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.
Biden's proposed US-led Belt and Road seems to be his attempt at accomplishing what China has been doing. Does it have any potential or will this end up like similar initiatives that had a lot of hype but ultimately went nowhere?
It’s not so much accomplishing what China is doing, but to re-route an entire supply chain to replace China.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but this is finance capitalism vs industrial capitalism.
At the core of the competing forces lies the following question: “can you really just print money to get your way out of everything?”
So far, many Global South countries are heavily indebted due to rising dollar strength, rising interest rates, not to mention commodity inflation (energy/food import becomes expensive) because these countries have been forced by the World Bank to adopt policies that resulted in the lack of means to become self-sufficient.
BRICS is offering an economic alternative but the question is, “does the relief come too little and too late?” Can developing countries really wean off dollars just because they don’t like the way America does things? Or will they finally give in to the dollar regime because things have become too unbearable and BRICS is moving too slow?
This is what we’re going to find out over the rest of this decade.
The latter. Obama tried something like this in the 2010s and called it the New Silk Road Initiative. It got nowhere - didn't even receive any real funding, let alone construction beginning on it. I would be surprised if this new project falls on its face quite as hard as there's now a much greater incentive to get some form of anti-China supply routes, but I expect that before long we'll see articles talking about how it's being delayed, or companies are pulling out, or there's some scandal here or there.
In all, it's going to be like the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures to boost manufacturing is in America - looks great until you look into it, and you realize that it's just on very shaky foundations (what comes to mind is that article from yesterday on how the Arizona chip factory will be useless in a US-China war in which Taiwan is occupied by China or at least its factories unable to work and import/export). It's not going to have zero effect, there's way too much money being pumped in for it to do nothing, but "Bidenomics" is just too tainted by neoliberals to be a really serious threat. I disagree with @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net on that last point I think, but I agree on most other points, particularly how this is a war of finance capitalism vs industrial capitalism. The US won't win by trying to reindustrialize - the parasitic rot is just too deep now, and it would take nothing short of a gigantic industrial bourgeois revolution to change that. Where they can win is by using their financial tools effectively. They are not currently, because in part the ideology runs too deep; in financial institutions, in universities, in businesses, etc. The superstructure is shaping the base, rather than the other way around. I think they absolutely have the potential - the anti-Western movement could be demolished without even that much effort if the US was run by hypercompetent fascists (as oxymoronic as that might be) who knew how to use their tools correctly, which is the scary part. But there's nobody on the horizon who seems more competent than Biden, and that is not a compliment for Biden but an insult to the opposition. I mean, Trump? DeSantis? Fucking Chris Christie? And on the Democrat side, Buttigieg? Harris? Warren?
What I'm a little curious about actually is why they're attempting this project in the first place. Yeah, sure, "we need to have alternative projects to evil China's", whatever, but like, America and the West is not the side that people typically imagine with supply routes under threat in the event of WW3 with China. I do wonder if it's essentially an acknowledgement that Russia and China are increasing in military and particularly naval presence, especially as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia join BRICS and thus will become more closely aligned, and those countries happen to be near critical straits and gulfs, like Suez, and the Gulfs of Oman, Aden, etc.
Americans have to get their TREATS somehow without China. Probably gonna come from India, but whether they can replace China as a supplier in time, I don’t know.
But what we can be assured of, is that it won’t come from America itself. The economic structure is way too financialized for that to happen (literally every big American company you can think of is owned by Vanguard, Black Rock and State Street, even competing/rival companies are owned by the same institutional investors. A true oligarchy. I hope to write an effort post on this at some point but I’m way too busy at the moment).
India is fraught with numerous internal contradictions (North India vs South India, caste contradictions, religious contradictions, Aryan-descendant vs Dravidian-descendant vs tribal-descendant) and much of India is already hard hit by climate change, further sharpening those contradictions. I think people underestimate how much of India is build on sand and how India's domestic situation can get ugly very very fast.
In general, I don't see any country or group of countries replacing China anytime soon. The closest would be Vietnam if Vietnam had 10 times the population it has now. That doesn't mean these capitalists can't invest and prop up a target country with the goal of turning it into the next 1980s era China, but that takes time and money, something those neoliberal ghouls don't want to spend.
For what is worth while this is all 100% correct I think it is also something we will only have to worry about for the immediate short term future.
I don't believe western capitalism be it ruled by industrialists or finance capital is ever going to be willing, let alone able of dealing with the consequences of climate change and this is their ultimate limitation. Nature realy doesn't care about ideology, the US will be ravaged by climate change, well along with the rest of the world too and this is the issue.
The foundation of modern capitalism is now linked to the status quo of the current global markets, the freedom of movement for capital and access to all raw materials and resources.
Even for industrialists what is industry without ample access to labor and raw materials? The population will not stick around in areas that are literally unlivable but industrial centers are most optimally located near trading hubs or with easy access to such, guess what is the first immediate effect of rising sea levels.
The raw materials wont travel around the globe in a super container if those ships are instead carrying other vital industrialized goods. Even without oil yeah ultimately we could go back to sailboats but you can forget mass industrialization either way. IMO.
In short, capitalism as it exists today would collapse if global trading collapses and I believe climate change will do this. So TL;DR competent or not, financial/industrial or not I don't see much of a chance of the current US status lasting beyond 2035 maybe 2050 due to climate change.
The US will be devastated by climate change but the bourgeoisie will be the last to suffer. They’re probably fine with killing off the world’s poorest 20% to cut down emission and to reduce resource competition. They’ll be living in their own isolated bubbles while the rest of the world burns.
I'd not disregard capitalist on capitalist violence though, the US is lucky compared to Europe for example.
To be fair in my doomer scenario I also almost take US balkanization for granted and then I'm not so sure anymore.
I am reminded of all the whinging during COVID because there was literally no one to work at starbucks to get rich people coffee because so many people died. They'll be the last to suffer, but they'll be the first to complain about it.
Yeah, to me, it's a decaying empire trying to right a sinking ship. Most decaying empires have some faction that's competent and not corrupt enough to realize the whole rotting house will collapse if they don't do something. For the Qing dynasty, it was the Self-Strengthening Movement. For the Roman Empire, it was Diocletian forming the Tetrarchy that gave new life to the empire. Sometimes, it pans out like the Tetrarchy, which didn't last that long but it at least stalled the collapse of the empire for a good couple of centuries for the west anyways, but most of the time, it's like the Self-Strengthening Movement, reforms that come too little too late.
BRI with burger characteristics is not like the two I've listed above because these aren't domestic reforms aimed at stabilizing the empire, but it comes from the same general place of anxiety of empire collapse. I do not think the US has the technological and logistical know-how to competently pull this off.
Who would look at America's infrastructure and think "yes we'll have some of that please"??????
An America worshipping populace spoonfed Netflix and Youtube. I know a lot of people who think the US looks as safe and clean as it does on their favorite shows and Youtube channels featuring rich LA influencers.
they think it looks like Toronto?
Apparently, but I liked Toronto tbh. Used to go there all the time when I lived in Upstate New York and found it less unbearable than nyc.
Sounds like Johannesburg
Fucking hell, every nation deserves their own great firewall to keep us fucking snow roach imperialists out
I'd rather your mining companies leave first
me too
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.
Sure it could, but it won't. I'm a materialist, so I think that if the US did the same things as China does it would get similar results (after accounting for differing material conditions). However the US is ideologically incapable of that sort of infrastructure investment at home, much less abroad. This idea is going to wind up like the US's previous plans, it'll be revealed that the trillions of dollars promised will have to come from Public-Private Partnerships or some other sort of nonsense. This is what happened with "Build Back Better World", it was announced and then nothing happened since then.
Edit: The corridor that Biden is proposing ends in the port of Piraeus. A Chinese company owns the majority of that port. https://www.dw.com/en/greece-in-the-port-of-piraeus-china-is-the-boss/a-63581221