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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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 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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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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Your Saturday Briefing
The Eurozone remains in recession, with the composite PMI falling from 47.6 to 47 despite expectations that it would rise slightly, marking 7 consecutive month below 50, or stagnation. In the UK, the services PMI rising might stop them from technically being in a recession, but it's not looking much better for them overall either.
As Pakistan continues to deport 1.7 million Afghanis back to Afghanistan - most of who were living in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces - their absence is causing labor shortages in agriculture and mining. The lack of migrant remittances heading from Pakistan to Afghanistan will also hurt Afghanistan, which is already among the poorest countries on the planet following the US's mission to bring freedom and democracy there.
Putin has stated that the coming decade will see a massive expansion of infrastructure, especially in railroads, linking Russia to south and east Asia.
China's Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has stated that the Middle East should no longer be a geopolitical arena of great powers, after a meeting with Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is kind of a hilarious statement to make with US aircraft carriers circling it like sharks.
The ruling emir of Kuwait, Sheikh-Nawaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah, has died at the age of 86. He took power in 2020 after the old emir died, and will be succeeded by Sheik Meshal Al Ahmad Al Jaber, who is 83 years old.
China is experiencing a cold snap, leading to yellow alerts for cold temperatures. It is predicted that in northern regions, daily low or average temperatures would approach or break records. Authorities are setting up relief supplies, and roads, railways, and schools are being closed, especially after a railway accident in Beijing after a train was unable to brake in time due to icy rails and collided with another train, injuring 515 people.
Somalia has received $4.5 billion in debt relief from the IMF and World Bank due to their implementation of a poverty reduction strategy and sound macroeconomic management. Citizens seem generally pleased.
The German Defense Minister, Pistorius, told the German troops that have been kicked out of Mali that they fulfilled their mission and their achievements were not in vain, which I suppose is technically true, if the objective of the mission was to not stop rebel groups and keep the country in a state of chaos to maintain extractive industries.
Eight million Chadians will vote in a referendum for a new constitution tomorrow; the yes side seems certain to win as the government has been waging a campaign for it. The referendum is the final step towards elections promised by the military government.
Two unidentified men had sex in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in a Senate hearing room. Dudes rock.
Argentina's Presidential Spokesman has confirmed that the country is going through hyperflation, with inflation rising at 1% per day, or nearly 4000% per year. The government has simultaneously ordered protests to be made effectively illegal, promising harsh resistance in the face of any blockades.
The ruling emir of Kuwait, Sheikh-Nawaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah, has died at the age of 86. He took power in 2020 after the old emir died, and will be succeeded by Sheik Meshal Al Ahmad Al Jaber, who is 83 years old.
every dumbass khaleeji is posting about him but never posted a single thing about palestine
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