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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I feel like I can discern what the Israeli strategy is going to be here - storm Al-Shifa, dress the basement+tunnels up to look like what they think a command bunker looks like, film it, declare victory - but beyond the propaganda for foreign audiences, I'm really sure what that... does? Like, in the actual world? They might even try and do the classic "make a symbolic victory, leave Gaza without actually having defeated their enemy at all" move, but that can't really work. Not even in a "well erm acktually there are still Hamas fighters existing in the tunnels" way, but because the tunnels are still pretty much mostly unstormed and uncleared, Hamas still has the ability to take your tanks out, and most importantly from a propaganda point of view, still has the ability to launch missiles into Israel. Westerners are willing to believe a lot, and I mean a LOT of bullshit, but giving a victory speech in Tel Aviv while the sirens are blaring from missile strikes incoming would probably raise some eyebrows.
Israel's continued existence is currently reliant upon western support of it. Israel "winning" is through the creation of something that convinces western audiences to support it over Palestinians for long enough for them to find the opportunity to exterminate them.
Their current goal is still what they started this war with, they want to create the narrative that these are like isis and need to be uprooted like isis through any and all means necessary, including the complete takeover of the land. If they're like isis, then what they're trying to create is the extremist islamic state again. A perfect excuse for total destruction and takeover.
In the longterm their goal is the political ability to carry out genocide. In the short term it's several pre-requisites to achieving that ability, the first is to create an enemy the western populations agree is worth fighting.
Israel's continued existence is currently reliant upon western support of it. Israel "winning" is through the creation of something that convinces western audiences to support it over Palestinians for long enough for them to find the opportunity to exterminate them.
I think that Israel could literally drop a thermonuclear bomb onto al-Shifa hospital and it wouldn't make the United States stop giving them military aid, which is really the only thing that matters here. Public sentiment against the Iraq War produced the biggest protests in US history and led to some of the lowest approval ratings a president has ever had, and it didn't shift the course of a single missile a single nanometer
BDS and other things have been successfully eating away at material support for Israel. And public support has VERY clearly shifted. This hasn't currently amounted to a political shift in the west but it absolutely does create pressures. The western politicians are saying "no don't kill all Gaza it would be bad for us politically", and this materially results in Israel holding back on what they really want to do - killing all Gaza.
If the support in the west were different Israel would obliterate it all. The pressures that are created by the declining support do have a material effect. If the west were as fashy (widespread in the populations) as Israel is you know what would happen.
Israel knows there are tunnels there, they've built that fucking hospital in 1983. Just need to spread some crack around
Has there been any update on Al-Shifa? Weren't people saying the raid started hours ago? Can't see why there'd be such a delay in sharing evidence of tunnels or "Hamas HQ" (besides the time needed to create and plant it of course). We're just going to get a cut-up video of elevator shafts and calendars again, aren't we?
Whatever the other political calculus, Israel will need to account for the hostages.