Its so hard to give an informed opinion on who did it. Mass media feeds us so many different sides of the same argument, and we are left none the wiser. It is unlikely that Putin said "pull the trigger", but I understand the attitudes of people who say that if pro-Russian forces are to blame, then he at least should be made to answer the international condemnation as well.

What I can say, as an Australian, is that the murder of these people, whether by accident or not, deserves more than an "oops - sorry". A friend of my family's was on board with his three grand-kids, and all lost their lives to a senseless act that should not have happened. It was the same for the other 294 people on board that flight - all were known by someone, and their ghastly deaths will all have trickle-down effects on the lives of the thousands they interacted with during their lives. I hope that the world never forgets what this stupid event has done, or that the perpetrators deserve to have justice rain down on them in the most severe way.

When INDEPENDENT international forces are given access to the crash site, and when the due diligence is conducted and decided on by parties who are TRULY independent and who have no axe to grind (and honestly - how possible is that?), then the world needs to learn from this stupidity. These are people's lives, dammit. These people, from all I will ever know, had nothing to do with the in-fighting in the Ukraine, or with any pro-or-anti Russian force. But the reality is that they are dead. And they did not deserve it. And the perpetrators should prepare for more than just sanctions IMHO.

I also understand and acknowledge that this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that innocent people have died or will die as collateral damage (yes, I hate that term, too) to a war. It has happened for millennia, and it is still happening at so-called geo-political hotspots around the world.

I just wish that this f***ing stupidity, and the events that preceded it and which allowed a circumstance like this where an uninformed individual can have such irreversible "power" over the trigger to a killing machine, would end.

Rant over.