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Bulletins and News Discussion from November 13th to November 19th, 2023 - Much To My Chagrindavik - COTW: Iceland

Image is of the Herðubreið tuya in northeast Iceland, formed when ice sheets covered Iceland thousands of years ago. It's not really relevant to the Grindavik situation but I think they look neat. The title also doesn't make much sense but I saw the pun and took it.

Off in Iceland, different kinds of tunnels are causing problems. Underneath the town of Grindavik in southwestern Iceland, not far from the capital of Reykjavik, tens of thousands of earthquakes are portending the movement of magma in tunnels underneath the peninsula, which could breach the surface and cause an eruption. The 4000 residents of the town have been evacuated as the magma has risen to less than a kilometer below the surface.TRG

Icelandic volcanism is pretty fascinating, with the country sitting on the mid-Atlantic ridge, the birthing line of new oceanic crustal rock running right down the Atlantic ocean for many thousands of kilometers, as well as a hotspot, an upwelling of mantle material of debated origin which also feeds otherwise-inexplicable volcanism in the middle of tectonic plates, like Yellowstone and Hawaii.

An additional factor here is the presence of glaciers. When a volcano erupts underneath a glacier, the melting water cools the lava rapidly, causing features usually seen in volcanoes that erupt under the sea like pillow basalts, but also unique features like tuyas, which are steep-sided but flat-topped volcanoes. The rapid melting of water can also cause glacial floods called jökulhlaups.

Icelandic volcanoes have had significant regional and even global impacts in the past. In 2010, the volcano Eyjafjallajökull, which was a volcano covered by an ice cap, erupted and the ash cloud spread across Europe, causing airline disruption for about a month which caused nearly $2 billion in total losses for airline companies - though this seems pretty quaint compared to the pandemic's impact on airlines in retrospect. Back in the 1780s, the Laki volcano killed a quarter of the Icelandic population due to sulphur dioxide causing massive crop failure and cattle death. This eruption's impacts spread to Europe and beyond, causing notable worldwide temperature drops and thus crop failures and may well have been a contributing factor to the outbreak of the French Revolution, which obviously heralded the death of the feudal order and the eventual primacy of capitalism in its place. That being said, any eruption at Grindavik is very probably not going to have any significant worldwide impacts - there are over a hundred volcanoes already in Iceland, and regular climate change is doing a great job at causing mayhem right now anyway. It's also still possible that there won't be an eruption at all, at least not in the short to medium term.

Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

The Country of the Week is Iceland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

This week's update is here!

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

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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  • Presidential debate night yesterday in Argentina, and Milei got demolished by Massa. Lots of things, Milei looked like absolute shit, he tried to present himself as the dominant one very early in the debate but he couldn't even scratch Massa's rock solid face. Lots of discussion revolving around the economy, and I think my favorite moments were when Massa exposed Milei on foreign policy. First, Massa acknowledges the "multipolar world", which is a big plus to me because it means he's aware that the world is changing, while Milei stays in a static "US-ISRAEL THE FREE WORLD" position (Yes, he said "Israel" is the free world).

    Then came Massa's attack on Milei regarding his plan to cut relations with Brasil and China because they're communists. He got absolutely demolished here: He forced Milei to walk back on his sayings, to provide "context" while cornered and to fail spectacularly while doing so. He says that "the state shouldn't interfere" in the economy, yet he planned to cut relations with them (clear state interference). Then he claimed that it is the "private sector" who should decide to trade, or not, with them, and if the relations are cut, "privates will find a way to continue trading, either by triangulating or by finding alternatives on their own". Well look at fucking that lmfao, turns out the "economy understander" doesn't understand international commerce and relations. Cutting relations with either of these countries sends the argentinian economy into absolute chaos, Brasil is our largest trading partner and China is not far behind, what the fuck is he even thinking lmfao.

    Later on the topic of Malvinas was brought upon the debate, and while both candidates "agrees" that Argentina should reclaim the islands, Massa attacked him because back in the day Milei said he admires none other than Margaret fucking Thatcher. Of all people, that fucking witch. She is THE enemy of modern Argentina, like everyone here (and in many other places, as well) fucking hates her. But he doesn't, he likes her. So he had to provide a reason as of why he likes Thatcher, he said that he "understands the war, but there's people who have done great things" (Thatcher? lmao), he mentioned he admires Reagan, Thatcher and Churchill. Just look at how the list gets progressively more and more ghoulish lol. Then for some reason he attacked Massa saying that "he must have felt very bad during 1989 when the wall was brought down", huh? His mind is stuck in the Cold War and in the "End of History" of the 90s.

    Finally, Massa delivered a massive hit to Milei, he touched something that Milei holds very dearly and almost made him cry. Turns out that back when Milei was almost graduated from whatever university he was on, he worked temporarily in the Central Bank as part of his final studies. He HATES the Central Bank though, his campaign continuously talks about "demolishing" it. So, apparently, he was kicked out of his post in the Central Bank because he showed psychological issues. After Massa delivered this blow, Milei just couldn't gather enough strenght to counterattack, he could barely talk, his voice was very low and shaky. It was beautiful. He also accussed Massa of "trying to steal the election", Trump-esque move. How splendid.

    This debate should be the final nail in the coffin, his performance was dreadful and, I hope, it finally convinces the undecided to either not vote for Milei or vote for Massa, which sucks but at least he doesn't have dementia. Elections are next sunday, if we can bury this motherfucker we can talk about trying to rebuild, step by step, in a new world.

    Edit: I made so many grammar mistakes. Damn, I'm really struggling these days.

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