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.
Olaf Scholz does not seem to take his new Power Cuck status well.
He's started to wear an actual eyepatch in what commenters say is a "desperate attempt" to harness any kind of "chad energy" by "trying to look like Dan Crenshaw".
Hexbears remain doubtful if "punished Scholz" will escape ultra cuck territory in the upcoming power rankings.
(apparently he had some kind of accident while jogging, though why you would need a eyepatch for that I have no idea)
Another minor piece of insane Germany news: Exactly one year from now in september of 2024, three state elections will take place.
All of them are in the east, with the three states having a total population of 8.5 million - so only 10% of the total German population.
Here's the current voting tendency for these states:
Interesting times for German comrades, huh.
As the news mega germany basher ima pipe in here all three of those don't surprise me, well I guess Brandenburg does surprise me since they've been seemingly doing the 'best' out of all the eastern Bundesländer but yeah.
It can't be overstated just how much the BRD gutted the DDR. From 1993 to 2013 eastern germany had an average unemployment rate of 15-20% and now they still have around 8% vs western germanys 5%, while earning 20% less on average than in the west. And the unemployment issue was really only solved by a steady drain of people leaving those states. The former DDR states saw their population decline by 15% over that same time frame and their life expectancy dropped. It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that this is happening as the screws tighten again on the people that have very little and with an, in my outsider view, ineffective left what you'll get a rise of fascist parties like the AfD. Hell it's not even people sliding to the right voter participation has been declining to around 50% for most of the eastern states and AfD was able to motivate people to vote based on a hateful rhetoric, last elections particpation went up a ton for the first time in decades.
Of course the 'respectable' german parties all are appalled by the rise of the AfD but will not do anything meaningful to counteract this so yeah.
Edit: Also I should mention the eastern Bundesländer are the most deprived but countrywide AfD is polling at 22% at the moment so it's not like the rest of the country is doing any better.
jogging accident aside, I think more failing leaders and politicians should do stuff like this. dye your hair. get a stylish wig. grow a goatee. get an eyepatch. can't hurt, surely
Honestly, makes him seem way cooler
Need an MGS codec convo between him and Zelensky who is spooked when they’re interrupted by a blabbering Biden