this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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Bulletins and News Discussion from November 4th to November 10th, 2024 - This is a Giant Problem
(hexbear.net)
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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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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.
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Rumours of the Trump proposal for ceasefire in Ukraine are being thrown around. Some highlights:
This actually seems like a ceasefire agreement that Russia might agree to? Or at least a start to negotiations. We'll see what happens but if this is the attitude Trump is going to take with negotiations he might actually be able to deliver relatively quickly. Obviously the EU and Ukraine will not like these terms, but they're vassal states for a reason.
Per the WSJ
If Putin is smart he won't agree to it and make Trump budge for further concessions.
This is basically Minsk 3 and it's transparently just an attempt to rearm and try again.
Yeah agreed, I don't think in its current form Russia would agree, but it does provide a framework that can be negotiated from to actually get to a position of what Russia wants.
i don't even think this would have flown in early 2022 - even the istanbul draft text was less favoured to ukraine in some ways. I don't see how this would fly after 2.5 more years of russian strength/ukrainian weakness/western duplicity
Russia probably wants all its gold back. While bad, this deal would basically fuck all European governments so why not.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that. They're still funding Ukraine via the interest on that giant horde, too. Insanity.
Did the interest on Russian assets deal ever go through? I though they were still batting it around.
Per https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/united-states-america/eu-assistance-ukraine-us-dollars_en?s=253
Russia has probably written off all the assets the Europeans stole from them. I don't think they're ever getting those back regardless how the war ends, but it doesn't matter because they can seize western assets in Russia and more than make up for their losses. They have already partially begun doing this.
If they get their gold back, they can seize european stuff anyway as compensation for Nordstream and the stolen interest. I fully expect Russia to take the capitalist route here.
ridiculous cope on the part of WSJ and anyone who believes this.
the russian invasion was predicated specifically on demilitarization and prevention of ukraine from joining NATO. russia is wiping the floor with ukraine - why would they accept continued massive influx of american arms into ukraine as well as polish/german/uk/french troops in the "demilitarized zone"?
That would be the point of contention, yeah. I suspect the actual negotiations (if Russia was willing to entertain them) would eventually end up with Ukrainian neutrality.
That sounds like a tacit defeat for Russia to me. I don't think Putin will accept that.
Russia's main goal is to prevent a fascist, Russophobic, heavily-armed NATO member on its borders, which is why they were willing to pull out in 2022 for a guarantee that Ukraine would remain neutral. Territory isn't really that important.
I'm reminded of the quote: "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years."
Putin would be stupid to take any deal that results in a Ukraine in NATO at any point in the future, or one that allows Ukraine to receive NATO weaponry, but the demilitarized zone does seem to be a nod to one of Putin's demands, which is something. I wonder if this is how far Trump is willing to go, or if this is intentionally starting at unreasonable so it can be negotiated downwards to something that both sides can tolerate.
I feel like something that both sides could live with is:
Russia keeps the current 4 oblasts (all of them, including the portions of Zaporozhye and Kherson that Russia hasn't yet taken) and also gets Kharkiv and maybe one or two others, there's a demilitarized zone which is proportional to Western artillery range, Ukraine will never join NATO, Russian officials are allowed access to the Ukrainian border and key military sites alongside Western officials to ensure that there is no funny business with funnelling weapons in.
In exchange, Ukraine can join the EU, Ukraine west of the Dniper is kept pretty much intact and they can keep Kiev, and Russia has to rebuild their portion of conquered Ukraine, not discriminate or take reprisals out on the Ukrainians living there and allow them to leave west if they desire.
Russia can sell this as a victory quite easily because it fulfils Russia's war aims, NATO can say that they won because they stopped the evil dictator tyrant Putler from taking all of Ukraine. Low level conflict will of course continue as NATO creates terrorist cells to infiltrate Russia and deal damage to them and some of NATO's factories might find themselves mysteriously torched every now and then in retribution, but this is inevitable no matter how the war ends. If Russia takes all of Ukraine, it would still occur. But the Ukraine War would be over and the daily casualties would plummet.
I have to imagine it's the latter. Trump is the deals guy, he knows how negotiation is supposed to go if nothing else. He loves dealmaking just for the love of the game, even he's not stupid enough to start with his best offer.
It is a starting point for negotiations, certainly better than the delusional maximalism of Genocide Joe, but there is a long way to go before it would be acceptable to Russia.
It fails to address Russian security concerns and it would essentially mean NATO rearming Ukraine to be a threat to Russia again. I think we need to see something more like Ukrainian neutrality before Russia could accept it.
Certainly, but can Ukraine even be armed up again for a war in the near future? Do they even have enough men left for a small army?
There is no chance in Hell Russia agrees to let the West continue to arm Ukraine.
Trump’s plan would have been acceptable in 2022.
If I was Putin there's no way I would settle for something like this immediately out of the gate.
I would at least try to wait for materiel to dry up and take easy territory gains requiring minimal cost in terms of money, resources, personnel.
Why settle for your demands of the old status quo when the new one benefits you even more?
They would NOT accept this. They've made it clear what they want. Neutral status for Ukraine and denazification (elimination of banderism). The media doesn't report this but Ukraine attempts terrorism in Russia on at least a bi-weekly basis. All those Tajikstan terrorists were/are directed either by the SBU or CIA.
The DPRK deal is a sign Russia is confident they can go on this war for the long term, including the fact they're potentialy agreeing to pivoting to Asia if necessary it would be stupid then to compromise on a war they're massively winning right now.
Also keep in mind there are people further right from Putin that would seriously threaten the government if they fumble this war.
But Putin taking some shitty deal right now is definitely going to be the wrong move that puts his own credibility on the line, you can't talk about "denazification" or even dog whistle about conquest and then turn around and take this sort of compromise, not right now anyway.
The whole point of the SMO was to stop and undo the militarization of Ukraine by NATO. Allowing Ukraine to rearm would defeat the entire purpose. I won't pretend to know what the Kremlin is thinking and whether or not they will after all end up conceding on this, but at least in all their public statements they continually repeat that the goals remain unchanged - demilitarization, de-nazification and no NATO - and all the goals will be achieved. The West still thinks that Russia isn't serious about any of those points. Time will tell.