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!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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.
@[email protected] is hosting the news megathread this week while I’m busy irl!
Make sure to head to the US electoral containment thread for everything to do with the election on a domestic level, as we don’t want too much US-centric news to flood this thread. Discussion of Harris’ or Trump’s potential geopolitical impacts is still perfectly fine here.
on a domestic level
Thought we were an internationalist forum?
Yeah but most of us are from
so I think it’s that we aspire to being an internationalist forum but we also acknowledge the reality that most of our users are from the imperial core and that this election will affect the whole world
Most tolerable thread ever thank you
we don’t want too much US-centric news to flood this thread.
S-Tier moderating decision
while I’m busy irl!
No relation whatsoever to what is going to happen in Tel Aviv next thursday
deleted by creator
Have fun storming the castle!
Here is another iconic imageHonestly, the cry bully fascism of the Israelis it’s just infuriating at this point. How can anyone say that with a straight face.
Hahahahahahahahhahagaga
fucking incredible
Following recent electoral developments in Burgerland, Euro libs are shitting and pissing themselves over how the Ukraine war will proceed.
Michael Aastrup Jensen, Liberal Party chair of the foreign policy committee of the f Danish Parliament has reacted to said electoral developments by posting the following on X, the everything app (formerly Twitter):
The EU and the rest of NATO must make sure to shoulder the necessary responsibility, for this war must not be lost. This is really a fateful hour for it the EU can put action behind the pretty words about unity.
His Estonian counterpart Marko Mikhelson is equally salty and has posted:
Good morning Europe! Be ready to fight for yourself and your friends
He goes on to write that NATO’s “hardest years are ahead of us” and that Europe should do everything it can to maintain the pro-American alliance.
Seeing their tears already makes me happy.
Zelensky is about to have an awful morning.Been hearing that a Trump victory is particularly bad for Brazil. How true is this?
probably because he is friends with bolsonaro and he may used that to get back at lula
In researching after a thread with comrade Miz, I stumbled across this horrifying story that was published only a few weeks ago. Article
Haji Naseem, an Afghan father and husband was kidnapped by the Americans in 2007 and taken to Bagram and then Guantanamo Bay. He was then systematically tortured and broken down under the premise that he was an “Al Qaeda emir” when in fact the only evidence they had against him was that at one point he was coerced into letting al qaeda stay in his home for some nights.
In 2011 he died in his cell and the military ruled it a suicide.
Hajj Naseem is one of a string of these “mysterious deaths” at the US torture camp in Cuba. The whole article is quite long and gives an in-depth look into the practices at Guantanamo without focusing excessively on the details of torture.
When you see what the zionists do to Palestinians, remember that they learned that from the Americans who have never faced any accountability for over a century of perfecting and exporting professional torture.
This really disturbed me while reading about internationally acclaimed alt media darling John Kiriakou, his “whistleblowing” laundered the CIA story about Abu Zubaydah being an effective interrogation (also lied about even being present for it, which he was not, although his service record does indicate he was working in facilities that did torture people at other times). I don’t entirely understand the purpose of torture but it is seems to be mostly about making people insane and intimidation
John Kiriakou, his “whistleblowing” laundered the CIA story about Abu Zubaydah being an effective interrogation
👀 another slimy American phony anti-war personality??? Say more ✍️
I don’t entirely understand the purpose of torture but it is seems to be mostly about making people insane
This same author actually outlines one of the most important components of US torture doctrine which is linked to MKULTRA and originated when the US brainwashed thousands of its own soldiers returning from Korea into believing that they didn’t use chemical and biological weapons. It’s a meticulously cited article.
One of the things about US torture is that it is basically a way of rewriting people’s personalities so that the imperialists can turn them into whatever they want. Nobody talks about it but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who led ISIS until 2019 was a prisoner in the US torture camps in Iraq alongside a lot of others who would end up being leaders in the zionist-American proxy army known as ISIS. They basically molded these people into monsters and then used the camps to allow them to network and spread this new monstrous ideology implanted into them by the CIA.
This is similar to a book I read awhile back about how the CIA experimented on African American prisoners with similar techniques. The name of the book is escaping me right now.
What the zionists are doing today is not that though. Their torture is meant to be broadcasted and publicized as a “pressure tool” against the resistance and the mass base. To get them to accept surrender because the conditions are so incomprehensible for the prisoners. And to break down the Arab masses after the heroic victory of Oct 7th.
The name of the book is escaping me right now.
The book is called Revolution’s End by Brad Schreiber. It also discusses somewhat the PHOENIX program too which is another huge part of this whole nightmare history. Truly evil stuff.
Thanks will give that a read soon
Yes we can off the top of our heads point to two of the most important antiwar figures on the left today as former interrogators. Don’t want to be too “sectarian”. Will say more later, I plan to stick around.
Kaye’s writing about the brainwashing myth being used to justify torture research is really eye opening. I think that history is critical for understanding a lot of the seemingly crazy and esoteric disinformation (with its New Age Hitlerian overtones) circulating today. A lot of the MKULTRA mythos covers up what you know about torture and chemical or biological weapons. Many stories about veterans or active duty members of the US military being driven to psychosis, in some cases over fake aliens, losing it and pulverizing a baby, US forces draining civilians in the Philippines of blood to imitate vampires, and now yet more fake air force UFO sightings, seemingly disconnected bizarro events, to me they point to ambitions of full management of pilots in combat via delusions and simulation. (Possibly convincing foreign rivals that the USA has access to real thought reprogramming technology to create sleeper agents - to make the analogy I’m making to imitating vampires more clear.) That’s probably an unrealized dream for the US but to ground this a bit, they could have just lied to the pilots who fired missiles at Iran from well outside their airspace that all of the air defense failed and Iran is just propagandizing. That is a mundane way of accomplishing one of those goals.
This was all basically accomplished anyways with HUMINT and control of the distribution of ideas. I don’t think these megalomaniacs would ever be satisfied though. They were putting brain implants in dogs and now they’re openly defiling monkeys.
Anyways, my ramblings aside, I do have a lot to say about the antiwar left, and it’s not this kind of vibes-based speculation, but I will format it properly and not ramble about it. Another IOU, as I already told someone here I would try to package my thoughts on the Myanmar conflict and how the US is using Thailand to set up a new intelligence center.
Waiting for the :jesse-wtf: now T plus one, two, three,
I need one of these for my Camry
Has this been reported yet? Hadn’t seen this on hexbear yet
Benjamin Netanyahu has fired Israel’s defence minster Yoav Gallant
Some combat footage and news from Gaza and Kursk.
Palestinian resistance forces have conducted many operations targeting Zionist invaders in northern Gaza over the past 48 hours (at least two Merkava tanks destroyed): https://thecradle.co/articles/qassam-brigades-kill-israeli-troops-at-zero-distance-in-besieged-north-gaza
Russian forces conducted missile strikes on a Kiev regime troop concentration in Sumy oblast, near the Kursk border (destroying some US-built “Bradley” infantry fighting vehicles, among other things): https://news-pravda.com/uk/2024/11/04/825569.html
A Russian FPV drone struck another US-built “Bradley” infantry fighting vehicle in Kursk oblast: https://news-pravda.com/ukraine/2024/11/05/827826.html
Israeli tourist arrested for racially insulting a worker on Boipeba Island, Brazil. The tourist called the porter a “monkey” and was arrested by the Military Police on Tuesday.
An Israeli tourist was arrested on Tuesday (05) on the island of Boipeba for racially insulting a local worker. According to initial reports, the foreigner had offended a man carrying suitcases on the island by calling him a “monkey”, which caused outrage among the people present. Military police officers were called and took the tourist to Boipeba police station, where he will be charged with the crime.
Racial insult has been considered a non-bailable and imprescriptible crime in Brazil since January 2023, when President Lula sanctioned new legislation equating racial insult with the crime of racism. The penalty for racial insult ranges from two to five years in prison and includes a fine. According to the legislation, any action that causes embarrassment, humiliation or undue exposure on the grounds of color, ethnicity, religion or origin is characterized as racial insult, especially when the discriminatory treatment is not meted out to other groups.
They come to South America (Specially Bolivia and Peru), commit crimes and are surprised when local police or population arrest/attack them.
The worst tourist, right after the British, the French, the Australians etc
Go directly to Lulag. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200 Real.
Apparently the IDF had to delay their initial ground invasion into Gaza because some random guy was in their control center for all the planning
Source (Hebrew)
Shhh don’t tell them about B
I don’t believe this. To me it sounds like they are trying to blame their shitty results on a goofy mistake in security instead of systemic incompetence. “oops we let a silly man in the office” is far less damning than “All out strategists and tacticians are absolute fools who couldn’t organize a fuck in a brothel.”
DPRK Foreign Minister Meets Russian President
Pyongyang, November 6 (KCNA) – DPRK Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui on an official visit to the Russian Federation met with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation, in Kremlin, Moscow on Nov. 4.
Choe Son Hui courteously conveyed warm comradely greetings of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un to Vladimir Putin.
Putin asked her to convey his warm greetings to Kim Jong Un.
They had a good talk over many undertakings for steadily developing the relations between the two countries and reaffirmed the will to further consolidate the DPRK-Russia friendship on a track of new comprehensive development. -0-
www.kcna.kp (2024.11.06.)http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/ca4322368cd7e4580fed1d67fc3b74ae.kcmsf
https://xcancel.com/cheriblossom__/status/1853903459277516942
The Chief of the Air Force is stuck in the streets of Tel Aviv due to large protests and street blockades
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fu571ehtsjzyd1.jpeg
(Image uploads don’t seem to be working, sorry for reddit link)
This is the first official picture of China’s J-35A stealth fighter (previously known as FC-31), from the Zhuhai airshow.
It was originally built for export, then the navy decided they wanted a version for aircraft carriers, and now the air force looks like they will adopt it as well.
It has a more focused design than its US-made counterpart, the F-35, which will likely mean it’s better at its job and cheaper/easier to build in large quantities.
Looks almost exactly like an F-35, made with alleged stolen data from the F-35 programme.
China calls it the J-35
The last Kufiya factory in Palestine (west bank), Hirbawi, sells Kufiyas on kufiya.org again. So if you want one and simultaneously support Palestinians you can order them there
