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Bulletins and News Discussion from November 4th to November 10th, 2024 - This is a Giant Problem

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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  • in Mozambique violence is spreading across the country. Old conflict resurfaces after elections and puts Lusophone country in chaos.

    Images on social media have shown scenes of violence in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, a Portuguese-speaking country located on the east coast of the African continent. Since the presidential election on October 9, the defeated far-right candidate Venâncio Mondlane has questioned the result of the election and the validity of the ballot boxes.

    Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front), the historic organization that transformed Mozambique into an independent nation, had Daniel Chapo as its candidate, who was declared the winner with more than 70% of the votes. The opposition, especially the supporters of Venâncio Mondlane, who ran as an independent and received around 20% of the votes, accused Frelimo of manipulating the electoral process.

    Mondlane is a former member of Renamo, the right-wing organization financed by apartheid in Southern Rhodesia and by the West to prevent the growth of the left in Africa during the Cold War period. Mondlane did part of his political training in the USA. Protests erupted immediately after the election results were released, intensifying after the assassination of two senior opposition figures on October 19.

    These events led to a severe crackdown by the security forces, resulting in numerous casualties on both sides. Activists warn that the situation could deteriorate into a “bloodbath” if the government does not engage in a dialog or address the protesters' grievances.

    Venâncio's idea is to overthrow the Mozambican democratic system: 'The fourth phase is going to be extremely painful, because we have noticed that the regime wants to arm-wrestle the people. The regime wants to use only the force of arms against the people, it wants to continue murdering the people, but as we have seen, there is a very strong determination on the part of our people to continue this struggle,” he said.

    • Knew this shit was a color revolution as soon as the protests were getting boosted on reddit

    • In 2010–2011, Anadarko Petroleum and Eni discovered the Mamba South gas field, recoverable reserves of 4,200 billion cubic metres (150 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of northern Cabo Delgado Province. Once developed, this could make Mozambique one of the largest producers of liquefied natural gas in the world

      Mozambique gave France's Total Energy control over the extraction process

      In 2017 Mozambique received gas developement bids (power plants, fertilizer, plastics etc) from 14 companies and chose 3 of them:

      Norway’s Yara International

      UK's GL Africa Energy

      USA's Shell Mozambique

      Doesn't appear to have any Russia or China involvement. An islamist insurgancy started in Cabo Delgado Province around 2017. I'm sure it's a complete coincidence the worlds largest NG reserve is also located in Cabo Delgado Province.

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