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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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.


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[-] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 36 points 1 year ago

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/0MZ03

Early morning cope from me:

Business Insider reports: Ukrainian commander says he'd be dead if he fought exactly how the US and its allies taught him. By Sophia Ankel.

Lol. Lmao even.

A Ukrainian commander trained by US, British, and Polish soldiers told the Financial Times that if he followed their advice exactly he would be killed.

Weasley journalists doing wordplay to soften the words of the dude they're quoting a few lines lower.

Western allies of Ukraine have offered training to thousands of troops in the hope of steeling them for battle against Russia's invasion force.

Remember, they're only getting less than a month of training before being herded into minefields.

But some have said that the principles they learn from NATO countries often do not pan out on the battlefield.

Obviously

"If I only did what [western militaries] taught me, I'd be dead," said a special-forces commander in Ukraine's 78th regiment who spoke to the FT. The outlet didn't give his full name, referring to him as Suleman.

Shame.

During his training, Suleman said he was offered "some good advice" but also "bad advice ... like their way of clearing trenches. I told them: 'Guys, this is going to get us killed.'"

Serious shame they didn't follow the advice.

He isn't the only Ukrainian soldier who has spoken out against the Western approach to instruction.

There's also western mercs that have gone over there and said the western approach doesn't train them for fighting an actual war.

A senior intelligence sergeant in the 41st Mechanized Brigade, who goes by the name "Dutchman," told openDemocracy last month: "I don't want to say anything against our partners, but they don't quite understand our situation and how we are fighting."

Good.

The soldiers believe that instructors have never fought a war like Russia's invasion of Ukraine — the first clash of two heavily-armed militaries for decades.

And they would be correct.

Most Western forces have experience of very different conflicts, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan where their side had huge advantages in resources and far superior technology.

And then still losing to them

"We need people to understand how to effectively clear trenches, enter them, how to throw grenades effectively, how not to trip on booby traps, to understand what grenades the [Russians] throw — essentially to understand the enemy," Dutchman told openDemocracy.

Pretty common-sense shit that the western powers lack.

In some cases, Ukrainian soldiers have decided to ditch their training completely because it proved ineffective on during their slow-moving counteroffensive, The New York Times reported earlier this year.

Good on them for prioritizing not dying a pitiful death of a one-shot demining device.

A report published by the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) earlier this month argued that Western nations should stop training Ukrainians to become NATO-style officers.

Holy shit, there's actually British intelligence with something smart to say?

Drills should focus on the conditions on the battlefield Ukrainians are fighting on, RUSI warned, instead of NATO-standard norms because it could increase the risk of things going wrong during live operations.

Practice like you'd play. Novel concept.

NATO forces also train Ukrainian soldiers to overwhelm their enemies with the type of firepower that it does not possess.

And will never possess in this war.

About 63,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained in the West as of August, openDemocracy reported.

May god have mercy on their souls.

The 35-day crash course basic soldier training is mostly held in Germany and the UK, an unnamed source involved in the process told the outlet.

Oh they heard about the complaints about how less than a month of training before deployment is akin to murdering these poor bastards, so they revised the training to be more than a month.

Barely.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"bad advice ... like their way of clearing trenches. I told them: 'Guys, this is going to get us killed.'"

Anyone have books/reference on nato trench clearing methods? Very interested to see what they're complaining about here.

[-] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I haven't seen anything in any of the field manuals I've read. The primary one, fm 3-90-1, is fucking barebones and primarily concerns itself with organizing light infantry skirmishes and ambushes.

Edit: also hair-brained all-in breakthrough maneuvers

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

Hare-brained all-in moves might be a good way of pulling off quicker warfare but it's all-in and that comes with the risk of losing everything as well.

I imagine it's much easier to get troops who voluntarily signed up for the military to take on those tactics and fully commit to performing them too, a factor involved being that if anyone in the maneuver doesn't do their part the entire thing fails. Imagine how those tactics would play out with conscription where troops are much more likely to waiver or want to save their own ass. It's how you get officer fragging.

[-] emizeko@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

thinking about how republicanism enabled Napoleon to move his army at three times the speed of opposing armies from monarchic states

[-] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

Here's a page about the one of the roll-the-dice tactics in the booklet. It's highly reliant on maintaining the initiative and tempo of an offense to set the defending forces up to either fall back or maneuver to engage the penetrating forces

You read through it and it's not really addressing how to engage an enemy on equal footing to yourself. But that said this is the 101 basics that every officer had to learn with higher ranking combat branch officers receiving more relevant educations to their respective commands.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

This maneuver doesn't really explain the act of assaulting the trench itself though, it's too much of a macro level thing whereas the commander in the article seems to be quite specific that it's the exact method of assaulting a trench he has a problem with. This maneuver is really "go past the trenches and attack things behind it, causing envelopment and retreat occurring to avoid envelopment".

This maneuver is also completely useless with multiple lines of defence. To really achieve what this maneuver is for you'd have to go past all 3 lines. As long as the next 2 lines are behind you there's no reason to abandon position on the first line.

[-] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

This maneuver doesn't really explain the act of assaulting the trench itself though

That's the cool part of this specific field manual!

None of the techniques taught teach how to assault an entrenched position!

this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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