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.
Question for newsheads who know a bit more about the military side of things. What's the rationale from a NAFO/Ukrainian perspective for the western countries providing only limited amounts of arms IV dripped to Ukraine? Obviously outside this perspective it's rather obvious, that Ukraine is the territory of a proxy war between NATO and Russia. And I imagine that there are voices on the pro-Ukraine side who are angry at the NATO (mostly US) strategy of giving Ukrainians just enough to keep running into mines without surrendering.
To me it seems like there should be some kind of internal logic that keeps the US politicians (nevermind military leaders) from going full hog into supplying more of what they have. Is it simply that they don't think they can get the political support from Congress? When has that stopped them before? Is it that the military industrial complex thinks it can make more profit if a war is dragged out? Overall what drives this particular method?
They do not want Ukraine to start ww3, they have been consistently careful about avoiding giving Ukraine enough to actually do anything in Russian territory. They are fully aware that the Ukrainian state does not have full control of its military, with factions militias and groups all willing to do their own thing. As such they have avoided giving them anything they think could take the war out of Ukraine and into other territories.
The point is to keep the war within the borders of Ukraine. Not to expand it into the borders of Russia as well. If the war expanded properly into the borders of Russia nukes would enter the picture.
I don’t think what you’re saying is wrong, it’s more that I think it’s too convoluted.
Something like 75% of the worlds oil is in the Caspian basin and this explains most of the past 30 years of US war.
I think Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, it’s about that oil and the countries in proximity to it.
This stuff about “finance capital vs industrial capital” I dunno, it’s not wrong I just think it’s a bit too abstract high concept.
that doesn't sound right to me, are you sure?
This feels a little pessimistic, there's rumblings about US oil production decreasing substantially next year:
And also the SPR is almost the lowest it's ever been - in the context of rising oil prices. Business Insider itself is saying that Biden has less and less ammunition now:
Seems to me that OPEC+ is mounting its offensive and starting to win. They're putting Biden in a zugzwang - continue the course, watch oil prices increase as you use up your supplies, and lose the election, or engineer a recession to bring down oil prices and lose the election.
Why is the US even involved in a connection between Asia, the Arabian Gulf, and Europe?
imo tpp was the US' best shot at a comprehensive and future proof anti china platform, best thing trump did was take it out and the US has been on the strategic back foot ever since
will be interesting to see the real meat of the biden counteroffensives though, while it seems the initial probing attacks in the tech sector have been bogged down, i feel like brandon's best chances in the economic sector will be in the latam/africa directions. problem is that those places are currently just good for raw resource extraction, value added work there would be risky due to political instability and low quality of human capital. which basically just leaves the imperial core itself.
problem is that the imperial core has all these domestic problems that seem to be nigh unsolveable barring some kind of a fascist yakubian messiah. how are barely literate, obese, mentally ill military rejects with 900$ rents and a 57 minute commute going to be able to work iphone factory shifts long enough to prop up the falling rate of profit?
the imperial core should join the BRI, have china build infrastructure for it, then eventually force majeure everything back with a manufactured humanitarian crisis. at this point hopefully latam/africa have developed sufficiently to support supply lines beyond raw resource extraction, at this point the core can then just implement the new monroe doctrine deal and regenerate its labor aristocracy
The US is enemies with half the nations across land so they had to just use the Suez. It’s barely a new trade route at all at that point.
Lmfao.
It cannot be overstated how huge fracking/shale oil is for US energy independence. I wouldn't be surprised if declining production kicks off a new level of imperialism
The reasoning NAFO types engage in is that western weapons are exceptional and remarkable such that only a small number of them can counter much larger Russian forces.
“Wunderwaffen” is the term for this reasoning.
The more cynical view, our side of things basically, is that the west is only providing enough to keep Ukraine in the fight but not enough to win because the west benefits more from this conflict dragging out than it benefits from any peace settlement.
Ukrainian victory is not plausible without western forces actually deploying, and since the west is not actually willing to bleed for Ukraine, the objective of the west is to prolong this conflict for as long as possible in order to make Russia bleed as much as possible.
The mask slips pretty frequently as US senators or EU presidents boast about how “cheap” this war is because “it’s not US soldiers dying.”
The concept is known as a bleeding sore. The west wants to engage Russia in as expensive a conflict as possible in order to force Russia to expend blood and treasure in Ukraine, with the rationale being this makes Russia weaker in the medium term future.
Secondarily and specifically for the benefit of the USA, it forced europe to cut economic ties with Russia and broke apart the growing links between Germany and Russia which ensures Europe remains firmly under US vassalage. The loss of very cheap energy imports from Russia also dramatically undermines European manufacturing which rather directly benefits US manufacturing since the US is also pushing the EU into a trade war with China.
I guess I assumed that the wunderwaffen justification would fall apart as months and months pass, it doesn't sound particularly convincing to me. But I'm also trying to peek inside the minds of the type that would believe this. Maybe it's as simple as: the politicians who say it don't believe it themselves, and the ones who consume it aren't following the conflict closely enough to raise any alarm bells?
I'm surprised more pro-Ukraine types who follow this conflict closely aren't getting more and more jaded with the NATO response. Or maybe they are, and that's how you get a diaspora of armed fascists
When it comes to these Wunderwaffen, remember that Western media surrounding war for the last 40 years or more has been about how incredibly superior NATO tech is to Russian tech in every aspect.
Take the Challenger 2 tanks that recently got sent to Ukraine. As someone who used to really be too into military stuff, any time you read about the Challenger 2 there was always talk about how invincible it was, how it has never been destroyed in battle, how the armour is so advanced that even what it's made out of is a classified state secret. When you hear stuff like this for decades on end, it's difficult to shake it even when one sees Challenger 2s torched in a field, and often these NAFO types will justify it by saying sure, it was destroyed, but that tank probably took down 30 T-90s before it was taken out.
The wunderwaffe is a moving goal post. It’s always the next weapon that will change everything. The weapon that hasn’t yet been delivered is the secret ingredient that will change everything.
Currently this is the F-16.
I had this same argument yesterday where a lib insisted that the patriot missile defense system is a wonder weapon and that I was a slur for saying Russian hypersonic missiles will make a joke of it. I pointed out the Kinzhal missile that took out a nuke resistant armored underground bunker, and they just dumped western news sources saying “no they didn’t.”
Nothing but cope
In some places I've been in, the liberal rationale is that the governments are cowards for not providing more arms to Ukraine and should be giving at least double what's already given, and that - at least in the US - they're being blocked by the "pro-Putin" GOP from sending more.
It's purely nonsensical.
The people actually making decisions have their reasons but as for the public-facing message there is no logic. Liberals just hear that "Ukraine is getting [latest Wunderwaffe fad]" and being idealists rather than materialists they pay no attention to the actual numbers and genuinely believe that ten western tanks made with magic Aryan technology can easily defeat a hundred Russian tanks built with laughably inferior Slavic orc technology. It's the perfect marriage of bazinga-brain and white supremacy.
Combination of things I think the biggest one is training rate, we saw stuff like MLAWs and Javelins go first because they are easy to train a lot of people on, just grab any infantry person, which is the largest pool of people, and instruct them how to use it, after that you had artillery and rocket systems since those two are fairly easy to train people on training tank crews is considerably harder which is why it took that long and so is training pilots and their crews. If you have to send 20 pilots to learn how to fly a jet that is 20 pilots you don't have that can maintain air superiority.
So after sending all those first systems out they sent a ton of material hoping that it'd be enough to just upgrade the infantry to western standards. After that you had certain absolute failures like the artillery and rocket pieces they've sent over that are just too heavy too expensive and too gutted to function properly. Now they have to keep on sending stuff but they can't do this because their stockpiles are gone so they'll get another new thing out of storage hoping that 'this weapon will change the tide of the war'. They've sent a ton of stuff over and they are kind of running dry which is why they have to do the 'bad optics' stuff like sending over clustermines because they are out of shells and rockets and sending depleted uranium rounds.
This isn't exactly the mainstream opinion I don't think, but I'll tell you what Oberst Reisner thinks. He's an analyst and now social media sensation from the Austrian military. He's got some "superior NATO tactics" brainworms and at least one far-out take, but also generally better analysis than other "experts" touring German media, so there's that. He thinks this:
The US does not want to escalate too much (being the wise and measured dudes that they are), so they're providing Ukraine with just enough capabilities to match the Russians. The US wants to convince Russia that they cannot win and the same time avoid WW3, by providing Ukraine with just enough stuff to cause a stalemate whenever the Ukrainians fall behind in some area.
I don't think that's correct. While there is certainly some escalation management going on, sending weapon systems is really hard. So I think it's either the generals saying sending all that stuff is pointless or counterproductive, and then the politicians get pressured into sending it anyway. Or some of it probably just took a while to get ready.