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.
The Trump narrative is based on his inconsistency, so arguing based on his historical record is already a contradiction and doesn’t realy change much.
The second point is that Ukraine and NATO was never anywhere close to a relevant topic in US politics and even this is arguably already back down from the 2022 peak. So you can underestimate how far Trump will go to spite libs and everyone else he personaly doesn’t like. If libs continue to continue this war at all costs then it is easy to say Trump will just take the easy political win here.
My personal theory is Trump likes all of these traits like “the negotiator”, “the business man”, “billionaire”, “big deal guy”, “tough guy”, the boss etc.
So the easy win for him is to get soyboy little Putin(or maybe even make this about shitty “liberal” EU/NATO and getting them to do what he wants) to come to the negotiation table “against his will” or something and do a Vietnam and try to make this humiliating defeat into a big victory because Trump is actualy the peace guy if you didn’t know lol. Yes why not chuds will take the pro-peace route just to spite libs because he is tough and Putin respects him so that is Putin accepted a peace deal. You get the picture.
Also I should add there were already multiple MSM articles trying to push the narrative Russia wanted to destroy Ukraine so by failing to do this it means this is already a victory for the west. All of those articles about Putin trying to rebuild the the USSR or even the Russian empire, old news.
They tried to push this and failed because Ukraine’s maximalist approach, they want not peace but the whole Donbas and primarily Crimea back at all costs. So no shitty NYT article will convince the Nazis they’re actually winning if they simply survive. Anyway this is also why the US can’t “freeze” the war yet.
The TL;DR is libs made the mistake of turning the Ukraine war into part of their own personality, people with Ukraine flags even though they can’t point to it on the map(certainly not before last year anyway) so even though nothing is certain I don’t see why Trump will shake hands with libs on this issue. Putin would have to escalate against NATO, actualy use a nuke even for chuds to turn around and actualy believe Russia is the enemy.
Only problem with this theory is I just don’t think the rest of the repubs would let him, the MIC loves this war and they’re all in its pockets just like the dems are, as fun as it is to say he’s a political outsider he still needs the party’s support for something like this.
I think you are overestimating the power and influence trump has on the situation. It could be that 2025-2028 will see the US pull the pin on ukraine support or maybe not, but the material actions that occur will occur whether trump or Biden is in the big chair. Even though Russia is winning the attrition war and is weathering sanctions, there is a lot of juice left for the empire to squeeze out of ukraine. Worst case for the empire (say even more abject military failure from ukraine and a collapse of the West’s ability to influence the global south), continued destruction of ukraine is useful to the empire to solidify their control over Western vassals. Best case, Russia fucks up bigtime and the empire gets a mulligan in some ugly insurgency. Further, based on precedent in how the US uses other countries as proxies, it takes 5+ years to really wring out all the value of a people/nation state for moloch.
All that is to say that while the aesthetic presentation of whatever happens will definitely differ depending on who is present, both parties/candidates are beholden to the same military industrial complex forces that actually direct policy. Whatever a second term trump might do will definitely be presented by him as owning the libs, 100% agreed there. However, neither the dog brained libs or the hooting chuds that make up 95% of the American electorate actually understand anything about the situation, meaning that the rhetoric that is used to describe whatever the empire chooses to do doesn’t have to reflect any actual reality.
Setting aside the big picture forces that in my opinion are more relevant for setting the direction of the conflict, trump cultivates an unpredictable reputation but ultimately he is still an 80 year old man. I sincerely doubt he has gotten smarter or learned new tricks while stewing in maralago the last 4 years. I think his previous term as president is a good indicator of what he would be like in round 2. That is, the figurehead of an empire that is hard on Russia that is nevertheless attacked by
libs for being soft on Russia.