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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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.
Your Saturday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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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Rest of the tweet thread
Through a seemingly innocuous change to the definition of “electronic service communications provider,” the bill vastly expands the universe of U.S. businesses that can be conscripted to aid the government in conducting surveillance.
Under current law, the government can compel companies that have direct access to communications, such as phone, email, and text messaging service providers, to assist in Section 702 surveillance by turning over the communications of Section 702 targets.
Under Section 504 of the House intelligence committee’s bill, any entity that has access to equipment on which communications may be transmitted or stored, such as an ordinary router, is fair game. What does that mean in practice? It’s simple…
Hotels, libraries, coffee shops, and other places that offer wifi to their customers could be forced to serve as surrogate spies. They could be required to configure their systems to ensure that they can provide the government access to entire streams of communications.
Even a repair person who comes to fix the wifi in your home would meet the revised definition: that person is an “employee” of a “service provider” who has “access” to “equipment” (your router) on which communications are transmitted.
The bill’s sponsors deny that Section 504 is intended to sweep so broadly. What is the provision intended to do, and how is the government planning to use it? Sorry, that’s classified.
At the end of the day, though, the government’s claimed intent matters little. What matters is what the provision, on its face, actually allows—because as we all know by now, the government will interpret and apply the law as broadly as it can get away with.
At the end of the day, though, the government’s claimed intent matters little. What matters is what the provision, on its face, actually allows—because as we all know by now, the government will interpret and apply the law as broadly as it can get away with.
This isn’t a minor or theoretical concern. One of the FISA Court amici posted a blog to warn Americans about this provision. I can’t overstate how unusual it is for FISA Court amici to take to the airwaves in this manner. We’d be foolish to ignore it. 9/11 https://www.zwillgen.com/law-enforcement/fisa-reform-bill-702-surveillance/
If you don't want to have to worry that the NSA is tapping into communications at the hotel where you're staying, tell your House representative to vote NO on the House intelligence bill this week. More on the many flaws with that bill here: 10/11 https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/fisa-reform-and-reauthorization-act-biggest-expansion-government
Instead, they should vote for the Protect Liberty & End Warrantless Surveillance Act, a bill passed by the House Judiciary Committee on a 35-2 vote that would reauthorize Sec. 702 with strong reforms to protect Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. 11/11 https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/house-judiciary-committee-applauds-bipartisan-passage-hr-6570-protect-liberty
Even a repair person who comes to fix the wifi in your home would meet the revised definition: that person is an “employee” of a “service provider” who has “access” to “equipment” (your router) on which communications are transmitted.
Libraries and hotels are smalltime. They are going to use this on "public" institutions like universities, as well as data centers, cloud providers, and colocation facilities where websites like this one are hosted (though this one isn't hosted in the US).
:snowden: