Turkey Shoots Down Russian Plane

A Turk F-16 shot down a Russian Su-27 Fighter-Bomber over the Turkey border with Syria this morning. Both Russian pilots are reported to have ejected safely. Turkey is a member of NATO, which means that if there is a conflict with Russia, the US will be under treaty obligation to help defend Turkey. Putin has directed his military to play Cold War type games against NATO countries, including flying Backfire Bombers within a mile of a US Carrier Group, and invading the airspace of Norway, the UK, and Sweden. In flying warplanes over Turkey, he pick the wrong guys to mess with, as the Turks have always been absolute about protecting their country. Whether this means a return to the Cold War or not remains to be seen. It may also have been done intentionally to curb Putin’s aggression.

Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane Near Border With Syria

NATO member Turkey shot down a Russian warplane after it violated the country’s airspace near the Syrian border on Tuesday, officials said.

The Russian aircraft was warned 10 times in five minutes before being fired upon, according to the Turkish air force.

The incident — the first time a NATO member’s military has downed a Russian or Soviet military aircraft since the 1950s, according to Reuters — risked worsening tensions between Moscow and the West.

Within hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident a “stab in the back by terrorist helpers.”

“Do they want to have NATO serve ISIS? I understand that every state has regional interests, and we respect that, but we would never tolerate crime like today’s,” he told journalists on state television.

NATO said it would hold an extraordinary meeting later Tuesday to discuss the incident at the request of Turkish officials.

Syrian fighters on the ground and Turkish sources told NBC News that the Russian jet’s pilots ejected and landed in north of Latakia, Syria. That area is controlled by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. Russia has an air base in Latakia which is used to launch bombing raids targeting Assad’s foes — including ISIS.

Footage from Turkish Haberturk TV showed a warplane going down in flames in a wooded area with a long plume of smoke trailing behind it. Russian and Syrian regime helicopters were later seen searching the area where the jet went down, a rebel commander who goes by the name Abu Faiz told NBC News.

The head of the Turkish military briefed President Tayyip Erdogan on the incident, while Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu ordered consultations with NATO, the United Nations and related countries, Reuters reported citing their respective offices.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, there are 69 warplanes based in Latakia. Russian planes have run thousands of bombing raids in Syria since Sept. 30 when the Kremlin announced it would start targeting ISIS.

However, U.S. officials say many of the strikes appear to be hitting areas where ISIS doesn’t have a presence.

Putin ordered his air force to step-up bombings after a passenger plane crashed in Egypt’s Sinai on Oct. 31, killing all 224 on board. On Thursday, ISIS claimed it brought down the Metrojet plane with an improvised bomb.

 

 

The Second American Civil War

Fascinating how the more things change – the more how some things never change.

If Mitt Romney gets elected President this election, and the Republican Party makes inroads into the Congress it will be almost all due to the politics of polarization of race in America by the Republican Party.

“Polarization”?

 “You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognises that while not appearing to.”

Richard M. Nixon as recorded in Richard Nixon’s chief-of-staff, Bob Haldeman’s diary

Since Obama won the Presidency in 2008, we have seen a steady drumbeat of racism from the GOP, which apparently, if poll numbers are to believed has borne significant fruit in terms of elevating Mitt Romney. As most minorities in America are well cognizant of – if you can hoist enough racism into the mix, you can convince a significant segment of the white population in America to go so far as to even cheer the sacrifice of their own children, in a war they were lied into, for objectives which, if achieved – will do absolutely nothing to improve their lives or the country they live in. Big difference between Heroes and Cannon Fodder…

They accomplished it during the Civil War where they convinced over a million Southerners to don the Grey and 250,000 to die – despite the fact that the vast majority neither owned slaves or profited directly from slavery. They ass reamed the same group again during and after WWI to disguise the fact of the massive wealth inequality which lead to the Stock Market crash, while hiding the fact by convincing the same victims that black folks were stealing their jobs and livelihoods…

Sound familiar? You bet…Welcome to 2012.

AP poll: U.S. majority have prejudice against blacks

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51% of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48% in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56%, up from 49% during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

“As much as we’d hope the impact of race would decline over time … it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago,” said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52% of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57% in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison…

The result this time around?

The GOP’s Geography And The Confederacy

Current Electoral Projection

 

Map of the Confederacy in 1861

Are you not struck by the similarities? (The yellow states were not part of the Confederacy but backed slavery. Kansas is an exception, and Maryland and Delaware along the border too). I am not saying (and in the conversation it’s a little garbled and I can see why Heroge might have interpreted me as saying) that that the only states that will switch from Obama to Romney this year were Confederate states. Indiana is the exception. I was saying that if Obama loses North Carolina, Virginia and Florida – which I suspect he will – then the 2012 map will more closely resemble the civil war map than 2008, when the same pattern was striking.

I think America is currently in a Cold Civil War. The parties, of course, have switched sides since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The party of the Union and Lincoln is now the Democratic party. The party of the Confederacy is now the GOP. And racial polarization is at record levels, with whites entirely responsible for reversing Obama’s 2008 inroads into the old Confederacy in three Southern states. You only have to look at the electoral map in 1992 and 1996, when Clinton won, to see how the consolidation of a Confederacy-based GOP and a Union-based Democratic party has intensified – and now even more under a black president from, ahem, Illinois.

 

The Second Civil War… Indeed.

Let’s hope this one ends the way the one against the communists did…