An image of the wildfires in Rhodes, taken on July 23rd, showing the flames and the plume of smoke.
Greece, in late July, faced a heatwave in which over 8 million people experienced temperatures about 41C, with some areas reaching above 45C - all in all, both the longest heatwave in Greek history, as well as some of the highest temperatures on record.
Due to these high temperatures, Greece was then struck by hundreds of wildfires this summer, affecting nearly 200,000 hectares. About half of the total burned area was in the north-east of Greece, in the Dadia national park near the city of Alexandropoulis - the single largest blaze that the EU has recorded. Other parts of the country were also struck, such as Attica, Magnesia, and islands like Corfu and particularly Rhodes; the last one prompted an evacuation of 20,000 people, the largest evacuation operation the island had ever seen. Of course, this is just one country of many that have been caught in the European wildfires this year, of which the total burned area approached 500,000 hectares - the only consolation is that this was less than last year.
Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkiye were impacted in early September by flooding caused by massive storms bringing a deluge of water - in Greece, this mainly impacted Thessaly, in the centre of Greece.
Luckily for Greece, despite being a very earthquake-prone country, they have experienced no significant quakes lately to round out the four (I hope I haven't jinxed it) - though, of course, earlier this year, a major earthquake struck nearby Turkiye, killing 60,000 people and injuring 120,000.
The Country of the Week is Greece! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's update is here!
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
this, basically. I think Trump was about average levels of hawkishness for a US president (which is still extremely high compared to almost any other leader on the planet) but he seems a lot less hawkish in retrospect because he wasn't literally trying to start wars with two nuclear superpowers simultaneously while also maintaining the regular coup, assassination, and sanctions regimes. that isn't to say that Trump wasn't hawkish on Russia or China - he demonstrably was - merely that he didn't push Ukraine and NATO into starting the goddamn Ukraine War which has had such a massive impact (directly and indirectly) on the world.
but now the ratchet has been pushed forwards, so any leader that takes the reins will inherit and continue Biden's foreign policy. maybe Trump will end the Ukraine war (I doubt it) but even if he does, the soonest he could do it is in January 2025, and projecting Ukraine's and Russia's military abilities forward a year from now means that the war may basically be over by then anyway. I think it's more likely that Ukraine will be barely intact but bled white than fully conquered as Russia seems content to just let attrition play its gruesome math, whether that takes one year or fifteen, and have been extremely offensive-averse and can't especially see what factor would force them to start offensives again short of some funny business by Poland, but even now, the avenue for Ukraine to win seems to have disappeared and I can't see the avenue reopening.
hell, Trump might even start the war over Taiwan. who knows. the important thing is that there is nobody, and I mean nobody, who is even slightly less bloodthirsty than Biden who could even hypothetically become president. even the "Bernie is hiding his power levels, on day one he'd reveal he lied about supporting all the wars and withdraw us from all these places" argument, silly as it is, can't work because he's already said he's not running. the current American policy, introduced by Biden, of "fight literally everybody, all the time, everywhere" will be the one until either America is forced to stop being a hyperimperialist power by (likely) supreme violence against it, or until we all turn to radioactive ash.
Third option, of course, is that we rise up and torch the war machine from the bottom. I'm afraid we're too far from that, though, even though it is absolutely necessary for the survival of our species.