Image is from this article in the New York Times.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Morocco on September 8th, with the epicenter 73 kilometers away from Marrakesh.
At least 2500 people have died as of September 11th, most outside Marrakesh, with more people being pulled out of the rubble every day, making it the deadliest earthquake in Morocco since 1960, and the second-deadliest earthquake this year (first being, of course, the one in Turkiye-Syria in February, which killed nearly 60,000 people). While the deaths are the most horrific part, damage to historic sites has also been very significant - including buildings dating back to the 1000s.
Morocco is situated close to the Eurasian-African plate boundary, where the two plates are colliding. The rock comprising the Atlas Mountains, situated along the northwestern coast of Africa separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean Sea, are being pushed together at a rate of 1 millimeter per year, and thus the mountains are slowly growing. As they collide, energy is stored up over time and then released, and faults develop. The earthquake this month originated on one such fault, as did the earthquake in 1960. The earthquake hypocenter was 20-25 kilometers underground, with 1.7 meters (or 5 and a half feet) of rock suddenly shifting along a fault ~30 kilometers (19 miles) long.
Earthquake prediction is still deeply imprecise at best, and obtaining decent knowledge and forewarning of earthquakes is highly dependent on dense seismometer arrays that constantly monitor seismic activity, such as in Japan, and detailed understanding of the local and regional tectonic environment. The best way to prevent damage is to build earthquake-resistant infrastructure and establish routines for escaping buildings and reaching safety. All of these, of course, are underdeveloped to nonexistent in developing countries, particularly in poorer communities inside those countries.
The Country of the Week, in honour of Allende’s death 50 years ago (the only bad geopolitical event that has occurred on September 11th, of course), is Chile. Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly update is here!
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.
Look, a coward and a
Putin isn’t a tankie
cancelling my putinbux, I cannot associate with this man any longer
You better convert to xicoin fast. All the tankies are selling, putinbux are crashing
“I don’t support the USSR dissolving but I support all the western backed separatist movements within the USSR”
Liberals are such fucking dolts. I like the thing, but I hate the consequences of the thing!
deleted by creator
I literally cannot comprehend how some people can think of Putin as a “great leader against the West” or an “evil mastermind who wants to destroy the West”.
Putin is and has always been a milquetoast bureaucrat. He came to power not through leading an electoral campaign with ideological convictions, or through a military coup who believed the leadership is too weak. He was literally appointed to the head of state as a bureaucrat by Yeltsin.
Always been a managerial bureaucrat with no ideology or long-term vision of his own, a true liberal centrist who just wants to do business with all parties, who ignores all warning signs until it is too late, and only until then, whose only goal is to make sure Russia survives in this harsh geopolitical environment.
he’s been metaphorically forced at gunpoint to oppose the West
True enough. I see Putin much the same as Deng in China but he was unsuccessful in gaining western capital investment while trying to maintain some sort of national control over their economy. Russia and Putin have been seeking to join the international capitalist system as relative equals and were repeatedly rejected and diminished by the west until they were in a corner in UKR and lashed out. They’re now simply playing out plan B - anti US hegemony/multi-polarity. They’re entering into capitalist competition on a global development scale, alongside China and BRICS to both enrich and protect themselves more than anything. I can’t really think of a more materialist situation where the west is forced into unfavorable conflicts to satiate our outrageous debt ratios while keeping profit margins high. Meanwhile the East and global south are being channeled into a relationship of convenience in opposition to the West.
In many ways, yes. However, the Dengist strategy can never work for Russia, because Russia lacks the vast quantity of cheap labor that China attracted the Western capitalists in the first place.
Russia’s main attraction was their natural resources, and had very little to offer in terms of cheap unskilled labor, which means the only fate that awaits them is to be exploited by the Western imperialists as resource colonies.