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.
The Biden administration has established a foothold in Latin America through Argentina, Asia through India, Ukraine has done its job dragging down Russia and Europe, while the Middle East is being destabilized.
The BRICS+ bloc has really failed to stop the torrential flood of the dollar offensive. As optimistic as I was last year, BRICS dragging their feet over de-dollarization (almost two years now and they still haven’t decided on an actual plan) has really given Biden the opening to revive the American Imperium.
Been working on writing a summary of my thoughts over the past few months, and I will post them next week.
agreed, would add Peru to that sentiment. Monroe Doctrine is so back
gotta have another vassal to harvest as South Korea and Japan circle the drain, lmao
Russia I disagree with here, I think they're coming out stronger than they went in actually. Europe, absolutely.
I agree with this but this is actually the bad kind of destabilisation for the US for multiple reasons (weakens/destroys their giant military base called Israel, strengthens Iran in the process, potentially fucks up global trade through the Red Sea, further diplomatically weakens the US, etc) rather than the good kind so it works against the overall point
I do appreciate that you're basically my pessimistic foil at this point, though it's nice to keep grounded on these issues, so I look forward to your summary
Actually, no, the correct place would be Peru, where the democratically elected president was removed from power and a puppet was put in his place. And a bunch of US troops went there to put down the revolts and prevent a invasion by any neighboring country.
I do persoanlly think de-dollarization will still work, but the USA sure is doing everything possible to stop it from happening. China and Brazil will both have closer relations, and Argentina really needs to trade and the aid they receive from Brazil and China (besides they have a bunch of loans they need to pay to both countries). Even if Milei is a fucking moron, the neoliberals behind him will force him to trade with the two countries.
Modi's relationship with Biden is one of convenience. India is far too nationalistic to fall too far into the American sphere of influence.
I would look at the collapse of the British Empire as a counterpoint. It reached its greated geographical extent about 20-25 years before it's collapse. History is littered with empires have collapsed quickly after reaching their zenith because they simply don't know when to take the W and walk away. America may have won in Argentina in the short term, but I simply don't see a long-term strategy to fix Argentina that benefits both America and Argentina. The contradictions have not disappeared with a Milei win. The debt is going to have to be forgiven and excessive privitization is going to cause serious social upheaval.
In terms of dedollarization, that may be coming whether or not BRICS makes it happen. The US is about to lose its last AAA credit rating, and Washington seems simply too dysfunctional to do what needs to be done for fix the US' growing budgetary and financial issues (or make the American bourgeoisie sacrifice on behalf of the country, for once). It's hard to say right now which direction we are heading, or how long it could take for a collapse, but there seems to be a path where the US causes dedollarization all on its own, and BRICS can sit back and shrug its shoulders saying it has no choices instead of taking the "more aggressive" posture.
Your read on the situation is far too pessimistic.
This is actually bad news since per the Monroe doctrine, the entirety of Latin America is supposed to be under US dominion. As overused as the phrase "America's backyard" is, America's backyard is supposed to apply to Latin America. The US has taken major L's with Brazil (Lula got elected), Colombia (Colombia is no longer the Israel of Latin America), and especially Bolivia (a premier source of lithium is controlled by MAS after overturning the Christofascists).
India is beset with numerous internal contradictions: religion, caste, ethnicity, geography, and class. It had a very strategic geopolitical position until the issue with Palestine came up. Due to the rabid Islamophobia of the ruling party, Modi can't effectively play both sides or remain neutral but have to side with Israel for the sake of his constituents. IMO, India isn't prepared to deal with climate change, and their society will collapse over unresolved contradictions after having those contradictions sharpened by climate change.
I don't see Russia being adversely affected by Ukraine like Europe is.
It's being destabilized because their precious proxy state is being existentially threatened. US benefits from WANA destabilization when the destabilization is caused by Israel or Western backed jihadists like ISIS. It's definitely not benefiting from the destabilization now.
And on another point, Western imperialism has been taking major L's in the Sahel. Mali and Burkina Faso are already cleaning up house and ridding their countries of Western backed jihadists and separatists. They and Niger banded together and called out ECOWAS/Nigeria's bluff.
i would say the first foothold was ecuador since the right still controls it, right now its ecuador, argentina, peru and salvador who are very pro US, i dont think the war in Ukraine has been that good for the USA while they did get a bunch of funding for the military-industrial complex and weaked their european satellites it didnt hurt the Russians that much, like russia did have to use a bunch of it reserves to stabilize its economy right now they are ok and are able to expand their influence in other regions of the world like the middle east and africa,
The destabilization of the Middle east it actually bad for the USA, like before Iran was a pariah and they were able to do regime change in a few nations, right now they are losing that support and Relations with Iran and other contries are being normalized, they failed in syria and yemen and now they are pro-iran, Iraq instead of being a US ally has instead become a neutral party and is slowly becoming anti-american the Saudi-Iran cold war is in pause, Turkey is still and independent actor and their support of Israel is ruining their image in the region. its looking bad for them there
Biden isn’t reviving shit
I did not agree with your other takes but here I agree almost 100%. The de-dolarization is a stronger trend than you give credit for IMO.
The China normalization shit and the Argentinian election are severe blows to the BRICS, anyone thinking otherwise is still drinking the koolaid from 12 months ago. It is specialy painful for Brazil too since Lula was very invested into Argentina's membership and now he looks like a clown.
But most importantly, everything is collapsing under China's noses and fucking Xi is having meetings the devil, in the middle of a genocide, in the middle of the BRICS falling apart...
Its terrible and China shall eat shit for their naive and useless foreign policy. I go back to my earlier criticism, the CPC are proving they are nothing but stand for nothing liberals. They truly believe that nonsensical idiocy of cooperation and good relations with the US. They're proving they have no Marxist understanding of imperialism, they're proving they don't see the US as an existential threat.
If people were asking as a consequence of the meeting what was China's concession this time? Well its right here. China continues their commitment to non-interventionism, they continue to claim they wont fight the US. In doing so this is the result. The US creates regional conflicts, they force the local bourgeoisie to subvert national interests in favor of the US and end up undermining everything China builds.
Its why you need to actualy fight the US. It is why I am extremely angry and sad over this BS normalization trend. We are doomed at this rate. The Ukraine war may well turn out to be a mere bump in the road only because Russia is an actual nuclear armed country capable of securing their interests. Everyone else in the global south, literally can't afford shit because the only country actualy capable of influencing global politics doesn't actualy want to jeopardize their own self interest.
Its a shame this is the end of 2023 trend we're getting, 2024 looks horrible. China will be embarrassed once again when US election time comes and both sides promise more Taiwan escalation.
Wtf do you want China to do for the Argentinian elections? Rig them or assasinate the ancap nutjob ? It wasnt close enough to be flipped by an agressive China intervention in the first place and its not like its losing some strategic ally. Argentina is gonna get worse with the clown and in 4 years time some socdem peronist will win and things will be more of the same. What is this "Well its right here?" that you so clearly see in this case?
Also where are you seeing this normalization and concession stuff ? The Americans were begging for a meeting for years and Xi went there in a position of strength and repeated every buzzword and positions China has stated in the last 10 years. There was no rhetoric shift. China is as non-interventionist today as it was 2 or 3 years ago. That may already be in issue yeah but that doesnt mean that somehow believe that they will have good peaceful relations with the US or that they conceeded their position in any international matter