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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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

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.

  • the_kid
    ·
    11 months ago

    Yemen peace plan at risk over Houthi attacks in shipping channels, says US

    There is pressure in Congress to designate the Iranian-backed Houthis – who have been embroiled in years of civil war in Yemen with Saudi-backed forces – as a foreign terrorist organisation.

    Designation would stall the start of the first phase of a three-phase peace plan that has been negotiated between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, diplomats have said.

    If the Houthis were designated a terrorist group, diplomats say, money that was due to be put into banks for the payment of civil servant salaries, a key Houthi demand for the first phase of the peace plan, would be blocked. Similarly the planned opening of any seaports or airports would not be be possible, so keeping the Yemen economy in ruins.

    US diplomats are clearly hoping that warnings to the Houthis that they are recklessly and dangerously jeopardising the painstakingly negotiated chance to end Yemen’s nine-year civil war will persuade the group’s fighters to desist from the attacks on maritime shipping.

    The warning to the Houthis shows the price the US is willing to pay to support Israel’s plan to eradicate the Hamas leadership.

    ...

    Western officials say there is no hidden agenda to scupper the three-stage peace plan, just a recognition that it may be politically impossible to stem the growing demands in the US Senate to designate the Houthis as terrorists as these attacks continue.

    • carpoftruth [any, any]M
      ·
      11 months ago

      Archive link to the article https://archive.is/5RvfZ

      The French defence ministry said on Tuesday that the French frigate Languedoc intercepted and destroyed a drone that was threatening the Norwegian oil tanker Strinda in a complex aerial attack originating from Yemen on Monday evening.

      The attack caused a fire onboard the tanker, which was sailing under the Norwegian flag, the ministry said.

      If an attack drone was destroyed but still caused a fire then maybe it actually wasn't destroyed

      • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        If an attack drone was destroyed but still caused a fire then maybe it actually wasn't destroyed

        It was destroyed it was not intercepted.

    • newerAccountWhoDis [they/them]
      ·
      11 months ago

      price the US is willing to pay

      https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Gm2x6CVIXiE (I swear we had an emote for that)