Bulletins and News Discussion from November 13th to November 19th, 2023 - Much To My Chagrindavik - COTW: Iceland
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.
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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The more I read, the less I understand why Zelensky didn't take the fucking peace deal offered. Russia withdraws back to its 02/24 borders, Ukraine gets security guarantees (but no NATO), and everybody wins.
everyone wins
Except the western Military-Industrial Complex, the neo-cons who want war & the US who no longer gets to blow up a pipeline and monopolize EU LNG.
The entire point of the 2014 coup was to prepare for a war with Russia. Calling it off defeats the entire purpose of the Ukrainian project, for Ukrainians to die en masse and “weaken” Russia while the state is privatized, hollowed out and sold off to western capitalists on the cheap.
Boris Johnson quickly got Zelenskyy, who showed weakness by having the interests of his nation in mind, corrected and aligned back to western hegemonic interests
I don’t think he was allowed to. Ignoring foreign meddling, he is still owned by an oligarch who gets final say.
:bojo:
Is there someone you forgot to ask?
He was likely promised more than the west was ever willing to give. And it's not like they didn't give quite a great deal already. I can imagine ukrainian leadership looking forward to the second collapse of the russian economy, or perhaps even NATO intervention. I can also imagine them being unwilling to call the west's (boris johnson's really) bluff about not offering any security guarantees to an Ukraine that makes peace with Russia. Either way, accepting the loss of Donbass, Crimea and potentially more is politically impossible today, imagine when the war started and the entirety world media crowed about the destruction of the entire Russian army at the hands of Ukrainian super tacticians.
This is not to absolve Zelensky's responsibility. But even political factions in Armenia had to wait a few years before washing their hands from Artsakh and Armenia lost that war incredibly hard.
Boeis Johnson made sure it couldn’t happen, on behalf of NATO (i.e. the US)
The whole point about Ukraine war is not so much about Russia or Ukraine, but to sever the Europe-Russia-China economic cooperation that had been well underway for more than a decade.
The US needs to take on China as the window of opportunity is fast closing, and they need to make sure that Europe does not have the ability to play the third force that tilts the balance of power. They certainly do not want the finicky Europeans to defect and throw their weight behind China and Eurasia (reminder that Europe has been trying to get out of US sphere of influence for decades, so they see a chance to escape, they will take it).
That’s why Europe needs to be properly disciplined. That’s why the certification for Nord Stream 2 was repeatedly “delayed” by the US. And that’s why to shatter their illusion once and for all, Nord Stream 2 has to be bombed.
Only when you figure out the real purpose of Ukraine war will you understand that this entire project is simply a prelude to the ultimate war with China, where finance and industrial capital clash.
like everybody else said, you don't get to take peace deals as a vassal unless your patron state wants it to happen
the west wants Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian, and the neonazis want to fight to the last non-neonazi ukrainian too. If Zelensky takes a peace deal, he's gonna get a hand grenade gift
why Zelensky didn't take the fucking peace deal offered
Simple. He told Zelensky if he signed any peace deal that Boris would murder him while biden watched.