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Bulletins and News Discussion for December 11th to December 17th, 2023 - What's Yours is Mine - COTW: Canada

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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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

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  • Breaking non-surprising news - the IDF is evil and they use Gazans as human shields. But CNN doesn't want to use "human shields" so they say: "Israeli soldiers had taken cover behind the detainees."

    Doctor says Gaza hospital staff and patients subject to harsh treatment by IDF

    A doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza told CNN on Wednesday that he and dozens of staff were taken from the premises by Israeli soldiers to a military screening center nearby.

    The doctor, who declined to be named out of fear for his safety, said in a telephone interview that men at the hospital had complied with an order from the Israel military on Tuesday to form a line outside the hospital.

    They were then led about 500 meters away to a what he called a "filtration military camp" in Al-Birawi area on the outskirts of Beit Lahiya.

    At that location, he told CNN, they were ordered to remove their clothes and were given blue overalls. They were handcuffed and sorted into groups based on their perceived threat level, the doctor claimed.

    He claimed the detainees were physically and verbally abused while handcuffed. At one point, the doctor said, when clashes broke out, Israeli soldiers had taken cover behind the detainees.

    The doctor’s claims cannot be verified. CNN has asked the Israel Defense Forces for comment on how staff, patients and others at Kamal Adwan were processed after leaving the hospital.

    The doctor said that after several hours, the detainees — numbering about 1,000 people —were released and instructed to head toward specific areas in southern Gaza.

    Gunfire injured several of the group, he said, as they walked south.

    “The IDF continues to act against Hamas strongholds in the north of Gaza, among them the area of Beit Lahia. The IDF takes all feasible precautions to mitigate harm to noncombatants, and is fighting against the Hamas terrorist organization, and not the civilians in Gaza or the medical teams operating there. This while following international law," the IDF said in a statement.

    CNN received the same response from the IDF regarding several and separate instances about their operations in Gaza.

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