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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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.
The weekly update is here on the website.
Your Tuesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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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Permanently Deleted
Lame ass name for an mercenary group
They got their shit kicked in by Wagner in Syria, several of the FOG members were killed with sledgehammers. Wagner even has a patch with FOG logo getting smashed by a sledgehammer
Wagner must be the closest thing to SS divisions we have today. Absolute inhumane monsters
closest thing to SS divisions we have today
not the couple dozen actual ukrainian SS battalions? or the ukrainian guys with Dirlewanger brigade patches?
Wtf are you talking about, they were there killing FOG American Nazi mercenaries and ISIS fascist. They aren’t the bad guys. I wish all FOG mercenaries a very happy sledgehammer to the knee and then face. Plus Wagner has been eliminating Azov battalion and literal SS units in Ukraine. They have single-handedly ended more “SS units” than any westerners ever have
So you haven't seen the video
I’ve seen lots of videos of Wagner operating in Syria and killing ISIS and American mercs you are going to be more specific
The one where they kill a Syrian defector/forced conscript with a sledge hammer while laughing and gloating about it
i've seen things that could kill you
Just because they aren’t the bad guys doesn’t make them good people. Mercs are mercs and regardless of the fact they’re taking out Nazis in Ukraine and Syria, they’re still just mercs who will point their gun at whoever the Russian federation tells them to. I would 100% call out “canoeing” which western special operations do, how is this any different? It’s just assholes getting a sick kick out of being as brutal as possible in a warzone. Russia has my critical support at this time and this is one of those times to be critical.
Calling them “the closest thing we have to modern SS” while Azov and Americans are running around, while the IDF is actively engaging in genocide, is radlib absurdity. Wagner doesn’t even really exist anymore, and even when they did they were never 1/100th as close to being SS as the American fourth reich
We NEED a way to recycle The New York Times' Wagner headlines from 2022 under the guise of antifacism. Can't you just forget where we got the idea from and be chill for one fucking minute?
is this a bit?
Extremely lib take
bellingcat subscribers when the state dept tells them to line up and call russian military aid to africa worse than hitler:
I’m not gonna say they’re worse than the SS because that’s dumb, but killing guys with sledgehammers is definitely beyond the idea that war is hell. It’s actually getting pretty close to what Ukraine does which is pop knee caps and set guys on fire. I think we should remember that support for Russia at this time is CRITICAL support. Having mercs thinking it’s cool to sledge guys to death, even if they’re Americans who deserve it, should be part of that critical aspect.
The really bad part of the SS was who they were killing. Caring more about the methods used than the who is being killed and for why, etc. is lib shit. Like, sure, i think they should just shoot them. But to say they're the closest to the SS is absurd.
Nah I’m gonna disagree. There’s a reason you have standards in war and ROE. Shit like this, regardless of who it’s being done to is not good on a psychological level. These are guys who will eventually need to be reintegrated into society after their service is done and I’m pretty sure most people would not want to have guys who participated in shit like that walking the streets with them. Part of the deal with having organized military units is having the expectation that they’re going to behave with discipline and that their commanders have a duty to keep tendencies like this to a minimum or eliminate them all together.
A similar example is the mass rapes the Germans did during the invasion into the USSR. Fascists don’t care so they let it happen. When the Soviets pushed into Germany did they allow mass rapes to happen? No rapes were much less and those that got caught were arrested or executed. Why? Because you have to keep the dogs on a leash unless you want them thinking they can do whatever they want. Kinda like Wagner thought it was a good idea to turn around and march eastward until they had stare down the barrel of Chechen Ahkmat forces.
Also I never said they were the closest to the SS that was the other person.
No, that's the IOF.
Bellingcat subscriber L O C A T E D