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.
Western media is reporting that Ukraine has breached the first and presumably hardest line of defense near Rabotino/Robotyne and that they are now "only 20 kilometres from Tokmak". It is being presented as a major victory.
I still don't know what they're talking about. The ownership of Robotyne has shifted back and forth over the last couple weeks, for sure, and Ukraine needs control of it to advance, but it isn't on the first defensive line, it's several kilometers in front of it.
feels like the media has zero understanding of the situation so they hear "Ukraine takes control of key village on front" from their government sources, say "Oh, they must have breached the first line of defense that those Russian propagandists have been talking about so smugly! Time to report it!" and then a day later, Russian counterattacks back into Robotyne and Ukraine no longer controls it, and then a week later Ukraine gets control of it again, and then the Ukrainian government once again says "Ukraine takes control of key village on front" and then they're like "Holy moly, look at the progress! Two key villages in this short (lol) time! They must be barrelling past the first line of defense and be close to Tokmak!", when in reality the front has shifted like five kilometers (in this area) maximum over three months and Ukraine's taken something like 60,000 casualties for their trouble
I highly doubt any journalist cares, more than likely a lot of the news outlets have sent their team to Kiev where they stay in some hotel and read the messages by the ukranian ministry of defense and then report this back, maybe they'll don their little helmet and flak vest outfit and pretend they are near the warzone like that one BBC guy almost crawling on the ground while people were just walking past him.
Any journalist in Ukraine has been outright told they cannot report the truth. Always remember than when reading their articles.
They are knowingly participating in propaganda. The truth means nothing to these people.
What happened is, western media have redefined the 'first line" to mean any defences in front of the real first line, which is the surovikin line. Some genius in the newsroom came up with this dumb idea and libs at frothing at the mouth to say "WE BROKE THE FIRST LINE!". Shades of Spinal Tap; this one goes to 11.
Lol... Now the same people who had a "military analyst" write a piece about how this means that Ukraine is winning are quoting the US government-affiliated organisation ISW for saying that maybe they didn't actually break through the line but they're really, really close.
This back and forth has been going on for at least a week.