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.
Norman Finkelstein:
hexbear is guilty of doing Sperm Libel
Sometimes I forget how good Africans are at deflecting Western edgelords. Saw one where the Westerner went with the usual, “Don’t use any of the technology you have right now if you hate the West so much.” The African responded saying, “Don’t use your laptop, smartphone, car, or any other commodity you enjoy that uses minerals and other resources from Africa.”
Another Westerner made jokes about the African Slave Trade. The African responded with, “It must feel terrible for your racist self knowing that you’ll die an old man with at least one or more of your offspring or grandchildren having children with a black man. Your women can’t resist us and the increasing number of mixed children prove it while your own population declines”
Second one went into iffy territory but I’ve learned that you can’t worry about that when they’re joking about the rape and murder of your people. Feeding into their bizarre fertility obsession always gets them worked up.
I am fully Yemen-pilled. they suffered so much at the hands of Saudi and the West and didn’t get 1/10th the amount of attention. I don’t think anyone would have blamed them if they did nothing here, and they’re still showing up for Palestine and taking action.
I regret to inform you that the tiktok zoomers have turned against Bin Laden after finding out he was a nepo baby
deleted by creator
I have bad news for people still paying attention to the Ukraine War. Unfortunately, it appears that the Ukrainian summer counteroffensive never actually happened. Yes, I know, this was shocking to me too, but:
A few days ago, the Kiev TV channel 1 + 1 reported that the Ukrainian army did not conduct a counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, and all the information about it was merely a brilliant psychological operation targeted against the enemy. The story made use of popular stereotypes to show Ukrainians in the most favorable light – as skillful and smart people, capable of finding an original solution to a difficult task.
The video was accompanied by memes popular in the late 2000s, which millennials would easily relate to.
The story was accompanied by the following comments: “The war is being waged not only on the ground and in the air, but also in the minds [of people]. In the future, Ukrainian psyops will be analyzed in textbooks. One of the most successful such operations is the ‘counteroffensive’. For several months, we deceived the enemy, claiming that we were conducting a large-scale offensive operation. Our cyber troops spread this information on the enemy’s social networks and [implanted it] in their minds. For several months, Russians have been subjected to a powerful psychological attack while our troops are getting stronger [and preparing] for a real counteroffensive.”
seeing a lot of annoying liberals praising Mehdi Hasan recently for calling out the Israeli freaks he interviews. it drives me nuts because Hasan was one of the guys smearing Corbyn as an anti-semite. scumbags like him killed the only anti-zionist force in the UK and propagated the same bullshit Israeli propaganda that justifies their atrocities today.
WTF Putin pivoting to be pro-LGBT???
The Russian dictator also spoke out in support of representatives of the LGBT community.
Putin began by saying that in order to win cultural competitions in the West, he imagines it is necessary to “talk about, write or show something from the lives of sexual minorities, transgenders [sic] and other transformers”.
Quote: “I’m going to say something unexpected: they too – these topics and these people – have the right to win [competitions], to show and to tell [their stories]. Because this is part of society too, it’s how some people live. It’s bad if they are the only ones to win all these competitions – we don’t want that. But this desire for equality… this equality should be everywhere, in everything – especially cultural competitions.”
Yemen is confirmed to be based and piratepilled
everybody get your sea shanties ready, it’s time to hoist some landlubbers to the mast
Yemen today
