125

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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Al_Sham@hexbear.net 52 points 7 hours ago

In researching after a thread with comrade Miz, I stumbled across this horrifying story that was published only a few weeks ago. Article

Haji Naseem, an Afghan father and husband was kidnapped by the Americans in 2007 and taken to Bagram and then Guantanamo Bay. He was then systematically tortured and broken down under the premise that he was an "Al Qaeda emir" when in fact the only evidence they had against him was that at one point he was coerced into letting al qaeda stay in his home for some nights.

In 2011 he died in his cell and the military ruled it a suicide.

Hajj Naseem is one of a string of these "mysterious deaths" at the US torture camp in Cuba. The whole article is quite long and gives an in-depth look into the practices at Guantanamo without focusing excessively on the details of torture.

When you see what the zionists do to Palestinians, remember that they learned that from the Americans who have never faced any accountability for over a century of perfecting and exporting professional torture.

[-] scarcity_of_the_self@hexbear.net 28 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

This really disturbed me while reading about internationally acclaimed alt media darling John Kiriakou, his "whistleblowing" laundered the CIA story about Abu Zubaydah being an effective interrogation (also lied about even being present for it, which he was not, although his service record does indicate he was working in facilities that did torture people at other times). I don't entirely understand the purpose of torture but it is seems to be mostly about making people insane and intimidation

[-] Al_Sham@hexbear.net 25 points 6 hours ago

John Kiriakou, his "whistleblowing" laundered the CIA story about Abu Zubaydah being an effective interrogation

👀 another slimy American phony anti-war personality??? Say more ✍️

I don't entirely understand the purpose of torture but it is seems to be mostly about making people insane

This same author actually outlines one of the most important components of US torture doctrine which is linked to MKULTRA and originated when the US brainwashed thousands of its own soldiers returning from Korea into believing that they didn't use chemical and biological weapons. It's a meticulously cited article.

One of the things about US torture is that it is basically a way of rewriting people's personalities so that the imperialists can turn them into whatever they want. Nobody talks about it but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who led ISIS until 2019 was a prisoner in the US torture camps in Iraq alongside a lot of others who would end up being leaders in the zionist-American proxy army known as ISIS. They basically molded these people into monsters and then used the camps to allow them to network and spread this new monstrous ideology implanted into them by the CIA.

This is similar to a book I read awhile back about how the CIA experimented on African American prisoners with similar techniques. The name of the book is escaping me right now.

What the zionists are doing today is not that though. Their torture is meant to be broadcasted and publicized as a "pressure tool" against the resistance and the mass base. To get them to accept surrender because the conditions are so incomprehensible for the prisoners. And to break down the Arab masses after the heroic victory of Oct 7th.

[-] scarcity_of_the_self@hexbear.net 7 points 4 hours ago

Yes we can off the top of our heads point to two of the most important antiwar figures on the left today as former interrogators. Don't want to be too "sectarian". Will say more later, I plan to stick around.

Kaye's writing about the brainwashing myth being used to justify torture research is really eye opening. I think that history is critical for understanding a lot of the seemingly crazy and esoteric disinformation (with its New Age Hitlerian overtones) circulating today. A lot of the MKULTRA mythos covers up what you know about torture and chemical or biological weapons. Many stories about veterans or active duty members of the US military being driven to psychosis, in some cases over fake aliens, losing it and pulverizing a baby, US forces draining civilians in the Philippines of blood to imitate vampires, and now yet more fake air force UFO sightings, seemingly disconnected bizarro events, to me they point to ambitions of full management of pilots in combat via delusions and simulation. (Possibly convincing foreign rivals that the USA has access to real thought reprogramming technology to create sleeper agents - to make the analogy I'm making to imitating vampires more clear.) That's probably an unrealized dream for the US but to ground this a bit, they could have just lied to the pilots who fired missiles at Iran from well outside their airspace that all of the air defense failed and Iran is just propagandizing. That is a mundane way of accomplishing one of those goals.

This was all basically accomplished anyways with HUMINT and control of the distribution of ideas. I don't think these megalomaniacs would ever be satisfied though. They were putting brain implants in dogs and now they're openly defiling monkeys.

Anyways, my ramblings aside, I do have a lot to say about the antiwar left, and it's not this kind of vibes-based speculation, but I will format it properly and not ramble about it. Another IOU, as I already told someone here I would try to package my thoughts on the Myanmar conflict and how the US is using Thailand to set up a new intelligence center.

Waiting for the :jesse-wtf: now T plus one, two, three,

[-] bazingabrain@hexbear.net 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I posted an article way back, that essentially made the point the 60s counterculture was not progressive at all but was in fact a conservative backlash at increased government intervention and aid. It completely flipped my understanding of the movement and in retrospect it makes so much sense considering how the people who participated in that whole mess turned out in later years. You could make the same exact point about the antiwar left of today, you can already see it with people moaning that their taxes are going to Ukraine instead of helping them and their treat lifestyles

[-] IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net 6 points 3 hours ago
[-] bazingabrain@hexbear.net 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Hey, so I’ve deleted that post for opsec a while back, and because I’m a dumbass I accidentally deleted my firefox saved tabs 3 days ago. I’ll try finding it again, which might take a while, I recall it was a bunch pdfs that aren’t scanned so can’t rely on keywords…

[-] IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net 1 points 2 hours ago

appreciate the effort, got my fingers crossed 🤞

[-] bazingabrain@hexbear.net 1 points 40 minutes ago

No worries, it’s genuinely a good article too.

[-] Al_Sham@hexbear.net 14 points 6 hours ago

The name of the book is escaping me right now.

The book is called Revolution's End by Brad Schreiber. It also discusses somewhat the PHOENIX program too which is another huge part of this whole nightmare history. Truly evil stuff.

[-] IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net 5 points 3 hours ago

thanks for the book recco

[-] scarcity_of_the_self@hexbear.net 6 points 5 hours ago

Thanks will give that a read soon

this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
125 points (99.2% liked)

news

23519 readers
632 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS