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.
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Sacha Baron Cohen and other Zionist celebrities are big mad about TikTok and confronted the executives about it. TikTok ending up like Reddit would probably radicalize even more zoomers and Biden's re-election numbers are also going down the shitter if they ban it over Israel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/technology/tiktok-jewish-open-letter-antisemitism.html
I didn’t know he was a Zionist. I mean I knew Gadot was in the IOF but Cohen’s usually expressed radlib views, I didn’t think he was actually in the tank for Zionism.
I mean the guy made borat, i assumed he was racist
And the dictator as well lol
His IDF character was such a good sendup of the insanity of Israeli military culture too.
Ooh, got a link to that?
The article :
Jewish Celebrities and Influencers Confront TikTok Executives in Private Call
TikTok faces escalating accusations that it promotes pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel content. “Shame on you,” Sacha Baron Cohen said on the call.
[Image] Debra Messing, wearing a white coat and scarf speaks into a microphone at a lectern. Behind her is a row of American and Israeli flags. The actress Debra Messing was one of the celebrities who joined a meeting with TikTok executives.[/image]
By Sapna Maheshwari Nov. 16, 2023
More than a dozen Jewish TikTok creators and celebrities confronted TikTok executives and other employees in a private meeting on Wednesday night, urging them to do more to address a surge of antisemitism and harassment on the popular video service.
The meeting, held on a video call for about 90 minutes and joined by more than 30 people in all, included the actors Sacha Baron Cohen, Debra Messing and Amy Schumer. It was led by Adam Presser, TikTok’s head of operations, and Seth Melnick, its global head of user operations. The executives said they wanted to know more about what the creators were experiencing to improve the app, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.
The celebrities and creators described, sometimes with fiery rhetoric, how TikTok’s tools did not prevent a flood of comments like “Hitler was right” or “I hope you end up like Anne Frank” under videos posted by them and other Jewish users.
“What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” Mr. Cohen, who does not appear to have an official TikTok account, said early in the call. He criticized violent imagery and disinformation on the platform, telling Mr. Presser, “Shame on you,” and claiming that TikTok could “flip a switch” to fix antisemitism on its platform.
Mr. Presser and Mr. Melnick of TikTok, who are also Jewish and based in the United States, were largely conciliatory in the meeting. “Obviously a lot of what Sacha says, there’s truth to that,” Mr. Presser said, referring to Mr. Cohen’s remarks that social media companies needed to take more action. Mr. Presser later said there was no “magic button” to address all the concerns raised. Image Sacha Baron Cohen said TikTok was feeding young people antisemitic content.Credit...Buck Ellison for The New York Times
TikTok is urgently trying to push back against escalating claims that it is promoting pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel content through its powerful feeds. Several Washington lawmakers have renewed their calls to ban the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, arguing that Beijing may be influencing the content promoted through the platform’s algorithms.
Antisemitic and Islamophobic hate speech has surged on many online services since the Israel-Hamas war began. Antisemitic content soared more than 919 percent on X and 28 percent on Facebook in the month since Oct. 7, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group. TikTok has gained particular attention because of its ties to China, and its powerful algorithm drives content to 150 million users in the United States.
(continued)
spoiler
“If you think back to Oct. 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate,” Mr. Cohen said in the meeting. He accused TikTok of feeding similarly incendiary content to young people.
“We recognize this is an incredibly difficult and fearful time for millions of people around the world and in our TikTok community,” TikTok said in a statement. “Our leadership has been meeting with creators, civil society, human rights experts and stakeholders to listen to their experiences and feedback on how TikTok can remain a place for community, discovery and sharing authentically.”
TikTok arranged the Wednesday meeting with the creators in response to an open letter they sent last week criticizing the company.
One TikTok user, who couldn’t be identified through the recording, was incredulous about a “Letter to America” written by Osama bin Laden two decades ago that started going viral on TikTok this week, finding some support among young Americans. In the letter, Bin Laden justified the killing of Americans, and expressed hatred of Jewish people and anger about Palestine.
The letter, the person said, had become the “talk of the app,” and added: “In regards to trending topics right now as we speak, this trend needs to end. This app needs to ban this letter.”
TikTok said it was “proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”
Miriam Ezagui, a TikTok creator and nurse with 1.9 million followers, said some popular editing features on the site were being used by some users to twist her words in a video and send waves of hatred her way.
Mr. Presser said the use of the tools to perpetuate hate was another “important flag” for the company to follow up on.
“We can do better,” he said.
Ms. Messing, who has more than 37,000 followers on TikTok, pressed executives on TikTok’s moderation of the pro-Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea,” which many Americans regard as a call to eradicate Israel. It has been deemed antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League and has appeared in messages and comments to many Jewish TikTok users, regardless of what they’re posting.
Mr. Presser said the phrase was up for interpretation by TikTok’s 40,000 moderators.
“Where it is clear exactly what they mean — ‘kill the Jews, eradicate the state of Israel’ — that content is violative and we take it down,” he told the group. “Our approach up until Oct. 7, continuing to today, has been that for instances where people use the phrase where it’s not clear, where someone is just using it casually, then that has been considered acceptable speech.”
The notion of the term being used “casually” upset several participants.
Ms. Messing asked the company to reconsider its stance, saying: “It is much more responsible to bar it at this juncture than to say, ‘Oh, well, some people, they use it in a different way than it actually was created to mean.’ I understand that you are in a very, very difficult and complicated place, but you also are the main platform for the dissemination of Jew hate.”
TikTok said in a statement, “We don’t allow content with this phrase when it’s used in a way that threatens violence and spreads hate.”
Several creators asked why they could not directly reach individuals at TikTok for help with the harassment. One creator said that when she reported harassment, it took three to five days for TikTok to respond.
The executives said that while TikTok used to have managers for each creator, that became harder as the company grew. It’s now trying to reorganize its creator management teams to get more individual or community support for bigger accounts, Mr. Presser said.
“To hear that this place, this platform, this community that has brought you so much joy and helps each of you as individuals is becoming a place that feels like somewhere that you’re not sure you want to spend time on, I mean, that’s devastating,” he said.
“This is where we get the feedback, this is where we hear what isn’t working,” Mr. Presser said as the call concluded. “A lot of it, honestly I am embarrassed to say, is new. I haven’t heard a lot of it.”
“If you think back to Oct. 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate,” Mr. Cohen said in the meeting. He accused TikTok of feeding similarly incendiary content to young people.
Repeating the same lies that Israel has, which they never provided proof for, but sure go off. Also blaming social media for teaching kids to hate Israel and not the fact that they live in the open air prison that is Gaza or are pushed into smaller and smaller pockets of land by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. What a fucking clown.
Also not surprised it isn't mentioned in a NYT article, but wasn't the Israeli lobby trying to pay off TikTok influencers to post pro-Israel content?
Thinking that social media is the reason Hamas are mad at Israel is one hell of a take
Yeah. Wow.
Idk if that "85% of Hamas members lost at least one parent to Israeli bombs" thing is true or not but I suspect the "literally avenging murdered family members" thing is probably more of an influence than tiktok dances.
biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis
holy shit fuck all the way off. honestly shouldn't expect anything less of the racist fuck that made borat
Hey, at least theyve moved on from Stalin
TikTok has gained particular attention because of its ties to China, and its powerful algorithm drives content to 150 million users in the United States.
literally half the US uses TikTok? Good luck banning that Biden, I'm sure Gen Z will love you taking away their toy to punish them for disagreeing with you
they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate
yeah watching your siblings and cousins die of hunger or being shot by the IDF is sure gonna teach you to hate them.