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.
They won’t invest in domestic infrastructure but they will spend overseas because that was how they sent all the industries to China in the first place. Now it’s really just creating a new supply chain because China no longer listens to them.
After all, some of the trillions of dollars created since COVID has to go somewhere:
And no, they won’t end up in your pocket (if you’re American) because they don’t want Americans to have growing living standards and higher wages. But they can flood the developing world with these newly created capital who are desperate to pay back their debt and/or need to import energy/food.
The real question is can those finance capital be converted into actual industrial capacity that builds infrastructure and production facilities in the current environment, when America itself has sufficiently been de-industrialized?
I wonder how much of that will simply divert to China in the end, through commerce
What do you mean? China is actively getting rid of dollars these days because it’s completely useless for them, which is why you’re seeing BRICS so keen on de-dollarizing.
China used to be the top holder of US treasuries among foreign central banks (peaked at $1.3 trillion back in 2014) but they have now cut down to ~$860 billion (Japan is now the top holder at $1.1 trillion), because they realize that the treasuries are just junk papers and the US has zero intention of repaying them.
But the rest of the world whose industries had been destroyed by the US so they could concentrate the industrial capacity in China? They are desperate for the dollars due to the amount of dollar-denominated debt (like to IMF) that they owe and also to import energy/food (as a result of following the World Bank dictated policies).
I assumed that the dollars flooding the third world would be used to buy stuff that is produced by Chinese companies, like materials for infrastructure or consumer goods.
How exactly do they “get rid” of the dollars? I know very little about all this
China gets dollars, which are then “recycled” back to US treasuries to fund the US deficit spending to build military bases around China. This is why China is actively getting rid of the dollars, which they see very little use of.
In fact, China had accumulated so much dollars that they had to spend it on Belt and Road Initiatives as loans to the other participating countries, because at least they are getting something tangible back. The downside is that the US government controls the dollars, which as you’ve seen with Russia, they can do whatever they want to their own printed currency easily.
What China and Russia (and increasing number of countries) have been doing is to reduce their trade in dollars, and use each other national currencies instead. However, the problem with this approach is that many commodities are still based on dollar indexing, and how these countries can eventually overcome this issue will be crucial for the de-dollarization to happen.
In short, it’s very hard to de-dollarize because 85% of the world’s transaction is conducted using dollar, and an entirely new alternative financial system is needed to replace that.