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.

Okay, look, I got a little carried away. Monday’s update usually covers the preceding Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but I went ahead and did all of last week. If people like a more weekly structure then I might try that instead, if not, then I’ll go back to the Mon-Wed-Fri schedule.

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.

  • cynesthesia [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    36·
    1 year ago

    Not a news post, but hear me out.

    I read the first half dozen or so chapters of don Quixote this week. It’s a story of an anachronistic errant knight stuck in the death throes of feudalism (read, an idle failson) that goes out and does self-indulgent chivalry to the common folk of the region. It’s all told in the unreliable voice of Don Quixote as he fucks around out of touch, imagining he is doing Great Deeds. He is self effacing to himself and wildly arrogant to others.

    I’m not sure I will read it all (it’s 1000 pages) but it reminds me a lot of Confederacy of dunces by Toole and A Rebours by Hyusmans, both also stories of self important basement dwellers going out into society. Both of these books are in my opinion more readable to the modern audience (especially CoD as it was only written in the 70s, while a rebours was 1880s I think) but Don Quixote is nevertheless notable to me for depicting a very similar Type of Guy. All three protagonists remind me of precursors to the idiot social conservative authors that chapo makes fun of so well.

    I think that if you can make the mental effort to accept the anachronistic writing style, other newsbrains here might enjoy checking out Don Quixote.

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      30·
      1 year ago

      I think you’re being a little uncharitable to Don Quixote/Cervantes, because there’s an aspect of the novel that’s actually pretty progressive. In a roundabout way it’s a critique of society, as it was written in a world that espoused chivalry and a glorious past, but the exposes that chivalry as impossible, as something that if you actually carried out you’d look like a complete fool. It’s a bit like somebody today writing a novel about a dude who took Economics 101 seriously and operated as if its conclusions were correct, and the attempted to operate in the real world. He’d be looked at like an absolute fool, and that says something about the supposed ethos our society pretends it’s based on.