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.
You're viewing a single thread.
https://twitter.com/ya1hor/status/1725556429115756567
https://nitter.net/ya1hor/status/1725556429115756567Just to be clear on IMT’s position regarding Palestine:
Do trots count under the sectarianism rule?
Palestinian bourgeoisie
Fucking who?
I mean, Mahmoud Abbas and party, but still a shit take from the IMT. The Israeli working class is largely complicit.
Abbas is a traitorous comprador dog and loyal lackey of Israel, so denouncing both him and Israel should lead one to siding with Palestinian resisters even more
Even Abbas himself is subject to regular humiliations. Even the elite have to go through checkpoints, have family members and friends jailed and killed, etc. Even if I was some hypothetical, ruthless Palestinian capitalist I can’t see how I would ever want to cast my lot with the Israelis.
Marx or Engels - can’t remember who - talks about how once the bourgeoisie realized they get sick from pandemics just as much as workers do, you got significant sanitation improvements. Even the rich can’t escape everything. Even the most elite Palestinian is treated as a sub-human by Israel. We talk about the bourgeoisie not being human but of course that’s not literally true. They are human beings and regardless of your wealth, you can’t buy dignity.
It's not hypothetical that Abbas "might" cast in his lot with the Israelis. He's not national bourgeoisie, he's comprador. He's a traitor and has always sided with Israel and will continue to do so until he is deposed.
once the bourgeoisie realized they get sick from pandemics just as much as workers do, you got significant sanitation improvements
Trots man…
doing class analysis on the inmates of the concentration camp to figure out who to support
Palestinian bourgeoisie
There is such a thing?
Not in Gaza. Gaza does not have a functional economy (not their fault ofc). You don’t really have capitalism there so you can’t have a capitalist class. Might be a bit more like capitalism in the West Bank, idk. But if there is a national bourgeoisie there, I can’t think of a better place on earth where Mao’s ideas of the workers and nat’l bourgeoisie allying together is more relevant.
Yeah you can’t be sectarian against Trots but a bad take is a bad take, and the take itself can and should be dunked on.
Even if you argue that there is, they are certainly not aligned with Israeli Bourgeoisie
There is. Palestine is not a socialist society. Class war works differently in colonised societies though and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of Palestine has a shared interest in national liberation and can benefit from allying in the freedom struggle.
Yeah. There are wealthy Palestinians around. Not a lot, and generally speaking not in Gaza.
They should do a follow-up "analysis" where
(1) Capitalism is more advanced in isn'trael compared to West Bank or Gaza
(2) The isntreal working class is therefore more advanced than the Palestinian masses
(3) The hope therefore rests in the mass proletarian uprising of the isntreal working class, which we are sure is happening any day now.
(4) Hamas attack hinders isntreal working class from achieving this consciousness.
(5) Hamas bad. We condemn Hamas. Q.E.D.
Schniff
JR Sakai was right
J.R.R. Sakai's the Lord of the Settlers
This is what happens when you refuse to update your theory for 100 years. I'm sure the Israeli "workers" are about to rise up any second here...
If you don't recognize that imperialism is the primary contradiction, you're a fucking joke.
Trots are bad. But you see this same kind of nonsense from certain ML tendencies too, especially about the US.
You can put their heads on easter island and people won't notice.
But :not-all-trots: so maybe restrict to concrete organization
What the fuck did Fatah do?
CPB, Communist Party of Canada, CPUSA etc. openly support stopping at a "two-state solution" according to the 1967 borders (note: only the last article is older than a month)
I sleep
Canadian branch of the IMT posts cringe 14 years ago, said cringe being hardly representative of the rest of the IMT's articles on Palestine
Kill all trots immediately
Well, I'll call all those parties revisionists as happily as I shit on trots :)
I thought the trots were supposed to be the splitters?
Well, maybe I'm being more sectarian than I should be. But, IMO, Maoists split from MLs for the right reasons, Trots not so. I will say, basically MLs and anarchists have historically made up this site's population, so that's who the rule applies to.
Doesn’t Hamas also support a two-state?
My reading of their charter was "We don't like this, but it's what everyone else wants and we're not going to be jerks about it".
Sure, but my point remains. Although I will concede that the current trot position on Palestine is significantly better https://www.marxist.com/down-with-hypocrisy-defend-gaza-imt-statement.htm
Who is putting "blame" on Israeli workers? Is the IMT responding to something in particular, or is this their general statement regarding the genocide in Gaza?
The author of the article this is from is the founder of the canadian branch of the IMT, and . It’s just generally speaking about the situation in palestine, but it was published in 2010 when the genocide had already started. This founder was just recently kicked out btw, but not for his dogshit political position, for being a sex pest.
the canadian branch of the IMT
I have not heard good things about that org.
yes they do, fuck trots