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.
Inspired by @[email protected]'s comment here, I am starting two initiatives:
The first is recommendations for a geographically and geopolitically themed list of literature. Broad pieces on the nature of imperialism, capitalism, communism, etc are great, and recommend any if you have any ideas, but I want to focus in on the more specific works about regions, countries, ethnicities, movements, etc. Not just hand-wavey knowledge about colonialism but how it has actually affected the people of X country.
The second, to help facilitate the first, is a Country of the Week system where essentially I/we choose a country and then people can come in here and chime in with effortposts, books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants, related to that country. You don't have to reply to this comment, though you can if you want, you can post it anywhere in the thread.
As suggested by @[email protected], factors you might want to pay attention to are:
Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?
This week's country is Libya! On Sundays from now on, I will put a comment up asking if anybody has any pertinent suggestions for next week's country.
I just started reading it, but the book "Drug Cartels Do Not Exist" by Oswaldo Zavala would be pretty good for this. It's about how American news and entertainment media creates the image of coherent and organized drug cartels as a enemy to rally around in order to support capitalist interests in Latin America and Mexico more specifically. People here might have heard of Zavala before because he appeared on an episode of Trueanon. I don't know if it's available for free anywhere but here's a link to the description and the book itself: https://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/9780826504661/drug-cartels-do-not-exist/
Reminds me of how American media spun Al Qaeda before the Iraq war
So I can't access that book currently, but is the argument that the US invented the concept of the organized drug cartel wholesale, or that the West doesn't understand that any specific cartel is mostly just a loose grouping of self-interested narco-producers and traffickers.
More the second one, that the image of a centralised hierarchy led by an individual or small group of individuals is a product of US media. In reality the book argues cartels work more as independent groups in each region that aren't really beholden to a single boss like we'd see in something like Narcos or Sicario
Shortly after writing my comment I took the time to listen to the TrueAnon ep with the same author (Ep. 290 - "The Beast" I think it's called). And the author makes some pretty compelling points, in particular about the very term "cartel" being incredibly misleading as a name for it, especially given the propensity towards infighting that regularly happens. Also the quote from El Chapo's son was pretty funny in a dark way.
Anyway what I'm saying is: Listen to TrueAnon on this, the author really seems to know his shit. Also Brace and Liz are somehow better at interviews than most other podcasts I listen to, which is strange.
Yes! That's the one I listened to as well that turned me onto the book. Hearing Zavala speak about the topic really made me realize how much of what I assumed to be truth about the drug trade was coming straight from US media
To contribue to the COTW, I have this article by Vijay Prashad in 2020:
The War in Libya Will Never End
rather surprised this starts mentioning that russia backs haftat, when arguably france has been the biggest backer all along. they even gave the man a medal.
I have a book to suggest: Imperialism in the 21st Century by Smith, published by Monthly Review. It covers a lot, but the first chapter can be read alone as it details very well the imperialistic relationship between the core and periphery through three comoddities: T-shirts, iPhones, and coffee, the first of which being the most interesting imo. It also covers ways in which trade unions within the core have implicit interests in worsening this exploitative relationship, but that may be in chapter two.
The whole book is dense and packed with information. For me, it really made concrete what imperialism is today. Available free here: https://resistir.info/livros/imperialism_john_smith.pdf
:settlers: moment
Yeah, I like to recommend this book to people as it hits some points settlers does without the Maoist standard English and more data. But this book also implicates everyone living in the imperial core tbh
it's one of those things that I think appears accusatory but imo it's a matter-of-fact observation. You aren't born in the core with the opinion: 'I approve of my raised stature thanks to exploitation of the global south'. It's tough to describe, yes all proles in the core are 'implicated' but I give those kinds of statements a charitable reading maybe. In another way, I think it's meant to enlighten rather than guilt
Yeah that's a good way to put it. It's tough for people, even those with more leftist politics in unions etc, to understand how economies in the core function on imperialist exploitation. It can really open your eyes to a larger frame of analysis then your own specific condition in the workplace, which is important
That is an excellent book. The china chapter drove me nuts but otherwise is excellent
It's been a while since I read it, so I can't really remember that part, but I may have just rolled my eyes and moved on lol. It was written in 2016, so quite a bit has changed even since then.
Yeah that's pretty much what I did as well. I read it I think 4 years ago now, I just remember reading that section