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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Teekeeus [comrade/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Facing A Navy-Wide Sailor Shortage, USS Ford Sheds 500-600 Crew

    There's a fair bit of cope towards the end of the article:

    the most likely scenario, according to long-time Navy observers in Washington DC, is that, after the Navy’s massive 20 percent miss in FY 2023 enlisted sailor recruitment goals, the Navy simply has no sailors to spare.

    An alternative scenario is that the ship has enjoyed an incredible uptick in efficiency, defying predictions based upon the USS Ford’s last six and a half years of commissioned service.

    It could be a bit of both. The Navy desperately wants to position the Ford carrier program for success, and, given that the extended deployment will delay key, high-profile testing events, shedding crew offers an immediate boost to the platform’s lifetime operational and maintenance savings, making the platform’s ragged business case far more viable.

    Unfortunately, as this article went to press, the Navy had yet to respond to a query asking if the current staffing level was a temporary transient due to recruiting problems or if it was a more permanent change, reflecting an optimized crew.

    The future size of the Ford’s crew may well be a moot point. Even if the massive cut to the USS Ford’s crew is temporary, and the Navy gradually fixes recruitment problems and increases the Ford’s compliment back to 4,600 to 4,700 sailors, this is a huge victory for the Ford-class carrier program.

    Nobody—outside of a few stalwart carrier advocates—thought the USS Ford could operate effectively with fewer than 2,391 sailors. Many Navy observers thought the carrier was understaffed. A few years ago, the Pentagon’s testing arm even worried that “recent estimates of expected combined manning of CVN 78, its air wing, embarked staffs, and detachments range from 4,656 to 4,758.” As such, the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) wondered if the crew would end up outstripping the ship’s 4,666 berths.

    This is a big deal.

    Major and rapidly implemented crew cuts usually come with serious consequences, reducing vessel endurance, readiness and survivability. It doesn’t seem to be the case right now. The USS Ford might be understaffed—or, as a platform that is at the tail end of a deployment and still working out operational kinks, it may be serving as, essentially, a billet donor to other, more battle ready aircraft carriers.

    But, rather than break down, the carrier is breaking performance records. In fact, the ship recently spent ten weeks away from port, in what appears to be the vessel’s longest uninterrupted period at sea since it was launched.

    The aircraft carrier is performing, too. According to Captain Burgess, “Since October 9th, Carrier Air Wing EIGHT has flown more than 2,500 sorties without interruption from FORD while stationed in the Mediterranean Sea.”

    While 2,500 sorties in nine weeks is still far less than the Navy’s old-school sortie generation testing goal of around 4,800 sorties over the course of thirty days, it isn’t half bad. And though USS Ford is still generating far fewer sorties than the 3383 strikes 4,104 Sailors aboard the World War II-era carrier USS Midway (CV-41) generated over the course of 42 nights of Desert Storm, USS Ford and its diminished crew are clearly holding their own.

    • JuryNullification [he/him]
      ·
      10 months ago

      Fuck here we go with “optimal manning” again. That carrier is gonna run into a cargo ship at 4 AM.

    • Flinch [he/him]
      ·
      10 months ago

      This and the rusty warships definitely bode well for the globe-spanning war they're trying to start miyazaki-laugh

      • NPa [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        WW3 is really going to be the funniest war yet.

        Predictions: Several Gerald Ford class carriers lost to a Bulgarian ransomware attack (unrelated to the war)

        Germany's brand-new top of the line Rheinmetall weapons factory in Ukraine only produces a single Leopard before it is destroyed by a DPRK kinetic orbital strike. (this makes the Americans lash out at the Germans by completely demolishing the Berlin U-Bahn. Germany blames Russia.)

        IDF TikTok battalion gets into some drama with the Ukraine Psy-op Girls and they both leak DM's. Both groups are tried in the Hague solely for their group chats.

        China never actually enters the war formally because it would be rude to Kissinger's ghost to nuke America. (Plus the war started on April 4th and that's just too many 4's)

        While no one was looking, the DPRK appropriated 40 Chaebol owned factories. That's four tens. That's terrible!

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      10 months ago

      gosh I sure hope it doesnt sink in the mediterranean lost with all hands

      • Teekeeus [comrade/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        sink in the mediterranean lost with all hands

        At the rate things are going there'll barely be any hands left on board when that happens

    • Kaplya
      ·
      10 months ago

      For comparison, Soviet/Russian Navy usually run with 1/2 - 2/3 of the complement (crew size) compared to US vessels of similar class/size because a lot of investment was put into automation since the 1950s.

      For example, the Los Angeles class attack submarine has a complement of 130 people, but its Soviet counterpart the Akula SSN can be run with a crew of only 70, even though the Soviet submarine is slightly larger than the Americans’. They have better, less cramped crew quarters and even have a recreation room, and of course, pack more firepower because of the extra space.

      • daisy
        ·
        10 months ago

        The USSR's space program is another area where heavy use of automation helped make the most of limited crew. For example, the US space shuttle required a human pilot at many key points in flights. The USSR shuttle Buran had equal capabilities but was fully automated. Sadly Buran was never used beyond testing, but there was never an in-flight failure.