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.
French Court of Auditors say nato isn't worth it:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence-and-security/news/frances-presence-at-nato-not-profitable-countrys-auditors-say/
TL;DR: Not profitable, cost too high vs influence too low. Advisory - Need more involvement in "nato-led" RnD to become profitable.
Sounds hilariously like a Trump level of "why does the U.S. have to pay for all of it?" kind of reasoning.
(Nominally) going in the right direction, for all the wrong fucking reasons. (And of course not actually meaning it anyway. Probably just whining in the attempt to get a little attention from someone powerful.)
I don't think it's crazy. NATO is a military alliance. This means military contracts, arms trade and so on. The french are being sidelined over and over again by the americans on that front. Forcefully. Not that I oppose the french state getting it's teeth kicked in, but it makes sense - this is an intra imperial conflict and one of the marcher states is not getting it's due. The french aren't alone in this either.
Just think of the sahel situation and how quick the american estabilishment was in keeping french interests at arms length. If you want to see a more intense version of this look at Turkiye.
AUKUS and the Australian submarine deal made the French super pissed about America.
However none of that matters anymore as the Biden administration has succeeded in cutting off all other escape routes for Europe. Macron tried to make an overture with China last year and was quickly put in his place.
If anyone in the European imperial system is going to say "fuck this" and go do their own thing, it's France. They see themselves as an independent imperial power, not a client, and will work to assert that.
Yes, and they will learn the hard way what America’s (Biden’s) wrath really means. Probably a good disciplinary example for all the other vassal states who even dare to think about rebelling against the empire.
How many times have France been snubbed by the US in the past?
After WWII, the US decided to rebuild Germany through Marshall Plan, and the French cried about how unfair it was because Germany ruined their country, and so they were given the consolation prize of being the financial administrator role of the EEC (the precursor of EU) to “check” the industrial manufacturer role of Germany. As a result, France does not have industries with significant weight in the EU like Germany does.
During the Vietnam War, America’s deficit spending created a massive accumulation of dollars in French Indochina banks. When the French president Pompidou asked Nixon to please pay them in gold rather than junk papers, Nixon immediately ended the Bretton Woods and the French lost all their leverage.
In the early 2000s, France tried to get away from their energy dependence on America and tried to pen a deal with Saddam to purchase oil in euro (through Total). The US immediately invaded Iraq the following year and shattered that plan.
How many more times do France need to be disciplined to learn their place?
What are you thinking? Sanctions? A little spicy coup?
I’m not even sure what France can do at this point (see my edited comment above). Without energy sovereignty, without a strong industrial capacity, and with a military dependence on NATO (the US), what can they do to rebel against the US? The most they can do is more akin to a puppy barking at its master.
True. Only thing I could think is somehow striking a deal with China to get more renewable energy, but what would they even be able to give China for that?
Don't forget the crushing humiliation of freedom fries