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.
Fuck Iran and fuck Hezbollah tbh. The fascists called their bluff and they sit idly by while their brothers and sisters are exterminated. I don't give a fuck if it risks a 'regional conflict' or dragging US armed forces into the fight. Fucking do something you cowards. These are the weeks where decades happen. Make it happen.
I think you're just not reading the right news sources. There have been dozens of attacks against US military bases in the region, but the US doesn't report on it. Hezbollah did 11 missile and drone attacks yesterday against the IOF.
Building on this: a common tactic is to report inconvenient losses as training accidents.
I’m not going to dox myself, but a person I trust deeply explained it to me once. He had a buddy reported as a dead in an osprey crash when he was actually blown up somewhere we aren’t officially on the ground.
Apparently the osprey’s reputation as a death trap is partly because it’s so often used as a scapegoat for why people died when the truth is inconvenient.
All second hand, grain of salt, ect.
A US helicopter carrying a special forces team 'crashed' in the Mediterranean last week...
Makes ya think don’t it?
Hezbollah have been escalating the fighting and have been doing serious damage to the IDF. Its actually quite impressive how they have managed to keep putting more and more pressure on without pushing the zionists to go apeshit.
Our job is not to criticize the people fighting imperialist colonialism. Our job is to support them. They are doing more than you or I will likely ever do.
this is easy to say when it isn't your region that may get nuked by insane Zionists
Nuclear weapons are paper tigers.
Typical western arrogance. They are doing a thousandfold more than you, and risking their lives and their family’s lives. Sit down with this defeatist chauvinism and entitlement
Newsflash I don't own any missiles.
deleted by creator
I personally believe that Hezbollah will eventually enter the fight in a more "official" way at some point, because even if you're totally cynical, Israel's rhetoric (and, well, previous actions over the last decades) suggest that Israel won't stop at Gaza if Hamas falls. It will destroy the West Bank too, and then go for Egypt and Lebanon. The settlers must have their lebensraum to ward off the internal contradictions in the state project. Therefore, you're going to fight Israel at some point in the future - you therefore get to choose whether you fight them now, when like half their army is distracted in Gaza, or if you fight them later, when Israel could potentially become stronger and invest even more into their military in response to their embarrassing performance in this war. The choice is fairly obvious. I also don't think Hezbollah has been deterred, though this requires elaboration - I don't think Hezbollah wants particularly to fight this war if they could otherwise avoid it, due to the destruction that Israel could cause in Lebanon. But I also don't think Hezbollah has decided that they won't fight this war. They will fight it, but they are willing to let Hamas try and cause the collapse all by themselves and merely play a supportive role in holding troops in northern Israel and destroying military equipment. I also think this is in line with Hamas' wishes - they aren't having it imposed on them by Hezbollah and others. They literally planned this war for over a year, training in urban combat for the exact events that are happening right now - they know what they're doing. Let them cook.
For Iran, it's fairly similar - they don't want to fight the war, but if it comes to it, they will fight it. The Reuters article that people have been quoting for evidence that Iran wants nothing to do with the war is obviously bogus. One reason that immediately comes to mind is that Iran is diplomatically quite skilled, and therefore wouldn't reveal that they weren't going to fight even if they secretly didn't want to out of fear of being bombed or even nuked. The whole point is ambiguity. It's a core concept in diplomacy and war - you don't let your enemies know what you're thinking, and you definitely don't tell them that if they strike at your allies, that they have no retaliation to worry about. This is like, middle school level thought processes here. Personally, I have no idea if Iran will enter the war if one kicks off between Hezbollah and Israel. If you put a gun to my head then I would say that it's more unlikely than likely, but we're talking like 55-45% chance here, not 90-10% chance. But Iran is definitely supplying arms to their allies in the region and will continue to do so, whether they're officially in a war or not.
We're in month 2 of a conflict that could last a year. Most of the horror still awaits us, as does most of the fighting, as does, inshallah, Israel's collapse.
This sounds ghoulish, but have you considered that allowing the atrocities to pile up could be part of the strategy?
To us, we already understand the casus belli as just. Allow enough lower information but fully genocidal non-American natoids to become enraged and disgusted by Israel’s genocidal nature and when they do eventually enter in full it’s far more likely that America enters alone (at best) or with a smaller coalition of governments willing to risk losing mandate come the next election.
It’s ghoulish, but there is no propaganda better than a dead child.
This sounds ghoulish, but have you considered that allowing the atrocities to pile up could be part of the strategy?
To us, as higher information people, we already understand the casus belli as just. Allow enough low information Natoids to become enraged and disgusted by Israel’s genocidal nature and when they do eventually enter in full it’s far more likely that America enters alone (at best) or with a smaller coalition of governments willing to risk losing mandate come the next election.
It’s ghoulish, but there is no propaganda better than a dead child.
[sinister music starts]
What is happening on our front is very important and very effective.
[horn blare]
It may seem to those who expect or demand Hezbollah enters an all-out war
[horn blare]
against the enemy immediately - what is happening at the border may seem modest.
[horn blare]
However, if we were to observe what is happening at the border objectively,
[montage of shots of the border]
we would find it to be greatly considerable, significant, and effective.
[horn blare]
Surely, it will not suffice on its own in any way...
It will not suffice on its own in any way...