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.
So, there seems to be a lot of speculation over the Trump admin and how it will handle Ukraine, the war in Western Asia and China going forward. I think these are interrelated and I feel like a lot of people are missing the point, or maybe I am just off base…. But I think that there isn’t going to be all that much room for Trump to delay US decline or even challenge China in a way it could arguably win.
1)Ukraine won’t have a quick ending: Despite the political will among some right-wing policymakers, it is up to Russia and Ukraine whether the conflict will end anytime soon. This might fly in the face of a lot of historical decisions by Russia, but why would Russia take a big L for almost no long-term material gains? At this point, they are probably better off taking most of Ukraine and leaving a rump-state or a puppet government that will eventually allow for some level of normalization. It doesn’t make sense for Russia to stop until it can have a reasonable guarantee for its own war aims. (no NATO, demilitarized ukraine).
2)Trump likely won’t be able to disengage from the genocide in Gaza or the war in west asia either. His attitude of “I will let them finish it. Vote for me and I will be the peace candidate by ‘ending’ the war. “ Really stinks of the same attitude that Nixon had during Viet Nam. If he really is sincere about that, ultimately he will facilitate the expansion of the conflict through his proxy at a point where Hamas is still operational and Hezbollah has prevented any kind of victory for the Zionist state. The idea that Israel would stop, when their current political class’ survival depends on the continued expansion of the war, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Trump might be less of a psycho than Biden, but he won’t want to “lose” and the resistance will likely win as the conflict is prolonged, as nearly every asymmetric national liberation struggle has ever proceeded. There is a chance he could threaten an arms embargo to force Israel to disengage, but I think that would be treated like a betrayal after Biden allowed all of this to go on unabated for over a year.
3)Trump’s China policy is probably going to be mediated by the above two points. At one point last year the US couldn’t spare an aircraft carrier in the SCS because of the other conflicts… Any continuity in Europe or west asia is going to continue to build that pressure. The other side of the coin here is that Trump has traditionally been really transactional with China and as long as they roll out the red carpet and he can tell his fans that he got the “best deal” he can continue to delay any sort of meaningful conflict. So if China only needs more time, it seems like they still have years to find some sort of settlement or prepare for the kind of highly aggressive moves everyone seems to expect. This is really what prevented “major power conflict” from taking off back in the 2000’s. The US got bogged down in two wars and didn’t revisit the idea until 2014…
The US decline seems inevitable, I think it doesn’t matter who is in office at this point
I agree with you, I don’t think there is a lot of room for the american state to maneuver here, despite donny’s penchant for wriggling his way out of jams.
on ukraine, there are three paths - 1) massive escalation and mass use of US soldiers/materiel, 2) capitulation on russia’s terms and 3) status quo leading to ukraine as a failed state. 3 continues to serve the US’s consistent strategic objectives viz a viz europe and russia (maintains antagonism between russia and europe, leaves ukrainian nationalists in a position to poison and threaten any detente with Russia from disaffected euros, and continued profits for US defence/energy conglomerates). sure the US doesn’t get to colour revolution russia and pick its bones clean a second time, but that was always an outside chance anyway. 3 is obviously preferable to emptying every other theatre to fight russia (1) and to a contemptible defeat (2).
in palestine, I don’t think either the israelis or the iranians want a large scale war and it doesn’t appear the more sober elements of the US security state want that either. nevertheless, I think there is the greatest risk of escalation here as there is a lot of gas in everyone’s tank and trump and his administration’s likely staff are such open and vile racists. I don’t think that the difference between dem technocratic racism and GOP vile racism will be a huge driver of the conflict’s future, but it doesn’t help. more importantly, there’s still so much that iran and hezbollah are holding back and so much still yet to be won or lost. compare this to russia-ukraine where russia is clearly winning and there’s little or no capacity for escalation in the short term (except nuclear war).
on china, trump would clearly rather be president deals and I think that suits china fine. china won’t escalate to a hot conflict unilaterally and I don’t think trump has the stones or attention span to do it either.
Massive escalation isn’t a real option. The idea that the USA can field half a million men in Europe isn’t real.
They could escalate to nukes or they could occupy a buffer zone in western Ukraine and dare Russia to use nukes.
Going head to head against Russia in Ukraine without nukes isn’t realistic. It would simply mean more meat for the grinder.
Yep 100%. It would be impossible for the US to support logistics for a land war in Asia.
On #2 I’m pretty sure Trump will provide and let the entity use even bigger bombs, and more of them. He just wants them to “finish” the job. The Dems want the same, but they want it done slowly so that people stop paying attention and move onto other things.
I’ve having some weird doubts that a military campaign that has consisted of dropping very large bombs on targets for over a year straight (which has failed to produce notable military results) will ve significantly altered if instead of “very large bombs” they instead used “extremely large bombs.” and there is already no limits on the civilian slaughter by Israel, their policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing is completely independent of what’s happening in America
Israel could drop 80 nukes on southern Lebanon and Hezbollah would still be a fighting force because of the tunnel complexes, the bombs aren’t solving any problems. Whenever I see the talking point of “Trump would be worse on Gaza and Palestine than Biden because he’d let Israel be even freer in their use of weaponry,” I don’t really understand what the actual point being made there is. Hezbollah and Hamas are beating the shit out of Israel’s military and could cripple Israel all by themselves via anti-colonial attrition and their missile stockpiles, meanwhile Iran has enough missiles to make the whole country unlivable all by themselves on top of that. If the US tries to bomb or invade Iran, they are losing half their navy in the region and all their military bases in addition to Israel itself. The Millennium Challenge point has been made a hundred times in the news megas.
We aren’t in the “oh woe is me, we must pity all the innocent countries that the US is invading, they’re just weak and powerless and don’t deserve all this” phase of American hegemony anymore. We are in the “if you try and fucking destroy us, you will also be destroyed” phase. The US and Israel aren’t holding off on dealing significant damage to Iran because they’re considering how they’d justify it to the rest of the world or whatever, they’re holding off because they are scared shitless. They didn’t hold off for a year in bombing Lebanon and Hezbollah because they were preparing the legal justification for an invasion for the UN, they held off because they were scared shitless, and they were right to be because the north is being depopulated and their army is being eviscerated. There is no avenue of victory for Israel and the US in the Middle East, and the President being one guy or another doesn’t shift that.
One problem with the above is that the reverse is true also. Iran, hezbollah and Yemen can launch rockets and missiles and damage Israeli infrastructure etc., but it will be very hard for them to affect political change in Israel over this. Perhaps they can degrade military facilities enough to materially limit the number of planes and bombs Israel can drop, but I doubt it. Neither gaza or Lebanon have air defence capable of fending off the Israeli air force, so the amount of physical damage from resistance air strikes needed to stop their bombing campaign would be immense, if its possible at all. I can see Hamas and hezbollah inflicting enough damage to drive back Israeli ground forces - they clearly have had that level of success already. However, stopping the brutal Israeli bombing campaign is another matter.
yeah, the destruction is very mutually assured, it’s basically a) whether the US thinks that taking down Iran for a decade or two while it rebuilds (certainly with the help of China and friends) is worth the destruction of the last century of empire-building in the Middle East, and perhaps even more importantly b) whether it’s even up for the US and Israel to decide anymore, if Iran feels sufficiently emboldened to strike first or if Israel thinks that it’s 100% going down if they don’t fight Iran and just die to a thousand cuts and there’s a 97% chance that they go down if they do fight Iran, so might as well take the second option
I don’t even know it would be mutually assured. I mean sure if the US just decides to first strike nuke Iran, but they won’t do that. If they try to do things with massive conventional air strikes based in Israel, off aircraft carriers and from bases in the mid-east, I think they will hit a real logistical wall quick. They can do an alpha strike, but even a week into a for-real airstrike war over the strait of hormuz would see the US losing aircraft carriers and rapidly decreasing strike capability. It wouldn’t be murder suicide, it would just be suicide.
My thinking is thermobaric MOABs. Trump loves his big bombs. He used one in Afghanistan for the hell of it.
That’s what Nixon’s view of Vietnam was too, that he just had to release all safeties and it would be over quick. Instead it just bogged the US down even deeper into conflict
Oh, I agree with you. I’m not saying that it’ll work when Trump does it
on #1 I think if trump could possibly call putin and say “how do we end this war?” and at that point it would be so zellover.
#2 i think that trump will have some red lines that are way out there but bibi will still cross them just to mark his turf and trump will get mad and shut him down. (this is 99% hopium)
#3 If 1 and 2 go the way I think trump is going to get really busy with China. I feel like he is backed by the “crush China” lobby. They didn’t like how biden did the ukraine war instead of focusing on China, they didn’t like the blank check for isisrael. They didn’t like trump or how he handled China while in office but they explained exactly what they want from him and he agreed to do their bidding.