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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Xi Jinping and Biden will meet at the Filoli residence, where the filming of the series "Dynasty", the comedy film "George of the Jungle", the thriller "The Game" by David Fincher, the comedy drama "Heaven Can Wait" by Warren Beatty and Buck Henry took place
The main house of the residence has 56 rooms, and the area of the estate is about 5 thousand square meters, including a Georgian mansion and an English Renaissance garden.
Filoli was built between 1915 and 1917 for William Bowers Bourne II, owner of one of California's richest gold mines and president of the Spring Valley Water Company, which supplied water to San Francisco, and his wife Agnes Moody Bourne.
The estate's name is an acronym formed by combining the first two letters of the keywords of William Bourne's creed: "Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.”
In 1975, the estate was donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation with an endowment that helps defray annual operating expenses. The estate operates as the Filoli Center, a private non-profit organization with its own Board of Governors, staff and volunteers.
Observers note that it is a quiet, secluded estate where Biden and Xi can hold conversations in a relaxed atmosphere different from the APEC summit.
It is interesting that the Filoli estate was essentially built with money from the largest gold mine in California - the Empire mine, where hundreds and thousands of Chinese, taken as guest workers or simply fleeing the country before, worked and died for pennies for the good of America.
The collapse of the Qing Empire - it is because of the gold mines of San Francisco that in Chinese it is called Jiu Jinshan 旧金山 - Old Gold Mountains.
Biden’s China experts did not disappoint—the hint to Xi Jinping was not at all subtle.
Biden’s China experts did not disappoint—the hint to Xi Jinping was not at all subtle.
spell out the hint. motherfucker, what's the hint
The collapse of the Qing Empire - it is because of the gold mines of San Francisco that in Chinese it is called Jiu Jinshan 旧金山 - Old Gold Mountains.
Fun fact, as a counterpart ro San Francisco being called Old Gold Mountain, Melbourne*, Australia was called New Gold Mountain 新金山 xin jinshan because of the gold rush that occured afterwards.
(*more accurately the town of Ballarat to the West of Melbourne where the main access to gold fields was but the name are defunct now, and replaced by phonetic names)
The collapse of the Qing Empire - it is because of the gold mines of San Francisco that in Chinese it is called Jiu Jinshan 旧金山 - Old Gold Mountains.
Where is the supposed hint? This lump of words is not even a full sentence lmao … Is the idea that the old gold mountains caused the Qing’s collapse?
No, the hint is that Biden is forcing Xi to meet him at the Californian gold empire estate built with the blood of Chinese slave workers during the Gold Rush as the Qing Empire near its collapse.
Article was translated from Russian so it sounded weird.
Yeah, I didn't understand what the article was trying to say. Chinese dynasties didn't even use gold as a currency. They mostly used copper and silver.
The only interpretation of the article I'm conceiving of at the moment is insanely fascistic. As in, 'welcome to the palace built on the bones of the previous century of humiliation'.
The message (that the author sees) is clear.
What they meant is that Biden purposefully chose the meeting place with Xi to be at the Californian gold empire estate built with the money earned through the blood of Chinese slave workers who emigrated from the declining Qing Empire during the Gold Rush. It’s supposed to (not so) subtly humiliate the Chinese leader.
(The article was originally in Russian so it sounded weird when translated)
Is this like the California version of the Biltmore estate? Can't imagine doing diplomatic negotiations in what is essentially a tourist destination
See my other comments on the thread, the author believes that Biden team’s deliberately chose the location to humiliate the Chinese leader.
Can we get a photo op of Xi riding the cable car? It's the only one in the world. Also curious what he thinks of Chinatown.