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.
Does Zelensky do anything other than throw whiny tantrums, beg for money, and pimp himself out on photoshoots for the Nazi clothing brand as le epic anti-Russian democracy warrior?
He’s completely indistinguishable from the thousands of other corrupt bureaucrat compradors, except that he lucked into being the MSM precious baby darling who can do no wrong and is literally Harry Potter.
Liberals are the most brainwashed people on earth. Tyranny is when you don’t let fascist death squads roam around freely, freedom is when you ban all opposition parties and suspend elections.
The first main point is Zelensky's own personal weakness, he originally wasn't part of the Nazi shit, in fact the opposite he was "pro-Russian" therefore it is not like they have any particular allegiance to him, the whole "but he is Jewish" thing is a deliberate point
That lovely video and that famous interview @1:33 and where this point is made.
The second main point is its not about what he does but the political power he got as libs only representation of Ukraine. He was at the right place at the right time and now they can't replace him easily, for many normal people Ukraine is Zelensky. The same shirt from 18 months ago is not a coincidence I guess.
Finaly the Ukrainian government is filled with Nazis and if given outright control of it by someone even more unhinged they would say things even western media would have trouble making excuses for.
I mention Podolyak so many times, "office to the president" is a meaningless bureaucratic job I'm sure, but it is still absolutely true he is allowed to talk freely like he does because to some extent his words are low impact and don't reach western ears, he says all this to Ukrainian nationalist ears, as a means to make it clear to them Ukraine is not under some western leftist woke agenda, to constantly reassure the Nazis that the core ideology of the government is still intact.
But imagine Podolyak as president constantly giving interviews about imprisoning and expelling everyone from Crimea? Nah even the MSM can't handle that because you know, democracy and shit. It is pathetic but right now I imagine Zelensky is perhaps the least publicaly unhinged fuck in that government.
I think one of the other reasons to not hold elections is the quantity of nazi shit that would be spewed in those elections.
Literally every single sus and horrific thing said in these elections will be broadcast globally and none of it would make Ukraine look good. It would also allow us to quantify the scale of the nazi problem in Ukraine, when we can reel off every political party and what horrific shit they say in the election we can literally put them each into camps on a varying scale of nazi-like things stated by the different parties. This would then quantify things in a way that would be very hard for people to ignore internationally.
Foucault's great-man boomerang
Zelensky was literally an actor and comedian before becoming president. Had his own TV show and used that to get elected on a populist, pretty generic "anti-corruption" platform. He never seemed like a particularly clever or even political guy, relying more on his photogenic charm and name recognition to get elected. All the politicians in the country being blatantly corrupt scoundrels helped his popularity too. He's is a lot like Trump is these regards actually- something I doubt the liberals who support him would ever recognize or admit just because he's their media darling (much like trump is for the right wing)
When it comes to this war, I think touring the western states begging for more aid and doing photoshoots is what he is best at, so the Ukrainian nationalists are squeezing him and the west for all he's got. His whole election was based on him being an "outsider", so I bet he's now getting pushed around by the "insiders" during this war and he's in way over his head by now. I certainly can't imagine him seriously strategizing alongside the generals or even making key staff appointments and changes. The military and far-right militias probably just tell him what they're going to be doing and then orders him to go back to Denmark to loot more of their social services budget.