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.
Forbes: Ukraine Has Lost Its First Challenger 2 Tank
...
Man this article is hell lmfao
Lmfao, Forbes orientalism moment. Actually, I cannot find information about Challenger II having blowout panels, like Abrams and some other NATO tanks do. If this was the case, the tank wouldn't be burning from the inside, the Challenger II shown in the video is indeed having a "cook off", it's internal ammunition compartment is burning up because of a direct hit. Challenger II has ammo scattered around the hull in armored boxes, and that's it, no fancy blowout panels, just good old boxes and prayers to keep it safe. That last quote is delicious, the Westerners (TM) make tanks to protect it's crew while the RuZZians make tanks that go boom because they have no regard for their own people!!!
The article is pure copium, and the great lenghts western propagandists go to defend their shitty toys is incredible. Western tanks have this aura of invincibility because all they faced (and with all due respect) were militias armed with RPG-2s and 7s that were taken from old warehouses, so yeah, when your enemy is a guy with no professional training (but incredibly motivated) your wunderwaffe tank will be invincible (even though they lost in Iraq and Afghanistan regardless), when the regular army you face fields Type 69 MBTs inside ditches, your Challenger II will be completely out of harms way. Now these tanks are facing a regular army with spooky minefields (that NATO never saw coming), attack helicopters, ATGMs, loitering munitions and modern tanks, all while retaining local air superiority.
Remember my words: When Ukraine finally gets Abrams and F-16s fielded, and the first dozen or two are destroyed, the westerners will completely change their narrative, ditch the ukrainian flag and the Slava Ukraini tags and blame the ukrainians for their "backwardness" and their lack of understanding of superior NATO doctrines.
NATO tactics cannot fail, they can only be failed
Although I think this is already happening to some extent - there was some article posted in one of the previous megathreads, where American officials were complaining that the Ukrainians weren't advancing and were instead reverting to Soviet tactics, apparently completely unable to consider the posibility that maybe the Soviet tactics are just better.
They are refining Russian tactics while refusing to learn any lessons of their own.
This is an old "prediction" and it is worse than that because it already happened, western officials complained that Ukraine did not use the proper tactics as one of the reasons for the failed offensive. They even made some absulotely deranged shit about Ukraine promoting officers with combat experience over NATO trained fucks and this was bad.
Far from anyone to praise the absolutely shitty Ukrainian army(in truth they are deficient in almost every area) but lol lmao that is not something anyone would ever criticize unless all our parodies are actualy true and these "analysts" are literal armchair generals thinking NATO basic training gives an automatic +100 XP towards the "uber soldier" specialization and that makes you better than someone actualy fighting in the trenches for months and surviving.
Here it is
These morons
Any intelligent military would be hiring these trench veterans to teach THEM how to fight in the modern era.
Instead the West has convinced themselves Russia is no more powerful than the Taliban, and thus failure to defeat them is incompetence on the Ukranian part.
I mean, just the sheer arrogance of a general trained in counter insurgency to berate the Ukranians here - my god man, you are not trained in actual warfare General Miley!
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I love how they frame this as positive. The Leopard 2 and Challenger 2 are the current frontline tanks for the entirety of Western Europe, tanks that were constantly thought to be invincible compared to Russian tanks, and they got clowned on by significantly older Russian tanks. And these EU bozos still think they could win handily against Russia?
Edit: I'm also calling bullshit on this article for another reason. A comrade posted pictures of the burnt out tank lower down, and that turret is not still attached. It's canted at an abnormal angle. The ammo cooked off and likely caused a relatively small detonation that lifted the turret just a bit, rather than a more spectacular turret flying through the air, but it absolutely sheared the turret off.
An important fact to remember is that imperialists tend to suck at war, they just make up for it by becoming absolutely depraved, usually at the expense of the overseas populace they're fucking with.
In a fight with Russia they'd be tapping the big red nuke button every five minutes, begging to use it and coming up with a new argument every week for why it's necessary and actually, "the Russians just nuked Warsaw can you believe that (the Russians did not nuke Warsaw)? We must respond."
I don't have to remind the old readers of the community but people who are new here, everyone here and on the media we follow repeated this point over and over how Ukraine was destined for failure because these tanks but specially the Leo2 are outdated garbage made to fight in combined arms in the wide open fields of Central Europe against the USSR. A WW3 scenario that obviously never happened but dictated the design philosophy e.g the emphasis on frontal armor along with their doctrine.
Besides all that even if someone wanted to disregard all what we discussed here, it was also pointed out many many times how the Turkish army embarrassed themselves with these shit tanks by using them "wrong" in Syria.
In the end the point is the only ones thinking they were "invincible" was western media and it seems obvious now also the entirety of NATO actualy believes their own bullshit propaganda.
Kind of wild how the video pivoted into the tank is fantastic, turkey has no idea what it was doing.
It's also funny the assumption that you just have to use the tanks "correctly" and that Ukraine is definitely going to be able to do that.
Frankly I'm not sure any current tank can really wade into urban combat or really any combat (especially unsupported) and not take losses. But pretending if it's used in an exact specific manner against a peer/ near peer adversary and be flawless is a pure fantasy.
NATO equipment cannot fail. It can only be failed.
I remember hearing this from "our side" (the chuds on MoA, Mercouris, etc) and I was like "This is such an obviously bad idea that NATO and Ukraine must have a trick up their sleeve. They aren't just going to let them burn in the fields of Zaporozhye, they clearly have some plan for them, and we just aren't seeing it." I remember watching the counteroffensive gear up in early June and I kept expecting them to play their trump card, to show off the trick they were hiding, show us what clever idea they had to mitigate the disadvantages. some weird combination of equipment that the Russians didn't prepare for or something.
but no. three months of abject failure and burning/exploding equipment. maybe if we believe hard enough, the tanks and bradleys will make it through the Russian lines. vibes-based combat. I think the closest thing to an actual idea is doing the counterattacks at night with the assumption that NATO's night optics were far superior to Russia's, and to somewhat mitigate aviation advantages, but that was clearly disproved within the first week.
To steal a point from a recent radio war nerd, there’s a reason the British military is one of the last places to let children of notable families be tank commanders. The Chally 2 is supposed to have very impressive crew survivability stats. Americans wouldn’t dream of it. If you’ve got name value here you go air force
Love the guy's name: https://archive.ph/NPud4 (From back in June.)
50 miles is their goal! it would be hilarious if such a horrific loss of life isnt guaranteed in this fools errand. if Ukraine ever reaches a point that the Russians actually want to defend, they’re cooked. the hundreds of daily Ukrainian casualties are just from them confronting Russia's screening lines and minefields. if they manage to reach Russia's full defensive lines, they are looking at a drastic increase in casualties. their position in negotiation gets worse every day