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.
Anyone know 'Holland, 1945' by Neutral Milk Hotel? Was having my monthly crying session to that song, and it struck me how much the lyrics (originally about WW2) apply to the west's war in Ukraine today:
"It's so sad to see the world agree that they'd rather see their faces filled with flies, all when I want to keep white roses in their eyes."
It feels like I'm the only one who wants this war to end, who wants to keep white roses in the eyes of the Ukrainians and Russians in this conflict. But the world all agrees that they should die a soldier's death in a pointless war, and that the flies should hover over their corpses. It's sad to see. And for what?
That whole album is simultaneously good crying music and good yell singing at a campfire with friends music.
And maybe just to riff off your comment, I've been thinking lately about the concept of being stuck in a predestined track of events. It's showed up in some slop I consumed recently (Foundation TV series, Dirk Gently, Andor). In each of these shows, we already know the way the future unfolds, or it's heavily implied. So what's the point of watching, if we know how it ends? Do they have free will? Is the future unchangeable?
It's interesting to meditate on this a bit, both that it's a recurring theme in my media, and what it might suggest about how people think these days. Does this enable doomerism on the left, especially in relation to the climate crisis? We already know the ending - environmental catastrophe, human suffering - why should we do anything? Let's just watch the train wreck and keep our eyes glued as our hands do nothing.
I wonder how many people think this way regarding Ukraine. They can imagine the entire outcome in their heads, a defeated Russia with its tail between its legs, with victorious Ukraine having endured heartbreaking losses. Yes, losses, but noble ones which are redeemed by the victory. Since people have imagined this outcome, all they have to do is wind up the doll and let it all play out.
It feels a little obvious to say that a challenge of the left should be to snap people out of it - another world is possible, nothing is predestined. Free will exists, the real world isn't a hollywood script with the end panned out. Thinking otherwise is falling for capitalist realism. I think we should always be looking for ways to break out of teleological thinking when it comes to our own lives.
I agree and also good song