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to halt new mining approvals, and announced a public referendum on whether the contract with First Quantum should be repealed.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

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.

1.3K comments

  • Being in Taiwan has made me just stop using Reddit altogether. Hard to use that site and see Sinophobic bullshit on anything featuring Asian people. The amount of salivating over a war with China over Taiwan is disturbing too. The people posting that garbage disgust me with how they're willing to sacrifice millions of Taiwanese trying to live a life like they do.

    This megathread gives me better updates on global events from a leftist perspective than anywhere else I've looked with conversations surrounding those events being more informative than anywhere else on Reddit.

  • My son was crying. I asked what was wrong. He told me he heard about the referendum today and he was sad because he didnt want Biden to ever stop being president. I told him the referendum is about the chilean constitution and he immediately cheered up. He just turned 38.

  • “Stop murdering thousands of children,” said the evil, crazy Nazi.

    “It’s bad to murder children,” the monster added. “Children should not be slaughtered at mass scale with powerful military explosives, they should be allowed to remain alive and happy and healthy.”

    What would lead someone to say something so hateful and depraved? What disgusting conspiratorial anti-semitic online rabbit holes must this freak have slithered down in his path toward radicalization to say something so profoundly evil? One can only guess.

    “We should not incinerate children and blow their guts out of their bodies with bombs,” the world’s worst person continued. “Zero children should die by incineration, and their guts belong on the inside of their bodies.”

    I’m just as shocked and dismayed as you are. I thought we were beyond this. I thought we as a civilization had left this kind of genocidal rhetoric behind us with the end of Nazi Germany. But, apparently, Adolf Hitler still lives on.

    This fiendish enemy of all things good and righteous went on to say that all Palestinians are human beings just like everyone else, and they should accordingly be given human rights instead of exterminated like insects with some of the most sophisticated weaponry ever devised.

    “I just don’t think someone having a certain ethnicity makes it acceptable to butcher them in massive numbers with modern war machinery and drive them off the land they wish to live on,” said the ghoul, adding, “I kind of think we ought to treat others how we ourselves would wish to be treated.”

    Now, I’m as liberal as the next person and I absolutely support free speech, but this kind of repugnant blood libel is exactly why we need to be having some serious conversations about how far the right to free speech ought to go. We can’t have deranged fascists running around our society fomenting genocidal violence by spouting extremist rhetoric like “Don’t drop bombs on babies” and “It’s wrong to intentionally assassinate journalists.”

    It makes me feel unsafe when people say such things, because I do not agree with the things they are saying. And, as we all know, the universe revolves around me and how my feelings feel. I therefore fear we have reached an unfortunate juncture in our society where we’ve no choice but to censor the internet, prohibit pro-Palestine demonstrations, ban TikTok, and make it illegal to be a Zoomer. The only alternative is to allow horrifying radicalization like what we just witnessed here to continue.

    Caitlin Johnstone on twitter

  • Your average German antifascist Magazine:

    Dear readers,
    One wall, two posters: In Hamburg, unknown people at Rote Flora changed the clear statement against Hamas into a statement of solidarity with Palestinians. It should no longer be written on the wall that the killing of Jewish people in Israel and around the world is not a liberation struggle. Anti-imperialist movements have been criticized for years for uncritical solidarity. The occupied cultural center in the Schanzenviertel has not changed its position. “Free the world from Hamas” is now hanging there. This demand reflects that Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organization. On October 7th of this year, the Islamists, who have controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, confirmed that they were, above all, carrying out terrorism by targeting civilians, murdering the defenseless, executing babies and children, raping women and displaying the dead. That day, Hamas hoped to murder as many Jewish people as possible. They killed people true to their fundamentalist Islamism. On that one On that day, Hamas didn't just take over 250 people hostage by kidnapping them from Israel. They also took hostage the approximately two million people in Gaza, who serve as human shields alive and as propaganda material when dead. Propaganda and contempt also seems to come from parts of the Israeli government post October 7th that articulated scenarios, such as the relocation of all Gazans to the Sinai or the use of nuclear weapons.

    With all justified compassion for the civilians in Gaza: If you are a leftist, you do not demonstrate with reactionaries, if you are a feminist, you do not show solidarity with the rapists and murderers of Hamas who are close to the Iranian regime. If you are an anti-fascist, you stand with the Jews and against anti-Semitism, especially in Germany. Any secret joy for the organization driven by religious fanaticism is no less an anti-Semitic reaction. The criticism of parts of the migrant communities and the left-wing solidarity spectrum because of anti-Israel positions and/or anti-Semitic sentiments is not new. It has been expressed for years and often comes from the respective milieu. In the current discourse, some politicians and journalists are now taking a harsh tone against migrants and “the” left. And they suggest that the entire migrant left and all migrants living here stand in unison against Israel. A generalization that also applies to other leftists. The fact that the German section of Fridays for Future is quickly drowned out when it spoke out clearly against one-sided “Free Gaza” solidarity. It is even more quickly drowned out that anti-Semitism is not just virulent in majority society, but omnipresent. But let's not talk about the Aiwangers and Walsers of this society. Let us also not remind you that the German fraternity decided to exclude Jews at the Würzburg Burschentag in 1822. Let's better forget that "Death (...) is a master from Germany". Anti-Semites are always the others - especially the strangers, the immigrants.

    Your editorial team
    MAGAZINE #derrechterand 205/2023 3

    Just got this in the mail and immediately cancelled my subscription.
    Like literally reproducing every Israeli propaganda talking point that has been debunked already and calling yourself leftists, all the while scolding every actual leftist that is not a Israeli lapdog. Infuriating.

    German original

    The cover - it translates to "Against all antisemitism - without question!"

  • It is a good time for reminder that the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran has been consistently the most principled supporter of Palestinians and has always rejected normalization with the zionist entity and has always held the correct principled position that the United States is the source of all imperialist violence today and must be forcibly removed from hegemonic power.

    The Iranians have paid dearly for this correct and uncompromising position, including the millions who died as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's aggression in the 1980's. Saddam's Baathist government was backed by both the USSR and the US in this endeavor to destroy the revolution remember. They have lost many lives due to crushing sanctions. And yet they have not wavered. Aid to the resistance in Palestine is part of their annual national budget and written into the constitution.

    Many many people from Talal Naji the Secretary General of PFLP-GC to Palestinian martyr Nizar Banat to Secretary General of Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq Seyyed Hashim al Haidari have emphasized this point that to be an enemy of Iran is to be an enemy of Palestine.

    Those rockets and UAV killing American occupiers in Iraq? Iran helped design and manufacture those.

    The drones striking the cancerous entity from Yemen? Iran helped design those and transferred manufacturing technologies.

    The tunnels in Gaza that the Resistance is using to deliver "new flavors of death" to the occupiers? Hajj Qassem Soleimani helped design those.

    The guns in the West Bank wielded by Palestinian heroes in defense of their homeland? Iran paid for those.

    The 100,000 precision missiles in Hezbollah arsenal that has the occupiers and the Americans shitting themselves in fear? You already know...

    Palestine is not alone, it has never been alone, and the only people saying that it is alone are irrelevant defeatists and anti-Iran and anti-Resistance.

  • Erdogan seeing Ukraine and fucking Moldova getting into the EU before Turkey while being in a worse position than Turkey economically and diplomatically.

  • IOF soldier steals makeup from Gaza and gives it to his wife on Facebook. Commenter tells her to delete the post to not tarnish the IOF reputation (lol).

    (I have to mention but WHO steals fucking makeup that is probably used. Insanity.)

  • Maersk has announced that it is temporarily suspending flights to Israel due to the threat of attacks from Houthi drones and anti-ship missiles. The United States and Israel cannot do anything about the fact that the Houthis are actually increasing the naval blockade of Israel from the Red Sea and causing huge losses to the Israeli economy.

  • This thread is about the forced conscription of a Gazan civilian to act as a suicide bomber on behalf of the IDF. I edited it to improve the layout.

    Thread by @MouinRabbani on Thread Reader App

    THREAD: The following translation of a witness statement from the Gaza Strip was produced by a volunteer with the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate. It is provided here because it is an account that according to the translator "we find to be highly credible". I am not in a position to verify it, but would suggest that doing so is an urgent task for those who claim to oppose human shields and suicide bombings, and demonstrate they are acting in support of a principle rather than of a state.

    Translation [Brackets indicate the translator's clarifications, I have made no corrections]

    Prior to our apprehension within Majda Wasila School, located near Palestine Mosque in the western sector of Gaza City. [When this incident occurred, the civilian was in Majda Wasila School along with his family members and others, near Palestine Mosque in the western part of Gaza City.] I was approached by an [Israeli] officer who asked my name, occupation, and age.

    He also sought information regarding my relatives and family. He then directed me to accompany him. When I asked about our destination, he said: "I am going to present you to your Lord akin to a bride." Clarifying if he meant a groom, he elucidated, "a bride adorned in white attire and makeup."

    [In this dialogue, the Israeli soldier is making light of the possibility of killing the civilian.] I was escorted to a location next to a tunnel that belongs to the resistance. There, the Israeli officer outfitted me with a belt containing explosives and a GoPro camera affixed to my head. He secured a rope around my waist, with the directive, "When I tug the rope, you are to return to me." I was held at gunpoint near the tunnel entrance and threatened with harm against my family.

    While I was resisting compliance with his commands, he suddenly thrust me into the tunnel opening, where I landed and remained for approximately 3 minutes. Then he started yelling [at me to move] and fired shots to force me to move forward in the tunnel. I walked a distance of about 40 meters. He then pulled me from the tunnel using the rope, and said: "your Lord still does not desire your presence."

    I was handed over to the soldiers, who received instructions to find another individual of younger age. When I got back outside the tunnel, I discovered my family members still near the tunnel, and a child (15 years old) was taken from the group. Fortunately, he returned unharmed, and I saw him upon my release from detention.

    The [Israeli military's] objective underlying these actions is to avoid entering the tunnel. If the camera affixed to my head had detected the presence of resistance fighters within the tunnel, [the Israeli officer] would have detonated [the explosives on my belt], killing me and others. Further details will come out in the coming days.

    End of Translation.

    An Israeli acquaintance adds: What is described here is not "use of human shields", but rather a much more severe crime: forced conscription of a civilian to act as a suicide bomber on behalf of the IDF.

    That being said, there is ample evidence that the IDF is also using human shields in recent weeks, both in Gaza and in the West Bank (including one instance in which after using a Palestinian as a human shield the IDF apparently attempted to execute him: at the time reports indicated he survived the shooting).

    I would also note that in [Operation] Cast Lead [in 2008-2009] there was a somewhat similar case, which in Israel is dubbed the "Child Procedure" incident, in which a 9-year-old Palestinian child was forced to open bags which the IDF suspected were wired to explode. "Child Procedure" is a paraphrase of "Neighbor Procedure", the IDF-speak for using Palestinians as human shields (a practice notably used by newly popular "leftist" Yair Golan, who called it "very humane".

    It is widely assumed Golan will lead the leftist-Zionist camp in the upcoming elections).

    End of comment by acquaintance and END OF THREAD

  • Shipping firm pauses Red Sea journeys over attacks - BBC

    Danish shipping company Maersk has said it is pausing all journeys through the Red Sea.

    The decision comes after a spate of attacks on vessels launched from a part of Yemen controlled by the Houthis - an Iran-backed rebel movement.

    The group has declared their support for Hamas and say they are targeting ships travelling to Israel.

    The Red Sea is one the world's most important routes for oil and fuel shipments.

    "The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the area are alarming and pose a significant threat to the safety and security of seafarers," Maersk, one of the world's biggest shipping companies, said in a statement sent to the BBC.

    "Following the near-miss incident involving Maersk Gibraltar yesterday and yet another attack on a container vessel today, we have instructed all Maersk vessels in the area bound to pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to pause their journey until further notice," it added.

    Wikipedia:

    In the 2022 Forbes Global 2000, Møller-Maersk was ranked as the 161st largest public company in the world. Maersk is one of the largest shipping companies in the world and is the largest by fleet capacity, with 18% of worldwide fleet capacity.

    God Bless Yemen.

  • The Houthis Ansarallah is intentionally luring an international fleet of genocide supporters to the Gulf of Aden where they will be hit with a deluge of TOR🅱️EDOs.

  • Hostages killed by mistake were waving white flags
    An initial investigation into the incident in which three hostages were mistakenly killed by the Israeli army in Gaza were holding up a white flag, a military official said on Saturday. The incident occurred in an area of intense fighting where Hamas militants operated in civilian clothing and used deception tactics, the official said. The hostages were shot at in violation of Israeli rules of engagement, the official added.

    🏳

  • An Extension of Nazism: How Did Zionism Collaborate With Hitler to Establish ‘Israel’?

    "Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the relationship between Nazism and Zionism is the disconnect between Zionism and the Holocaust during World War II. Zionism was not interested in the massacres of Jews and rescuing them as much as it was in the facilitating the emigration of Jews to Palestine. And those Jews who did not emigrate to Palestine before the establishment of the “state” in 1948 were not a matter of concern for Zionism, whose conviction was limited to the fact that the solution to the Jewish question was solely related to the establishment of a state, and that anything else was irrelevant.

    This is confirmed by Egon Redlich in his diaries, Memoirs of a Zionist: The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich in which he confirms the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Jews who were eliminated and sent to their deaths through deals that Redlich himself felt ashamed of, in exchange for false promises. He wrote: “The Zionist movement in Czechoslovakia sent thousands of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in exchange for Nazi promises to send a few dozen or hundreds of Zionist leaders and financial figures to Palestine.”

    Abdul Wahab Al-Masiri, author of the eight-volume Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism, mentions that Adolf Eichmann succeeded in his mission thanks to the cooperation of the Hungarian Jew Rudolf Kastner, who convinced members of the Jewish community in Hungary that the Nazis would relocate them to new places where they would settle, or to vocational training camps for rehabilitation, and not to the concentration camps which were their true destination.

    In exchange for this, the Nazi authorities in 1941 allowed over 1,700 Jews from a concentration camp to be sent to Palestine, “Jews of the best biological material,” according to Eichmann."

  • Pretty insane that Biden's approval rating right now is lower than Trump's. He's almost lower than Trump was at any point during his presidency

  • Remember, it's not the Israel-Hamas War or the Israel-Gaza War, it's the Palestine-Zionist War. The Zionists are not targeting Hamas, or even just Gaza, but all of Palestine in a total war against a whole people. "Israel" is an illegal entity that should not be recognized as legitimate.

  • 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.

  • ⚡️| 🌍 BIG SUMMARY of all resistance operations today, December 14, against US-israeli forces

    — 🇾🇪 Yemeni Armed Forces:

    🔻Carried out a military operation against the container ship "Mercy Gibraltar," headed towards israeli ports, targeting it with a suicide drone, causing a direct hit.

    🔻Successfully prevented several ships from heading towards the israeli entity within the past 48 hours.

    — 🇵🇸 Al-Qassam Brigades:

    🔻(Partially) destroyed 25 Merkava tanks, 8 APCs & 3 military vehicles in various combat axes.

    🔻Sniped 4 Zionist soldiers northwest of Gaza City.

    🔻Targeted military field command rooms in the southern axis of Gaza City with short-range rockets and heavy-caliber mortars.

    🔻Shelled army incursions in the eastern & northern axes of Khan Yunis with heavy-caliber mortars.

    🔻Shelled army incursions in the eastern and northwestern axes of Gaza City with mortars.

    🔻Targeted an IOF patrol unit with an anti-personnel explosive, causing casualties among them, in the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City.

    🔻Killed at least 10 IOF officers/soldiers in an operation on an IOF infantry force in Hassanin Street in Shujaiya area, using powerful explosive devices.

    🔻Targeted an IOF infantry force, inside a building with TBG explosives, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.

    — 🇵🇸 Al-Quds Brigades:

    🔻Shelled military concentrations east of Zaytoun with heavy-caliber mortars.

    🔻Shelled military gatherings in the "Natsarim" axis with a barrage of 60mm caliber mortars.

    🔻(Partially) destroyed 6 Merkava tanks, 2 APCs & 1 D9-military bulldozer in various combat zones.

    🔻Shelled military concentrations in the southwestern axis of "Natsarim" with heavy-caliber mortars.

    🔻Sniped a Zionist soldier in the axis of Sheikh Radwan west of Gaza City.

    🔻Shelled military concentrations east of the central governorate with a barrage of mortars.

    🔻Shelled military concentrations around the Al-Zalal Mosque in the axis east of Khan Yunis with a barrage of 60mm mortars.

    🔻In a joint operation with the Al-Qassam Brigades, ambushed a building where IOF forces took refuge, resulting in 6 casualties between dead & injured in the Shujaiya axis east of Gaza.

    — 🇵🇸 Martyr Omar Al-Qassem forces:

    🔻Clashed & ambushed IOF forces in the axes east of Shujaiya, causing many casualties leading to the IOF admitting its losses after it became too much.

    🔻Clashed IOF forces & vehicles on Street 5

    — 🇵🇸 Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades

    🔻Clashed with IOF forces in various axes

    — 🇵🇸 Mujahideen Brigades:

    🔻Intense clashes with IOF forces in the Shujaiya axes.

    — 🟡 Hezbollah:

    🔻Targeted an IOF army gathering near Shomera barracks with appropriate weapons.

    🔻Targeted Yiftah barracks and a group of IOF soldiers & militants vehicles in its vicinity with appropriate weapons.

    🔻Targeted a group of israeli soldiers near Hunin with appropriate weapons.

    — 🇮🇶 Islamic Resistance in Iraq:

    🔻Targeted the US base in Shaddadi, south of Al-Hasakah in Syria, with a suicide drone, causing a direct hit.

    https://nitter.net/AryJeay/status/1735429044114485536

  • Portuguese companies doing four-day week cut hours by 13.7%

    More than 70% of the companies have adopted organisational changes, such as reducing the number and duration of meetings, creating work blocks or adopting new software, say the study’s coordinators, which indicates that 95% of the companies rate the test positively.

    The four-day week also had an impact on workers’ mental health, with the anxiety index decreasing by 21%, fatigue by 23%, insomnia or sleep problems by 19%, depressive states by 21%, tension by 21% and loneliness by 14%.

    Levels of exhaustion from work fell by 19%, and the percentage of workers who found it difficult or very difficult to reconcile work and family fell from 46% to 8%. The majority (65%) of workers spent more time with their families after the start of the reduction in working hours.

    The report also indicates that 85% of workers “would only agree to move to a company with five-day working hours if they received a salary increase of more than 20%”.

  • IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva has congratulated Javier Milei's government on the economic measures announced yesterday by Economy Minister Luis Caputo.

    Georgieva says that this is an important step towards the stability and reconstruction of the country

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