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.
I understand everyone is excited that chairman 72T isn’t home but that’s no reason to track american electoralism all over this thread
take it to the containment thread or c/electoralism . you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here
Edit: I’ve been informed that a second ban has hit the containment thread and it is now closed. I have also been requested by 1% of the hexbear electorate to maintain the red terror on low effort electoralism posts.
For the rest of the week, high effort electoralism posts are allowed but low effort posting will be deleted and you will never reach Valhalla.
Even though it’s closed now, removing low effort posts about the election is still funny and good.
The thread is locked, can we post election cringe here again now?
See the edit. Choose wisely - avoid electoralism altogether, pull yourself up by your post-straps with high effort electoralism or be banished to the shadowlands
Our mods are on a killing spree! Look at the electoralism crushed under their hammer and the low effort top level posts fall at the swing of their sickles!
Lol
19
Should probably pin the electoralism thread on the main page
Yeah would be nice. Though the stickies are really growing rapidly lol.
I want to apologise for breaking this rule
I did too and deleted my own post on reflection
This hot dude threw one of the Israeli hooligan fascists in the river. Happy he’s on our side, we need more hot dudes with winner energy.
Push zionists from the river into the sea
I hope the cops can’t get him
Damn who is he???
Our gigachad is still being based as hell
Wake up, new
banger
Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first Jewish president: “I’d like to thank Jesus for accompanying me.” The co-chair of @DemMaj4Israel tried to smear the incoming Mexican president by implying she isn’t Jewish enough. He said she even “thanked Jesus for her victory.” There was just one catch. She was thanking her HUSBAND, whose NAME is Jesús María Tarriba.
Was just driving down the street and a couple folks probably mid 20s were at the corner of a stoplight, one holding a big Palestinian flag, going to rally I’m about to swing by. These two probably like mid 50s liberals ride by them on those very expensive $5000 low to the ground seated bicycle things, one of them says “oh ok, well it’s not over yet, you should have voted Kamala!” In the most rich, condescending, sneering liberal way. It encapsulated so much in just a single moment
https://x.com/WVanwagenen/status/1855366838437150767
YNet says Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir are waiting for the hostages to die. The issue of the hostages in Gaza will be solved ‘naturally and tragically.’
They will then use these deaths as further pretext to permanently occupy and establish Jewish settlements in Gaza, YNet says.
Netanyahu’s cabinet has always wanted the hostages dead after the plan to kill them all with helicopters before they reached Gaza on 7 October was not entirely successful.
The re-election of Donald Trump is a decisive rejection of liberalism, writes Francis Fukuyama:
https://www.ft.com/content/f4dbc0df-ab0d-431e-9886-44acd4236922
What’s the best paywall bypass nowadays? Ft does that shit thing where it loads once and then forces a paywall if you reload or whateverthanks, now I can add this wild quote:The second distortion was the rise of identity politics or what one might call “woke liberalism”, in which progressive concern for the working class was replaced by targeted protections for a narrower set of marginalised groups: racial minorities, immigrants, sexual minorities and the like. State power was increasingly used not in the service of impartial justice, but rather to promote specific social outcomes for these groups.
Does capital cynically employ identity politics as a veil? No, the state is woke now.
More lib surrender news, seems like SNL has wisely chosen the path of least resistance. And by least resistance, I mean “let’s not talk about politics, let’s be a little more racist, please don’t murder us” material.
The decision to include the Gaza genocide in the list followed Wikipedia’s formal Request for Comment process, which began in July. Editors supporting the inclusion argued that it met the page’s criteria of events “classified by significant scholarship” as genocide. They also pointed out that the Gaza situation had stronger scholarly consensus than some existing entries on the list, such as the Darfur and Rohingya genocides.
Even
pedia has agreed that it is genocide, in case any libs in your life still have doubts they love Wikipedia don’t they?Libs: The evil muslamics controlling the world have also got to Wikipedia!
I have found evidence of attacks plans on Israelis in Amsterdam
I’ve seen people suggest that the failed zionist hooligan riot in Amsterdam was not just horrible people being horrible but was a deliberate false flag operation carried out by the illegal zionist entity. What do people in this site think about that theory? Some points made in support of the theory:
- Prior news reports stated that operatives of the terrorist organisation Mossad would be sent to Amsterdam to protect the hooligans
- The incidents happened on the anniversary of the Kristallnacht, the best time for this to happen from the viewpoint of zionist propagandists
- Amsterdam’s green party mayor has a history of being more permissive towards anti-genocide and pro-liberation protests than the zionist entity and the far-right Duty regime likes. The entity is petty enough to ger her blamed for “antisemitic pogroms” as revenge.
- The western consent manufacturing machine was in full swing right away, with every mainstream media outlet and professional opinion-haver parroting the same lines about “antisemitic” violence.
Against this theory speaks:
- Zionist hooligans are this horrible.
- Nobody could have predicted that the locals would defend themselves this decisively. There would have been no media outrage if the hooligans had just done their racist violence unopposed.
- The zionist entity does not control scheduling of European football matches, UEFA does. Although UEFA is corrupt and liberal I somehow feel that the idea of the terrorist organisation Mossad dictating the match schedule to be too conspiratorial to seem plausible.
- Western liberals do not need a conspiracy to be racist against Arabs and assume the worst about their intentions. They will uncritically believe any zionist claim of “antisemitism” as they have done every time until now.
https://tankie.tube/w/uMKWioFdcD9wNbG2hnKQY2
Hezbollah released a video comparing Israeli advances in past conflicts — reaching Beirut in 7 days in 1982 and Wadi al-Hujeir in 33 days in 2006 — with the current situation, where after 40 days, Israeli forces are still fighting on the outskirts of the border villages.
It may be too early to tell, but there appears to be a massive grassroots social media backlash against liberals developing, in response to the last four days of unrestrained racism and blame shifting
The liberal left hand doesn’t seem to know what it’s right hand is doing, one faction of liberals want to primarily blame Arabs/Muslims, another wants to go after Black men, others think posting pro-deportation posts in somehow gonna result in sympathy for their politics
The end result seems to be a lot of rightly pissed off POCs and racist republicans and democrats using this as an opportunity to launder their racism, straight up this could have a snowball effect that permanently sees the democratic base fall apart
Racism isn’t one of those bigotries you can just dip in and then dip back out, in 4 years these racist liberal posts are gonna be plastered everywhere and in the meanwhile the resentment is gonna solidify
