There are times when single events have massive, world-wide repercussions. That’s how wars start. Franz Ferdinand gets killed in Sarajevo, the next thing we have World War 1. They never called it ‘1’ at the time, that only came when the next one started and they needed to differentiate.

Similarly events in Cuba 50 years later almost resulted in World War 3, with the Russians and Americans on the verge of pushing the buttons.

And yesterday, the Turks shot down a Russian jet. My first thought when I heard was ‘ooooohh, you don’t wanna do that’. My second thought was ‘where’s the nearest air raid shelter and can I take my car in there too?’ ‘Oh, and my family, maybe’.

This is a bad thing. A very bad thing. Turkey indeed has a right to defend its air space and apparently gave 10 warnings, in perfectly clear Turkish, to the Russians that they should basically FUCK OFF OUT OF TURKISH AIRSPACE, LIKE NOW!!! They didn’t and ka-boom, the world went all Roy Lichtenstein.

Oh well, never mind, Russia’s got loads more planes, I’m sure Putin’s hardly even bothered.

Yeah. Right.

A rescue helicopter was sent to help the 2 pilots who’d wisely ejected from their plane. And it was also shot down. Not by the Turks but by the anti-Assad, not-ISIS, Syrian rebel forces. Who hate the Russians. Because the Russians bomb Syria to protect Assad, even though they claim its to attack ISIS. The Russians are very anti-ISIS, nominally, because it sits well with the Americans, and they’ve used the Sinai bombing as a great excuse to let rip with some serious hardware because of ‘the terrorist threat’. But they like Assad.

We (us and the Americans) hate Assad. Or we did. We even almost started bombing him when he was gassing his own civilians to try and suppress the uprising. But Parliament wouldn’t agree the bombing. So now we’re putting it through the government again, this time against ISIS, which helps Assad, which almost makes us allies with the man we wanted to bomb last year. Such is the ever-changing face of the middle east.

At the moment America and Russia appear to be on the same side. But appearances can be deceptive and allegiances change in moments in Syria. Similarly America’s ally, Saudi Arabia appears to be on the same side as its own nemesis, Iran. With the Saudis declaring hatred for the ISIS that they pretty much fund.

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn has decided to sit in bed for a week, with or without Diane Abbott, and sing ‘all we are say-ing, is Give Peace a Chance’ repeatedly until everyone kisses and makes up and takes their horrible weapons back home.

Happy Wednesday, let’s hope its not our last

A xxxx