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.
What is the difference between the liberal universalist definition of ideology and Marxist (or Zizek's)?
I'm helping a baby Marxist study for a class and the class is trying to flatten Marxism and Fascism into the same thing, treating ideology like a religion and saying that the reason people die in the third world (revolutions, resistance and otherwise) is because silly people believe in things too hard.
Like in 9/11
✈️
The liberal definition of ideology is a pluralist view where ideology is just the different beliefs of people but also that ideology is an impurity that distorts your worldview and removing as much ideology as possible makes you see the world "more clearly".
The irony is ofc that liberalism is insidious in it's constant desire to maintain itself as both "free of ideology" AND superior to all other forms of "ideology" because of this freedom. Liberalism maintains itself as objective, in other words. Maintaining itself as both universal and non-existent the main function of liberal ideology is to reproduce itself, and with that function the idea that it is free of ideology and superior to believing in "ideology".
Zizeks take on ideology aligns w the Marxist one where we understand that ideology raises from the material conditions of society and is shaped by the superstructure in the last instance. Zizek also adds that understanding the nature of ideology doesn't prevent you from falling victim to it as it's determined by the material conditions you are constantly and mostly helplessly subjected to no matter how Marxist you may be. Thinking you understand ideology so you stand above it works to obscure ideology and leaves you blinded to the possibility of being controlled by it.
I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few days, you can really feel the Christian and Calvinist roots in Liberalism
This class explicitly says there is going to be one worldview free from ideology that we're going to explore and I know it's going to be fucking Liberalism.
I've heard it said that neoliberalism is a political belief system masquerading as an economic belief system. AKA, it claims to be free of political ideology and just offering objective facts about economics - you can do what you want with our cold hard facts about how interest rates and taxes and inflation work! - when in fact it's a deeply political (and insidious) program for the mass exploitative of the poor and for making the absurdly rich even wealthier.
Thank you comrade
idk if its relevant but i liked this video
Thank you comrade
One of my friends also thinks this way; I remember one time that they pushed back on the idea that any political figure could be ardently supported and liked by the people and essentially implied that all politics was a deeply cynical game of voting for lesser evils who have opaque policies and hoping things go alright in the end somehow; and that ardent support for some figures was actually what's wrong with America, because Trump's supporters love him and Trump was literally Hitler 2.0.
There's all sorts of pop psych reasons I could come up for it but ultimately the fact is that there just haven't been any inspiring political actors in America for the last like, decade, aside from Bernie, for socdems. Obama was the last one of particular note, but after the initial 2008 electoral campaign where the whole "hope for a better future" thing fell on its face, it basically just became "This is a nice and respectable guy who does things adultly and presidently" and not like, "Holy shit, it's OBAMA, that guy who improved my life a shitload!" And before him it's been a desert.
I remember feeling exactly like this after Bernie failed, everything was cynical grimdark Realpolitik until I learned about the places where socialists won
Thank you comrade
Can't imagine having a viewpoint like that. It's like going past the
libs and deciding that it is the peak of political action, seeing the miserable state of the "end of history" and saying "yeah this is as good as it gets"
Lmao I agree
Marxism is tied to material interests and materialist analysis, it’s the opposite of an ideology. Ideologies concern themselves with ideals
I agree lol, it's the closest to a scientific ideology and the class openly mocks Marxism for calling itself scientific
I’m assuming these people also think Osama woke up one day and decided to attack the US because of the lack of burkas on the streets
I don't know if liberal universalism actually has a coherent definition of ideology, but for Marx ideology is specifically the ideas you have that originated in the consciousness of another class. If a worker believed in the invisible hand of the market and that billionaires are uniquely hardworking geniuses, those would be pieces of bourgeoise ideology.
Thank you comrade
Adopting the ideology of another class really captures the feeling of it, like they're tripping and can't see their own interests anymore.
Or like that neurological injury where your brain won't let your consciousness acknowledge that you've lost your eyesight.