Image is from this article on the excellent Canadian environmental journalism outlet, The Narwhal.
The Giant Mine just outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada is one of the country's largest recognized environmental liabilities. The mine's 100 plus year history illustrates the continuity between resource colonialism in the late 19th/early 20th century and neoliberalism at the turn of the millennium.
There were several gold rushes in northern Canada/US in the late 19th century, such as the Klondike. The Giant gold strike on was first discovered by settlers about the same time as the Klondike, but as Giant is on Great Slave Lake (named for an Anglicization of the name of local peoples, not after slavery) instead of the Pacific Ocean, it is much less accessible and didn't take off like the Klondike. Parallel with displacement of local Yellowknives Dene people https://ykdene.com/, the town of Yellowknife sprung up around small mining operations through the 30s. It wasn't until after WW2 that the mine was developed at a large scale. Starting operation in 1948, Giant was owned by a Canadian mining conglomerate through the 80s, then some Australians, and for the last ten years of its operating life, by Americans, who went bankrupt and abandoned the property in 1999. The Canadian federal government is responsible for the site and its remediation now, similar to the way the EPA has Superfund sites in the USA.
The project is infamous for poisoning the people and environment of the surrounding area through arsenic poisoning. The ore at giant is arsenopyrite, an arsenic sulphide mineral that often contains gold. Roasting it in large furnaces or kilns releases the gold as well as fine arsenic trioxide dust. The most infamous arsenic poisoning incident was in 1951 when a Yellowknives Dene toddler in died after eating contaminated snow in the fallout area, 2 kilometers from the processing mill's smokestack. Over the years, improvements to the mill reduced the amount of toxic dust released to the environment. This is better than blasting it into the air wildly, but meant that the site accumulated hundreds of thousands of tonnes of arsenic trioxide dust that they chucked in empty mine workings underground. Unfortunately, arsenic trioxide dissolves in water as easily as sugar and so represents a tremendous risk to groundwater and waterbodies nearby, like Great Slave Lake and Yellowknife's water supply.
Arsenic issues contributed to labour disputes as well. In 1991 the union workers of the plant went on strike, refusing management's demand to reduce their salary and wanting better safety measures for workers . The company brought in Pinkertons and strikebreakers, backed by RCMP thugs. The situation escalated, culminating in a bomb planted on a train track deep in the mine. When it was triggered, it killed 6 scabs and 3 Pinkertons. For the next year, the RCMP interrogated mine workers, their family and community without determining who did it, supporting the company in their refusal to sign a new contract until an arrest was made. Finally a worker named Roger Warren confessed to doing it alone and was sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2014 and died in 2017.
Since 1999, the site has been the responsibility of the Canadian federal government and is being every so gradually remediated. Operated through what are effectively private-public partnership contracts, environmental engineering companies are attempting to clean up and isolate the huge amounts of arsenic trioxide dust. The concept is move the dust into specially ventilated chambers of the underground mine, where it is frozen in place and thus prevented from leaching into groundwater. Active remediation is supposed to be finished in about 15 years at a cost of $1 billion CAD, but will surely take longer and cost more than this. Also, freezing material in place will definitely work because the climate isn't changing, and the Canadian north is definitely not seeing extreme levels of temperature rise.
After active works are complete, the site will require perpetual care.
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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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
A post on Iran's ballistic missile test conducted on November 8th 2024. If you don't want to read this long post, just watch the cool video at the end to see for yourself how the missile works.
From footage that was widely circulated on social media at the time, viewable on twitter, and xcancel, it can be concluded that Iran carried out a ballistic missile test at their Shahroud facilities, which were also hit by Israeli airstrikes during their attack on Iran in October, in which a missile casting building/warehouse was hit, which was responsible for manufacturing the casings for Iran's solid fueled Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBMs). So the facility is still operational despite the damage from the airstrikes, viewable below.
As for what missile was tested, there has been much speculation, including that of an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) test, even by Iranian member of parliament Ahmad Naderi, who also called for the testing of nuclear weapons. I doubt that, and rather think the test is being done in preparation for a future attack on Israel. As for what I believe was likely tested, my guess would be the Khorramshahr-4/Kheibar MRBM.
So what is the Khorramshahr-4 MRBM? It is part of Iran's more advanced Khoramshahr series of liquid fueled ballistic missiles, using a hypergolic (self igniting) propellant of unsymmetric dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) as the fuel, and dinitrogen tetroxide as the oxidiser. This is a significant improvement over the use of kerosene compounds as fuel, and nitric acid mixed with 27% dinitrogen tetroxide as the oxidiser, which Iran's Scud derived designs used as propellant.
The Khorramshahr-4 is a design that takes inspiration mainly from the Soviet R-27 Zyb Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM), the North Korean Hwasong-10/BM-25 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) which is a North Korean version of the R-27 Zyb, and the North Korean Hwasong-12 IRBM. The story starts with Iran purchasing and modifying a Hwasong-10 IRBM for their own use, making the motor more fuel efficient, to allow for the use of a bigger warhead on the missile with smaller fuel tanks. The Khorramshahr-4 was unveiled in 2023, with a 1500kg warhead and 2000km maximum range. This is a fairly large warhead for an IRBM. However, there is speculation that with a lighter warhead, the range could be extended well past this, form anywhere between 3700-6000km. Tests of the Hwasong-12 IRBM have shown that a range of 4500km is possible. Iran could also be understating the range to keep relations with Europe and East Asia more amicable.
So what are the positives of this weapon, when compared to the solid fueled Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan IRBMs with Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicles (MaRVs) Iran used in their attack on October 1st? The first advantage is the size of the warhead, with the Khorramshahr-4 warhead weighing three times as much as those used previously. With more explosive power, less accuracy is needed. This also enables the use of submunitions and cluster bombs in the warhead, which is a capability of the Khorramshahr-4 that Iran has already made public. The 4 meter tall warhead has plenty of space for that, as pictured below. This also means accuracy is less important, as you can hit a lot more, even if overall penetration and damage goes down. Think of it as a shotgun vs sniper rifle.
As for another advantage, the guidance systems of the Khorramshahr-4 are said to be resistant to jamming. According to Iranian officials, it makes use of a mid course phase guidance correction system that operates when the missile is exoatmospheric, so it is not reliant on guidance in the terminal phase which can be jammed, such as GPS guidance. My guess on that one would be that the Khorramshahr-4 makes use of a celestial-inertial navigation system, similar to the Galileo system used in modern French SLBMs. This involves using a camera to pick up on the position of the stars, and correct errors with the gyroscopes in the Inertial system. Navigating using the stars. A lot of older SLBMs used this, as without a fixed launch point and no GPS, it was a good way to improve accuracy. The Khorramshahr-4 is derived from the R-27 Zyb SLBM after all.
As for disadvantages, for one it's a traditional ballistic missiles, and the re-entry vehicle/warhead is not fully maneuverable, there are no aerodynamic fins to change course. This makes such a weapon easier to intercept, even with its fast speed, of Mach 16 while exoatmospheric, and Mach 8 while in the atmosphere. It's just a normal, parabolic ballistic trajectory. It won't be able to perform the skip and glide trajectories that MaRV capable missiles can.
Another disadvantage could be accuracy. The original R-27 Zyb SLBM did not need to be very accurate, it carried a 1 Megaton nuclear warhead, about 62 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It had a mean error radius of over a mile/1.6km. However, this is a problem for the conventional explosive Khorramshahr-4, and Iran has made attempts to improve the accuracy, similar to the DPRK. They have mounted four veneer rocket motors to the rear of the re-entry vehicle/warhead, similar to the Hwasong-12, to help steer and guide the warhead and improve its accuracy. Here's a video showing the operation of the veneer rocket motors. Seriously worth watching. While these can't make full manouvers, they will allow for course correction. Iran claims a sub 30m mean error radius in testing. I doubt that, and think a 100m mean error radius would actually be very good under real world conditions. Iran's attack on Nevatim had a 900m mean error radius, likely due to GNSS jamming and errors with the inertial guidance systems causing overshoots.
Overall, the missile test, Ansarallah launching Palestine-2 missiles at targets in Negev desert to probe Israeli air defenses, and the speculated use of such weapons like the Khorramshahr-4, shows that Iran is testing the waters for a potential retaliatory strike against Israel. An attack with the intent to hit more targets than the last, while still remaining efficient, and without firing thousands of missiles.