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.
What do we make of Biden standing on the picket line? Just an easy way to score some points with progressives? Given that he crushed the rail unions I assume he's not actually pro-union in any shape or form. I mean, I don't know, I guess I could imagine some twisted mental gymnastics where he could think of himself as pro-union and still stop the rail strike out of political pragmatism. So what's the deal? Purely opportunist? Or is old Union Joe a rube who genuinely believes in the lies of the democratic party being pro-worker?
Because if it is just opportunist, this does seem like a bit of a risk. I mean, I suspect the President getting a photo op on a picket line doesn't really mean anything, materially. But it seems like most Presidents are somewhere between "Kill all Union members" and just kind of publicly avoiding the issue. Tepid support in the press while crushing unions in private is genuinely a better stance than I'd expect.
Seems to me that Joe Biden, lifelong conservative democrat who happily waved the New Deal off on its path to hell, could only risk to alienate his corporate sponsors while probably not meaningfully gaining much among the liberal progressive voting bloc, who are sufficiently cowed into voting blue no matter who.
He's afraid of losing Michigan. The Dems are seeing the same polls we are, and they're worried they will lose the people they lost in 2016. I don't think it's much more complicated, liberals are broadly sympathetic to workers in the abstract, going outside and talking is one of their favorite things to do. He can tick off the boxes with limited risk by just showing up and not tripping on his shoelaces.
Yep, Biden's even gotten a fawning Jacobin article for his two minute speech where he said:
What a truly powerful statement.
Hell yeah, with all this effort we can get the Democrats to make even more empty promises as union membership stagnates or falls and those who try to create new unions are endlessly hounded by corporations! Most pro-labour president in history!
Democrats have always pretended to be pro-labor while in fact being the exact opposite. The only unions they support are ones that are wholly top-down controlled and subservient to the bosses they are meant to oppose. They've easily done as much damage to the labor movement over the decades as Republicans' outright, open hostility has. Why the fuck would—or should—workers want to participate in a movement where the bosses simply have another hierarchy with which to control us? Pacifying unions is just as bad as when they outright crush them, which Democrats are also more than happy to do when they show a hint of slipping out of control (as Biden gleefully showed with the rail workers).
Note carefully how police "unions" have wormed their way into Democrat-supported union federations. That should set off the warning sirens for anyone wondering how supportive Democrats are of labor.