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.
Japan is considering dissolving the Moonies
Gotta be one of the most successful adventurists of all timethe guy who killed shinzo abe is what the unabomber wishes that he was. everyone in japan is spontaneously coming to the conclusion he was right.
It probably helps to have a target people actually might turn against, like an exploitative cult, rather than uh, society and minorities(anyone not a healthy cis white guy).
Liberal champions of sovereignty are now frothing at the mouth about a Chinese company designing a Chinese smartphone in China because the US didn’t “allow” it.
This is what liberals believe: nobody can do anything without whitey’s permission.
Colonial mentality in action. They need to be reminded that they don’t control China anymore.
Greece Weather report with hidden commie W
So right now the Thessaly erea (Center of Greece) is being hit with probably the heaviest rainfall in recent years in Europe. Already at 100-500mm in the last ~12 hours in large ereas and cities and it wiil probably rain ~1000mm in overall till Thursday, maybe even more in places. Naturaly things have started to get fucked up and floods have hit the second largest city in the erea (Volos, 80k population). No one can do anything against such rainfall, its not the politicians fault right?
Well the largest city in the erea is Larisa (200k population) , and it is situated basicaly in a hole and bellow sea level and with a major river going through it. Seems like an apocalypse ready to happen. But it wont. Larisa had regural floods at every other downpour and river surge but it also had a communist mayor from 1980 to 1994. Former ELAS captain, imprisoned tortured and exiled for decades and all. Aristidis Lambroulis. He got his hand on any European and state found he could find, brought over Soviet engineers and technicians and basicaly dug up most of the city for years instaling the largest stormwater drainage system in Greece and also split and redirected the river bed inside the city to decrease volume and make flooding less likely. And Larisa hasnt flooded since and is unbothered even by the heaviest rains. Now this one will be a real test and historicaly big but still. It will pull through thanks to the legacy and struggle of a communist administration
I've been going over reddit data a bit today and roughly a month or so ago every single subreddit on the site lost around 75% of its activity.
A few comments-per-day samples, look at what happened on July 11th on all of these:
In order - /r/mildlyinfuriating /r/whitepeopletwitter /r/gaming /r/Askreddit
Show
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What the fuck happened on July 11th? Some sort of delayed aspect of the API closure? Tokens for a major mass botting operator run out?
75% (or more, up to 95%) is an absolutely behemoth drop in overall site commenting activity.
Was this much of reddit literally fake activity? I don't think this is just people that stopped using the site, not all simultaneously, this all happening at once points to some sort of major event with automated commenting all stopping sitewide simultaneously. You can check every single god damn subreddit, the same thing happened everywhere.
I knew reddit was botted, you see it a lot on the mod side of things and you recognise a tonne of sus bots going haywire. But if this is the scale of the fake activity that existed on the site it's wayyyyyyyyyyy bigger than I believed it was and I was among some of the more paranoid people about it.
EDIT: And since it happened, nothing is recovering. Everything is going down, everywhere. The drop in comments is causing a slow drop in comments over time site-wide. This is catastrophic data, worse than what musk has done to twitter in my opinion.
My workplace is having a reading contest this month, so pretty great reason to crack open some books again. Started reading A People's History of the United States, read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and also The Long Walk to Freedom. Mandela's autobiography really slaps hard on par with Blackshirts and Reds.
HR doesn't like me discussing socialist theory probably because I'm objectively right and 95% of the workplace agrees with me, lmao
America deserved 9/11
Random tweet:
Europe would have been better off if there were just forests where Russia is now.
Europe would be owned by the Nazis if there were just forests where Russia is. Although I'm guessing they'd consider that better.
If I read another "actually the voters are stupid and the media isn't giving them the real facts about how good Brandonomics is" OpEd, I am going to pay a visit to the Minecraft version of the NYT office.
People have real, powerful economic indicators of how the economy is doing that they interact with everyday: their bank accounts. Money goes up? Economy good. Money goes down? Economy bad.
It's funny how these neoliberal hacks who wax poetic about the beauty of individualism are suddenly really big fans of "collective" measures of economic performance, like GDP, when it's only the rich who are profiting from GDP increase.
Whats going on in Mexico? (effortpost)
so you nerds have probably heard of some elections thats happened this week on the country and that they were important, there was fraud, it starts the end of morena/ the opposition, that the presidential election is until next. but dont worry im here to explain them to you.
So last week there was a party election in the Morena Party, Morena is the current ruling party funded by the now president Lopez Obrador, its a social democratic party with some pro-labor views, this party election was important because it decided who out of 6 candidates would become the presidential candidate of the ruling coalition, like a USA primary, except it was decided via surveys instead of normal voting like a popularity rating.
So out of the 6 candidates only 2 were really going to win, which were Marcelo Ebrard and Claudia Sheinbaum
Marcelo Ebrard
He was the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Obrador and was a very active member of the cabinet of the president, He joined the party in 2018 and he used to be member of 3 other parties (MC, PRD, PRI) he has know obrador since 2000 when he backed his campaign for Governor of Mexico city and he became secratary of public security, then on 2006 he became the Gobernor of Mexico city and continue the same policies as Amlo. then for the presidential election of 2012 Obrador became the candidate of the PRD and he promised Ebrard a spot in his cabinet as Foreign relations secretary, but he lost, on those 6 years between 2012 and 2018 Ebrard would leave the PRD and join Movimiento Ciudadano which is a progresive liberal party until 2018 when he joined Obrador's party Morena and became the foreign relatios secretary when Obrador won on 2018
So what are his views? to me he believes in the same social democratic ideals like the president except he has always backed a very internationalist outlook he wants mexico to be more active in international organizations like the UN and on the internacional stage. thats the vibe i get from him
Claudia Sheinbaum
The first party she joined was the PRD were she meet Obrador and when he won the election for Head of goberment of Mexico City she became part of his cabinet and became Secretary of the Environment, she oversaw the introduction of the Public transport proyects like the Metrobus and others, and Obrador added her to his Cabinet for the presidency of 2012 but he lost, then in 2014 She follow Obrador and became a founding member of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) the current ruling party, then on 2018 she would get the candidacy for Governor of Mexico city and would win becoming head of goverment of Mexico city.
During her governorship her main agenda was the introduccion of green policies to control the contamination in Mexico city, like planting tree, ban single use plactis, built new waste separation plants, etc. as well as the expantion and development of the Public transport system in the city, her biggest challenge was the covid-19 pandemic in which she pushed for more lockdown policies that were well recieved.
so her view, to me she is mainly an enviromentalist not only because of her policies during her governorship but also because she has a doctorade in environmental engineering, her administration of the city is seen as tecnocratic, and she is big support of obrador since she left the PRD and joined his party in its infancy so i say she probably has the same social democratic views as him
The Morena election
so yesterday the survey results were revealed, and Shienbaum won with 39% of support to Ebrard 26%, to me it wasnt that surprising Claudia has always been the more famous one even with Ebrard's many apparences with the president, both have been basicaly campaigning since june but really they both started much sooner since like the start of the year, for example in the state i live it isnt governed by Morena yet in the city there is a Big poster with Shienbaum face saying "she supports you".
ok so the drama is that Ebrard is a sore loser and called the survey an error and posible fraud, and in interviews he said that there isnt space in the party for him, etc. so he is probably leaving the party, but the question is to where?
What now?
OK so for the presidential election in 2024 there are 3 main factions that will participate mainly only 2 have a chance to win and will probaly be Morena
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So the first faction is Juntos Hacemos Historia which is a coalition of 3 parties, first is Morena they are socdems, then is Partido del Trabajo which is a small labour party more left than morena you could call them socialists, and finally Partido verde which dont belive their lies its not a green party is just a PRI remnant they are liberals, Its really just Morena and friends only the PT have ever been close ideologically to Morena, Verde is a recent addition in 2018 election it was Morena, PT and a party called Encuentro Social who were christian ultraconservatives, they now go by PES and arent morena's ally anymore, their candidate will be Shienbaum
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2nd faction is Frente Amplio por México, made up by Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) who are christian conservatives who fun fact ther party was founded by fascists, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) they used to be the only Ruling party of the country for 70 years they used to be called the perfect dictartorship they are neoliberals, and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) they are socdems, in the past if you made a coalition of ths 3 parties you would have gotten more than 90% of the votes, the reason why is that 20 years ago they were pretty much the only 3 viable parties you had the neolibs, the conservatives and the socdems. the reason why this is not the case anymore is that in 20 we saw the collapse of the PRD and PRI alongside the rise and fall of the PAN, the PRD and PRI lost the mayority of their supporters to Morena and the PAN after a terrible presidency of Calderon they have never recovered. FA hasnt picked a candidate for presidency yep but its between 3 people, which are Xóchitl Gálvez (she seems to be the more popular), Santiago Creel and Beatriz Paredes
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3rd and last is Movimiento Ciudadano, who are a progressive liberal party , they are going at it alone but their objective isnt to win the presidency but to gain enough support to become the main opposition party over the members of Frente amplio, they dont have a candidate yet and this strategy has caused infighting in the party for beign risk but their luck change for the better with the Morena elections, because if Ebrard lefts morena he will probably join MC since he used to be a member and their will get a very popular candidate.
So if the popular theories happen the Presidential Elections of 2024 will be battle between Claudia Shienbaum (Morena), Xóchitl Gálvez (FA) and Marcelo Ebrard (MC) its still very likely that morena wins again, however the important event is from which coalition will MC's candidate pull supporters from, now its posible Sheinbaum will lose some votes to Ebrard because he did got 26% support in the survey but its important to remember that Morena is Obradors party and people voted for them because it had Obrador not anything else so its hard to say if any will vote MC over morena again.
Now the more interesting effect would be if MC's pulls voters from Frente Amplio, this is posible because rembering the views of the member parties of Frente Amplio is that it has no Ideological Cohesion, in the past all 3 parties used to call eachother corrupt, narco supporters, dictators. So from going from that to today its a very sudden, this is really an anti-morena party, MC used have a coalition with PAN and PRD which made more sense than FA but they decided to not continue to ideological diferences, which is good for MC in a way because the FA main problem is that they just look like a bunch of sellouts (which they are) and you could say thats a reason why PRD and PRI lose so many voters and supporters to Morena who has ideological cohesion.
The elections for 2024 are going to be very important for the country in my opinion on one point it will cement Morena's hegemony over the country dependen on by how much they win, and two what will be the future of Oposition parties, will the follow the Frente Amplio's plan of becoming a centrist amorphous blob that has abandon all its ideals or the MC plan of just countinuing the way they have always been like, being a minor party until the big one fucks up.
@JamesConeZone@hexbear.net here is an effort post on mexico nerd
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Somebody snap me out of it. I'm causing myself psychic harm because libs on nominally left Facebook pages are malding over Musk apparently disabling starlink for a Ukrainian attack, and I can't stop bullying them for being brainworm riddled seals clapping along to Western MIC cash cow projects.
How do these idiots not realize the bloodlust for Russia is exactly the same as it was for Iraq? How the fuck do you learn that literally every foreign intervention the US has been involved in during the last 150 years has been naked imperialism or proven lies to mask that imperialism, and go "yeah, no, THIS time it's legit. Surely the State Department/Pentagon wouldn't fool us again..."
Seriously, these fucking Blue MAGA morons don't see the parallel between their "oh, you're anti-war? Great job supporting fascist Putler
" and the rhetoric warhawks used for years against the anti-war movement during the Iraq war? This is an anti-billionaire Facebook page! How do these people think the problem here is that the Billionaire didn't use his property to kill people for a change?
convincing people there was ebola at burning man was the bit of the year.Challenger tanks actually getting destroyed in a peer war is 9/11 for small business owning UK uncles who think that the British military is invincible because they beat the Americans in a war game 3 or 4 years ago
Elon’s starlink fiasco, where he accidentally did a good thing, has the libs frothing at the mouth about treason like the good, obedient, loyal bootlickers they are.
For all the ranting and raving they do about “authoritarianism”, they sure do seem pretty eager to jail enemies of the state!
They want the People’s Court back so badly so they can live out their Nazi revenge fantasies.
Anyone who spontaneously starts spouting off about the evil anti-American traitors who need to be put behind bars is a violent criminal who needs to be isolated from society.
Don’t be surprised when Red Scare 3 officially swings into full gear and they’re giddily joining firing squads while simultaneously bitching about “North Korea authoritarianism”
On today's episode on Social Democracy is the Moderate Wing of Fascism: Finnish ex-prime minister Sanna Marin of the succdem party, beloved by all progressives, quits her job in politics and goes to work at the fucking motherfucking Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
What can I even say? Disappointed but not surprised? Given the current state of finnish politics I can't blame her for quitting, but damn girl, Ol' Tony's Warcrime Breakfast club? Really? I mean, I always disliked her politics, but gotta admit I got a little bamboozled by her progressive vibes, because she wasn't a billion years old and seemed kind of down to earth and or a cool person to hang out with or whatever. Ugh, like a god damned liberal. Shame on me. When am I gonna learn? Never ever fucking believe a social democrat. I gotta re-read Rosa Luxemburg's shit.
Article here https://yle.fi/a/74-20049056
Finnish Succdem Queen ends up at capitalist warhawk Institution. How could this have happened?
