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 country of the week is Iceland so here is a story about an early liberal decolonisation adventure and the guy behind it. Jørgen Jørgensen, or Jörundur hundadagakonungur (the dog-days king) was a Danish privateer during the Gunboat War. In 1808 he was taken prisoner of war by the British and brought to London where he was released on parole on conditions that he didn't leave the country.
In London Jørgensen became acquainted with a merchant and suggested a voyage to trade with Iceland. At that time Iceland was a possession of Denmark-Norway and the island suffered food shortages and deprivations due to a Danish trading monopoly and the state of war between Denmark and Britain that made trade difficult. The climatic situation in Iceland had been bad during the 18th century and the eruption of the volcano Laki in 1783 that resulted in 80% of the island's livestock dying from eating poisoned grass and a quarter of the Icelandic population dying from famine. Jørgensen and his partners hoped to exploit the dire situation to make a large profit. The first voyage was unsuccessful though as the Danish governor of Iceland refused to trade due to the war.
Jørgensen and his business partner attempted another voyage in June of 1809 but once more the Danish governor refused to let them trade. In response Jørgensen and members of crew from the ship sailed to Reykjavik where they arrested the governor and took him back to their ship. Jørgensen proclaimed himself protector of Iceland and declared the abolition of Danish rule. Jørgensen confiscated all public funds and stockpiles, Danish debts were annulled and the people was promised independence, liberal democracy and restoration of the Althing, Iceland's traditional legislative and judicial parliament that had been abolished by the Danish crown in 1800.
Little came of these reforms though. Two months later a British warship arrived and seeing the situation, the captain negotiated Jørgensens surrender where he agreed to be taken back to London, and annul all his decrees. Government was left in the hands of local officials as the Danish governor travelled with the warship back to London to explain the situation.
In London Jørgensen was imprisoned for breaking his parole and released a year later. His heavy drinking and gambling eventually landed him in debtor's prison. He then travelled Europe and worked as a spy and translator for the British in Germany and France. Returning to London he got in trouble with the law again and was transported to Tasmania where he proved himself useful to the colonial regime and would end up taking part in the genocide of the indigenous population as a constable. He has been called the founder of Hobart, the capital of Tasmania where he is still commemorated as a local hero.
Jørgensen left few lasting traces on Iceland if any and it doesn't seem like he ever made much effort to engage the people of Iceland in his revolution. In typical liberal fashion he saw himself more as a saviour who was bringing the benighted peasants into civilization. Consequently, his rule crumbled the first time it met resistance.
Iceland would eventually gain its independence through a process starting with the emergence of a liberal national-romantic independence movement in the 1830's led by Danish-educated intellectuals. The Althing was restored as a consultative body in 1843. In 1875 the Althing gained limited legislative power over internal Icelandic affairs, although the Danish king still directly appointed some members and often would veto legislation. In 1880 Iceland was allowed to trade freely with all nations.
In 1918 Iceland nominally became a sovereign state although it remained in a personal union with the Danish king who would rule both nations. Denmark would represent Iceland diplomatically and militarily. In 1940 the Nazi occupation of Denmark and the loss of communication with Copenhagen meant that Iceland became de facto independent. The last ties to Denmark were severed in 1944 when Icelanders voted to end the personal union and declare a republic.