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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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
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.
twitter | nitter
absolutely incredible thing to say as the President of a country not named Israel
Zionist trying to get as many Jews as possible to move to Israel. Nothing new. That is why Netanyahu loves antisemites like Orban.
It can’t be overstated just how much Oct 7th fucked up the Zionists demographic plans. They are obsessed with getting (white) Jewish people to immigrate to Israel. They know they are in the minority compared to Arabs so they use immigration to try and build an eventual demographic majority. I saw that at least half a million Israelis have left since Oct 7 with few planning on returning. That’s many, many years worth of immigration just disappearing.
truly insane that there’s an entire country where everyone believes in the great replacement theory
It’s possible that I misunderstand the situation but I’ve been assuming that part of their plan to genocide Gazans gives them better demographics for annexing the West Bank next. i.e. if they erase 2 million Palestinians then the demographics are better for white Jewish people and it allows them to outnumber any remaining Palestinians/Arabs
Yes, that’s also part of it. Ethnically cleanse Palestinians on one end and bring in white Jewish settlers on the other.
How tf does that even make sense? Does the IOF show up when a Jewish kid in Phoenix is getting bullied on the playground? Even from a Zionist perspective, I genuinely can’t understand how Israel’s existence makes it safe for Jewish people in other countries.
Draw a damn clock, Genocide Joe.
It’s actually the kids fault that he didn’t fly to Palestine and steal someone’s house. He doesn’t deserve glorious IDF protection.
ukraine too
deleted by creator
That sounds like a threat. Dark, even for Brandon.
Gentile zionists are really telling on themselves: “Dear Jews, you’re not safe with us. We would love nothing more than to finish the job Hitler started. If you want to be safe you need to get away from us.”
Brandon is recognising the satanically racist nature of the west: If there were no “Israel”, there would be no geopolitical reason for western elites to like Jews. Instead there would be a bunch of Jewish settlers going back home to Europe, being visibly ethnic and foreign and perfect scapegoats. The west would revert to it’s traditional values of antisemitism.
(/s Just to be clear. You can’t use one racism to justify another.)
that’s a threat
Reply to someone saying that Jews should be able to feel safe and belong in the US like anyone else.
These people are deranged. You’d have to wonder why they haven’t moved to Israel yet as they are apparently expecting imminent pogroms in NY.
"When Palestine is finally free, it will SHOCK you how quickly the west remembers how to truly hate Jews. It’ll happen so fast your head will spin. And when it does, the worshippers of Zionism won’t even be able to conceptualize their own oppression. They will, of course, blame those of us who oppose empire with all we’ve got, for “giving Jews a bad name.” They will subsist on a diet of revanchism and collaboration.
The rest of us? Well, we’ll just have to remember how to fight."
https://twitter.com/BmoreOrganized/status/1732856571695096271