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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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.
“Stop murdering thousands of children,” said the evil, crazy Nazi.
“It’s bad to murder children,” the monster added. “Children should not be slaughtered at mass scale with powerful military explosives, they should be allowed to remain alive and happy and healthy.”
What would lead someone to say something so hateful and depraved? What disgusting conspiratorial anti-semitic online rabbit holes must this freak have slithered down in his path toward radicalization to say something so profoundly evil? One can only guess.
“We should not incinerate children and blow their guts out of their bodies with bombs,” the world’s worst person continued. “Zero children should die by incineration, and their guts belong on the inside of their bodies.”
I’m just as shocked and dismayed as you are. I thought we were beyond this. I thought we as a civilization had left this kind of genocidal rhetoric behind us with the end of Nazi Germany. But, apparently, Adolf Hitler still lives on.
This fiendish enemy of all things good and righteous went on to say that all Palestinians are human beings just like everyone else, and they should accordingly be given human rights instead of exterminated like insects with some of the most sophisticated weaponry ever devised.
“I just don’t think someone having a certain ethnicity makes it acceptable to butcher them in massive numbers with modern war machinery and drive them off the land they wish to live on,” said the ghoul, adding, “I kind of think we ought to treat others how we ourselves would wish to be treated.”
Now, I’m as liberal as the next person and I absolutely support free speech, but this kind of repugnant blood libel is exactly why we need to be having some serious conversations about how far the right to free speech ought to go. We can’t have deranged fascists running around our society fomenting genocidal violence by spouting extremist rhetoric like “Don’t drop bombs on babies” and “It’s wrong to intentionally assassinate journalists.”
It makes me feel unsafe when people say such things, because I do not agree with the things they are saying. And, as we all know, the universe revolves around me and how my feelings feel. I therefore fear we have reached an unfortunate juncture in our society where we’ve no choice but to censor the internet, prohibit pro-Palestine demonstrations, ban TikTok, and make it illegal to be a Zoomer. The only alternative is to allow horrifying radicalization like what we just witnessed here to continue.
Caitlin Johnstone on twitter
Good post.
john helmer and caitlin johnstone article titles are always bangers