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.


  • LargePenis [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    New cuck n chad ranking live from Damascus, Syria. You’re getting a trip report when I’m back in Beirut next week. I’m posting from a Turkish (lol) VPN because Hexbear is weirdly slow on the Lion’s internet.

    Russia - Ukraine cuck n chad power ranking

    Gigachad Chad Neutral Beta Male Virgin Cuck
    Lukashenko (Forever chad) Woody Harrelson (somehow has the best American take on the war) Surovikin (dude is doing sightseeing in Algeria and chilling) Shoigu (immortal cuck, still can’t dismiss his current W streak) W Sarah Ashton-Crillo (most unhinged person in the pro-Ukr media, now fired lol)
    Russian non-doomers (these guys finally took a major W) SuriyakMaps (good neutral objective maps) Putin (finally an upgrade for him, everything is just working well and he’s chilling) ⬆️ Zelensky (has taken so many major Ls recently, even the Poles are beefing with him rn) ⬇️ The Russian government (neoliberal gigacucks)

    International cuck n chad power ranking

    Gigachad Chad Neutral Beta (Fe)Male Virgin Cuck
    Bashar Al Assad (guaranteed spot for the Lion as always, nice visit to China as well) West African anti-France front (based chads) Erdogan (the guy just never loses, he has now won in Armenia as well) Armenian diaspora in the West (seeing your leadership fumble the most important issue ever, while you sign petitions, protest in LA and DC and blame Russia) Nikol Pashinyan (WEF dude has doomed Armenia by cuckmaxxing and pretending that this result was inevitable)
    Niger coup dudes (have successfully kicked out the French) Xi Jinping (very impressive opening ceremony in the Asian Games, also met with the Lion) Ukrainian SS vets in Canada (imagine being in the literal SS, then still enjoying a great life owning the libs until you’re 100) “normal” Ukrainians in Canada (constant heated gamer moments by endorsing the worst nazis) Jewish orgs in the West (mentioning Palestine = anti-semitic hate crime. literal nazis being cool again = one mild tweet)
    • Torenico [he/him]
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      2 years ago

      This is very good. I am tempted to ask you to add the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the Virgin Cuck category. These mfs have been taking L after L in the war, started promising by being a reliable platform to launch cruise missiles and then captured the Snake Island (which is completely useless it seems), but as soon as they lost the Moskva things have gone down pretty rapidly. Major ships were hit by naval drones, their HQ is getting their weekly drone attack (now with missiles!) and their dock facilities are also attacked (even one of their subs was hit and it’ll be out of service very soon). They’re being clapped hard by a country that has no navy. Well the entire Crimean peninsula is kinda on the cuck category, well within range of Ukrainian attacks and the Russians can’t do much about it.

      (I know you cannot add them to your chart but I just wanted to mention them)

    • GVAGUY3 [he/him]
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      342 years ago

      Adding my bedroom window to Virgin Cuck. Couldn’t take baseball sized hail.

  • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]
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    222 years ago

    ooh greece COTW CommiePOGGERS

    On fire then underwater in the span of months. blob-on-fire

    Thessaly has had a number of earthquakes in the last hundred years. During the period 1954-1957 there was a series of devastating earthquakes and floods that leveled much of the city of Volos (port city in Thessaly).

    This is the same region hard-hit by fires and flooding this year.

    There are concerns about the long-term damage from polluted water (full of agricultural waste) being dumped into a relatively insulated gulf. On top of all of the damage on land, the damage to the sea life in the immediate area will also be bad.

  • Awoo [she/her]
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    2 years ago

    If you wanna get chuds on board with being against invading Mexico by any means necessary point out to them how many refugees a war creates and where they go. When they say they won’t go to the invading country show them the Ukraine refugee statistics and show them how many go to Russia. https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine

    It’s not ideal to use their anti-immigration shit but getting people into an anti-war position is more important and this shit works.

  • Torenico [he/him]
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    222 years ago

    Today we had out first Presidential Debate in Argentina and primaries winner Javier Milei did an outright and public genocide denial as he claimed “There were no 30,000 disappeared, only 8,000” (He actually gave a very specific number around 8k) and that we have been in a state of “War” in the 70s and the military dictatorship did commit some “excesses”.

    Death to all Fascists like him.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]
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    342 years ago

    Former PM Fico (Socdem) on course to win Slovak election as most districts report

    Slovakia’s leftist former Prime Minister Robert Fico was on course to beat his progressive rival in a parliamentary election after a campaign in which he pledged to end military aid to Ukraine, partial results showed on Sunday.

    With 90% of voting districts reporting in the Saturday election, Fico’s SMER-SSD party led with 23.69% of the vote. The liberal Progressive Slovakia (PS) followed with 15.68% and the HLAS party, which could become the kingmaker for forming the next government, was third with 15.43%.

    Former Fico colleague and HLAS leader Peter Pellegrini kept his options open on future coalitions in televised comments as results became clearer.

    A government led by Fico and his SMER-SSD party would see NATO member Slovakia joining Hungary in challenging the European Union’s consensus on support for Ukraine, just as the bloc looks to maintain unity in opposing Russia’s invasion.

    “We do want to evaluate everything, so we will wait for the final count,” said Robert Kalinak, a SMER-SSD candidate and long-time Fico ally, adding the party would comment on the full results later on Sunday.

    Exit polls had favoured PS as the winner, but projections from two Slovak news sites based on results with 90% of districts reporting pegged Fico as the winner with a margin of about 5 or 6 percentage points.

    The PS party has advocated maintaining Slovakia’s strong backing for Ukraine, and would also likely follow a liberal line within the EU on issues such as majority voting to make the bloc more flexible, green policies and LGBT rights.

    The first party across the line was expected to get a mandate from President Zuzana Caputova to lead talks on forming a parliamentary majority and, if successful, a government.

    The final districts to report, from large cites, were expected to favour PS, but the gap behind Fico appeared too large to bridge.

    PS leader Michal Simecka did not give up hope he could form the next government, depending how possible smaller allies end up.

    Fico has ridden on dissatisfaction with a bickering centre-right coalition, whose government collapsed last year, triggering the election six months early. In campaigning, he stressed concern about a rise in the number of migrants passing through Slovakia to Western Europe.

    Fico’s views reflect traditionally warm sentiments towards Russia among many Slovaks, which have gathered strength on social media since the Ukraine war started.

    He has also pledged to end military supplies to Ukraine and strive for peace talks - a line close to that of Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, but rejected by Ukraine and its allies, who say this would only encourage Russia.

    The far-right Republika party, which was seen as a possible ally for Fico but unacceptable to others, may not win any seats, partial results and media projections showed.

  • grandepequeno [he/him]
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    292 years ago

    This is from a progress report of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were agreed on in 2015 to be achieved int 2030, from Nature Journal

    Of the 36 SDG targets reviewed in the GSDR to provide a snapshot of progress, only two were on track as of 2023, namely access to mobile networks and internet usage (see ‘SDGs Midway — Snapshot of Progress’). Fourteen showed ‘fair’ progress, with targets just in reach if efforts are stepped up. Twelve showed limited or no progress, including for poverty, safe drinking water and ecosystem conservation. And eight targets were assessed as still deteriorating: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, fossil-fuel subsidies and numbers of unsentenced detainees; enhancing economic growth, vaccine coverage, sustainable fishing and food security; and preventing the extinction of species.

    So globally we’re getting poorer and emitting more carbon BUT more people are closing themselves off on the internet and watching the world burn through their screens

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]OPM
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    2 years ago

    Italy: Meloni admits she hoped to do ‘better’ on migration as numbers skyrocket

    When the Italian Prime Minister’s far-right party was elected last year, they promised to reduce mass immigration to the country - but the number of people arriving on boats from North Africa has nearly doubled in just one year.

    Honestly, I wonder if European fascism even has the energy to differ significantly from neoliberalism when they’re actually in office (versus their rhetoric about what they’d change beforehand). I feel like they just get into office and just do what the liberals were already doing, faster, but make sure to blame minorities for the bad effects of those actions.

    In the same way, I don’t really think that a “competent fascist” is on the horizon after Trump like so many people (including myself) warned. Or, rather, Biden is the competent fascist. Fascists that want to do Nazi-era blood and soil shit with death camps and all that in the 21st century have to contend with a system entirely penetrated by financial parasites and a ever-decreasing ability to build new things that don’t directly benefit the top 50 richest people in the country.

    Trying to do Hitler-esque fascism in a financial capitalist environment (as opposed to the industrial capitalism of the early 20th century) just doesn’t really seem to work very well, though I guess we still have a number of decades before Western hegemony has fully collapsed for manmade horrors beyond our comprehension to emerge.

  • GoroAkechi [he/him]
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    652 years ago

    I think it’s great that pretty much every major and relevant power, supernational or regional, is treating the expulsion of 120,000 people by the Azerbaijani government with the threat of violence for not doing so (as textbook ethnic cleansing as it comes) with little more than some fetid hand waving. Truly amazing.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]OPM
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    2 years ago

    They’re turning Hitler’s birthplace into a police station lmfao

    Even 78 years after Hitler’s suicide in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin — with which he evaded all responsibility shortly before the unconditional surrender of the German Army — there are still discussions about the use of his birthplace. Austria is struggling with the recognition and would like to get rid of the neo-Nazi pilgrimage site.

    That is why a police station is now to be housed there, but this is being met with resistance.

    trying to max out the hitler-detector

  • mechwarrior2 [he/him]
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    502 years ago

    https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/09/26/poland-may-seek-extradition-of-ukrainian-nazi-ww2-veteran-hunka-from-canada/

    A Polish government minister has launched a bid to extradite Yaroslav Hunka, the 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian man who fought in a German-Nazi division during World War Two and last week received a standing ovation in Canada’s parliament.

    “In view of the scandalous events in the Canadian parliament, which involved honouring, in the presence of President Zelensky, a member of the criminal Nazi SS Galizien formation, I have taken steps towards the possible extradition of this man to Poland,” announced education minister Przemysław Czarnek.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]M
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    442 years ago

    http://www.kcna.kp/en/article/q/47647ea5a05791ca8befc14f96e5ac60.kcmsf

    News from the DPRK

    KCNA Report on Final Findings of Investigation into American Soldier

    Pyongyang, September 27 (KCNA) – The investigation into Travis King, a soldier of the U.S. Army who was detained after illegally intruding into the territory of the DPRK in the joint security area of Panmunjom on July 18, has been finished.

    According to the investigation by a relevant organ of the DPRK, Travis King confessed that he illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. army and was disillusioned about the unequal U.S. society.

    The relevant organ of the DPRK decided to expel Travis King, a soldier of the U.S. Army who illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK, under the law of the Republic.

  • M68040 [they/them]
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    2 years ago

    No sleep until I’ve turned the world towards a thousand years of depravity, filth, and moral decay. I wanna make a world so downright pornographic it makes every single rightoid shit squeal. Open, conscious defiance of their philosophical traditions and social mores around every corner. That shit needs to chafe them as much as their ideal world would chafe me. Shit, as much as the world they’ve built does chafe me.

  • MarxGuns [comrade/them]
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    302 years ago

    The thumbnail of Rhodes kinda looks like it’s for a YT video that’s going to talk to you about space lasers starting wild fires. 🫤

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
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    452 years ago

    Amazingly The Economist is finally admitting the obvious about Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

    The war in Ukraine has repeatedly confounded expectations. It is now doing so again. The counter-offensive that began in June was based on the hope that Ukrainian soldiers, equipped with modern Western weapons and after training in Germany, would recapture enough territory to put their leaders in a strong position at any subsequent negotiations.

    This plan is not working. Despite heroic efforts and breaches of Russian defences near Robotyne, Ukraine has liberated less than 0.25% of the territory that Russia occupied in June. The 1,000km front line has barely shifted. Ukraine’s army could still make a breakthrough in the coming weeks, triggering the collapse of brittle Russian forces. But on the evidence of the past three months, it would be a mistake to bank on that.

    Granted, the article goes on to advocate for turning Ukraine into a fortress state with a robust war economy so it can throw infinite Ukrainians into the meat grinder of a long war of attrition that will beat Russia if we all believe hard enough, but it’s interesting to see the mainstream press begin to look down the barrel of Ukraine’s clear failure here.