Image is from this Washington Post article, which shows the Shabara artisanal mine, where cobalt and copper are dug out by hand.
This preamble got much of its information from this article in ROAPE, and this article in People’s World.
Countries in the imperial core have increasingly advocated for Green New Deals, whose primary goal is to re-attract manufacturing capability to somewhat counter deindustrialization, and then export some of this renewable energy generation to other countries to gain profit. Just as the initial wave of industrialization was built on massive resource exploitation of coal and iron and then oil, this wave is being built on exploiting metals like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The DRC is one of the best case studies on the planet for understanding the new dynamic.
The DRC is, to your average Western country, a resource bonanza. It is the 11th largest country by land area, and contains lithium, copper, and cobalt in massive quantities, famously containing two thirds of the world’s known cobalt supplies. The Western world and their institutions swarmed the DRC like piranhas, dismantling the Congo’s sovereignty over its natural resources. China was not terribly involved in the privatisation process, but has stepped in to benefit from the West’s work - Chinese corporations account for 40% of the production of major Congo cobalt projects (and 15 out of 19 cobalt mines), with Switzerland at 30% via Glencore, and Kazakhstan at 22%. The US, for whatever reason, withdrew from majority ownership of some projects in the mid-2010s, but is now anxious about China’s position in the cobalt markets. Western countries in general have spent their time lately drawing up critical minerals strategies both to keep capitalism chugging along in their own countries, and attempt to weaken China, which invariably involves the Congo.
The Congo has attempted to resist imperialist encroachment. In 2018, the Kaliba administration asserted a new Mining Code which raised tax and royalty rates and increased state ownership in mining firms from 5% to 10%, and these changes were bitterly resisted by the West right to the end. Since 2019, under the Tshisekedi administration, the government established the state-owned EGC, which sought to take control over the processing and export of artisanal and small-scale cobalt production, which comprises 5-15% of cobalt production in the Congo. More recently, Tshisekedi is planning to move up the manufacturing chain - instead of merely mining cobalt, they want to refine it there and then make electric vehicle batteries and other such products with it, which would be an industry worth trillions of dollars. But so far, there hasn’t been much movement away from having mining exports as the backbone of the economy, and it’s doubtful that plans to just keep doing this until they get rich enough to build refineries and factories will work. The profits mostly go to Western countries and have failed to produce significant benefits for Congolese workers, nor resulted in the emergence of domestic industries so far. Reforms will help a little, but only a little, and they remain fundamentally constrained by the markets and the whims of the West.
Meanwhile, war and mass displacements have put immense stress on the country. There are 7.1 million displaced people in the DRC due to various conflicts and mass displacements - most recently, the war between the Congolese army and M23. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to be displaced every few months, and across the whole country, over 26 million require humanitarian aid. 6 million people have died in the eastern DRC in the last three decades, with hundreds of armed groups, both domestic and foreign, battling for resources and territory.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
I think we disagree on what constitutes a credible source. You’re critical of the sources I’m using but you’re citing Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone three times, and a Swiss Businessman whose claim to fame is being ‘a capitalist in North Korea.’ Zenz is a clown and a grifter, but we have first hand survivor accounts and reports from human-rights groups. Even socialist outlets like Jacobin have covered this, and I think those denying human rights violations have taken place are in the minority. I’m sure you’ll dismiss all of these sources but they’re credible enough for me and I’d rather not spend any more time debating the indefensible
BBC is not the primary source, it all goes back to Zenz and CIA funded think tanks
Firsthand survivor accounts like North Korean defectors, right?
It’s a good bit, make people believe the west as a whole would ever care about muslim populations at all when it happens to align with their interest in weakening China. Insidious, really.
I don’t think anyone (including that Covert article) is denying that any human rights abuses at all have happened. But even famous nato propaganda outlet Wikipedia doesn’t call it a genocide, itself. Where is any proof?
Uyghers weren’t killed in masses.
They weren’t displaced, a lot were imprisoned and then later released.
Birth rates are up in the region.
You can see youtube videos of people in large numbers practicing their culture & religion in public with no state repression.
Did I miss anything? Doesn’t even the CIA agree with everything I’ve mentioned here? Do you disagree with anything I’ve mentioned? On what grounds would you call it a genocide? Because a million people were temporarily detained? That doesn’t make it a genocide unless you think that almost every country is doing a genocide all the time. Were human rights violated? Almost certainly, but that’s not the same as a genocide
Oh okay, I guess it’s fine then…
Do you even hear yourself? A million people put into camps unlawfully as collective punishment, and you’re siding with that government over the reports of the people who were imprisoned?
Birth rates are up now, because they halved between 2017-19 when the Chinese government started targeting Uyghurs.
I’m sure you can see people practicing their religion in public. You can still see First Nations people in Canada wearing their traditional garb, selling their cultural artifacts etc. But that doesn’t mean that the Canada didn’t commit cultural genocide against them with the Residential Schools. The parallels are actually striking in both cases: China isn’t trying to kill all 15 million of these people just as the Canadian government didn’t try to kill all their Indigenous people. They just kidnapped a subset of them and tried to brainwash and torture them. The details differ (children vs adults), but in both cases the intent to destroy a people and their culture is there and that’s what makes these crimes genocidal.
Don’t you feel any dissonance when comparing the so-called “genocide” in China with what is happening right now in Gaza? It cheapens the actual meaning of the word “genocide” and turns it into a technical term rather than the highest crime imaginable. Genocide involves mass death, always, including in Canada’s residential school system where thousands of children were buried in mass unmarked graves.
There’s a reason the ICJ has not taken up these charges. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International declined to call China’s anti-terrorism campaign a genocide. The Uyghur Tribunal, though it did call it genocide, did not find evidence of mass killing or mass death.
Calling this genocide turns the very purpose of the genocide convention on its head; it makes China unique in all of history as the only génocidaire that didn’t kill its victims en masse. And to talk about this while thousands of children are dead in Gaza? I can’t abide it.
I’m not siding with anyone over anyone. I don’t agree with what the Chinese gov did I’m simply saying it doesn’t count as genocide. By what definition of genocide does this count in your mind? You didn’t ever make that argument. There were no “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”
You quoted me saying “a million people were detained” but didn’t read the whole sentence I guess. I said