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.

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Every time Biden opens his mouth his aides and the entire dem machine must pray he doesn't make an immense fuckup so bad even MSNBC (etc) can't help him clean it up.

    Not the Onion Biden, jack - "It is not carpet bombing. This is a different thing... This is a different story than before, the indiscriminate bombing... It’s not like they’re rushing to the hospital knocking on doors, you know, pulling people aside and shooting people indiscriminately."

    Joe Biden defends refusal to call for ceasefire - theguardian.com

    Julian Borger

    Joe Biden has presented an unapologetic defence of his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, arguing that Hamas presented a continuing threat to Israel and that Israeli forces were seeking to avoid civilian casualties. After a summit meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Biden told reporters:

    Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again like they did before, cutting babies’ heads off, burning women and children alive. So the idea that they’re going to just stop and not do anything is not realistic.

    Reports that Hamas beheaded babies in the 7 October attack on Israeli civilians remain unconfirmed, though the brutality of the massacre in which some 1,200 were killed is not in doubt.

    Biden also argued that Israeli forces had switched from aerial bombardment, which he seemed to acknowledge had been “indiscriminate” in parts, to more targeted ground operations, after more than 11,000 Gazans are reported to have died. He said:

    It is not carpet bombing. This is a different thing. They’re going through these tunnels, they’re going into the hospital. They’re also bringing in incubators or bringing in other means to help people in the hospital, and they’ve given, I’m told, the doctors and nurses and personnel the opportunity to get out of harm’s way. So this is a different story than I believe it was occurring before, the indiscriminate bombing.

    The IDF, Israeli Defence Forces, acknowledge they have an obligation to use as much caution as they can, in going after their targets. It’s not like they’re rushing to the hospital knocking on doors, you know, pulling people aside and shooting people indiscriminately.

    Biden also suggested that a possible hostage deal was imminent, saying the Israelis had agreed to a “pause” as part of the deal, but then stopped short, appearing to acknowledge the uneasiness of secretary of state Antony Blinken, finally adding: “I’m mildly hopeful.”

    The forcefulness of Biden’s defence of the Israeli military, is notably out of step with recent remarks by senior US officials, who have shifted their emphasis to appeals to the IDF to observe humanitarian law and avoid civilian casualties. It seemed to confirm reports that the president is more unreservedly pro-Israel than many in his administration.

    For clarity - I edited it a tiny bit. It's 2023 and the net as we know it is hardly new and the year is not something like 2003. How is it that writers and editors still don't fully understand using quotes on the net???

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        "The carpet bombing is over, jack. All over. Who did that?" He has a senior moment and instead of making a statement he turns it into a question "I did that?" He's so very, very tired. "In any event they did precise airst.... precise door-to-door... precise air door-to-door... They did the precise you know the thing at the hospital..."

    • Teekeeus
      ·
      26 days ago

      deleted by creator

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        "I'm elderly but I'm not old-old like those old codgers who are so pooped they can't play outdoor shuffleboard. We got a court... A court... Where is the court? Somewhere. Camp David? Anyway - I'm not pooped. I keep those disks movin' and nobody can stop me! Just lemme have my nap and I'm aces, jack."