As mentioned before, this is really only half a real update.

Summary for September 30th

Events

Almost every government on the planet has failed to improve their climate plans this year by the cutoff date set by Cop26. An environmental defender has been killed on average every two days over the last ten years. Biden made a ton of bullshit statements at the UN about how Russia is violating the UN Charter, which the US was famously not accused of doing of when it invaded the Middle East. The PM of New Zealand reaffirms her commitment to this war.

The UK is on the brink of economic and social catastrophe after Truss's and Kwarteng's plan to revitalize the UK is essentially "fuck it, this country's over, let's steal as much as we can and then fly off to our bunkers", which has sent the Pound to historic lows. The Bank of England is desperately trying to fix this situation. Russia's grain harvest may reach a record 150 million tons this year.

A massive fire has destroyed dozens of shanty homes in Sri Lanka, as the government refuses to provide adequate places for poor people to live.

An ebola outbreak in Uganda is prompting Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, the DRC, and Uganda itself to fine-tune its epidemiological responses.

The main focus of the news up near the United States has been Hurricane Ian smashing into Florida and, in the process, taking out Cuba's electrical grid (which is being repaired). The hurricane could cost $67 billion to the US economy and killed 12 people. In semi-related news, US gas flaring is releasing five times more methane than previously thought, and billions of dollars have been wasted on carbon capture projects that have largely failed. The US Supreme Court's approval is at record lows. The governor of California has signed a bill that will make it easier for farmworkers in the state to participate in union elections. Apparently, people distrust think tanks more than they do the media, which is probably justified. Nearly 60% of Americans would support the US engaging in diplomatic efforts in Ukraine as soon as possible, even if that means that Ukraine would have to make concessions to Russia. Thousands of students in Virginia have walked out from their schools in protest of a proposed anti-trans school policy. Mexico's central bank has raised their interest rates by 75 basis points to 9.25%.

I'm putting the Caribbean in with the rest of South America as I think that makes a little more sense. As mentioned before, Cuba's electrical grid is being restored, with 72% (nice!) restored by Wednesday night. Venezuela is providing aid to Cuba. Maduro has called to expand Venezuela's export capacity. Petro's environmental protection plans are, expectedly, facing pushbacks from extractive companies. Lula has hit 50% in the polls, potentially implying that he could win in the first round against Bolsonaro. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is desperately trying to find a way to escape his predicament by calling into question the validity and accuracy of the electronic voting system that they've used for over two decades.

Conflict: Kherson, Zaporozhye, LPR, and DPR are now officially and legally part of Russia. Zelensky has signed some kind of "accelerated" application for NATO, which NATO doesn't appear to be very interested in receiving. NATO had a press conference where they promised "unprecedented" news, prompting me to try and absorb as much posadist theory as I possibly could, and then basically sat there and cried about the annexations and the pipelines. 66 nations at the UNGA have called for an end for the war in Ukraine, including India, China, Brazil, and Mexico. The EU parliamentarian (they also have a parliamentarian? fuck!) has called to sanction the international observers of the Donbass referenda. The Gray Zone has an article where they interview a former NATO adviser and they say that the US and UK sabotaged the peace deal because they don't care about Ukraine, which makes sense. Russia has more or less accused the United States (or at least, NATO) of blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, because that's literally the only countries it could have been unless Cthulhu arose from his slumber in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

Analysis

The new analysis section!

Robin D.G. Kelley, the author of Hammer and Hoe and other books, has been interviewed by Current Affairs on the importance of utopian visions for social movements. Counterpunch informs us in an essay as to why the Swedish Left will continue to lose, and what can be done about it. Rashida Tlaib is obviously correct when she says that you can't be a progressive and also support Israel, and Jacobin agrees. Additionally, Jacobin writes about the victorious vote in Cuba.

To analyze the right, we have an article by Monthly Review, detailing how the fascists are returning.

A small intelligence-linked party was responsible for Corbyn taking on the cause of a second referendum for Brexit, and thus we have even more confirmation that the Labour party was explicitly working against him to sink his socialist ideas. Do you remember back near the start of the war when Croatia threatened to veto the NATO candidacy of Finland and Sweden? Apparently the US and UK are up to no good there.

Fukushima's post-meltdown history has been characterized by failure after failure to stop the thing from getting worse, and the latest solution, announced back in July and approved by both the Japanese government and the IAEA, is to release all the irradiated water into the sea after "re-treating" it, a process that they tried before and failed to do.

Biden's response to the deliberate killing of beloved Palestinian journalist Shireen Aby Akleh has been very poor, going along with the plan by Israel to hope that this all blows over.

For our resident South Africans, Counterpunch has an article on the electricity crisis in South Africa. Neoliberalism. Meanwhile, US diplomacy is failing in the Ethiopia-Eritrea war against Tigray, with thousands of soldiers and civilians dying every day of combat, starvation, and disease, after 700 days. And Jacobin writes on how Nigeria's underdevelopment has made it a target for capitalist exploitation.

The United States is using debt to prey on developing countries as the Fed raises interest rates ever higher. Puerto Rico's electrical grid company, LUMA, has only raised electricity rates and overseen power outages, prompting calls for a public power grid instead.

Non-stop protests in Haiti reach their fourth year, starting in 2018 when Venezuela was no longer allowed to ship oil there due to sanctions.

The Nord Stream pipeline exploding has highlighted the vulnerability of fossil fuels, which is probably about third on the list of important things it's highlighted, but important nonetheless. Corporations are really starting to get desperate in the fight against climate activism, calling it "woke capitalism". And scaling up renewables will require some pretty fundamental changes to how our power grids work, which China is, in some ways, pioneering.

I Love My Trans Comrades!