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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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."
autobots, roll out
Permanently Deleted
If it's real, this isn't the most surprising thing ever, because Putin's stance has always been something like "We don't really give a shit if you do LGBT stuff, you can do whatever, multipolarity means that nobody should enforce cultures on other people, just don't force it all on our culture," which is obviously still something I strongly disagree with but indicates to me at least that he personally doesn't actually really care that much. He's not really part of the sort of alt-right "this gender and pronouns stuff is getting really out of hand and destroying our societies and we, the oppressed cishets, must band together to face down the all-powerful trans people that rule us" movement, I think. So (again, if it's real) while the statement is surprising, it's not a total change for Putin personally.
The dipshits throughout the rest of the government, though? I can't imagine they'd actually want any of this, and it's all just words anyway and Russia is still (and will likely remain for the foreseeable future) a... not-great place for the LGBTQIA+ community regardless.
It’s not just Russia, a lot of old school commies in the developing world, let alone right wingers, still think LGBT movement is some kind of Western imperialist plot to displace their national/traditional culture. It needs to be said that oppression of national and cultural identities is an integral part of colonialism, so it’s not a surprise that any kind of foreign culture will provoke a knee-jerk reaction.
It’s one of those things I dislike about them, but from my experience, I feel like their hearts are in the right place, meaning they can be persuaded, most of them are not hateful or anything.
There was a Chinese communist in the 1920s - and I’m mad I can’t remember his name - who said that the generation that leads the revolution will surely have their own reactionary views that they themselves do not even recognize, but will later on be understood by future generations. Because all of us cannot help but be a part of the world as it exist under capitalist domination. Idk, he wrote it more beautifully than I did.
I think a lot about what those reactionary views might be for our generation, if we did end up being the one that leads the revolution.
Something something I hope for a future where I'll face the wall for being a reactionary something something
Stalin is the perfect example here
I think a lot about what those reactionary views might be for our generation, if we did end up being the one that leads the revolution.
I think animal rights will be our big thing. I think there's a lot of youngish people who can see that veganism is basically the morally correct position (and also helps alleviate climate change) but can't be bothered to swap for various reasons, and they will be looked back on like we look back on our grandparents or great grandparents when they start making insensitive (or just straight-up racist) comments about black people or Muslims or Asians or gay people etc. And that's not even getting started on the people who are like "Well now I'm gonna go eat TWO steaks because you told me that you're vegan!"
"Yeah, my grandpops is nice and all but... don't bring up animals to him. He'll rant on and on about how great real meat tastes compared to the fungi-grown stuff and-- yeah, I know it's fucked up, I can't believe humanity was doing that even up to the 2020s..."
the all-powerful trans people that rule us
Wtf??? wtf??? Is this a fake article???
If it isnt pat soc losers on suicide watch
I have no idea of the article's veracity, except that its entire text was reprinted by Yahoo, so make of that what you will.
It’s real! What the fuck…
(Only available in the Russian transcript for now, the English transcript is still incomplete)
As for the first part, yes, indeed, we see that at all competitions in Western countries, in order to win something, you need to either tell, write, or show the life of sexual minorities, transgender people and some other transformers - many different names.
But here’s what I’d like to say, I’ll say something unexpected. And they, too, these topics and these people, have the right to win, show, tell, because this is also part of society. This is also what people live by. It’s bad if they only win all sorts of competitions, that’s of no use. But this is the desire for equality, which, in my opinion, the Minister of Culture of the Republic of South Africa spoke about. It, this equality, should be everywhere, in everything, including in competitions in the field of culture.
…
Secondly, regarding Slavic culture. Here, as in the case of transgender people and sexual minorities, what I want to say is: you can’t stick anything out, you can’t behave aggressively towards anyone in any way.
The same applies to Slavic culture. Slavic culture is an integral part of European and world culture, and it is very bright and original. Of course, just like Russian culture, it is impossible to abolish it and pretend that it does not exist.
There is no need to stick anything out. We must be proud of our achievements, we must not be afraid to cooperate today under the watchful and stern gaze of some political figures. Because people who are trying to ban this communication, to ban figures of Slavic culture from communicating with each other - I apologize if I hurt the ears of people from the field of culture with something - but they are just idiots, you know, they are just crazy people who are trying to ban communication cultural figures among themselves.
Therefore, we need to meet, work together, be proud of our achievements, and look to the future together. Because Slavic culture, of course, has common roots, this is an obvious thing. But do not forget that this is a significant, but only part of the overall huge world culture, and treat your friends and colleagues from other fields of activity from other regions of the world with respect. Like this.
it is necessary to "talk about, write or show something from the lives of sexual minorities, transgenders [sic] and other transformers".
"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"We wouldn't brook this shit from anyone else. This is functionally the same as when chuds complain about pandering to the woke mob.
Secondly, regarding Slavic culture. Here, as in the case of transgender people and sexual minorities, what I want to say is: you can’t stick anything out, you can’t behave aggressively towards anyone in any way.
When he says this, we should read it in the context of a man who signed into law both the original "for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating a Denial of Traditional Family Values" law and its expansion last year. This softening of rhetoric is blowing smoke up people's ass.
Let us have our sweet dreams. Let us have our slightly, barely-at-all gay-friendly Putin.
Bizarre timing because today Rybar posted this extremely anti lgbt post (some formatting removed):
spoiler
The Ministry of Justice demands that the international LGBT movement be recognized as extremist and banned on the territory of the Russian Federation. Within the framework of its powers, the department filed a statement of claim; a hearing on the case will take place on November 30 in the building of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The official reason stated is that the activities of the LGBT movement have revealed various signs of an extremist orientation, including inciting social and religious hatred.
Many people do not understand what this international LGBT movement is. Two years ago, due to circumstances, I had to dive into the wonderful world of the rainbow subculture that captured the minds of our teenage TikTokers. Do you know what amazed me most? Coordination of efforts – numerous LGBT organizations seemed to be promoting the same theses and projects at someone’s invisible direction. When I began to dig deeper and study the financial statements of nonprofits, the number of which was rapidly growing, I discovered an interesting pattern. They all received funds from the same donors through shell companies, and ultimately the thread led to global sponsors of the LGBT notices.
Social movements to protect the rights of sexual minorities originated in the 1960s, but modern organizations are fundamentally different from them. They moved from legal support to imposing new social norms. In recent years, one of the areas that has been promoted is the concept of “gender identity”.
In Russia, the LGBT movement began to develop in the 2000s, when key non-governmental organizations were established through the efforts of the European branch of the international ILGA network. The interregional public movement “Russian LGBT Network” took on the functions of coordinator. Over the 15 years of active activity, the Russian LGBT Network has opened branches in more than 40 cities in our country, introduced queer art festivals and launched many initiatives. Regional funding was provided through subsidiaries of ILGA-EUROPE.
It was a real web. Having liquidated the operator through which LGBT organizations carried out financial manipulations, the Ministry of Justice immediately got a new one. Having recognized any NGO as a foreign agent, he doomed himself to bombarding it with fines for non-compliance with the law. At the same time, information resources and portals continued to work as if nothing had happened, sometimes even mockingly challenging law enforcement officers to “ban yourself.” Many of them are still functioning, and the mechanisms of the law adopted last year are not enough to suspend their work. Obviously, by banning the entire movement at once, the Ministry of Justice will try to solve this problem.
So if the Ministry of Justice is attempting to ban the lgbt movement in its entirety. So perhaps this is something Putin is against? A step too far for him?