Image is of container ships waiting outside the canal. While there is usually some number of ships waiting for passage, the number has increased significantly lately.
In order to move ships through the Panama Canal, water is needed to fill the locks. The water comes from freshwater lakes, which are replenished by rainfall. This rainfall hasn’t been coming, and Lake Gatun, the largest one, is at near record low levels.
Hundreds of ships are now in a maritime traffic jam, unable to cross the canal quickly. Panama is attempting to conserve water and have reduced the number of transits by 20% per day, among other measures. The Canal’s adminstrators have warned that these drought conditions will remain for at least 10 months.
It is unlikely that global supply chains will be catastrophically affected, at least this year. Costs may increase for consumers in the coming months, especially for Christmas, but by and large goods will continue to flow, around South America if need be. Nonetheless, projecting trends over the coming years and decades, you can imagine how this is yet another nudge by climate change towards dramatic economic, environmental, and political impacts on the world at large. It also might prompt discussions inside various governments about nearshoring, and the general vulnerability of global supply chains - especially as the United States tries, bafflingly, to go to war with China.
After some discussion in the last megathread about building knowledge of geopolitics, some of us thought it might be an interesting idea to have a Country of the Week - essentially, I/we choose a country and then people can come in here and chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants, related to that country. More detail in this comment.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
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.
The reasoning NAFO types engage in is that western weapons are exceptional and remarkable such that only a small number of them can counter much larger Russian forces.
“Wunderwaffen” is the term for this reasoning.
The more cynical view, our side of things basically, is that the west is only providing enough to keep Ukraine in the fight but not enough to win because the west benefits more from this conflict dragging out than it benefits from any peace settlement.
Ukrainian victory is not plausible without western forces actually deploying, and since the west is not actually willing to bleed for Ukraine, the objective of the west is to prolong this conflict for as long as possible in order to make Russia bleed as much as possible.
The mask slips pretty frequently as US senators or EU presidents boast about how “cheap” this war is because “it’s not US soldiers dying.”
The concept is known as a bleeding sore. The west wants to engage Russia in as expensive a conflict as possible in order to force Russia to expend blood and treasure in Ukraine, with the rationale being this makes Russia weaker in the medium term future.
Secondarily and specifically for the benefit of the USA, it forced europe to cut economic ties with Russia and broke apart the growing links between Germany and Russia which ensures Europe remains firmly under US vassalage. The loss of very cheap energy imports from Russia also dramatically undermines European manufacturing which rather directly benefits US manufacturing since the US is also pushing the EU into a trade war with China.
I guess I assumed that the wunderwaffen justification would fall apart as months and months pass, it doesn’t sound particularly convincing to me. But I’m also trying to peek inside the minds of the type that would believe this. Maybe it’s as simple as: the politicians who say it don’t believe it themselves, and the ones who consume it aren’t following the conflict closely enough to raise any alarm bells?
I’m surprised more pro-Ukraine types who follow this conflict closely aren’t getting more and more jaded with the NATO response. Or maybe they are, and that’s how you get a diaspora of armed fascists
When it comes to these Wunderwaffen, remember that Western media surrounding war for the last 40 years or more has been about how incredibly superior NATO tech is to Russian tech in every aspect.
Take the Challenger 2 tanks that recently got sent to Ukraine. As someone who used to really be too into military stuff, any time you read about the Challenger 2 there was always talk about how invincible it was, how it has never been destroyed in battle, how the armour is so advanced that even what it’s made out of is a classified state secret. When you hear stuff like this for decades on end, it’s difficult to shake it even when one sees Challenger 2s torched in a field, and often these NAFO types will justify it by saying sure, it was destroyed, but that tank probably took down 30 T-90s before it was taken out.
The wunderwaffe is a moving goal post. It’s always the next weapon that will change everything. The weapon that hasn’t yet been delivered is the secret ingredient that will change everything.
Currently this is the F-16.
I had this same argument yesterday where a lib insisted that the patriot missile defense system is a wonder weapon and that I was a slur for saying Russian hypersonic missiles will make a joke of it. I pointed out the Kinzhal missile that took out a nuke resistant armored underground bunker, and they just dumped western news sources saying “no they didn’t.”
Nothing but cope