Bulletins and News Discussion for December 11th to December 17th, 2023 - What's Yours is Mine - COTW: Canada
Bulletins and News Discussion for December 11th to December 17th, 2023 - What's Yours is Mine - COTW: Canada
Image is of the Cobre Panama open-pit copper mine, located 120 kilometers west of Panama City.
Canada is a prolific mining country, hosting many of the world's top mining corporations. Some of its extraction is local - for example, Saskatchewan is the world's largest producer of potash, a critical agricultural nutrient. Much of the extraction is abroad. Naturally, this means that Canada has cut a bloody, but often ignored, path through the global periphery, extracting minerals and causing environmental degradation.
A notable recent example is that of the Cobre Panama copper mine, which is owned by First Quantum Minerals, one of the largest mining companies in Canada. The company earned $10 billion in revenue in 2022, of which the Cobre Panama mine generated $1 billion. Protests in Panama about this mine have gone on for over a decade, urging for a greater share of the profits, protection of indigenous people, and stronger environmental protections. Canada has maintained a stoney silence (pun somewhat intended) on these movements.
On October 20th, the president of Panama, Cortizo, renewed the company's mining concession for 20 years, after a halt in production since the end of 2022 due to negotiations and reform. Everybody hated this. In October, protestors took to the streets in sufficient numbers that Cortizo was forced to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed. This was immediately cut down, but the government decided to invalidate the new concession anyway in late November, calling it unconstitutional, and closing down the mine.
First Quantum Minerals has lost about half its market value since October. Various international banks have said that Panama could lose its investment-grade credit rating next year due to the income hit - the mine generated 5% of its GDP. The international arbitration process which First Quantum has initiated against Panama could last years.
The book Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination handles Canada's role as an imperialist, anti-indigenous, extractive state throughout its history, and is on our geopolitical reading list.
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Your Friday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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The Country of the Week is Canada! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
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It is a good time for reminder that the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran has been consistently the most principled supporter of Palestinians and has always rejected normalization with the zionist entity and has always held the correct principled position that the United States is the source of all imperialist violence today and must be forcibly removed from hegemonic power.
The Iranians have paid dearly for this correct and uncompromising position, including the millions who died as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's aggression in the 1980's. Saddam's Baathist government was backed by both the USSR and the US in this endeavor to destroy the revolution remember. They have lost many lives due to crushing sanctions. And yet they have not wavered. Aid to the resistance in Palestine is part of their annual national budget and written into the constitution.
Many many people from Talal Naji the Secretary General of PFLP-GC to Palestinian martyr Nizar Banat to Secretary General of Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq Seyyed Hashim al Haidari have emphasized this point that to be an enemy of Iran is to be an enemy of Palestine.
Those rockets and UAV killing American occupiers in Iraq? Iran helped design and manufacture those.
The drones striking the cancerous entity from Yemen? Iran helped design those and transferred manufacturing technologies.
The tunnels in Gaza that the Resistance is using to deliver "new flavors of death" to the occupiers? Hajj Qassem Soleimani helped design those.
The guns in the West Bank wielded by Palestinian heroes in defense of their homeland? Iran paid for those.
The 100,000 precision missiles in Hezbollah arsenal that has the occupiers and the Americans shitting themselves in fear? You already know...
Palestine is not alone, it has never been alone, and the only people saying that it is alone are irrelevant defeatists and anti-Iran and anti-Resistance.
Permanently Deleted
I think it’s dialectical. If Iran had some room to breathe on external matters i.e. if the Zionist entity no longer existed, then domestic policy might be better.
the Zionist entity no longer existed
Do not forget the red white and blue boot planted in the region. Otherwise completely correct.
I avoided commenting because this isn't really the platform for a comprehensive discussion about the internal politics of a nation under 40 years of genocidal sanctions and multi-spectrum hybrid warfare. Because most people present benefit materially from the war on Iran which includes excessively highlighting contradictions to promote surreptitious regime change narratives.
But I will point out that Iran has universal Healthcare and even includes refugees in it. It has things like guaranteed maternity leave and one of the highest rates of "female" higher education rates. The Leader (Seyyed Khamenei) has really emphasized the harms of the capitalist mode of production lately which (partially) led to the democratically elected legislature voting in new progressive taxation system this year. "Capital gains tax; for the benefit of the masses, to the detriment of the profiteers."
I leave you with excerpts from an article about recent speech by the Leader:
He highlighted the need to create a direct relationship between “income” and “work”, saying long-term plans are needed to achieve this ambitious goal.
“This is a very difficult task. This means that much of the asset and windfalls is ill-earned. We must stop the culture of accumulating unearned wealth in the country. This is a long-term and difficult task, but it must be done,” he said.
The Supreme Leader further urged officials to fight corruption and bribery, cut out the middlemen in the economy, and prevent profiteers from accumulating wealth through their special connections.
“All of these are detrimental to the society. Income must be directly related to work,” he stressed.
“Work is the vitality of the society. Work is the backbone of people’s lives. Without work, there is nothing. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the facilities we use that our lives depend upon are all the results of work. Who does the work? The worker. Therefore, what is the value of the worker? The value of the worker is the value of the society’s vitality, the value of people’s life.”"
I put "female" in quotes because it is how world bank uses terms but I understand that it does not account for transgender people who do exist and have rights in IRI. Sorry if it is offensive to anyone
I know next to nothing about Iran but I just think it's worth noting that Israel is not shitting it's pants about Egypt (most populous Arab country and litterally located right next to Israel) or Saudi Arabia (incredibly ressourcerich and a leading figure in the Arab world), or any other GCC state for that matter. Israel is constantly shitting it's pants about Iran and whether Iran is close to having an actual fighting chance against Israel. And I genuniely think that is a pretty good barometer for who you should look at as allies for Palestine and the palestinians. I just hope that the people of Palestine sees the complete among the leadership of the arab monarchies and how they abandonned them in such a crucial moment.
I just hope that the people of Palestine sees the complete among the leadership of the arab monarchies and how they abandonned them in such a crucial moment.
if you could only understand Arab twitter, They've been cursing the monarchies since conception, only thing that changed is liking the axis of resistance more
I think if the people of Egypt were to topple the American comprador regime who currently run the government, THEN Israel’s pants-shitting would commence post-haste.
But have you considered
's opinion on the Iran question?cool analysis, however, I've been doomscrolling the Zionist Torment Propaganda Nexus for the last three hours and now feel miserable but don't want to admit that it was a total waste of time and that I lack discipline, so now I'm selling my utterly defeatist thoughts as "realist" on Twitter, because my mental state has been so irrevocably poisoned that I don't want somebody to say the word "copium" at me, because I think I'm a very serious geopolitical thinker who is able to determine the trajectory of ongoing events despite only having information provided to me via that Zionist Torment Propaganda Nexus.
(/s)
I think a decent way of thinking about this conflict is as if the whole of the Resistance is actually a "country" and each of the forces within it are "armies" commanded by "generals". Like in any war, you don't have every front at full intensity all the time. You focus on different parts as opportunities present themselves, and generals are activated correspondingly. Like, Yemen will slowly escalate its front as with a semi-blockade and long-range support, and if the pressure on Gaza starts to be too much, then Hezbollah will increase their pressure on the northern front, etc etc. This is all being coordinated and organized by a central command room, after all.
information provided to me via that Zionist Torment Propaganda Nexus.
Incredibly accurate description of US-run social media.
This is all being coordinated and organized by a central command room, after all.
Absolutely. And what people don't yet realize is that Iran, Hezbollah, and Al-Qassam have been preparing studiously the last 17 years for this moment and the eventual great war for the entirety of West Asia.
All the neocon conspiracies about Iran were actually correct all along, they were just wrong that Iran exerting this much influence and power is a bad thing. Israel isn’t wrong that they will never be able to exist in peace without destroying Iran. The thing is, they shouldn’t be able to exist, in peace or otherwise
Yeah I support the troops
شيعية شيوعية 🥺
Meanwhile, Shias are the main group fighting on behalf of the Sunnis in Gaza while Sunni nations cower in fear doing nothing and aiding the enemy
that's because shias killed all the sunnis on the planet
😭
I have so many memes for this but not for lemmyhexbeargrad
You can always post them to hexbear's main.
I appreciate it. I should explain. What I mean is that there is a fatwa against publicly spreading fitna (conflict) in the ummah. Most of the memes are "in-group".
Wahhabism should be condemned but not all Sunni are wahhabi, for instance most Palestinians are Sunni and they are most honorable. It is part of an American plot to promote this Sunni/Shia divide.
Unity is most important and memes often end up being divisive.
If only american protestants can learn from the example of the Shi'a faith.
we differ in the way we fold and unfold our hand, but we all agree on helping the poor and the weak, we have an issue with our priorities if we fight
please post the dankest muslim memes
Yk, for a long time I had a few questions in my head about Islam, I always withheld it as a religion of a revolution, a religion where the poor rose against their oppressor, the religion of the prophets who all fought against their own rich evil enemy, Pharaon Quraysh.. etc, but it always occured as weird to me that once Islam took over all these rich tyrants came in and were flexing their castles, the same religion that protected that told us to not discriminate was the one the tyrants who came here to enslave us and tax us Africans even after islam held, another thing is the lies they tell us about rich people having that money given to them by Allah but that us poor people will have better things in the Afterlife, another thing is how 'Ali's life was never mentioned in mainstream after the prophet's death, another important thing was Abu dharr, I always heard his name mentioned in modesty and his story and that he'll die alone, but they never finished the story they never tell us how he died... I never thought this was all connected, honestly thank you for this it all makes sense now.
Jazakillah this brought a smile to my face to read.
Just yesterday I was looking up the place that Abu Dharr (ra) was exiled and it turns out the Saudis actually excavated the tomb "because he was Sahaba" but there is no road to it and no markers and it is just as desolate in the desert 200km from Medina.
When The Prophet (s) said "O Abu Dhar! You will live alone, and die alone, and be resurrected alone, and enter the paradise alone." 😵
There's a hotel built on a sahhabi grave, al saud are just around mad
banger of a post 🫡