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.
Part of a NYT update
The entire update
Troops interrogate people inside Al-Shifa Hospital, an Israeli official says.
The Israeli military was solidifying its hold on the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital on Wednesday, after storming the complex overnight. Soldiers were conducting searches and interrogations inside, in a significant step that could shape the pace and extent of its war with Hamas.
The hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City, has become central to Israel’s 40-day effort to wrest control of Gaza from Hamas. Israel says that Hamas built a military command center beneath the hospital, using its patients and staff as human shields, a charge that Hamas and hospital administrators deny.
The capture of Al-Shifa, along with whatever evidence the Israelis produce of Hamas’s military presence there, could affect international sentiment about the invasion as well as the continuing negotiations to free the hostages captured by Hamas last month. Gazan authorities said Wednesday that the Israelis were in control of the complex.
Israeli soldiers briefly exchanged fire with gunmen outside the hospital before going in, a senior military official said, but more than 12 hours after it began, the operation appeared more like a police raid than a pitched battle.
One senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing operation, said that troops were interrogating people inside the hospital and had found weapons, but declined to provide evidence or further details.
A Palestinian man inside a surgery building at hospital complex said word had spread among the people there of interrogations and searches, including excavations, and that a tight cordon of Israeli armored vehicles had closed around the hospital.
Little information was available on Wednesday afternoon, as communications were disrupted in Gaza City.
Palestinian officials, the heads of United Nations agencies and some Mideast regional leaders condemned the raid, warning that it risked the lives of Gaza’s most vulnerable.
For years, Israel has said that Hamas built a military command center beneath the hospital, turning its patients into human shields.
To Palestinians, Al-Shifa Hospital is a civilian institution that for weeks has served as a refuge for thousands of displaced Gazans in addition to the gravely ill and wounded. Hamas and the hospital’s leadership deny its use as a military base.
The Israeli military invaded Gaza last month after roughly 1,200 people were killed in Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7. Since then, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Gazan health officials — one of the largest tolls in any air campaign this century.
Early on Wednesday, the Israeli army said it had launched “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital.” It said that its goal was not to harm civilians, and that it had sent incubators, Arabic speakers and medical supplies and personnel to join the operation.
The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said in a statement, that the Israeli soldiers had beaten patients and displaced people sheltering at the hospital and had expelled others from the complex.
Muhammad Zaqout, a senior health Gazan official, said in a news briefing that the Israeli soldiers had first entered part of a surgery department before later taking control of the radiology and cardiology departments.
Because of the communications disruption, The New York Times could not reach hospital administrators. The Palestinian man interviewed by telephone in the surgery building at the hospital said he had not heard of anyone being beaten.
They stormed the alleged Hamas HQ, the place they knew was full of hostages and weapons and commanders and maybe even Mr. Hamas himself. And all they got was a guy who might have been a Hamas member. Impressive.
I'm surprised they didn't just frame the guy entirely.
It's gonna be hard. He's very, very sneaky.
And a calender!