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.
So archive is still fucking up for me on both the .is link and the .ph link so I'll still be posting raw links.
From: https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/09/05/russian-unimpressed-us-bradleys/?expand_article=1
"Russian Engineers Unimpressed by Captured US-Made Bradleys" by Joe Saballa
For the record I've also heard U.S soldiers and officials shit-talk BMPs and said anything Russia made is not an analog of the Bradley because the Bradley won in every conflict its been in (they were talking about Iraq and Israel lmao)
Also known as a Kampfgruppe
Insert Pentagon Wars movie quote here
Insert another Pentagon Wars movie quote here
Also twitter image from the article here showing an image of a bunch of Russians posing in front of a captured in pristine condition Bradley thanking Zelenskyy for his gifts.
https://twitter.com/JohnEdgarCarter/status/1679040072006483970?s=20
The article finishes out with a YTvideo showing off the Bradley in a positive light so you can at least get a general idea of how they look, sound, and act in the field. Also I'm not responsible for any psychological damage you get from reading YouTube comments
There's lots of cope here from the Russians.
Their capabilities are very similar, but the Bradley has much better situational awareness, and the BMP-3 has a couple more ways to kill you. Literally any infantryman you ask of any nationality will prefer the Bradley over the BMP-3 because infantry like the idea of being in a troop compartment with an actual door instead of crouched in an extremely hot cupboard.
It's picking between being in a sardine can and an anchovy can to be fair. If somethings built for comfort that means there's more shit to strip out to pack more bodies.
Problem is you don't want your troops arriving cooked and hunched over. The BMP-3 also has a really awkward hatch arrangement that requires dismounting infantry to expose themselves on the top of the vehicle and run over the engine compartment. The BMP-3 was a replacement for a few marine vehicles, with the requirement that the engine was rear mounted, low down to improve water handling.
Outside of the doors being mid, thats pretty much all there is to structurally point out as design flaws. Complaining about engine placement is a dumb thing because there's always going to be complaints about engine placement, and saying infantry shouldn't be treated like shit in exchange for a taller target profile is like saying giraffes should be shorter so they can drink water easier. Like sure, but there's reasons behind the design for specific tasks and purpose.
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Sure glad the Soviets never build entire lines of lightweight amphibious and airborne fighting vehicles out of the same material.
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The Bradley's sent into action in Ukraine have the same protection scheme, steel plate and spacers over aluminum.
There are still softskin aluminium vehicles left in Ukraine, mostly BMD series.
Bradleys are not lightweight, amphibious or Airborne