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.
Good morning Comrades,
Friend just started a no-pre-req political class in a generally left-field and it's already devolved to libs frothing about Putin while also lamenting the treatment of BLM. It's an online class and I suggested to them to get ahead and control the early (graded) discussion boards with crypto-communist theory regarding ideology (which y'all kindly helped me helped them with a ton) but ended up toning it way down to avoid getting clocked, or our personal fear of potentially secretly blacklisted from the profession.
Right now they're publicly in a leftist position, lamenting sectarian infighting on the left compared to unity on the right. Let out some feelers to left-sounding people but those people later posted anti-communist stuff from the course materials.
Online class, most things said are going to be on record with full name attached, don't want to accidentally get my friend in trouble but it also seemed like prime territory for making some friends and networking new leftists.
These online class formats seem a good fit for left posters but very dangerous for us specifically since there is a fucking cop attending the class and posts are all on record. Anybody have any experience with this?
I want to ask about potential dogwhistles but we're now thinking of pulling back completely. It's a shame because I want to help agitate (class forum is full of weak libs) and my friend wants to make leftist/queer friends.
I love my trans comrades.
To add something more newsworthy, schools are freaking out about AI and are now pushing intrusive surveillance technologies on students, tracking every keystroke on assignment sheets. Cop-brained libshit.
They think everyone is cheating.
This is shit because I am helping lower year students cheat.
Bougie left-aesthetic white queer kids still being white nationalists in college shouldn't surprise me but still very disappointing after Covid and Biden. My brain tells me some of the leftists I'm seeing are real life hyper-sectarian self-described anarchists (like the one that banned our comrade from a trans discord recently) that are really just rich kids that like avante garde aesthetics.
I want to feel it out with this person but we've both been badly burned and ostracized by bougie radlib queers before. These people start radiating
the second a queer POC steps out of line.
If it is possible to cheat with an "AI" the assignment is poorly designed.
To spread communist propaganda in the classroom the most important thing is to avoid the trigger words decades of amerikkkan propaganda have made anathema.
Adam Smith had some great things to say about landlords and he's above criticism. Point out that modern millionaires are the modern landlords since they want to "reap without sowing".
Workplace democracy might be something to look into. Why should your boss control when you're allowed to piss?
Bringing up the brutal repression of labor movements is always good. Pinkertons and Blair mountain have been successful in my opinion.
Don't mention the labor theory of value but do keep in mind that labor is the only thing that can create value. Use this to push back against anybody that talks about creating wealth through investments or some bullshit.
~~Mention off-handedly how it would have been better if Stalin hadn't stopped at Berlin.~~
Edit: "Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis" by John Smith is good. It's like Settlers but more academic and is suitable for places where you can't pronounce Amerikkka with all three Ks. Might be worth reading if your friend has spare reading time.