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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.

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.

2.8K comments

  • Xi Jinping: "After having traveled to the US, my suspicions are now confirmed - the vibes are definitely off"

  • 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 like how the HAMAS HEADQUARTERS is less fortified than the average brazilian favela narcotics hq and less armed than the average american household

  • "Nooo, you can't say America deserved 9/11, 3000 innocent people died. You're a traitor and a terrorist"

    "Anyways, here's why thousands of children deserve to be blown up"

  • Germany doing clean wermacht, and saying hamas is worse than them, because they don't feel regret. What do they even study in history, i'll never know.

    Just bad vibes from hitler corrupted pure german souls, and now they did a growth that killing jews is bad. Nothing else happened in ww2, all lessons learned.

    So italy got meloni, japan never repented and germany now approaching same levels of discoourse, the gang is ready.

  • Xi, just enters his 3rd 5 year term (starting 2013) in a government that allows over a billion people to vote (at the least) for their local representative of 5,000 or less constituents. !!!!DICTATOR!!!!

    Bibi, who has been leader of Israel since 2009, in a nation that makes sure nearly 50% of the 15 million people within its borders are not allowed to vote. A great democracy and friend to America.

    I got it Joe

  • 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.”

  • Israel never showed any proof of the decapitated babies. Went on to murder thousands of Palestinian babies. And now is asking you to believe them when a dozen ak's and some vests were found in the hospital means Hamas controls it...which means we have to shoot the women and children fleeing it.

  • Guardian taking down the Bin Laden letter seems like just such obvious propagandist incompetence that Im wondering like who the fuck they have working there making these decisions.

    Like on just the fundamental level, if the issue is individual tiktokers with a large reach creating a narrative around Bin Laden that is overly clean due to only focusing on the rational justifications for attacking America, removing the letter will not stop that. You've only made it so random people can't read the parts where he says that Jews control western economy because of usury, or how its wrong that America makes its own laws instead of following the law of god, which to an average person would be discrediting the other arguments by association.

    And the thing is that almost every argument he makes such as the 1.5 million Iraqi children dead from sanctions, already has a readymade western "debunking" or dismissal, they could have fact checked Bin Laden, make his reasoning bunk by saying that he is lying about all the atrocities so therefore there is nothing for American voters to be held accountable for. Except now you've made the narrative that you are threatened by what the letter says, and if you fact check it now its like, ok you're still scared and trying to suppress it.

    Like this just seems like it wouldnt be that advanced to consider and think about? Its just very basic stuff that Im saying IMO.

  • 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."

  • Hamas is currently having a guy roasting the IDF video, I'll translate the video later if it gets released independently without translation

  • https://archive.ph/YznM1

    https://fortune.com/2023/11/11/china-xi-jinping-invites-everyday-people-from-iowa-to-dinner/

    Why a group of ‘everyday people’ in Iowa have been invited to dinner by Chinese president Xi Jinping: ‘We’re eager to meet with him’

    Xi’s warm feelings toward the Midwesterners contrasts with the recent acrimony between the two largest economies.

    BY JENNIFER JACOBS AND BLOOMBERG

    Lmao

    A group of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “old friends” from Iowa have been invited to a dinner he will attend in California next week — 38 years after they welcomed the then-unknown party official for a hog roast, farm tours and a Mississippi River boat ride as they showed him how capitalists do agriculture.

    Only politician to actually like Iowa

    “This has been a heck of a journey — we can’t figure it out. We don’t even know why he likes us!” said Sarah Lande, an 85-year-old Muscatine resident who has maintained connections with Xi since he made his first visit to the US as the leader of a food processing delegation from China’s Hebei Province in 1985.

    “But we’re eager to meet with him, too. We’re regular, everyday people,” Lande added. Xi’s warm and enduring bond with the Midwesterners he first encountered nearly four decades ago stands in contrast with the suspicions and acrimony that have characterized relations between the two largest economies over the last few years. Both Xi and President Joe Biden, who plan to meet Wednesday during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, have taken recent diplomatic steps to ease the strains.

    The Iowans’ invitations for the reception and dinner, on the sidelines of APEC, came through the the National Committee on US-China Relations and the US-China Business Council, in coordination with China’s embassy, Lande said.

    The Iowans haven’t been told if they’ll get a private audience with Xi, who was 31 when they met him.

    Terry Branstad, a former Iowa governor and US ambassador to China, has also been invited, according to an aide.

    In 1985, Gary Dvorchak’s parents gave Xi his bedroom, decorated with Star Trek items, in their Muscatine home. Dvorchak and his sister Paula, who talked to the future Chinese leader about American movies, are on next week’s guest list.

    So is Luca Berrone, then an Iowa economic development official, who drove Xi around to company sites including Monsanto Co., Cargill Inc. and Quaker Oats, grain and livestock farms, the Amana Colonies — a religious community known for its farming heritage and communal living — and Iowa State University in Ames.

    “He wanted to learn how to feed his people,” Lande said in a telephone interview. Xi had read Mark Twain “and he really wanted to see the Mississippi,” she said. She hosted him for a potluck at her home overlooking the river. Berrone’s stops with the four-member delegation and their interpreter included a farm in Coggon, a spot where Twain had hidden manuscripts in a wall. Berrone arranged hotels as well as home stays where none were available.

    “We had a really good time in two weeks,” he said. “We were like the road movie — five or six guys on a road trip.”

    Hell yeah, dudes rock

    ‘You Are America’

    The Iowans made an impression on Xi, said Ken Quinn, the former president of the World Food Prize Foundation, who is planning to attend the Bay Area dinner.

    “He was not anyone special and the friendship they showed him touched him personally,” said Quinn, who met Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, an architect of China’s economic opening, when he himself traveled to Iowa in 1980.

    When Xi Jinping returned to the United States in 2012, as vice president and about to ascend to the presidency, he gathered with the “old friends” in Lande’s Muscatine home again. “He said, ‘You were the first people I met in America, and to me, you are America,’” she said.

    That year, Xi invited more than a dozen of the Iowans to China, and “they had the whole thing set up in two months,” Lande said. “He was the top-down boss and he made it happen.” Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan — a famous Chinese folk singer in her own right — threw a banquet for them. “She said, ‘Well, I just had to meet the people from Iowa,’” Lande recalled. “By the way, she is a lovely, beautiful lady. Her last remark was, ‘If we ever retire, I’m going to gather my daughter and we’re coming to Muscatine.’”

    China’s embassy in Washington and the dinner’s organizers didn’t respond to requests for comment on Friday night.

    The reunion aside, Iowa, a major soybeans and corn producer, has an interest in better relations between Washington and Beijing.

    This week, China, a top soybean importer, bought more than 3 million metric tons of the commodity from the US, a volume that surprised the market. China had been buying cheaper Brazilian supplies and the move is a goodwill gesture ahead of the Biden-Xi talks, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing governmental decisions.

    That's right, Xi Jinping, the man who is concidered to be the second coming of Stalin, says mee-maw and pawp-pawp of the cornfields are America to him.

  • Nelson Mandela visiting Gaza in 1999

    Video evidence for the quote: "Choose peace rather than confrontation. Except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, or we cannot move forward. Then if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence." This was along with a call for Israel to withdraw from all occupied territories.

    This is a great video to show liberals. Use the whitewashing of leaders like Mandela against them.

2824 comments