Canal trouble, why God is Brazilian, China's deflation & Althusser's Intellectual Adventure
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Cecily Brown, Shipwreck Drawing, 2016. Brown was born and trained in Britain, but stood out from among her contemporary Young British Artists whose work had more experimental shock value fitted to the entrepreneurial, celebrity-studded “cool Britannia” — Brown found a home in New York instead. As Gagosian puts it:
Cecily Brown makes paintings that give the appearance of being in continual flux, alive with the erotic energy of her expressive application and vivid color, shifting restlessly between abstract and figurative modes… Key to the success of Brown’s aesthetic is her ability to seemingly transform paint into flesh, embedding the human form within a frenzied, fragmented commentary on desire, life, and death.
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To lose one canal is careless, but two…
Simultaneous disruption in the Panama and Suez canals, two vital corridors for global trade, is threatening global supply chains in the run-up to Christmas. Shipowners and importers have warned that a drought in the Panama Canal and a spate of attacks on cargo vessels 11,500km away near the Suez Canal risk constraining traffic ahead of the festive season. “There are supplies that just won’t be here in time for this Christmas…”
This October was the driest in the Panama Canal region since at least 1950, according to the canal authority, partly owing to the El Niño weather phenomenon that has affected temperatures and rainfall globally. The authorities have for the first time reduced the number of crossings, which by February will be limited to only 18 ships a day. “That drought in the Panama Canal is a serious concern,” said Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive of German group Hapag-Lloyd, the world’s fifth-largest owner of container ships, which ferry most of the world’s manufactured goods. At least 167 ships crossed the canal during the first week of December this year, compared with 238 last year…
Source: FT
Below are three narrow maritime openings, all crucial to global trade:
Getting past Egypt and through the Suez Canal is the first hurdle for ships — and the pliant Egyptian regime of Sisi helps to ensure safety for Western interests — but getting that far is not enough for plain sailing. Yemen can present a challenge too, where Houthis are leading the region in practical opposition to Israel amid its assault on Gaza:
So while climate challenges trade in the Panama Canal, on the other side of the world trade is disrupted by war and its effects.
Source: FT
Climate converts
Today, Brazil’s President marks a sharp break from his predecessor by stressing the need to shift to renewable energy — including through his delegation at the COP conference. But it wasn’t always so:
In 2007, after a giant oil discovery was made off Brazil’s coast, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the find “proves that God is Brazilian”.
Source: FT
Going in the wrong direction, part 1
This graph is not the whole picture, since it does not include the medium term projections resulting from recent agreements, but it sets out something of the challenge:
Source: FT
Going in the wrong direction, part 2
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Deflation in China
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Cecily Brown, The Children of the Fourth Duke, 2019
Philosophy on screen
Althusser - An Intellectual Adventure (2017) offers an unusually successful intellectual biopic:
“Socialist” money
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Arches of the hand
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Cecily Brown, Teenaged Wildlife
