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.
Last week's discussion post.
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What do you call it when a foreigner thinks that they know more about your own country than you? I'm arguing with someone like this right now. They seem to be a leftist from Scandinavia, but they think that Chris Hani was more popular than Nelson Mandela (even though their own sources say otherwise), deny the existence of Mandela's South African Communist Party membership (something the party itself has confirmed), act as if Ronnie Kasrils and Thabo Mbeki are still members of the ANC, and argue that Mbeki was an efficient technocrat and not a neoliberal austerity driven fool. They've posted a bunch of news articles from foreign websites that they didn't even read! Honestly infuriating. I probably agree with this person on most things, but they've invented some fictional reality about South Africa that is only possible if you've never lived here. Not even in matters of opinion, just denying facts that don't agree with their view of history.
Serious people and Adults in the Room don't dare hesitate when they decide what must be true.
In Hearts and Minds, LBJ's National Security Advisor, Walt Rostow, tried to claim that "Ho Chi Minh couldn't get elected dog-catcher" in South Vietnam. They cut to a flabbergasted Daniel Ellsberg, who said "Ho Chi Minh, dead, could beat any of the candidates we put up."
Ho Chi Minh, dead, could beat any of the candidates we put up."
Honestly could say the same about Mandela. The ghost of him would win the next election in a landslide.
Permanently Deleted
I mean I happen to be a
citizen of South Africa, but I don't go around telling Americans who to vote for or start making up alt communist history about how Eugene V Debbs was the most popular politician in US history. It just seems to be some terminal Reddit brained behaviour.Permanently Deleted
What do you call it when a foreigner thinks that they know more about your own country than you?
That's called a Yank.
Not this time. I think they're from Norway
en jänk
Permanently Deleted
Ei jænk*
I just see those people as chauvinists or narcissists, from how to describe them they seem to think they are already an expert and dont need any more evidence
There is nothing wrong about a foreigner thinking they know more about something. They often do and we are often in that position ourselves. Ask yourself this: would you expect Americans to know their own politics better than a commie from another country? I wouldn't. Americans are deep in propaganda and know very little about politics in general. If an American told a recent immigrant, "hey, you have to listen to my judgment here, I'm actually from here" you'd think, "wow that's fucked up".
The problem here is just that they are wrong. Their learning process is wrong. They've convinced themselves of stupid shit and aren't responding to you correcting them in a way that is reasonable or respectful, as you do actually know what you're talking about and presumably demonstrate this. If you're not demonstrating this, that's the thing to do on your end - showing how this person is wrong and, if they're reasonable, until they recognize that they're wrong pretty often.
But let's assume you've demonstrated that you're knowledgeable on this and they're being a fuckwad. If they're being rude and asking them not to be is getting frustrating, and you still want to engage with this person, I'd start making them make bets on things. Verifiable things. Then you make money when they're wrong and they start to realize that they can't afford betting against you.
Anyways sorry you've gotta deal with this dweeb doing dweeb things.
While I agree with you, there are certain things you can only get a true grasp of by living somewhere. Like I can talk about Trump and analyse his politics all I want and probably come up with better analysis than a lot of Americans, but I don't truly have a grasp of how simultaneously polarising and popular he is, because I don't live in the USA.
Yes that's the spectre of lived experience.
It will still screw with you, though, because being a person in a country is not a homogeneous experience. You actually might be much more correct about Trump and polarization than a very large number of Americans. I'd even say the majority. I can't stress enough how powerful false consciousness is and that anything involving judgment is liable to be dead wrong.
Example: if you asked your average American about the black experience, you're gonna get mostly wrong answers.
gringoism
Seriously people should not have such confidence. Western propaganda convinces people that they are most informed about politics on everywhere. I talk to a Russian leftist and only thing I objected to him about Russia is "Russian/soviet propaganda is best propaganda". if it was, no one would have heard about its existence