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.
https://nitter.net/SatimMonitoring/status/1699033904244535646
Looking past the Ukrainian assertions that Russia is “strapping tires to its planes” in a desperate attempt to mitigate damage, whatever Russia is doing appears to be some kind of sensor camouflage.
My understanding is that some drones/missiles rely on preloaded (radar-based?) images of the target in order to home in on it. By disrupting the appearance of the planes, that type of targeting wouldn’t work, I guess?
From that thread… WTF is “deceptive camouflage”? Is that as opposed to “honest camouflage”? How is any camouflage not deceptive?
I guess the difference is that you’re not trying to totally hide the existence of something, but rather make it look like something else. For example: making a large ship look like a smaller one.
I see. It makes a little more sense read that way, but still seems like a redundant term. I see from a web search that it’s definitely been used by various sources before though. Thanks.
My understanding is that some drones/missiles rely on preloaded (radar-based?) images of the target in order to home in on it. By disrupting the appearance of the planes, that type of targeting wouldn’t work, I guess?
Yes. Radar signal is very noisy analogue signal which many things can appear in. The radar is on the plane which fires it. All is moving. A change can disrupt operation. More so if those object have a material which absorb EM.
he Engels-2 base, plays a crucial role in Russia’s strategic #defense,
pogchamp its named after Engels
Yes but indirectly. The Engels airbase is named after the town Engels, which is a town in the former Volga German republic re-named so in like 1930.
oh interesting.
🦀🦀🦀 Apartheid collaborator Mangosuthu Buthelezi dead🦀🦀🦀
Today he’s known as a unifier by some, but those familiar with his history remember him as a war-monger whose hands, until the very end, dripped with the blood of the thousands killed across the country’s townships in the late 80s and the early 90s.
He had also accepted the oppressive regime’s homelands or bantustan arrangement as he argued that his participation in the Apartheid system was the ideal way to beat it.
This earned him titles such as sellout and an anti-revolutionary.
By the early 80’s, tensions, including with ANC and aligned UDF had spilled over into full on violence.
And when the dust had settled – with South Africa on the brink of democracy – it is believed that well over 20,000 people had died
His Inkatha trainees were found by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to have been responsible for the murders of ANC and United Democratic Front (UDF) activists. The trainees were men trained by the South African Defence Force.
This isn’t even talking about Operation Marion , in which there was an alliance formed between the IFP, the NP and even some AWB elements, the Zulu - Boer alliance for their own security. IFP militants were flown in C-130 troop transports by the apartheid government from their training base in Caprivi, to a military base in Durban, to do classic colonial “divide and conquer” operations.
The guy even personally visited Ronald Reagan to campaign against the anti apartheid sanctions. Opportunistic to the extreme.
“BRICS is where the most powerful countries come together with the most impoverished countries because they join forces to fight poverty and hunger,” Ortega said.
On Monday, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced his nation’s interest in joining the BRICS, the group of emerging economies led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
“We are knocking on the door because that is the multipolar world,” the leader of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) said during a ceremony on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of the constitution of the Nicaraguan Army.
“BRICS is where the most powerful countries come together with the most impoverished countries because they join forces to fight poverty and hunger,” he added.
“Over there the agenda is not defined in function of war as it happens in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, headed by the United States,” Ortega pointed out.
“BRICS is making its way in the world and the earth’s empires are trying to avoid integration between the nations that want to cooperate not to invade or bomb another country but to strengthen economic and social relations in the fight for peace,” he added.
“Nicaragua recognizes in the BRICS a powerful initiative that will allow us to strengthen the multipolar world and change the unfair, colonialist, and imperialist economic model,” the Nicaraguan government said on August 24, when it greeted the entry of Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran to the BRICS.
These six countries will become full members of the BRICS from January 1, 2024. The expansion of the group is part of its plan to gain influence and be able to reshape global governance towards a multipolar world order, which places the voices of the South Global at the center of the world’s political agenda.
