news

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.

Palestinian Factions Sign Beijing Declaration on Ending Division and Strengthening Palestinian National Unity 2024-07-23 18:49

On July 23, 2024, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi attended in Beijing the closing ceremony of the reconciliation talks of Palestinian factions and witnessed the signing of the Beijing Declaration on Ending Division and Strengthening Palestinian National Unity by 14 Palestinian factions.

In his remarks, Wang Yi noted that since entering the new era, President Xi Jinping has put forward proposals and propositions on addressing the Palestinian question, contributing Chinese wisdom and solution for addressing the question. Now, 14 Palestinian factions are gathering in Beijing with the greater good of their nation in mind. This is an important historical moment in the Palestinian liberation cause. China commends the reconciliation efforts made by all the factions, and congratulates them on the success of the Beijing dialogue and the signing of the Beijing Declaration.

Wang Yi pointed out that only when Palestinian factions speak as one can the voice of justice be loud and clear, and only when they join hands and march forward shoulder to shoulder can they succeed in their national liberation cause. The most important consensus from the Beijing talks is to achieve the reconciliation and unity among the 14 factions; the core outcome is the affirmation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinian people; the biggest highlight is the agreement on establishing an interim government of national reconciliation focusing on the post-conflict reconstruction of Gaza; and the strongest call is for truly establishing an independent State of Palestine in accordance with relevant U.N. resolutions. The key to the Palestinian reconciliation process is to bolster confidence, keep to the right direction, and make incremental progress. Only by making continuous efforts to build consensus and put it into practice can the reconciliation process yield more and more substantive progress and greater unity. Reconciliation is the internal affair of Palestinian factions, and cannot happen without international support. On the path toward reconciliation, China shares the same direction and destination with Arab and Islamic countries.

Wang Yi noted that the Palestinian question is at the core of the Middle East issue. China never has any selfish interests on the Palestinian question. China was among the first countries to recognize the PLO and the State of Palestine. China all along firmly supports the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights. We value fairness and advocate for justice. At present, the Gaza conflict drags on, its spillovers continue to spread, and multiple regional conflicts are interconnected. To help get out of the current conflict and predicament, China proposes a three-step initiative:

The first step is to achieve comprehensive, lasting and sustainable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as soon as possible, and ensure access to humanitarian aid and rescue on the ground. The international community should build more synergy for ending the hostilities and establishing a ceasefire.

The second step is to make joint efforts toward post-conflict governance of Gaza under the principle of “Palestinians governing Palestine.” Gaza is an inseparable, integral part of Palestine. Restarting post-conflict reconstruction as soon as possible is an urgent priority. The international community needs to support Palestinian factions in establishing an interim national consensus government and realizing effective management of Gaza and the West Bank.

The third step is to help Palestine become a full member state of the U.N. and get down to implementing the two-State solution. It is important to support the convening of a broad-based, more authoritative, and more effective international peace conference to work out a timetable and road map for the two-State solution.

Ceasefire and humanitarian rescue are pressing priorities. “Palestinians governing Palestine” is the basic principle for the post-conflict governance of Gaza. The two-State solution is the fundamental way forward. The international community should support the parties in taking the three steps in real earnest.

Wang Yi noted that intra-Palestinian reconciliation will bring hope and a future to the Palestinian people. It is an important step toward resolving the Palestinian question and achieving peace and stability in the Middle East. Unwavering efforts must be continually made in this direction. China sincerely hopes that Palestinian factions will achieve reconciliation and, on that basis, realize independent statehood at an early date. We will strengthen communication and coordination with the relevant parties and make joint efforts for the implementation of the Beijing Declaration.

Head of the Fatah delegation Mr. Mahmoud al-Aloul and head of the Hamas delegation Mr. Musa Abu Marzouk delivered remarks on behalf of the Palestinian factions. They noted that China holds an important place in the heart of Palestinian people, and expressed sincere appreciation for President Xi Jinping and China’s unchanging, firm support and selfless assistance to Palestine over a long period of time. They spoke highly of China’s acting as a responsible major country and upholding justice for Palestine in international fora. They expressed deep appreciation for China’s strong support for intra-Palestinian dialogue and reconciliation. They stated their readiness to implement the consensus, strengthen unity among factions, advance the reconciliation process, and work for an early solution to the question of Palestine.

Diplomatic envoys to China or their representatives from Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Russia and Türkiye as well as representatives from 14 main Palestinian factions attended the closing ceremony.

LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA AND LONG LIVE COMRADE XI JINPING

Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

https://hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:

• @[email protected] Bulletins
• Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @[email protected] for the suggestions)
• ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
• Wikipedia/Natopedia
• Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:

• Mastodon.social (well documented)
• Marxists.org (will be difficult)
• ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @[email protected] for pointing out the transphobia)
• Usability and performance improvements
• and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:

• You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

• use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.

• the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed

• on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

• ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️

• It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet :( @[email protected] post inspired me to look into this tho.

• Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @[email protected] offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.

• Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.

• Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: https://github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Countries-with-Regional-Codes)

• Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.

• No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@[email protected]

@[email protected]

@[email protected]

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

Enjoy your weekend :)

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT: After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

https://github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atlas/

https://git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy-atlas/

Edit: I realised that I spelled Pissingers name wrong in the title. Pity.

Propaganda is flying around like crazy in this conflict and I think it's time for our community to come together and try to separate the truth from misinformation and chaff. Similar to my last post on the al-Ahli Hospital Massacre, we're going to go with the following format:

For top-level comments, post the claim being made as well as who made the claim (please cite as close to the original source as possible) and, if possible, the date/time that claim was made.

For other comments, please try to either prove or debunk claims using multiple sources and verifiable information.

The purpose of this thread is to document crimes and atrocities conducted by Israel in Palestine.

Ground Rules:

1. Only post verified reports with proof.

There have been multiple instances of fake news being mixed up with real news which undermines real crimes.

2. Proper backup of the data should be ensured

Western controlled media and social media will definitely wipe evidence. For this reason, it's necessary to preserve everything on a safe host. For news articles or twitter threads, use the web archive.

Please feel free to mention any other safe / immutable places to store information and I'll add them here.

3. Proper formatting should be a priority

This is a serious effort thread so please treat it as such.

Whenever posting something, include the source, context,what happened and evidence.

Top Level comments should preferably only be what the post is for. I ask you to give your opinions either in the news mega or in the sub comments.

4. CW any link to proof that shows pictures of dead or badly wounded people.

ICJ report on the conflict :

https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf