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.
No cuck n chad ranking this week, maybe next week as well unless something funny and cool happens. I'm travelling to Bashar Al Assad's based Syria this week and staying for a while. I'm changing jobs soon and got a relatively fat paycheck for doing that and also around two months off in between jobs. So I decided to take my wife to Syria and Lebanon, where it's quite cheap, and I live for free there with random family members, and I sort of got addicted to the Middle East when I last visited. In exchange for no rankings, you'll get cool stories and possibly some pics if the internet situation permits and I feel comfortable doing so. If I die in an American or Israeli airstrike on Damascus, tell Bernie Sanders that he's a cuck and bury me next to Prigozhin.
Damn I'm jealous, stay safe. Do US sanctions or visa restrictions impact your ability to go to Syria or return to your home country afterwards? I didn't think Americans could visit Syria without gaining suspicions
Technically Brace is only CIA because he was in MK Ultra as a child
I will enter and leave Syria with my Lebanese passport through the Lebanese-Syrian border so that no knows that I've been there. On paper, I've only flown to Beirut, nothing else.
Did anyone post this?
ShowZzzzelenskyyyy quoted in the Economist: https://archive.ph/LsGEy
I just saw a video of the NAFO meetup in Lithuania and holy shit. These are the people posting about how indestructible NATO is? They're the sort of people that street gangs in my country would send 14 year old boys after to beat them up as a joke. I have a feeling that the people posting SLAVA UKRAINI on Reddit are cut from the same cloth lmao
yeah, it's really just kinda pitiful. they're trying to be trolls where they make dogwhistles (or just outright state fascist rhetoric) to try and anger pro-Russian people - that absolutely colossal and vocal section of Western society - but that strategy only works if you're actually, y'know. winning.
trying to piss people off while you yourself are pissed off and trying to pretend that you aren't pissed off and that the whole counteroffensive and war in general is going according to plan just makes you look pathetic. it works in the aftermath of Ukrainian victories like Kharkov and Kherson, but without any further victories by Ukraine it's just gonna be a very pitiful descent. and, obviously, literally none of this matters anyway, Putin isn't looking at your doge meme and then having steam come out of his ears and then ordering a Russian brigade into a minefield out of anger.
“Taking Russia’s side”, whatever that means, ostracizes you from Western society and will get you fired from your job along with a torrent of death threats. This is the position that the Nazi dog organization claims is “getting out of hand” and “infiltrating Western thought”.
Supporting NATO is literally the default position that’s expected of you and you’re a Russian propagandist if you make a wrong move during your daily dance of allegiance. This is the position that the Nazi Arming Fascist Organization claims is being “repressed” and “persecuted”.
It’s like this with every privileged cracker in the West. Their dominant position is so completely unchallenged that the closest thing they’ll get to fulfilling their fantasies of persecution are people being mean to them on Twitter.
“Taking Russia’s side”, whatever that means, ostracizes you from Western society and will get you fired from your job along with a torrent of death threats. This is the position that the Nazi dog organization claims is “getting out of hand” and “infiltrating Western thought”.
I know a couple of people who insist that the west is completely swamped with "Chinese propaganda", it's wild how detached from reality some people are.
Still kinda pisses me off, mostly because it's so damned easy to maintain the manufactured consent in the U.S. (and probably the rest of the West, but IDK), which in turn makes it very difficult to get an anti-war movement off the ground. And that does ultimately have consequences measurable in (many, many) human lives. It takes very little for bloodthirsty imperialist dweebs to piss me off. 😩
I have a feeling that the people posting SLAVA UKRAINI on Reddit are cut from the same cloth lmao
Always has been.
But realy though after that comment noticing reddit activity is down over 75% since July I think even more so now anyone still astroturfing Ukraine is definitely either on the extreme end of white collar BS desktop PC job or the usual kids because even the "normal"/"average" lib is by all accounts not even posting on reddit anymore in general.
One of Navelny’s staff members talked about how NAFO celebrating attacks on civilians makes Russians even more anti west and hurts their movement. IIRC, he or someone else even suggested that NAFO was an FSB operation to anger Russian citizens and make them more reactionary lol. Liberals say that Russia can manipulate the whole world into shitting themselves, so surely they can convince a bunch of pencil pushing lanyards to play general and show their bloodthirsty asses to the world
I bring a sort of "constantly bringing up the Chilean coup" vibe to 9/11 that liberals and chuds don't really like
Allende was a threat because he was a marxist, and it is a FACT that all marxists don't know Basic Economics (TM), so he was going to run Chile down completely and plunge them into stone age. So We (TM) had to intervene to avoid this, we had to grab this shady general Pinochet, give him money and training and direct him to coup Allende and install a decades-long dictatorship in place, so that WE can run Chile down by OUR terms.
this aint a bit this is literally what neolibs say
The Bank of Canada has published a study that concludes that as not enough countries have joined the sanctions on Russia, it is more profitable to ignore sanctions than comply.
The study looked at what affect on a country non-adherence of third countries to the sanctions regime affects the sanctioning countries. The study concluded if an insufficient number of countries support restrictive measures, Russia loses less, while those countries that are friendly are better off thanks to increased trade of goods that can be sold at higher prices.
“Our welfare analysis demonstrates that the sanctioned country’s welfare losses are significantly mitigated, and the sanctioning country’s losses are amplified, if the third country does not join the sanctions, but the third country benefits from not joining,” the study found.
To illustrate, the study’s calculations conclude that if a critical mass of countries were to join in restricting Russian gas purchases, Russia's GDP growth would decline by 9%. However, as long as only European countries comply with the measures, Russia's per capita GDP is reduced only by 4%.
At the same time, those countries facilitating the trade of sanctioned goods see substantial gains in their balance of trade. A raft of countries have seen their trade turnover with Russia explode in the last 18 months, including most of Central Asia, Turkey, China and even the Baltic states, which have become a gateway for goods to Russia. Despite the war with Georgia in 2008, today the small country in the Caucasus is more economically dependent on Russia than at any time since its independence thanks to booming trade.
if you start raining on their parade they'll enjoy a free shower. if you lace the water with poison they might gain superpowers.
Many of the global south countries that don’t sanction Russia don’t even particularly like Russia. They’re simply siding with them and China because the west offers 0 alternative solutions for their fuel and food problems while Russia is continuing to export. The west is shooting itself in the foot because they’re stupid enough to depend on their mortal enemy and racist enough to neglect the poor countries that are necessary for sanctions to work.
Many African leaders have justified their support for China and Russia because of their assistance with vaccines. Even neoliberal shit rags have warned their leaders to stop being condescending and hypocritical if they want Africa and South America’s support. Everyone remembers when the west spent more time bitching and moaning about the efficacy of china’s and Russia’s vaccines instead of helping the countries in need.
lol why is this even a study? Obviously it's more profitable to engage with a large market rather than not
Over 20,000 feared dead in Libya flooding.
If only they had a government that could fight disasters.
“We came, we saw, he died” - The most bloodthirsty ghoul imaginable. I hope their ghosts await Hillary in the afterlife.
You guys remember the 2014 coup in Ukraine? They put Poronshenko in power from 2014-2019. Here he is wearing a Nazi black sun.
https://twitter.com/NinaByzantina/status/1702382472615567735
Encouraging news coming out of Germany as a statute erected for the erstwhile dictator and strongman Angela Merkel collapsed overnight. German freedom fighters have yet to comment on this historic event.
ShowErected just two years ago near the CSU stronghold of Nürenberg the statue depicted the german despot on a horse and was over 2.7 meters tall and made out of concrete weighing 1.5 metric tons, the german government have not yet commented on this historic event presumably out of a fear of 'Gesichtsverlust'. Still the pictures of Mother Merkel, a subtle reference to the lesser book 1984 by writer 'George Odergut' are making the rounds on social media and may be what will make the german people cast of the authoritarian one coalition government that has kept the reigns of power for decades.
notceps reporting live from outside of germany
"Here is a direct translation of a speech Osama Bin Laden gave outlining his reasons for doing 9/11."
"You can't trust what Bin Laden says, he's not reliable."
"OK, I guess that means he might not have done 9/11."
"
"
In portugal 2 red wine depots broke and red wine is just flooding down the street like a river it's crazy 🇵🇹
France recently destroyed the equivalent of 302 million bottles of wine (80 million gallons) to keep the prices high
France
recentlydestroyedthe equivalent of 302 million bottles of wine (80 million gallons) to keep the prices highIf they wanted to get rid of them they could have just sent them to me!
Better slurp it all up real quick
Anybody knows where Stalin left his comically large straw?
Is there any speculation of the KGB putting objects too high on shelves for me to reach as part of their revenge campaign against me? The logic being to make me have to grab an object to stand on, or ask somebody else for help, and make me look small and weak?
god fucking damn it, I think the KGB is hiding my keys again
IDK, I think the Mujahadeen and Al Qaeda weren't particularly pro-Soviet, to say the least. Come on Günther, think these things through, you have to have more believable conspiracies.
Below average Günther: 2/5 Balkanizations
It’s literally just “Russia must be behind every bad thing that’s ever happened.” If it happened before Russia existed they simply race science their way to “but it’s still Russia’s fault”. There is no standard of evidence (the concept itself is Russian dezinformatsya). Liberals don’t even need top-down direction to start bleating like the sheep they are about how Russia made them choke on their coffee this morning.
gunther, the kgb had been dissolved for 10 years
gunther, they went kaput with the ussr gunther
gunther, are you ok?Is there any speculations on the #KGB shitting my pants as part of Putin's revenge campaign against the west dismantling his beloved Soviet Union?
There's definitely evidence of them shitting mine, the bois at Langley did a forensic examination of the skid stains and borscht doo doo ass is typical KGB bullshit
I regret to inform you that you've been played like a damn fiddle. This is from the parody account not from the real one. You can see that it's from "Gunter" and not "Gunther". This is the third time I've seen people get taken in by this. Gunther's normal posting is so deranged that this doesn't seem unusual.Edit: Nope, it's real https://twitter.com/GunterFehlinger/status/1701235295662817478
we should have seen it coming. he didn't post an image of how the twin towers could have been balkanised
It looks like I was mistaken and this actually the real Gunther. He really is that deranged.
Ah fuck, you're right. It looks like it was I that was a victim of disinformation.
Courtesy of the failing New York Times:
Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say
As a result of the sanctions, American officials estimate that Russia was forced to dramatically slow its production of missiles and other weaponry at the start of the war in February 2022 for at least six months. But by the end of 2022, Moscow’s military industrial manufacturing began to pick up speed again, American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the sensitive assessment now concede.
...
In October 2022, the United States gathered international officials in Washington in an effort to strengthen sanctions on the Russian economy. At the time, American officials said they believed the sanctions and export controls were working in part because they deterred countries from sending microchips, circuit boards, computer processors and other components needed for precision guided weaponry as well as necessary components for diesel engines, helicopters and tanks.
But Russia adapted quickly with its own efforts to secure supplies of the needed parts. Today, Russian officials have remade their economy to focus on defense production. With revenue from high energy prices, Russia’s security services and ministry of defense have been able to smuggle in the microelectronics and other Western materials required for cruise missiles and other precision guided weaponry. As a result, military production has not only recovered but surged.
Before the war, one senior Western defense official said, Russia could make 100 tanks a year; now they are producing 200.
Western officials also believe Russia is on track to manufacture two million artillery shells a year — double the amount Western intelligence services had initially estimated Russia could manufacture before the war.
As a result of the push, Russia is now producing more ammunition than the United States and Europe. Overall, Kusti Salm, a senior Estonian defense ministry official, estimated that Russia’s current ammunition production is seven times greater than that of the West.
Russia’s production costs are also far lower than the West’s, in part because Moscow is sacrificing safety and quality in its effort to build weapons more cheaply, Mr. Salm said. For instance, it costs a Western country $5,000 to $6,000 to make a 155-millimeter artillery round, whereas it costs Russia about $600 to produce a comparable 152-millimeter artillery shell, he said.
Putin isn't a tankie
cancelling my putinbux, I cannot associate with this man any longer
is suggesting that tankies are seething, and it's like....why? You're on Putin's side on this one, bud.
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!
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.