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.
I don't think we're particularly close to a kiss-and-make-up moment between China and India but can you fucking imagine if the United States continues to fuck up so badly to the extent that India and China work out their long-standing issues? Would be equal in magnitude to, greater even, than the Iran-Saudi rapproachment.
...
Why are they doing and saying this?! Again, the number one rule to maintaining an empire - NEVER BELIEVE YOUR OWN PROPAGANDA. Obviously India is doing shitty things in Kashmir, but you're the fucking United States! You're Germany! You can bomb brown children all day long and then go and deliver your speech for winning a Nobel Peace Prize! You don't give a shit about what Modi is doing! Why are you so fixated on it?! Just let Modi be a fucking fascist all day long and give him a billion dollars or twenty to go contain China!
If I was Trudeau, what I would do is this: I would have seen the news that Nijjar got killed, I would have then gone in front of the cameras and said "Yes, we are concerned about this, so here's what we're gonna do. Rather than fall prey to rumors, we are going to strictly follow the rule of law. I am going to create a conference. In two years, that conference will decide whether we need to hold a committee on this incident. If they decide to do so, that committee will then investigate whether a tribunal needs to be established, within five years. If that tribunal is then created..." you know, the institutions and norms and shit that liberals jerk themselves raw to, and in literally 12 hours from that speech, everybody except the Sikhs would have forgotten that it ever happened. Cancel what you just said 6 months from now when it'll become a vague footnote in history to be rediscovered in 2050 by a guy writing a book on Canadian minorities.
I mean Blinken is doing Holocaust denial now so we're well past that stage
Hitler will be rehabilitated by the end of next year.
India and China don't need to kiss and make up, though: they just need to be sufficiently aligned to see the US and the West as a common enemy.
India and China will never be militarily co-dependent like the US and its allies, and that's ok.
I think what Trudeau did is best for Canadian interests. It probably wasn't the best for American interests, but, well, sucks to suck I guess.
message: "that's reserved for the USA and its important allies like Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Bone Sawman. who the fuck dp you think you are India?"
lmao and of course the Germans are first to throw themselves in front of the bullet to save the US. Fucking pathetic.
Europe must be destroyed.