Inferno

Dear reader,

This is our weekly round-up from Greece.

It has been a week directly from hell: 40,000 hectares had been burned down till Thursday, five people died, animals and private property vanished in flames. The situation seemed to have been somehow contained late Friday. 

Authorities have proven incompetent in battling the flames. Their only policy is evacuating areas threatened by the fire - even part of a city. 

Rhodes, Karystos (Evia), Lamia, Magnisia (Volos), Corfu, and Dervenohoria (Viotia) are among the areas hardly hit by the wildfires. 

Greece is counting its wounds.

But first, let us break you the news about 

Allied Grounds - Berliner Gazette 2023 project

What does it mean to practice transnational solidarity and to fight for universal commons? Where do internationalist horizons run? What kind of organizations could enable international cooperation? Our cooperation partner Berliner Gazette launched its new annual project 2023, “Allied Grounds,” and intends to explore these questions with activists, researchers, and artists. It intends to revisit and further explore so-called “sacrifice zones” and “transition countries,” zoom in on struggles for labor and environmental justice, and, ultimately, probe these struggles' organizational practices and potentialities. A conference and a multimedia website are planned for October 5–7, 2023, in Berlin. In 2023, around 50 essays, reports, and interviews will be published – a call for papers is currently running. More information here (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

A rough picture of the disaster

A total of 594 fires broke out in Greece in 10 days, under heatwave conditions and with high-velocity winds, according (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) to Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias.