1130 comments! At least for a little while, we are back to posting levels seen only near the first couple months of the war.

Summary for September 19th

News

The EU has cut funding to Hungary because Orban is a very bad person (and also because Orban is on Russia’s team more than the EU’s, it seems). A great big undersea cable is in construction between Egypt and Greece that will bring green energy to Europe and save it from the energy crisis!.. 8 years from now. US energy producers are unwilling to boost their production of oil and gas, so Europe is basically screwed. Ukraine receives more financial aid. Putin has made a number of statements at the SCO, one of which is that Russia is not responsible for the EU’s energy crisis because Nord Stream 2 is available, which is very true. Volkswagen thinks that the chip shortages will last past 2023, and that this is just the new normal. Germany has confiscated an oil refinery owned by Russian oil company Rosneft, which accounts for 12% of Germany’s oil processing capacity - how illiberal of them! 33% of the UK’s exporters to the EU have vanished due to Brexit stuff.

Biden has said that the US armed forces would defend Taiwan if China invaded - explicitly saying that this wouldn’t be Ukraine 2, that American soldiers would literally be fighting and dying for Taiwan - while also thinking that this somehow falls within the bounds of the One China policy. Ominously, Taiwan then got hit by 2 relatively strong earthquakes in quick succession. China accounts for about half of the world’s industrial robot installations, in a push for automation and manufacturing dominance. China’s gasoline exports have doubled year-on-year. China urges Russia and other countries in the SCO to work at preventing colour revolutions from foreign powers. China has signed a railroad deal with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, which would establish a shorter route to Europe (and also co-incidentally bypass Russia, though Russia and China are also working on constructing a gas pipeline to replace Russia’s exports to Europe, so it’s not just a snub). India’s central bank could hike interest rates by 0.5%. Indonesia is still thinking about purchasing Russian oil, though it isn’t yet available to Indonesia (I’m not sure why - not enough tankers? idk). Natural disasters in Australia have become so frequent that Australia’s defence force has been almost totally preoccupied with them.

Putin has called for de-escalation between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Iran officially joined the SCO. Turkey wants to become a full member of the SCO, potentially as soon as next year, when the summit is held in India. Russia’s gas supply to Turkey will be paid 25% in rubles. Pakistan says that it won’t default on its debts despite the huge flooding that has displaced over 30 million Pakistanis.

Hundreds of people in Niger peacefully protested against the French armed force in their country, the Barkhane - 3000 French troops are still deployed in the Sahel (the region lying south of the Sahara desert). The Benin bronze sculptures will soon be returned to Nigeria from Berlin’s Humboldt Museum. Nigeria’s public university system has lost 57 cumulative months to industrial action in the last 23 years, caused by a lack of revitalisation and wage increases - and this latest one - beginning on February 14th - is described as “indefinite” by the strikers.

Electric bills across the United States are soaring due to natural gas prices. Energy and mining in the United States are having an outsized role in making the stock market look good, and if you take them out, earnings for the S&P 500 will fall, rather than rise 8%. Biden has said that the pandemic is over, which is news to a lot of people as the US experiences 2 million coronavirus cases in the last 28 days - that’s not even to mention excess death rates. Cuba is having a legislative referendum for the new Cuban Family Code. Cuba has denounced Israel for destabilizing West Asia, and Cuba’s foreign minister has expressed his solidarity with the Syrian government and people.

Venezuelan institutions in the area of health and scientific research are seeking cooperation with Iran. Venezuela has rejected the US report on drug producers, also saying that since the expulsion of the Drug Enforcement Administration from Venezuela, the largest seizures and confiscations of drugs in history have occurred.

Conflict, Climate, and Science

Ukraine and various Russian telegram channels claim that Russia is using Iranian drones (to great effect), while the Russian military says that they aren’t still, I think(?). The head of NATO’s Military Committee admits that NATO had planned its expansion near Russia’s borders several years ago.

The world’s fossil fuel reserves, if all burned, would blow through the remaining carbon budget that would tip temperatures to 1.5 C of warming - seven times over. And Russia and America each have enough by themselves to pass this threshold, even if everybody else stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow.

Chinese scientists have developed long-distance underwater communication, that would allow submarines and drones to maintain contact over more than 30,000 square kilometers, and pass sound signals over 100 km away, while still being difficult to detect.

Dipshittery, Good Takes, and Hope

I think I’m just gonna stop even putting the mainstream media’s interpretation of the war in Ukraine in these things because there’s not really any point in including them other than a quick laugh. Russia is losing and Ukraine is winning, also Russia just lost over 100 tanks, also they’re using inmates as conscripts, also they have no reserves left, also Ukraine took no casualties, also Ukraine will retake Crimea next week… it’s entirely disconnected from reality.

In the vaguely more interesting terrible articles, we’ve got one by Bloomberg on how China is cranking up its “global propaganda machine”, which America definitely does NOT have, no sirree. Politico writes some dumbass article on Xi Jinping being dictator for life. Jordan Peterson - yes, him - has wrote an article about how Queen Elizabeth II kept tyranny at bay, which is an astounding premise but I’ve already read one too many Peterson articles in my life. Texas and Florida are going “Full Belarus” on migrants, whatever that means, as the author says that good things are actually the exact same as bad things, and being incredibly racist and anti-immigrant is the exact same (in terms of morality or helpfulness or something) as being pro-immigrant, and that the true answer is somewhere in the middle - presumably, we should only put half the refugees in concentration camps. Al Jazeera has some dipshit write an article on European unity and how it’s being challenged by Italy and Bulgaria or something, who cares.

Now for some better takes: Al Jazeera, being a land of contrasts, also has an article on how degrowth is not austerity, but actually its opposite. The Guardian has written an article on how the recent electoral victory by Sweden’s right simultaneously reinforces the hold that these racist parties have had over Sweden’s policies and perception of things like immigration despite not being in power (and so them being in power won’t be a massive shift in the status quo), but also that they probably arrived too late and that Sweden will forever be more multicultural and multiracial, barring outright fascist genocides - though, of course, the government can do plenty to make minorities’ lives miserable without mass murdering them. US railroad workers have received a deal that included much of what they asked for that prevented a massive strike that would have frozen the nation’s freight railroads (though I believe they are still yet to vote on it, and they could still very well vote no if they’re unsatisfied) and CNN details how other groups of unionized workers - in UPS, in airlines, and in auto workers - are also negotiating (and potentially striking) for their contracts.