What Caught My Eye Today

Wild Fires - Maybe it is just me, but I'm pretty sure this same deal happened in both California and Greece around this same time last year. A deadly wildfire that has blackened a wide swath of tinder-dry forest around Los Angeles made another menacing advance, surging toward thousands of suburban homes and a vital mountaintop broadcasting complex. Dude, this better not affect my ability to text and tweet. If that happens, I'm telling you, the gloves are definitely coming off. The flames have scorched 134 square miles of brush and threaten 12,000 homes. The blaze has also killed two firefighters, destroyed at least 21 homes and forced thousands of evacuations. The firefighters died when their truck drove off the side of a road with flames all around them. And if that isn't bad enough, this isn't even the most destructive fire in the state. The blaze in the Los Angeles foothills is the biggest but not most destructive of California's wildfires. Northeast of Sacramento, a fire destroyed 60 structures over the weekend, many of them homes in the town of Auburn.

And then there is Greece...

Wildfires burned out of control in the forests of Athens' northern suburbs for four days before firefighters contained them. The fires were the most destructive in decades in the Attica region and the worst in Greece since the devastating fires of 2007. Oops, so I was off by a year.

Thought we were done? Guess again...

Officials in the Australian state of Victoria introduced a "mega-fire" alert level that will warn people to flee approaching wildfires and leave homes undefended as unseasonal winter bushfires point to a searing summer ahead. Mega-fires form when several fires join up in a huge front, creating their own weather systems with hurricane strength winds driving storms of burning embers and walls of flame. That sounds bad. No, on second thought, make that mega-bad. You know, Mother Nature seems like she's got her knickers in a bunch over something. It's like she's blaming us for all those environmental issues (you know, like global warming and that big pile of junk in the middle of the Pacific Ocean). Totally unwarranted if you ask me--the planet could have warmed up all by itself. Sure we nudged it along a bit, but honestly girlfriend, you need to chill with all this fire stuff. It's not good for your complexion.

Turkey & Armenia - Turkey and its neighbor Armenia have moved closer to establishing diplomatic ties after decades of bitter mistrust on both sides. I'm not sure many folks in the U.S. appreciate just how big of a deal this is...or care. Fear not, that's why I'm here--to break it all down for you. Negotiations on the mending of ties have been brokered by Switzerland. Naturally. And as an added bonus, this may give the Swiss a welcome bit of good publicity after all the bad PR it has been enduring regarding its questionable bank secrecy laws. The two countries' dispute centers on the fate of Armenians under Turkish Ottoman rule nearly a century ago. Turkey has resisted widespread calls for it to recognize the mass killing of Armenians during World War I as an act of genocide. Interesting how the butchering of hundreds of thousands of your people can put a damper on relations with your neighbor. Relations have also been complicated by Turkish support for Azerbaijan in its armed conflict with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Hmm. Turkey certainly doesn't seem interested in taking the path of least resistance does it. Maybe--and I just blue skying here--the Turks should take a look at how successful the U.S.'s strategy of picking sides in a conflict--that one could argue it shouldn't be meddling with in the first place--has been. That plan to pit Iran against Iraq and vice versa? Yeah, that's worked out real well for us.

Afghanistan - A top US general in Afghanistan has called for a revised military strategy, suggesting the current one is failing. The heck you say. Sources say General Stanley McChrystal sees protecting the Afghan people against the Taliban as the top priority. Seriously, where is all this nonsense coming from? The general's blunt assessment will say that the Afghan people are undergoing a crisis of confidence because the war against the Taliban has not made their lives better. The general goes on to say the aim should be for Afghan forces to take the lead; but their army will not be ready to do that for three years and it will take much longer for the police. Let's see here. We have a war that seems to be dragging out without much meaningful progress, a crisis of confidence from a civilian population that continues to get stuck in the cross-fire, and a domestic army that won't be ready to defend its population for at least the foreseeable future. Where have I heard this before?