World Burning Down (Turkey and Greece, California and Oregon, and Afghanistan!) by Alfred N.Muggins

11/8/21

Fires in Turkey.

The holidaymakers run to the sea, taking cover in the hotels.

Locals too, out of the hills, to places of safety.

It’s a good job many holidaymakers couldn’t go this year, because Turkey is still a red traffic light to Britons for holidays in the Pandemic.

Fires in Greece!

The island of Evia (Euboea) is having to be evacuated – one of the biggest islands of Greece, North of Athens. Its precious vegetation and the natural harmony between its human residents and nature, is all lost until nature hopefully restores itself in time.

The Athenian fleet hid not too far from here, waiting for the Persians, before the Great Sea Battle of Salamis, a few hundred years Before Christ (480 BC), saving the Greek City States at that time from the big superpower invader who wanted to turn the whole world into one!

The Greeks didn’t fall apart before the superior numbers of the Persian Fleet, despite their loss of many ships and men. Nor did the Spartan warriors at the Pass of Thermopylae, who gave up their lives for the cause of Greek ‘freedom’, which must be within sight of the island which now burns!

Do the brave Greeks remind me more of the Taliban conquerors of Afghanistan, who probably regard themselves as ‘freedom fighters’ against foreign ‘occupiers’, or of the hapless Afghan Army, who, for whatever reasons, stood down rather than stood up for the hard fought for freedoms of Afghanistan in the last 20 years, such as women’s education, rights and participation, and democracy and ‘modern’ legal systems?

(Maybe the Spartans remind me more of the Taliban? Long hair, attachment to their weapons and the warrior existence/lifestyle, devotion to the cause, stubbornness, but their women were more prosperous than their men, who tended to get killed in wars? Can the Americans, and other NATO allies, including Britain, be likened to the ancient Persian Empire, which of course may have had some positive features for all we know?)

(I Alfred Muggins apologise sincerely for digressing, as, at the moment, all thoughts seem to come back to the current Fall of Afghanistan, despite trying to concentrate on other issues!)

Hotel California!

California is burning again this year – is this the fifth year in a row? It happens every year now. The main question, it seems to Alfred Muggins, is whether the whole region will end up as a permanent desert if this global warming continues? or is he just being silly? He has a gut feeling that it will, which does not bode well for California! Oregon has already been burned this year, dry drought and scorching temperatures, kindle dry, no respite! in the late 40’s centigrade. The sun bears down on the land, scorching the last vestiges of greenery. Will there be water here ever again in the future?

Will there be a future?

How many times can your home burn down and still be replaced?

17/8/21

Was it wise for the modern Americans to build in wood? Was it wise for them to follow the Gold Rush to California?

(As Neil Young once said, “what happens After The Gold Rush?)

Should they have left the forests and mountains to the native Americans, the original Indians of Wild West fame. For they would surely not have harmed the climate in the ways that modern European American Civilisation did.

They chopped the trees, and built the cities, created farmlands and plantations, almost eliminated the buffalo, built the factories and steelworks, drilled for oil, and built huge numbers of motorcars. They turned Los Angeles and New York into concrete jungles! And proliferated like rabbits!

13/8/21

Afghanistan Burns

Today, while the fires burn in naturally caused heatwave conditions, Afghanistan burns in a different way, through the negligence and high hopes of politicians who just want to get out once and for all, leaving Afghans to sort their own country out. Great idea, but can they ever sort their own country out? It seems not because every day now another regional capital or two falls to the Taliban. Now who are these Taliban, that they can be at the gates of every city all at once? The Afghan military don’t want to fight, they don’t want to be the only ones to attract the attention of the Taliban fighters, with no government reserves or western militaries to back them up. It must be easier to surrender, than to stick it out, the few against the many, or perhaps someone is cutting them a generous deal or bribing them or their commanders. Could it be that wealthy Islamic backers are bankrolling this? Not so sure, but perhaps?