Latest article published today in Canadian Dimension, on the intersection of Canadian lithium exploration and NATO’s “democracy-building” activities in Mongolia. Canadian mining and lobbying activities in Mongolia are completely overlooked by both state and independent media in Canada, despite a long history of corporate interventions into governance and economic policy, and a slew of social and environmental damages that are not held to account.
Link to article: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-poland-of-northeast-asia-mongolias-lithium-frontier
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The true cost of mining in Mongolia
New article published in Toward Freedom, examining the role of Oyu Tolgoi as an instrument of neoliberalization and rapid privatization in Mongolia, and the abusive business practices of the mine’s owners and financiers.
Oyu Tolgoi’s majority owners, British-Australian company Rio Tinto, and Rio Tinto’s Canadian subsidiary Turquoise Hill Resources, have long exploited Mongolia’s lax environmental and economic regulations. Access to water and land, resource colonialism, and government corruption are ongoing issues that have led to sustained conflict. Despite ongoing criticism of the mine’s contracts and claims of corporate tax evasion, Mongolia’s government has persisted in granting dangerous concessions to the company.
Link to article: https://towardfreedom.org/story/mining-and-the-making-of-a-sacrifice-zone-in-mongolia/
Published a reflection with the poetic title of “Acquiring and Optimizing Sustainable Relationships for Good Solid Cash Flow Stream. Or Speaking with Plants”, as a contribution to Temporary continent. and the Anthropocene Curriculum.
This text includes excerpts from interviews with environmental scientist Roopali Phadke and artist Maureen Walrath.
Link to article: https://anthropocene-curriculum.org/contribution/acquiring-and-optimizing-sustainable-relationships-for-good-solid-cash-flow-streams-or-speaking-with-plants
The Sparkplug is a new series starting in Winter 2020. The Green Violin will be sending out an infrequent spin-off review with important links and articles. This review may include an occasional special contribution or original journalism, and will likely send you to other places on the internet.
Link to page: https://greenviolin.info/the-sparkplug/
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poster illustration – oct. 12
Poster illustrations I did for a performance by a people of oscillators and Stefan Christoff. Show was organized by Nathan Medema (pleasure through sound). Illustrations done in charcoal.
New article published with Toward Freedom, including interviews with Eugene Simonov (conservation scientist and coordinator of Rivers without Boundaries, Russia) and Sukhgerel Dugersuren (director of Mongolian research group Oyu Tolgoi). Excerpt:
In recent years, Mongolia has sought to expand its construction of hydroelectric dams in the northern provinces, where large watersheds connect Mongolia to the Buryat’ Republic in Siberia. Since the introduction of Mongolia’s Action Plan for Implementation of the Green Development Policy for the period of 2016–2030, the country has identified the river-systems in the northern provinces of Khövsgöl, Bulgan, Orkhon, and the Selenge as potential sources of hydroelectricity.[1]
These plans would have direct effects on the Selenge and Eg rivers, as well as the larger Baikal basin within Russia. The Green Development Policy also presents hydroelectric development as the next step for Mongolia to transition from fossil fuels. The country, however, has experienced a significant loss of rivers and lakes in the past 20 years, signaling to the dramatic effects of the extractive and agricultural industries on Mongolia’s water sources. Hydroelectric projects, as well as the central mining industry, continue to demonstrate a lack of transparency, accountability for transboundary environmental impacts, and a resistance toward meaningful consultation with impacted communities.
Read the full article on Toward Freedom: https://towardfreedom.org/archives/asia-archives/between-sacred-waters-and-natural-capital-resistance-to-hydroelectric-dams-in-mongolia/.
Tripwire 15 is out! Cover image is “Collapsing Liberty” by Omar Pimienta. Published are early excerpts from A Flight of Objects that Seemed Real.
three bits from the excerpts:
The artist from Turin says, I can’t repeat myself, I can’t talk about the same thing repeatedly. He consumes words with the luxury of exchanging topics like seasonal fashions, concerned at one moment with flights to San Francisco, and balancing work-life, and the Caiman Islands, and my thighs. Limp palmfuls pawing at my ass against a wall on an off-Chinatown market street, weakly cupping my thighs while condominiums rise on old graveyards. What do we become under each other’s hands but humiliation?
…
Bare little bird between my palms, you dissolve and I learn you more into my hands, your warmth cupping you into something tender and breakable, an intuitive stream of lip-trace over your shaking beak husks, winglike wraiths, that slip in your sleeping between my fingers, licking the dry shadows of their emptiness. Even as a shell-like, driftwood light-bearing shadow of voiceless language, you find every space in me. The rapidity of light that thinks over every pace, entering me, somnambulant. You never announced your arrival. Unnoticed in a deeper course of blood until the absence is unbearable and the material around is frighteningly delicate. You break against my ears every day. How many shards you have already left? I’m piecing them together, humming into them, a manic invocation into the laws of vibration and matter, improbable, telling sound how to behave so that you stand before me again.
…
Small profits are made out of the semantics of suicide. The elegance of theory allows another form of escape for radicals. Dissatisfaction is revolt. Unhappiness is essential rebellion. So refuse to be happy. Manufacture resistance, replicate sterilised poor-punk. Pushing purchased academpunk. Punkt. Punctum and the necessity to administer nodes of competence. The high-fidelity preservation systems of nonmilitantantinatalists. Vibrant material representatives of the Neuedemokratische and correct thinking. Warrior scholars, graduates of the fine art of impunity, waging class wars in the hills of Switzerland, on the warm beaches of Malta. Intellectual elite spooning warm oatmeal off of ultramarine tablecloths. The existence of tablecloths. And, sometimes, tables. “Our culture is suffering from ‘circulatory problems’: the waste is backing up”.
A section of The Decay of the Third Kingdom has been translated by 岑建興 for 苦勞網特約翻譯 (lit. Coolloud, “hard work”), available here: https://www.coolloud.org.tw/node/92927/. The full series was originally published in Warscapes.
Editor’s note from this article:
【編按】自去年（2018）5月美國單方面撤出伊朗核協議並對德黑蘭祭出經濟制裁後，中東地區衝突持續升高。近日（5/25）美國總統川普更表示，將增添部署1,500名兵力至中東。當美國將伊朗軍隊指定為「恐怖主義組織」的同時，本文提醒讀者：自1967年六日戰爭以來，以色列在被佔領的巴勒斯坦土地上發展核武，並且獲得西方盟國的技術奧援，才是區域內真實存在的核武威脅。
本文是一系列檢視以色列於內蓋夫沙漠發展核能文章的首篇，作者蒐集FBI與CIA的解密報告、文件與新聞報導，描述以色列早期核子發展與錫安主義及對巴勒斯坦人民的驅逐如何產生關聯。全文刊載於獨立線上雜誌「Warscapes」，作者Lital Khaikin特別為苦勞網縮減篇幅，中文版即是根據較短版本編譯。
