Smoke and Ash

Yesterday morning dawned with an eerie light. Red sun, grey sky. It was overcast without clouds.

All day, Portland was blanketed with the smoke from the Eagle Creek fire burning in the Columbia River Gorge about 50 miles east of here. At times flakes of ash fell like snowflakes. Pedestrians could be seen wearing surgical masks on the street. The haze reminded me of Kuwait in '91 when the other side set fire to the oil wells and there was smoke everywhere.

http://www.oregonlive.com/wildfires/index.ssf/2017/09/eagle_creek_fire_rages_in_colu.html

As my LJ readers may remember, I visited Eagle Creek / Cascade Locks with a friend last May. Dreadful to think of that beautiful place on fire.

Linkage 2017-09-06

Melanie Phillips: The greater danger.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/greater-danger-left/
'For the left’s Israel-hatred and Jew-baiting prejudices are on display virtually every day through the media, the arts, the universities, the trade unions, the churches and other institutions.

Of course neo-Nazis and their ilk pose a danger to Jews and other minorities, but their numbers are tiny. The immeasurably greater danger to everyone comes from the far-left and the Islamists — and from the broad left who ignore or sanitise what they do.

Unlike the far-right, the left controls the culture. It uses that power to deny its own Jew-hatred as well as Muslim antisemitism and religious aggression, and to defame and destroy those who call these out.

Ask the former Labour front-bencher Sarah Champion [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/left-failing-to-confront-truth-of-sex-crimes-says-sacked-labour-frontbencher-sarah-champion-mp-for-rotherham-dismissed-by-jeremy-corbyn-after-writing-for-the-sun-gbbm8p837], who drew attention to the cultural identity of the overwhelmingly Pakistani Muslim child pimping gangs, or the Muslim Labour councillor Amina Lone who stuck up for her — both now punished by sacking and de-selection respectively. ...'

Caroline Glick at JPost: The strategic case for Kurdistan.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-strategic-case-for-Kurdistan-503922
'Compared to their neighbors, not to mention to the Times’ favored group the Palestinians, the Kurds, who have been self-governing since 1991, are paragons of good governance. Not only have they given refuge to tens of thousands of Iraqis fleeing ISIS. Iraqi Kurdistan has been an island of relative peace in a war-torn country since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Its Peshmerga forces have not only secured Kurdistan. They have been the most competent force fighting ISIS since its territorial conquests in 2014.

The same is the case of the Kurdish YPG militia in Syrian Kurdistan. ...'

Gorge Fire

http://www.oregonlive.com/wildfires/index.ssf/2017/09/gorge_retains_splendor_despite.html

'"One thing that was encouraging is there are still a lot of green trees, there's still a lot of area that did not burn," said Traci Weaver, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

"The fire did not burn through there and burn every tree and every green plant in its path. And I think people need to recognize that, that it's still going to be a beautiful place. And one nice thing about being on the wet side, like we are: Things are going to start to recover much quicker than they would in a drier forest area." ...'