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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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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EU-China relations: European firms are reluctant to speak up on China as Brussels seeks to de-risk
As the European Union moves forward with plans to de-risk ties with China, it is encountering a familiar problem: getting businesses to go on the record with their gripes about the world’s second largest economy. Fear of retaliation from Beijing and a reluctance to air what could be highly sensitive trade secrets among competitors are combining to give officials a headache when gathering evidence to support Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s economic security strategy.
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Executives see huge risks in speaking out for fear of falling foul of opaque new anti-espionage and foreign relations laws in Beijing. Reports abound of Western companies being raided in China for flouting laws that Western business groups believe are vague and ill-explained. Nor do businesses want to put their heads above the parapet when discussing their own de-risking plans – shorthand for not having all your production and sourcing eggs in a single Chinese basket – lest it endanger their operations in China.
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Some firms that continue to bank big profits in China simply do not see the point in complying with Brussels’ efforts. As the world becomes increasingly bifurcated and supply chain risks proliferate, a common refrain among some corporate executives is: “What’s in it for us?” The chilling effect makes building legislation difficult – but not impossible. Plenty of other companies see what is coming down the road in terms of Chinese industrial overcapacity and are willing to cooperate – but often under certain circumstances.
Survey data suggests that some businesses – perhaps sensing the rocky road ahead – are not waiting around for EU legislation and are autonomously de-risking their own operations. According to a report by Deloitte and the Federation of German Industries this month, around one-fifth of 100 German multinationals plan to “friendshore” their production lines out of China and into other Asian countries. In the words of one major company’s chief executive: “We are de-risking without too much noise”.
But with persistent inflation, recessionary winds and stiff competition from American and Chinese state support, the survey also showed that few of those firms were likely to come back to Europe. “Almost half of responding companies expect the attractiveness of Germany, compared with other industrial locations, to decline from slightly to significantly over the next three years,” read the report.
Officials are attempting to assess exposure to and dependencies on potentially hostile states in four hi-tech areas: semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum computing.
These nerds still have the wunderwaffen attitude about dependency and strength. In an adversarial decoupling from China the west will need everyday commodity widgets, metal/plastic components, rare earths, batteries, water pumps, electrical infrastructure, etc. far more than AI and quantum computers. I suppose the gambit is that any big innovative win in the above 4 areas is easier to monetize, financialize and rent seek off of than things like basic materials, machinary manufacturing or more commoditized products.
The chain of technological and military supremacy into monopoly rents into financial power is being broken and all they can do is consider harsher sanctions
Permanently Deleted
It's almost always the little ankle bitters that bark the most.
They think their importance is innate, it is something fleeting and inherited
Turning capital and western governments against each other like a boss.
