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.
I'm not comparing it to post-9/11 US policy, not at all. For one, China's policies address the core reasons young men turn to religious extremism by promoting economic development and vocational training whereas US policy was so violent and destructive that it created ISIS.
When I say "war on terror"-era mindset, I mean that it's as informed by the initial war on terror as any state antiterrorism initiative. At worst I'd say it probably led to overpolicing of a specific minority, which is bad, but far more proportional to the actual risk of terrorism and far less abusive than US policing.
I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about here, maybe Qiao collective isn't the ultimate authority but they have a handy timeline so we can be sure we're on the same base here.
What connection you're implying here from the Chinese side. Do you realy think without 9/11 nobody would ever suggest mass surveillance? Yes ETIM was first recognized as a terrorist group in 2002 by request of China, Afghanistan and the US. Or maybe its something else entirely?
Also keeping in mind the first terrorist attacks started in 1990 and while the CPC only realy started tackling the issue in the 2010's it was because the attacks also escalated starting in 2009 with the attack that killed 200 people, yes they couldn't ignore it anymore. Again there is a attack timeline here.
The fundamental reason I dislike this is this and only this.
I'm not even sure this "overpolicing" narrative exists anywhere but in the anglo west side.
I don't mean this as a personal criticism of you or anything, but this is exactly why this leads to struggle sessions, people have a bad tendency of taking everything that is done by western imperialist powers and project onto others.
IMO there is literally no possible way China could deal with a minority population that wouldn't involve criticism from western sources as "attacking minorities", again because it is fundamentally projection but also they wont admit they were wrong anyway.
As the Qiao page puts it correctly IMO
To dismantle this argument requires intellectual honest from the western side, when we point out the majority of Muslim countries support China's measures what is there to say? "Oh but some of them are also mostly theocratic monarchies" or something. As I said, and exactly why it leads to struggle sessions. There is no winning here.
The majority of Muslim countries agree with it and say its fine. I and most others look at the evidence and say its fine.
IMO overpolicing is a western narrative disconnected from the Chinese reality.
It implies there is some optimal amount of policing that would get the job done.
It implies we know this amount but somehow the CPC didn't/doesn't.
It implies even if the CPC knew of a better alternative they still chose something somehow worse for reasons I guess?
I dislike these implications, at least considering I'm not in China and I'm not a member of the party to know the real workings.
I'm basing my claim of overreach on Carl Zha's interview on episode 149 of Radio War Nerd. He's Chinese, openly pro-PRC and about as far away from the typical hack Western concern trolling as you can get. Maybe he's wrong or I'm overstating the claim, but I felt his analysis of the situation was balanced.
Overpolicing is a Western perspective inherently because many Western countries don't police to maintain social stability, but to avoid social instability (which is rather different). Singapore jails and executes drug dealers - is that overpolicing?
FWIW, the Muslim countries (both in support and against Chinese conduct) aren't exactly unbiased: many have either received funding from the BRI (most places) or from American military support (Somalia). Still, it's pretty clear these votes happen on political lines rather than because of any notion of reality.
The thing with Xinjiang is about it being an ethnic minority and about a supposed ban on a specific hair style, having a beard etc. The obvious point here is that some these are not actually part of Uyghur culture, therefore it makes it far easier to identify foreigners coming into the country which they did that was the point of ETIM.
But if you are an outside observer specially westerner, you look at that and turn your nose in disgust because how dare you easily identify your enemies? I wont go further but its complicated but if there is anything that can persuade people it should things like this interview With a Kashgar Imam in Xinjiang. He supports the measures and explicitly says some of those things the government banned are indeed not part of Uyghur culture.
Then if you remember there was that Xinjiang police file leak with all the supposed photos from prisoners. Here is one random link I can find.