Boom! How'd you like that explosively obsequious diplomacy, Putin?
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Well, your PM Tony "The Shirtfrontenator" Abbott has had his much-anticipated confrontation with Russian president Vladimir Putin, in which he angrily demanded answers about the shooting down of flight MH17.
Well, OK, he politely demanded answers. Sorry, he vaguely asked for answers. Well, he said he'd really like an answer or two, if that was OK.
He also mentioned that the US paid reparations after accidentally shooting down an Iranian passenger airline in 1988, and asked if maybe Russia would like to do something similar.
Russia's response: nup, nup and nup.
"We totally refute the allegations and we want to commit to the full and impartial international investigation," Putin's spokesman Alexander Odoevskiy told the media. "If the Prime Minister has, as he declares, any clear evidence [that Russia was responsible], then he should bring it to the table. We haven't seen it."
While this might look a bit embarrassing for the PM given his big tough manly-man talk ahead of the meeting, he'll have the home country advantage in Brisbane this weekend, with plenty of opportunities to challenge less threatening world leaders to a fight.
Who will it be: Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff? Italian PM Matteo Renzi? Macky Sall, president of Senegal and chair of the New Partnership for Africa's Development? Lay your bets now!
But does God understand of the need for 2% annual GDP growth?
Our Tone also got a letter this week from God himself - or at least God's Head of Human Resources, Pope Francis.
The man born Jorge Mario Bergoglio penned the letter to remind the PM not to forget the poor in the G20's discussions this weekend.
"There are far too many women and men suffering severe malnutrition, a rise in the number of the unemployed, an extremely high percentage of young people without work and an increate in social exclusion, which can lead to criminal activity, and even the recruitment of terrorists."
Francis can rest easy: we know that Abbott hasn't forgotten the poor. In fact, as we mentioned earlier this week, he'll be discussing how he plans to reduce their payments and force them to wait for up to six months for unemployment benefits as a way of somehow stimulating economic growth.
So, y'know. Similar message, really, in an oppositish sort of a way.
And speaking of which…
Don't mention the war(ming)
One thing that's not going to be discussed at the G20 in any sort of detail is climate change.
As we Australians know, thanks to our far-sighted and scientifically-rigorous government, global warming doesn't exist; and if it does exist it's not a big deal; and if it is a big deal then it doesn't require any sort of emissions reduction; and if it does require emissions reductions then that definitely shouldn't be achieved through some sort of carbon trading scheme.
So it's a real shame that the governments of China and the US have, um, just finalised their carbon trading scheme.
There's no reason to think that maybe Australia has it wrong, of course. It's much more likely that the world's two largest economies have mistakenly embraced a system that obviously is nowhere as good as Direct Action's give-polluters-money-and-maybe-they'll-do-something protocols.
Also, there is zero reason to think that Australia should rethink it's whole mine-all-the-coal plan in light of Beijing's announcement that it's banning the building of coal-fired plants in some regions of the country and investing even more heavily in renewable, non-polluting energy generation.
After all, as a wise and definitely not completely mistaken man once said, "coal is good for humanity". So the conclusion is obvious: Barack Obama and Xi Jinping just straight up hate humans.
smh.com.au