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.
Wait so has Ukraine at long last broken through that first defensive line? Seeing more claims of it
I've seen some western media propaganda for this but have not seen any evidence through the usual channels. Feels like a media push? Not sure.
I saw the kyiv independent (lol) claim that Ukraine had a good shot of breaking through the other 2 by the end of the year, citing US intelligence. Not saying I trust them but that seems like a bold thing to claim if they aren't even sure themselves Ukraine broke through the first line
On the one hand western sources has been really consistent about this due days. On the other hand, where's all the Ukrainian propaganda channels triumphantly posting pictures of their tanks ruling past dragons' teeth? Where's all the Russian Telegram doomers demanding the summary execution of the entire general staff?
I really don't know what to believe on this.
This is exactly what I've been waiting for. The evidence.
If it exists they'd be shouting it from the rooftops. It doesn't exist yet. I'm not saying that it might not be close and the media is pushing this because of expectations it will happen any second now, but I don't see it yet.
The short version is no. No Ukrainian soldier has touched a Russian dragon's tooth yet.
The long version is that Ukraine has possibly broken through the first part of the first section of the first line. Either Ukraine has broken 0 out of the 1-2 lines before Tokmak or Ukraine has broken through 1 out of 4-12 lines before Tokmak. It depends on how you count the defensive lines.
Ukrainian infantry crossed the anti-tank fortifications and attacked into the Russian infantry trenches. No vehicles have made it yet, to my knowledge.
It seems that they are trying to clear a buffer zone with infantry only so that the vehicles have more time to get through safely. I don't think the defenses should be considered "broken" until vehicles can cross semi-reliably.
Mercouris at the Duran said yesterday that the claims Uk had broken the line from the day before were all false and western media were pulling back on the claim. They have been doing this for like 2 weeks. Every other day they claim that they have breached the line and then the next day they say Uk are about to break the line.
Getting these comments every other day is gonna get real tiresome. No shade on NotaRobot or anybody else of course for asking questions about whether Ukraine has/is breaking through, not her fault the western media keeps being so fucking shitty
I think the next "OMG! dey brook troo da line!" post is gonna be the one where it hits peak humor before it starts to get really annoying and dumb.
I believe the Russian claim is that they pulled out of Robodyne to cycle in fresh troops, and have pushed back to restore the stalemate over the town. Their strategy remains the same as ever, to bleed out Ukraine in unfavorable offensives. I guess we'll see in the next day or so if Ukraine has taken Robodyne/the first line/nothing
First Thought mentioned them making gains, but what does that even mean? A couple miles (at most) out of the vast swathes that Russia controls? Russia only occupying 19% of the country instead of 20%? And in return they get to see that the wunderwaffen aren't quite as wunder as advertised.
What I recall is that in the south, Russia has 3 big lines of defense. After that, there's very little all the way to the coast. If that's true, and if Ukraine has broken through the first line, then that could be taken to mean they are 1/3rd of the way to making massive gains in the south. For a while their "summer counteroffensive" had been kind of a joke because it wasn't even confronting that first line, but if what some western media is saying is true, then that might no longer be the case.
Of course, without knowing casualties on either side, it's tough to know what "breaking through the first line" even really entails. Like if this was the culmination of months of costly fighting with little gain, then it would not mean the same thing as it would if like idk Russia was taking massive losses trying to hold the line or something.