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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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

    • GucciMane [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      30·
      1 year ago

      Seriously it’s fucking nuts. I saw a post on r/judaism, which is a thoroughly zionist sub that I lurk sometimes to see what zionists are saying, about a person complaining that they didn’t feel comfortable wearing a sweater with a latke on it to a party, something really inane like that, because they were scared of antisemitism.

      Actually here is the post, just found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Judaism/s/ZkIh2l7ZsJ

      Feeling sad about showing my Judaism this holiday season

      After seeing the vile responses to quite a few Hanukkah well wishes posts on social media, I am nervous to share my Jewishness this season. We have my work holiday “ugly sweater” party tonight in our downtown area (large metro city in FL), and I don’t want to wear my ‘spinner spinner latke dinner’ sweater in fear of someone retaliating in public. It’s making me very depressed all around having to think like this.

      THERE ARE BABIES UNDER FUCKING RUBBLE, like just the sheer scale of human suffering and devestation in Gaza is so imaginable, and you’re worried about a fucking SWEATER??? what the actual fuck?? I mean don’t get me wrong it really sucks that people feel scared to express their Jewishness and America absolutely is really antisemitic, but this is really pathetic.

      • the_kid [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        I’ve really run out of sympathy for this bullshit “I don’t feel safe :(((( thing”. Palestinians are being slaughtered by the day - in the west they’re getting shot for wearing keffiyeh, people supporting Palestinians are being followed around and harrassed/sometimes assaulted by deranged white people. and I’m supposed to feel bad that this person is afraid to wear a sweater (even though nothing even happened?)

        I’m sorry but out of every single ethnic minority, being Jewish is probably the best one you can be - safest, most protected from hate, deal with the least amount of glass ceilings. you’re fine, wear your sweater.

        • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          10·
          1 year ago

          Here in Canada (emphasis is mine):

          "i stand in the middle on the israel-palestine conflict. i believe both sides are equally guilty and suffering. i can see the reactions already. i am personally not from either but i can’t deny the issue has been thrown at us at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way. for so long i’ve had issues trying to word my thoughts because people will label me different things. i decided to get active and reposted uofm’s post announcement about the antisemitic posters yesterday, and the responses i received were vastly accusing me of being an israel supporter, a zionist, a shame, uneducated and so on. i lost sleep thinking about it all. at a time i should be focusing on my finals, i can only dwell on this. what kills me is some of those replies were from people i was personally close to, people i met years ago and with whom i share many memories.

          i can’t tell why, but i feel extremely uncomfortable and panicked on campus since today.* i walked in the tunnels and came across someone draped in a shawl with the word “Free Palestine” scribbled across and i felt my chest tighten*. i spoke to a security guard recently, having noticed a greater number of security officers patrolling shared spaces, and he revealed there have been increased reports of violence on campus, which i have personally not seen, but which i have no problem believing."