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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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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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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Mauricio Macri rejected dollarization and called for a common currency with Brazil
The former president participated in an economic forum in the neighboring country where he ruled out a plan to dollarize the economy and strongly defended Javier Milei's fiscal adjustment program.
After attending Javier Milei's inauguration ceremony, former President Mauricio Macri participated in an economic forum in Sao Paulo, where he ruled out an eventual dollarization of the Argentine economy and, instead, proposed the creation of a common currency with Brazil.
According to Brazilian media, Macri took part in a meeting organized by the XP stock exchange agency and reinforced the idea of bilateralism with the neighboring country: "We have to move forward in a monetary unification. The single currency would strengthen Argentina more initially, but both countries in the long term".
Mauricio Macri discarded an eventual dollarization In this sense, the former head of state rejected the possibility of changing the monetary sign and gave the Ecuadorian model as an example. "I understand the symbolic advantages of dollarization, but Ecuador had a fiscal deficit again", he pointed out.
Regarding the application of an alternative economic policy that binds the economic destinies of the countries of the region, the founder of Pro insisted that "if Mercosur is serious, we need to have the same rules and the same currency, like the Euro zone".
"Having fiscal seriousness, there may come a time when what we talked about with (former Minister of Economy Paulo) Guedes and (former President Jair) Bolsonaro will make a lot of sense", he judged.
Mauricio Macri defended Milei's adjustment plan
On the other hand, the portal Valor Económico reported Mauricio Macri's statements on the deep fiscal adjustment postulated by Javier Milei. "We have an unprecedented opportunity in 100 years. If this man (Milei) imposes the change, we will see something unprecedented. The show is about to begin", he enthused.
On the libertarian's plan to abruptly reduce the deficit of the national State, Macri stressed that the incoming government will have to apply a "freezing of all possible public expenditures to generate balance".
Milei cannot spend more than what is coming in and that is what he is going to do in the next 90 days. And he has public acceptance for that. He said that yesterday and everyone present applauded. The common Argentinean perceived that the story that the State solves everything is a lie", he asserted.
And he continued: "He won the elections saying that he would make the adjustment, so he has the authority to make the necessary adjustments, something that was forbidden to do in Argentina. Today he himself said that the adjustment has a better image than him as president".
Following this line of argument, the former president again praised the inaugural speech of the leader of La Libertad Avanza by stating that he would not change "not even a comma". "It was perfect, especially from the liberal point of view. The ideas he defends are the ones I always defended", he identified himself.
When asked about the harsh criticism that the new president launched against his Brazilian peer Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom he had called "corrupt" and "communist", the Boca Juniors vice-presidential candidate tried to lower his tone: "He is very pragmatic, he learns fast".
This is actually an escalation. The brazilian and fernandes governments made it pretty clear they didn't want an Eurozone, but rather were studying the possibility of some sort of common currency for trade only. Macri wants to go even further, and it would be funny to see the right-wing brazilian congress be against Argentina now.