilisation.
That was the first protest I took any of my children. It felt like a special day. If it didn’t stop the war, it did help people understand that public mobilisation in large scale is possible, and it helped unmask the true interests of politicians, which are not the same as the public’s.
It’s people like this that allow groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda to grow with their attitudes of appeasement.
More like a continuous cosying up to the wrong type of dictator, interfering in internal conflict and arming the wrong sides, making ‘Hitlers’ out of local bullies and waging illegitimate wars and continuously bombing a region for it’s natural resources facilitates organisations like ISIS or Al Qaeda to warp alienated and confused people into committing atrocities.
Anti-War = Pro-ISIS ?? Good one Darryl..
Nah, I prefer to remember staying up all night watching shock & awe rock Baghdad. Nothing special about a bunch of crusties and easily swayed people gathering in one large group.
have your say