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.
@[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!
The 1980s plan to rebuild the U.S. Navy, known as the 600-ship Navy, was a campaign plank of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. The plan included: Recommissioning Iowa-class battleships, Keeping older ships in service longer, A large new construction program, and Increasing production of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers
The 600-ship Navy was the most expensive peacetime military buildup in U.S. history, costing $1.5 trillion over five years
The US Navy peaked at 594 ships in 1987 before experiencing a sharp decline between 1989-1992
True Promise 3 is the only thing that could revive this mega thread now, come on Iran!
By August 14, 1945, the US Navy peaked at 6,768 active ships, by 1950 that number shrank to 634 ships
Later that same year in 1950 due to the Korean War the US Navy expanded back up to 980 active ships before topping out at 1,122 ships in 1953 at the end of the war and remained at a stable 900 ships for the rest of the fifties
Between 1958-1974 the US Navy slowly shrank until stabilizing again at around 550 ships until Reagan’s 600 Ship-Navy Campaign Plank
Tervell posting, translation of caption
“ 🔷️ Old soldier, still in service
The Ministry of Defense of Russia has released a video of the activity of a mobile defense unit armed with a 23mm ZU-23-2 cannon to deal with drones. If you remember, at the beginning of the arrival of Gran 1/2 suicide drones in the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainian mobile defense units were formed by mounting anti-aircraft guns on tactical vehicles.
It has been some time now that the Russians have started to form such patrol units to deal with all types of Ukrainian long-range drones, which operate deep inside Russian soil and near sensitive points. Cannons like this ZU-23 with shrapnel ammunition have sufficient power to deal with the attacks of such drones, but if they are still used in almost the same way as 60 years ago, it will definitely reduce their effectiveness.
#Russia #Ukraine #Defense #UAV
NPC @Partisan2015”
Fascist Provocateur Rasmus Paludan Sentenced to Four Months in Swedish Prison for Hate Speech
Rasmus Paludan, the leader of Denmark’s crackpot fascist “Hard Line” party, has been sentenced to four months in prison by a Swedish court for inciting hatred against Muslims. This marks his third conviction for racist hate speech and the his first unsuspended prison sentence.
Read more... (CW: Racism, mentions of possible CSA)
The Malmö District Court found that Paludan’s derogatory comments, which included claims that Arabs and Africans are violent, unintelligent and lazy and that Muslims are “really good at killing”, went beyond permissible criticism of religion and amounted to racial incitement.
Paludan, 42, who has gained notoriety for his inflammatory Quran burnings and islamophobic hate propaganda that at one point angered Turkey enough to block Swedish , appeared via videolink during the trial, insisting he was merely expressing his political views. However, the court dismissed his defense, emphasizing that his remarks were intended to degrade Muslims and not foster any legitimate discussion. The court pointed out Paludan’s blatant disregard for previous rulings, leading to a rejection of a suspended sentence.
Paludan, who holds dual Swedish and Danish citizenship, has decided to appeal the sentence and has stated that he is now “done with Sweden” and will focus his attention on Denmark where he feels “more safe”.
Adding to his legal troubles, Paludan is also set to face trial in Denmark later this month for racist remarks against African’s and Muslims that includes comparing the intelligence of Somalis to that of orangutans.
Paludan, a lawyer by profession, has been in trouble with the law several times and has a rap sheet that includes convictions for racist hate speech, defamation and reckless driving as well as fines from the Bar Association for violating good legal practice and a restraining order against a man who Paludan stalked and harassed for years.
In the 2019 Danish general election Paludan’s “Hard Line” party ran on a platform of imposing a beefed-up version of the Nuremberg laws for Muslims and won 1.8 percent of the vote, falling short of the two percent threshold for receiving seats in parliament. The deputy leader of the party was Uwe Max Jensen, a far-right artist whose art mostly consists of defecating and urinating where he is not supposed to. Paludan has since attempted various grifts with little luck, including a football team named “The Soldiers of the Danes” and founding an explicitly islamophobic church with himself as archbishop.
Before devoting himself to the fascist cause he ran several blogs, one of which consisted of photos of pedestrians and cyclists who in Paludan’s view were committing minor traffic offences. Another blog consisted of deeply creepy but technically legal comments on “beautiful” underage boys.
- Source: TV 2 (state media), November 5th 2024
1-year-old baby is the third Brazilian victim to die in Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, says Brazilian Goverment. According to the government, three Brazilians - all minors - have already died amid Israel’s offensive.
a bottomless pit of evil. fucking Christ
During the beginning of the war in Gaza, Israel refused to let the Arab-Latinos leave for Egypt (mainly from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Chile). They were basically being held hostage by the Israeli government because Israel was angry that Latin America had condemned the genocide.
What can I even say about the only democracy in the Middle East
Megathread activity has dropped from moving the megas into a single holding thread, the extra click it takes to get here matters and people can’t see how many new comments are in the thread at a glance from the main page.
Quarantining election news probably also did a number
Noticed that too, sad side-effect but the huge amount of money raised so far is great.
This isn’t permanent, right?
Bit idea: Get Iran to do something funny so people will once more flock to the news mega
nope – iirc, it’s just a couple days
Oh thank god, I was worried. Don’t get me wrong I like the fundraising and already donated to both but yeah.
when I realized I couldn’t instantly tell if there were new posts, I just opened a new tab for each mega to keep up on them that way, but then they promptly got lost in the shuffle of my million open tabs 😂🤷 and then I forgot entirely that I had done it until I started closing tabs this morning and found them again 🤦😂
Apparently the FBI foiled a right-winger looking to take out a power station in Tennessee.
The play by play is hilarious. They rolled out all the receipts… this guy must’ve talked to every informant they had
On Nov. 2, 2024, Philippi participated in a Nordic ritual, which included reciting a Nordic prayer and discussing the Norse god Odin. Philippi told the UCEs that “this is where the New Age begins” and that it was “time to do something big” that would be remembered “in the annals of history.”
the only Nordic rituals that these guys should be participating in is eating sour haggis, sour rams testicles, sheep head paté and delicious putrefied shark while singing mostly translated Irish folk songs
the only Nordic prayer is “ahh, coffee”
nobody discusses Odin
what is up with 80% of Nordics drinking like four cups a day
we just like the taste I guess
Didn’t they sometimes throw themselves to their death from a high rock?
that might be a Norwegian thing, there is a big hiking culture there
I wonder how the FBI is so well versed in nordic rituals.
Spanish-speaking newsheads, how terrible is AOC’s Spanish? I’ve noticed the subtitles are in Spanish, which means her Spanish is probably not that good lol:
https://xcancel.com/AOC/status/1853294592818303174Not gonna rag on her too much for her accent because its probably close to what I sound like when I’m talking to strangers in Spanish
I can tell she’s probably trying hard to annunciate everything to sound as clear as possible. I do the same thing and as a 1st gen. Am*rican I get it. I do wonder what she’d sound like in a less formal setting though. That’s where you could probably tell a bit more about how close she is to the language. I usually get a bit looser with my pronunciation and speak closer to the localized Spanish that my parents speak.
I don’t speak Spanish so no idea, but I would assume the subtitles are for people who are hearing impaired.
It’s not so much that her Spanish is fake, it’s that she is fake.
It’s the accent. Very American and makes words sound funny. Also seems to have Americanized English grammar in it as well. I joke about it being terrible but it’s understandable, just sounds funny
as a portuguese speaker she sounds pretty good, which probably means she sounds terrible
There’s obvious influences in her accent and prosody that give her away as a heritage speaker whose dominant language is English, but she speaks Spanish clearly. I’m curious if her speaking skills would break down if she were speaking off the cuff instead of giving a scripted rehearsal though
High school spanish teacher-looking-ass spanish. “Donde esta el baño”-looking-ass. Audio recording you have to transcribe for a spanish exam-looking-ahh. DESPACITOlookingass [1]. Gives me the vibes she’s not speaking for spanish speakers, but anglos to show how good at spanish she is. Though I probably feel like that because I don’t like her, her bullshit account is at 0.
Anyway there’s nothing wrong as such with her spanish, as far as I can tell. It’s been a while - years :'( - since I’ve been with my latino family though, so my spanish is ass these days
Yeah I know it doesn’t make sense grammatically, but do it for the reference ↩︎
Not native but I could understand it fine without subtitles. Terrible at accents, though I definitely heard some heavy American sounding things. But I know 0 people from Puerto Rico so maybe that’s just how people there talk, for all I know.
My experience as a native Spanish speaker with Castilian accent listening to Puertorican accent mainly comes from Jovani Vazquez (I know, I’m sorry), and she sounds not much like him at all. Her pronunciation of the “s” is inconsistent, as if she were forcing herself to pronounce it where a Puertorican would skip it or exhale it but forgot to do it 50% of the times.
US contamination news, perhaps someone should maintain a column on that here, we have surely missed some delicious muckraking
The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to use any drugs made by a compounding pharmacy in California after regulators realized the pharmacy was making drugs that need to be sterile—particularly injectable drugs—without using sterile ingredients or any sterilization steps. The products made by the pharmacy, Fullerton Wellness LLC, in Ontario, California, include semaglutide, which is intended to mimic brand-name weight-loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic. Fullerton also made tirzepatide, which is intended to mimic weight-loss and diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro. The FDA became aware of the problem after a patient submitted a complaint to the regulator that a vial of semaglutide from Fullerton Wellness had an unidentified “black particulate” floating in it. Semaglutide, like tirzepatide, is injected under the skin and is intended to be sterile.
Source is Conde Nasty’s AssTechnica
actually yelled out loud at this part
The FDA became aware of the problem after a patient submitted a complaint to the regulator that a vial of semaglutide from Fullerton Wellness had an unidentified “black particulate” floating in it. Semaglutide, like tirzepatide, is injected under the skin and is intended to be sterile.
everyone is having to inject themselves for this new weight-loss fad?!? and omfg a bunch of these patients did it with nonsterile materials
It’s not an IV injection but similar to insulin
LLC
I’m more of an Unlimited Liability Corporation kind of person
Is anyone worse at posting than Washington DC? I just can’t stand it. Same shit about urging Iran not to respond again. No points for guessing where this leads.
https://en.irna.ir/news/85649897/US-urges-Iran-not-to-respond-to-Israeli-aggression
This bears repeating: Western states cannot sustain support for Israel’s carnage in Gaza unless they compromise democracy and the rights of their citizens.
Here’s Prof. Haim Bresheeth, a child of Holocaust survivors, getting arrested in the UK for speaking against Israel’s war.
Arrested under the terrorism act btw
Modern Zionists think Holocaust survivors are losers, just not as loseful (losted? loust?) as Holocausted unalivers
An American soldier has died in Israel. US military won’t say how he was killed other than that it was non-combat related, which sure is interesting.
Wow, so he died setting up a humanitarian aid pier?. That pier was used for humanitarian aid? Lots of humanitarian aid passed through that pier. HUMANITARIAN PIER!
No mention that that pier was used for that hostage rescue where 200+ Palestinians were murdered though when that the pier fulfilled its true purpose.
No mention that that pier was used for that hostage rescue where 200+ Palestinians were murdered though when that the pier fulfilled its true purpose.
And they immediately ceased using it afterwards.
Bleeding out from bullet wounds technically isn’t combat. Especially as they are likely friendly fire
They claim his injury was non-combat related. He died in what sounds like a long-term acute care hospital.
Vaxxed?
This always gets me.
did they get his cum in time?
Community note: He’s not jewish, so this joke is incorrect :nerd:
What if they jacked his corpse out of habit and then realized their mistake only after turning in the cum to the cum bank?
Israeli Tom Cruise rappelling down from the ceiling of the Cum Vault to retrieve the American sperm before it’s discovered and potentially corrupting the sacred gene pool.
cumming is what killed him 😔
https://xcancel.com/AryJeay/status/1853484155834679509
⚡️|🇵🇸 MUST WATCH: The Al-Qassam Brigades published a magnificent footage showing the total destruction of a Merkava tank with a powerful explosive device, in the Qasasib neighborhood, Jabalia.
4 Israeli soldiers were observed getting into the tank, they were all killed.
It’s fascinating how they’re repurposing so much tech, such as the backing-up camera from a vehicle as a surveillance camera.
I noticed that recently, guess they’re cheaper than go pros
Easier to get.
How so, are they literally ripping off car mirrors to salvage the tiny cameras therein?
Probably. A lot of those backing-up cameras are entirely self-contained little units, most of them output plain old RCA composite, and some newer ones use a standardized video protocol called AHD CCTV. This is why the “lane guide” overlay is baked into the video. It comes out of the camera unit itself and not from some centralized computer somewhere else in the car doing additional video processing.
Exactly. No shortage of destroyed cars in Gaza to scavenge from.
Short of the footage showing the tank lifted into the air, I never feel like the explosions in these videos are big enough.
boomlmao get rocked
