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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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 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.
https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1854701760385872270
Their team went on to lose 5-0 lmfao. Maybe the “israeli” players wanted to score goals but got distracted with all the women, kids and reporters in the stadium. Also their goalkeeper is nicknamed “Iron Dome”: He can’t catch anything.
“Israeli” teams visiting europe for UEFA matches have been inciting violence and attacking pro-Palestine people. They did so earlier this year in Greece in a match against I think it was Olympiakos. Meanwhile, UEFA refuses to ban “israel” from the federation or sanction their clubs. FIFA doesn’t saction “israel” either as they continue to kill FIFA-registered players in Gaza. Russia was banned by UEFA for the war in Ukraine and ukrainian fans are allowed to carry Azov flags and display tifos remembering deceased Azov members. It’s too evident.
lol
yeah what’s the problem, sounds like a fitting nickname
Thinking about it, is the Israeli league even actively playing matches at the moment? I’m a little surprised they have teams this far into European competitions, especially Europa league.
Either way I agree, it’s ridiculously hypocritical for FIFA and UEFA to ban Russia and turn a blind eye to Ukrainian and Israeli teams.
Yes, the “Israeli Premier League” is still going on. Meanwhile, the two palestinian top divisions, one for the West Bank and one for the Gaza Strip, have had their seasons cancelled. This is 100% the case for the Gaza Strip league of course but I’m not that sure about the West Bank league, from what I can gather it has been called off but I dunno.
Well that’s extra upsetting. I assumed there’s no way the Israeli league would be playing.
thats just sympathetic magic at this point
And now I’m seeing a bunch of videos of them getting absolutely whooped by the locals. Football hooligans sometimes do good things!
Football hooligans do a lot of good things
You can’t just post this without some links. I want to see Zionists get beat up
Here lmao
https://t.me/PalestineResist/67262
https://t.me/PalCommie/3673
https://t.me/PalCommie/3675
Plus a guy in the canal who says “free Palestine”
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8L62sKr/
Love the part where they steal “Israeli” passports and phones.
hahaha always with the crying
I needed that
lmao zionists are such fucking paper tiger losers.
deleted by creator
Inject that into my veins
Absolutely monumental
Celtic, st Pauli, and these guys are the only good ones (plus the Italians who memorialized Stalin)
That’ll be Livorno I think, known for having left wing “ultras”. Unfortunately they’re on the last tier of professional football in Italy, after financial problems and two refoundings… I think they’re a funding member of the Serie A even.
St. Pauli is cool but I recall they used to display banners saying stuff like “Free Palestine from Hamas” after October 7th. Cringe. Maybe, just maybe, they’re too afraid to outright condemn “israel” in a country like Germany that is viciously zionist. But I guess being rebellious, for some, is absolutely negotiable. There are fans within the St. Pauli stands that do not agree with this kind of message, though.
Damn ok, learning and growing, shame about Livorno and sp
Zionists are hostes humani generis and should be treated as such.
hell yeah
And they’ll call it an antisemitic mob simply out hunting for Jewish blood
deleted by creator
And Israel says “look at these hateful countries, come be active colonists where you’re safe”
deleted by creator
Not surprised to see the Zionist shitheads immediately crumble the moment they don’t have police protection or outnumber the people they target 10:1.
Well this is much better summary than the headline on the locked post in r/Soccer. Was not going to bother wading into the post or comments.
Glad they got their asses kicked. Also very glad the team on the field got beat 5-0 as an extra cherry on top.
a difficult situation has occurred in Amsterdam
Such a shame they sneaked in idf tunnels in their shoes, nothing you can do.
Although this is end goal of pisrael, seems they’ve achieved it
And fuck uefa for not banning them