Image is of the drying Canelon Grande Reservoir in Uruguay as the country battles three consecutive years of drought, its worst in nearly a century.
Quoting every country and region that is currently suffering under unprecedented climatic conditions and posting every graph showing extremely concerning things happening would make this preamble way too long, so I'm gonna keep it short and merely say that, holy shit, the consequences of fossil fuel executives' actions are looking real fucking bad.
Hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, are currently enduring higher than average temperatures sometimes reaching up 48 degrees Celsius or 120 degrees Fahrenheit or even beyond. Drought is putting pressure on water supplies basically everywhere around the world. And El Nino is activating, which will only do further damage.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second and third update have done the Dragonball Z fusion dance and created this long-ass thing that took me... a while to get done.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
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 journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.
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.
Update for July 19th and July 21st
It's a long one.
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Global
A meeting between finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 ended without a final communique as the countries could not agree on a statement about the Ukraine War.MP
Grain prices are pretty much fine despite media dooming and western politicians' statements; if there's gonna be a threat to food security, it will come from the impact of droughts and climate change and not letting Russian exports out, not Ukraine's grain having to be shipped over land.MoA Russia is offering to replace Ukrainian grain supplies to needy countries free of charge; this will be discussed at the African summit in St Petersburg next week.TS
The IMF has said that the US dollar's appreciation, driven primarily by global financial risks last year, has hit emergeing market economies harder than developed economies. Very strange*removed externally hosted image*
BRICS has received applications from 22 countries for membership and another 22 have informally expressed interest in joining the bloc.AM
Europe
Nuclear power has been re-introduced as one of the preferred green technologies to revitalise European industry.Euractiv
Finland
Finland’s Neoliberal and Far-Right Alliance Is a Sign of Things to Come in EuropeJacobin
...but they repeat themselves.
France
French MPs are to vote on a bill that would allow police to tap into cameras, microphones, and location services without the consent of its owner or possessor, though is limited only to suspects involved in terrorism, organised crime and other illegal activities punishable by five or more years in prison; I'm sure the French police will diligently obey that condition and not use it on literally anybody they want.MR Macron has undergone a second reshuffle since June 2022, with a dozen ministers being replaced.Euractiv Electricity prices are set to rise by 10% for 20 million French households.Euractiv
Germany
New housing constructions are set to decline by 2025; Germany's is expected to drop by 32%, exceeded only by Sweden's 39% and Denmark's 33%.DW Construction is beginning on a UK-Germany power link project.Euractiv German schools are becoming increasingly linked to the military in order to try and enlarge their armed forces and recruit new soldiers, with hundreds of presentations at various types of schools already taking place.WSWS
Spain
Spain has been accused of undermining the adoption of carbon capture and storage in Europe after circulating a discussion paper that questions the EU's approach.Euractiv
Switzerland
Swiss Government Plans to Lock Away Secrets on Credit Suisse Collapse for 50 YearsWSoP
Rumor has it that the ancient eldritch deities had their bank accounts in Credit Suisse and the bankers are trying to protect the public from going mad and turning into monstrosities.
Greece
Residents of the island of Evia are helping each other via mutual aid after a forest fire that burned 15% of the island's surface area two years ago.ET
United Kingdom
Ukraine war takes its toll on UK politicsBhadrakumar
On the drama of UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.
The UK's inflation rate has dropped to 7.9% in June, still far above the 2% target.EN India's Tata Group has said that it will build a £4 billion factory in the UK, which has injected optimism into the UK's car sector.FT The UK government has cut the rate of public funding to King Charles III by over half due to the monarch's profits from offshore wind projects.AM
Netherlands
The government has lifted its arms embargo on Turkey, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.MEE
Serbia
Serbian farmers are having to go from dealing with flooding to high temperature and drought.EN
Poland
Core inflation has eased to 11.1% year-on-year, dropping 0.4 points compared to May.BNE
Ukraine
Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria want to extend a ban on the imports (but not, as I understand, the transportation through their countries to other places) of Ukrainian grain beyond September 15th.BNE
Western Asia
The Chinese government seeks to increase its co-ordination with Arab countries, after the fourth China-Arab States Political Parties Dialogue.CGS
Saudi Arabia
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are having a diplomatic crisis due to diverging interests, though underlying tensions is nothing new.TC Saudi Arabia is allowing Israel to attend the UNESCO Riyadh summit.AM
Iraq
Washington sanctions 14 Iraqi banks. The point is to try and stop Iran getting dollars. Iraq is attempting to fight back against this by banning dollars for personal and business transactions, and promoting the use of the dinar with Iran. Damn it, now I'm laughing about the Iraqi dinar Trump thing.TC Iraq expels Swedish envoy, recalls diplomatic staff from Stockholm over Quran burning. Iraqi demonstrators also set the Swedish embassy on fire, which the Swedes aren't happy about.TC
Occupied Palestine
Biden demands Netanyahu scrap judicial overhaulTC
Or else what?
Settlers stormed Joseph's Tomb near a Nablus refugee camp and the Palestinians fought back while Israel nearly suffocated an infant with tear gas. TC Palestinians call for release of 5,000 prisoners in exchange for Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli spy that got captured in Iraq back in March. This sounds like a good deal.TC
Turkey
Turkiye, UAE sign agreements valued at $51 billion. Deals in energy, natural resource development, space exploration, and defense co-operation. Also aid for the earthquake.TC
Turkey has delivered another 2.5% interest rate hike, bringing it to 17.50%, after the market expected a hike of 5%.BNE
Yemen
Yemen's Ansarallah 'optimistic' about Omani-mediated peace talks with Saudi ArabiaTC
Central Asia
Russia
A look into the current trade dynamics between Russia and China, and what each country is offering to the other.VC China and Russia have kicked off their joint military exercise in the Sea of JapanGT China has imported a record volume of RUssian crude oil in the first half of this year.AM Russia's Rosatom has announced a big uranium mining project in Namibia, which expects to produce 3000 tonnes of uranium per year by 2029 and over the next 25 years.AM
Belarus
The Belarusian Defence Ministry has decided to involve Wagner forces in training its army personnel.AM
**Kyrgyzstan could be hit with US sanctions this week after failing to shut trade windows through which re-exported sanctioned goods make their way to Russia.BNE
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Eastern Asia and Oceania
Politics of hedging in the Indo-PacificBhadrakumar
China
Chinese officials fight back against the slowdown hype, which almost seems to be more about doing some TikTok-esque manifestation using psychic energies than actually trying to describe the current state of the Chinese economy.GT The head of America's Micron Technology has visited China and met with the Ministry of Commerce, following the Intel CEO's earlier visit.SCMP China is eyeing defence production opportunities with Turkey, a NATO member, and seeking to buy some Turkish companies, with 74 Chinese defence firms attending a Defence Industry Fair in Istanbul.SCMP Kissinger met with Xi on Thursday and talked about how the US and China can help each other prosper.CGTN
DPRK
The government isn't returning calls about the US soldier that crossed the border.DW
India
German Economy Minister Habeck has gone to India and urged them to condemn Russia's war in Ukraine, saying that you can't be neutral on it, which is news to most of the countries in the world.DW Modi has called out the opposition's new alliance against his party.ANN India, the world's largest rice exporter, has prohibited exports of non-basmati white rice to keep national prices stable heading into the general election in early 2024.AM
Sri Lanka
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN is taking steps to collaborate with Sri Lanka to address food insecurity caused by poor harvests in 2021 and 2022.TS
Malaysia
The Socialist Party of Malaysia and the Malaysian United Democracy Alliance have agreed on an electoral pact for the upcoming state elections, campaigning on five key shared concerns, though neither party has a significant voting base.GL A Chinese automaker is investing $10 billion to turn Tanjung Malim into the region's largest auto hub.AM
Philippines
Xi met with former president Duterte earlier this week in order to try and maintain friendly ties between the two countries.SCMP
Cambodia
Cambodia and Ghana are proposing an agricultural partnership focussing on rice production.ANN
Myanmar
Locations in Myanmar are experiencing their haeviest single-day rainfall in 76 years, with landslides and flooding hitting the country.TS
Australia
Rents are experiencing unprecedented annual increases in large population centers.WSWS
New Zealand
Prime Minister Hipkins has called for deepening ties with China at a business summit in Auckland.TS
Africa
US military sought to experiment on Africans for big pharma: KremlinTC
200 delegates from progressive organisations, parties, movements, and unions across Africa gathered in South Africa in a summit on building socialism within our lifetime.MR
Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi is heading to a meeting of BRICS national security advisors in South Africa, before moving on to other African countries.CGS
Algeria
China, Algeria to inherit, promote traditional friendship for 'better global governance' after President Tabboune ends his five day trip in China, building further ties.AN They seem to be besties or something.GT Algeria is obviously unhappy about Israel's recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara.AM
Guinea
Guinea Junta suspends membership in regional development group, OMVS, accusing it of "not taking its strategic interests into account"AN
Kenya
Shops keep doors shut as protests intensify in KenyaAN
Kenya's violent protests 'sabotaging' economy president Ruto saysAN
Sudan
The supply of gum arabic, used in industries ranging from pharmaceuticals, sweets, soft drinks, to cosmetics, is under threat as Sudan accounts for 70% of global total exports, which have now ground to a halt because of the war.DW
CAR
Hundreds of Wagner fighters have gone to the Central African Republic ahead of the July 30th referendum, to provide "security".AN
South Africa
BRICS: Putin to attend summit virtuallyAN South Africans spend an average of 9.5 hours online per day, compared to a global average of about 6 hours.AN Uber Eats drivers in South Africa are unionizing.RoW
North America
United States
While not yet necessarily an acute problem, the scale of infrastructure funding may outpace the number of workers in the US, and training programs will be needed to keep up.CoB
JPMorgan Chase Has Bled $230.6 Billion in Deposits Since Q1 2022, With Declines in 5 of the Last 6 QuartersWSoP
Whoops.
Recruitment targets are being missed by the thousands due to poor pay, bad housing, abuse, and increasing suicide and PTSD rates. Only 9% of young adults would consider military service. TC
Michigan Amazon Workers Stage Largest Delivery Station Strike YetLN
Red Clarion talks about the actors' strikes and Hollywood's response.RC
Jacobin inadvertedly dunks on that FAIR piece. Jacobin
The wildfire smoke is prompting US air quality alerts for 70 million people in 32 states.PW Most media outlets (62%) aren't mentioning climate when covering the wildfires. FAIR
Salmon numbers are declining in Alaska to the extent that fisheries are collapsing, partially caused by rising sea temperatures.ICN
Experts Study Using Waste Plastic in Roads and More, but Find the Practice Isn’t Ready for Prime TimeICN
US unable to sell stolen Iranian oil sitting in Greek tanker floating off Texas coast out of fear of Iranian reprisal TC
High temperatures in prisons (with very unsympathetic prison staff and state officials) are badly affecting and even killing prisoners, who must endure temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit without air conditioning.RNN
In-N-Out Burger is prohibiting workers from wearing masks in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Texas.RC
A tropical storm hit Hawaii on Wednesday.CGTN
Latin America
The EU is to invest 45 billion euros over several years into Latin America and the Caribbean.MP
Haiti
The food program to Haiti has been reduced by 25% due to a lack of funding.TS
Cuba
The impact of the EU's about-face on Cuba is discussed, noting that the EU is Cuba's largest trading partner, accounting for most of its foreign investment and a third of the tourists visiting.PW
Honduras
Honduras is threatening to withdraw from the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes over a $11 billion claim by the US company Honduras Prospera that the ICSID has breached "law and procedure" when the Honduran government stopped the company from establishing a charter city in a special economic zone in 2021.Bilaterals
Venezuela
Several economic analysis firms have talked about an economic slowdown or even recession in Venezuela's economy, while figures from both official Venezuelan sources and several businesses present that of recovery, increasing imports by 23% in the first half of 2023 and domestic market demand is being kept up with - pointing to an annual GDP growth rate of 3-4% which is still among the best in the region.Resumen Venezuela has received 1.1 million containers of insulin from the Russian company Geropharm, which will cover the needs of Venezuelans for up to three months.TS
Peru
Protests against Boluarte continue, organized by workers' groups.TS
Chile
In Chile, Having a Good Constitution Doesn’t Guarantee Social ChangeAlborada
Colombia
The Battle for ColombiaAlborada
The Workers' Unitary Central marched in support of President Petro on their independence day on Thursday.TS
Argentina
There's a new round of IMF negotiations to finalize a new agreement of this year's presidential elections.MP
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The War Against The West
The Western Front
Putin says Russia would return to Ukraine grain deal if demands metAN
The head of the UK's spy service has appealed to Russian citizens to help them counter the Russian government and bring the war to an end.Euractiv
Responsible Statecraft discusses why Ukraine's counteroffensive is failing to achieve its goals, and argues in favor of diplomacy in order to save tens of thousands of lives which will be needed to reconstruct the country after the war.
Slovakian arms corporations have seen their profits quadruple since the war begin.Euractiv
Retrospectives, Analysis, History, Theory, and Technology
JPMorgan Listed a “Lolita’s Closet” on the New York Stock Exchange for Jeffrey Epstein’s Money Man, Les Wexner WSoP
About Limited Too, an Epstein-connected clothing store that marketed itself for girls aged 7-14, with some disturbing products and surveys aimed at those girls asking if they were good at giving massages.
Is the US a Failed State?^Michael Hudson^
Responsible Statecraft discusses a new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine.
LGBTQIA
CW: This is usually bad news nowadays unfortunately, so if you don't want to hear about it, move on to the next section.
Republican Lawmakers Look to Ban Pride Flags at Stonewall, Other National SitesAdvocate
Louisiana Republicans Overturn Veto on Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth BanAdvocate
80% of transgender Americans have considered suicide, 42% have attempted suicide and 56% have self-injured for non-suicidal reasons. Trans people have similar rates of alcohol and drug abuse to cis people, though.Advocate
Lesbian Mothers Are Being Removed From Birth Certificates in ItalyAdvocate
Ghana's high court has tossed a challenge to a draconian anti-LGBTQ+ bill. It was for a very "uhm, actshually" technical reason that I assume only gets used for these kinds of things.Advocate
Same-sex marriage in Namibia is banned, and the participation, promotion, or advertisements of these marriages are now a criminal offense.AN
Kenya is on the verge of making the LGBTQ+ movement even more illegal (homosexual sex can get you up to 14 years in prison, it could now get you the death penalty) by making it a crime to promote homosexuality through the use of flags or emblems.AN
Dipshittery and Cope
Oppenheimer: an American Stalinist tragedyRF
Everything I don't like has deep ties to Stalin, including... ah, yes, an American president ordering American bombers to drop American nukes on Japanese civilians. And they say WE have the cult of personality - they can't stop thinking about the guy for a second.
Climate
The US is proposing to designate 8,850 acres of beaches and 428,000 square miles (awesome use of units in this article) as a protected critical habitat for six green sea turtle populations.CD
Gymnosperms that thrive in cold, high-elevation areas in the northwestern Himalayas are in decline.Mongabay
Changes in temperature and precipitation may result in the burned Canadian forests in converting to grasslands rather than new forests growing.TS
Mangroves in Kerala, India, are declining due to land conversions, illegal cutting, fishing, and sand dredging - the area of mangrove forests has declined by 90-95% over the last three decades.Mongabay
Canada's TC Energy has asked US federal regulators to approve a cost-saving plan that would expand a regional natural gas pipeline's capacity, in contradiction with climate policies in California, Oregon, and Washington. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will likely not reject the proposal and there's little those states can do about it.DeSmog
Michael Roberts covers the ongoing heatwaves and climate chaos.MR
I Love My Trans Comrades!
I checked that WSWS on German military recruiting and compared this to the original Frankfurter Rundschau article.
Then there's a table which totally contradicts this sentence! The most events were actually held at the beginning of 2023. But there's a note right under it:
What does this mean? Was the table in the article updated with new information at some point and now it contradicts the text? Is the information not comparable and therefore useless for the question at hand? Why is it there then and why do you conclude things from it? Maybe the 2022 data already contained all the unplanned events because those were already counted last year, so this actually is comparable? If so, why do you conclude the opposite of what the data says?
Fucking useless. Hey "journalists": Link your sources and learn to write clearly! I have no idea what's right and I can't find the real numbers, so 🤷.
Speaking of shitty journalism. There was a big
in German news yesterday:
There were videos that supposedly show a lion at the southern outskirts of Berlin. The authorities conducted a huge operation trying to find it. Someone supposedly saw it running after a boar, which then meant it was reported to have slain a boar.
There was no lion, it's boars all the way down.
I looked for the videos on YT and so I found a video from WELT were they had a guy on that said the video just shows a boar. But then the news anchor goes "couldn't they just look at the dead boar to figure out what killed it?" There was no dead boar.