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.
https://mronline.org/guest-author/moon-of-alabama/https://mronline.org/guest-author/moon-of-alabama/
Didn't realize that MoA wrote for Monthly Review, an explicitly marxist publication. MoA is quite cagy about his politics outside of geopolitical analysis, but the materialistic lens is quite prominent so I'm not surprised. I'm hoping he can remain cool and not go boomer mode on social stuff, I'm glad to find he's likely a marxist. It's so rare and refreshing to find hardline anti-NATO boomers who don't have brainworms writing in English.
Only 3 articles before the war though.
This is far more of an indication that the western left is made of wimps and cowards too afraid to stand up against the war narrative both in academia(economists) and social media, the result was obvious and unfortunate, it left the door open for centrists and even right wingers to take a hold of the anti-American and pacifist narrative.
Time and time again people like MoA and others we follow here said and continue to say things that should be coming out of leftist sources not questionably right wing sources instead. If you want decent grounded analysis of the war so far after almost 2 years, well its not coming from leftist sources from the most part.
It is improving a bit now that the BRICS narrative is gaining some traction but far too little too late in retrospect.
What makes you think MoA is centrist or even right wing? Their analysis seems Marxist
In principle I don't think a leftist(Marxist) would tolerate a lot of what goes in the comment section, the whole freedom of expression thing(if this is their excuse) is libertarian at best or sympathizing at worse.
have you considered laziness?
MoA is a german boomer, things work differently there.
HE'S NOT FROM ALABAMA?
nope it's a reference to a song by a communist german playwright
what the hell? I thought I saw that the moon of alabama site is like filled with chuds in the comments a few weeks ago lol
comments are just a battlefield, MoA the person is the author of the blog (refers to themselves as 'b') and I have never witnessed any chuddery. They have military officer experience in the german army and is now extremely anti-NATO, they have good insight into military matters.
yeah wasn't trying to say they were, it's just like typically your audience can be a good reflection of who you are and my only exposure to MoA was through the blog being posted in this thread, and so I just took the chud comments to mean it was a chud author with good foreign policy takes, glad to see they're likely a comrade!
yeah I think they just don't heavily moderate. They have mentioned they just skim and delete any actionable threats or slurs or whatever, but other than that they don't pay much attention to the comments. It's just 1 person doing a blog and writing an article nearly every day, they don't have time for moderation between research and writing and not making any money on it.
There's lots of NAFO type trolls there, and there's a lot of weird reject conservatives that do have the correct position on Ukraine. The Duran and its fanbase would fit in this category as well. Honestly I haven't seen anything that bad from them oddly enough, if they are chuds they are quite restrained with it and rational. They also are pro-China and pro-multipolar world so that helps, even if they are doing it because they want increase national sovereignty in hungary or whatever. There's communists and good comments too. Lots of cranks of all flavors tbh. Only super online weirdos like us are reading daily military blogs about Ukraine in September 2023.
There's definitely a variety. I have seen some really questionable anti-LGBT or antisemitic stuff in the comments, and also good comments.
The actual posts are fine, do chuds think it's a conservative blog because it criticises Biden? lol
Sorry my comment was unclear, the restrained chuds I was referring to are The Duran. I have seen pretty reactionary commenters in both places of course, online comments anywhere on the english speaking internet are going to be a cesspool of reaction if not heavily moderated. I believe The Duran are rational chuds who happen to be on the correct side of an anti-imperialist struggle, whereas MoA is actually a legit old-school GDR style commie boomer.
MoA has been name dropped a bunch of times on the Duran, which is how nationalists and conservatives may have found his site. The Duran also name drops Naked Capitalism quite a bit. They had Chomsky on one time, as well as geopolitical realists like Mearsheimer who are more conservative but smart and less chauvinist. I think the pool of media content creators who don't march lockstep with Western Mainstream Media on Ukraine is extremely limited, so they're forced to do "collabs". We do share a certain interest with the isolationist paleo-conservatives, I'm willing to work with them on anti-imperialism if it means damaging American empire.
What is their connection to Alabama? Or moons?
Explains it on their site, reference to an old song for whiskey lovers and a tie-in to an old forum that 'b' and a lot of the early commenters were on before it shut down.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/about.html
It's a reference to this song originally written by German Communist playwright Bertold Brecht.
Prior to MoA, B's blog was called "Whiskey bar."
I think MR Online isn't the same as Monthly Review despite being run by the same entity. The review publishes relatively meaty articles every month, while mronline aggregates articles from various different left wing publications. I've seen Caitlin Johnstone, Black Agenda Report, and I believe Mintpress, as well as many other publications, have their work featured on MR Online.