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.
Anthony Blinken visibly wincing when Biden calls Xi a dictator
You can hear his thoughts
First when the reporter asks the question "dear god please no"
And then when he answers "for fuck's sake"
LOL Yes!
I totally saw Blinken's "AW FUCK!" look on his face and the thought that he has to play damage control.
EDIT: The more I think about it, the more it looks like one of those Jomboy breakdowns where a player get hit in the nuts. https://invidious.io.lol/watch?v=UwHAgMcZX0E
lol why don't they wear a box? Seems obvious that they should much like cricket players.
does the commonwealth call it a box? yanks call it a cup
Yep, box.
https://www.gray-nicolls.co.uk/products/male-abdo-guard
if a yank heard someone got hit right in the box they'd assume the person was getting kicked in the vagina
LMFAO wheres the emoji of biden falling down the stairs
He just heard months of diplomatic work go up in flames with a single word of a senile corpse
Looks like that thing Larry David does with his head.
the american ruling class really couldn't find a more suitable puppet than biden?
They tried with Copmala, who was Wall Street's fav. LOL. Even their well-oiled propaganda machine couldn't actually convince people she had enough support (note I have no illusion that actual support is necessary; just the ability to create a reasonable narrative of that support). So they had to go with the old shitbag who had was-once-vice-president-for-some-stupid-reason history. A tried-and-true favorite.
And, of course, they managed to shoehorn Copmala in as VP along with their fallback strategy, just as an extra "fuck you" to anyone who thought there was actually any "democratic" choice involved in anything.
They tried to pitch Buttigieg as well.
They ultimately crammed Biden down our throats because everyone else failed
TBH I find it incredibly hilarious that they went to such lengths to give us Trump 2.0. But I guess they found Trump 1.0 even more embarrassing, and who can blame them (for that much, at least)? 🤷
"Lesser" of two fascism-expanding embarrassments. Not the late-stage capitalism we deserve after hundreds of years of our own violent oppression, but still somehow the late-stage capitalism we asked for.
it's not like her cognitive faculties are in a better state than biden's
honestly it could be a possible symptom of long covid in the white house
for months the discourse was about how Bernie was too old and then at the end they just pivoted to Biden. liberals have no memory at all
Also, I love the implication Biden makes that any form of government that isn't just like the U.S.'s is necessarily dictatorial. LOL. Personally I'm a lot less...optimistic...about China's governance than many people here, but that is just some top-tier authoritarian (and xenophobic, and racist) shit all on its own.
You can look at it like this, how many communists have you had a chance to vote for in your free and fair elections?
I voted for Howie Hawkins in 2020, who at least nominally claimed to be an anarcho-communist. But yeah, I never really had any illusions about the possibility that'd he'd win. LOL. (And he's the only one I can think of or name, too.)
Agreed that there's nothing particularly democratic about U.S. politics. In fact, the whole history of U.S. politics seems to be a strong indicator that it is designed 100% in opposition to any possibility of actual democracy. Big surprise, I guess. 😒
i get sympathy anxiety or embarrassment from watching stuff like that but Blinken's anxiety was like sweet candy for my brain.
deep state in shambles