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.


  • scarcity_of_the_self [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    US contamination news, perhaps someone should maintain a column on that here, we have surely missed some delicious muckraking

    The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to use any drugs made by a compounding pharmacy in California after regulators realized the pharmacy was making drugs that need to be sterile—particularly injectable drugs—without using sterile ingredients or any sterilization steps. The products made by the pharmacy, Fullerton Wellness LLC, in Ontario, California, include semaglutide, which is intended to mimic brand-name weight-loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic. Fullerton also made tirzepatide, which is intended to mimic weight-loss and diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro. The FDA became aware of the problem after a patient submitted a complaint to the regulator that a vial of semaglutide from Fullerton Wellness had an unidentified “black particulate” floating in it. Semaglutide, like tirzepatide, is injected under the skin and is intended to be sterile.

    Source is Conde Nasty’s AssTechnica

  • Al_Sham [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    Regarding the Lebanese man that the zionists kidnapped with the assistance of the German “peacekeeping forces” last week.

    Dr Marwa Osman, South Lebanese journalist (telegram)

    The Amhaz family clarifies the identity of their kidnapped son by Zionist Israeli enemy forces.

    The father of Lebanese citizen Imad Fadel Amhaz, who was abducted in Batroun, wrote: “My son is a civilian maritime captain, currently attending a course at the Mersati Institute of Maritime Sciences in Batroun. This is not his first course there—he has taken several at the same institute since 2013. He usually works on civilian ships transporting either livestock or vehicles and spends most of his time at sea. He has no affiliation with any political parties and does not engage in politics. As for the reports circulating in the media about multiple SIM cards found with him, he purchases a SIM card in each country he reaches to stay in touch with his wife, children, and mother. He is a father of three.”

  • Al_Sham [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    Al Manar reporter Ali Shoeib || Situation on the front in Southern Lebanon on the border with Occupied Palestine.

    ¡Comprehensive update!

    spoiler

    35 days into the start of the ground offensive on the frontline villages along the border with occupied Palestine, the Zionist occupation forces have failed to establish a foothold in any of the towns they entered with the goal of fully controlling these areas, eliminating the Resistance, and pushing it back from south of the Litani River.

    In Naqoura, the enemy forces failed to capture the town’s neighborhoods after 4 of their tanks were destroyed near its northern border in the al-Msahyrfeh area and amid defensive operations in al-Labbouneh. The enemy continued to carry out airstrikes and artillery shelling on the town’s neighborhoods. The enemy army aims to make an incursion by occasionally attempting to infiltrate, from time to time, the Hamoul area between Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab under fire cover. However, these attempts fail due to the continued defense by the Resistance fighters.

    Recently, the enemy managed to enter the towns of al-Dhaira, Yarine, al-Bustan, and the outskirts of Marwahin following bombardments, destructive airstrikes, and the demolition of buildings and places of worship. However, they then retreated to the border and are now attempting to maintain control over these towns through firepower due to the rocket barrages targeting their forces in the area.

    The towns of Ramieh and al-Qawzah witnessed fierce confrontations between the invading forces and the Resistance fighters, during which the enemy acknowledged losing a large number of soldiers and tanks. After demolishing buildings, the enemy retreated to the Ramieh and Zar’it outposts to prevent further losses, while continuing to target the area with intermittent artillery shelling.

    In Aita al-Shaab, the enemy’s attempts to infiltrate the town continue to face heroic defensive operations, and they have not achieved any penetration into the center of the town despite entering and demolishing the western and southern neighborhoods. The town is still under artillery shelling.

    The confrontations in the town of Yaroun have decreased after the enemy lost its fire control over the town, leaving some positions at the southern edges.

    In Maroun al-Ras, some enemy forces are stationed around the park and eastern outskirts, and they are subjected to daily rocket attacks.

    To secure this position, the enemy continues to bombard the northern outskirts overlooking the city of Bint Jbeil, which is subjected to daily airstrikes and artillery shelling, in addition to the surrounding towns of Tiri, Kawnin, and Ainatha, as well as all the highgrounds overlooking them, in what resembles a preparatory operation that may be a preemptive measure to attempt an infiltration to the city’s outskirts.

    In Aitaroun, some of the town’s neighborhoods continue to witness defensive operations; the enemy has been unable to control or enter these areas due to the Resistance within.

    After the destruction of buildings and civilian and religious structures in the towns of Mhaybib and Blida, the enemy retreated east but continued to maintain fire control over the two towns.

    In Mays al-Jabal, the enemy army continues its infiltration operations and targets civilian structures in its northern outskirts, failing to control or enter the center of the town due to the defensive operations carried out by the steadfast Resistance fighters despite the airstrikes, destruction, and artillery shelling. All “israeli” movements in the town are targeted daily.

    After advancing into the eastern neighborhood of the town of Hula under heavy fire cover for several days, and while 5 bulldozers were conducting sapping works and demolition operations in the eastern outskirts adjacent to the al-Abbad site, the Resistance targeted these gatherings with a series of rocket barrages and guided missiles, resulting in the destruction of 2 bulldozers. This prompted the enemy to withdraw towards the outpost while keeping the area under the fire of machine guns and artillery shelling.

    In Markaba and Rab el-Thalathine, enemy forces continue to maintain fire control over some of the neighborhoods facing the border, moving only within the area of Wadi Hunin, which is only exposed to the occupied Palestinian territories.

    The enemy army has failed to achieve its objectives of reaching the town of Tayb through the town of Odaisseh after numerous attempts, during which the 2 towns witnessed fierce confrontations between the enemy and the Resistance, resulting in significant losses among the enemy’s soldiers and tanks.

    The enemy’s movements are currently confined to the eastern neighborhoods of the town of Kfarkila and the Metula settlement, where rocket barrages and guided missile strikes continue daily against all [enemy] movements, gatherings, and tanks. The most recent incidents included the destruction of a tank near the wall and the targeting of a gathering with a guided missile.

    For 4 days, the city of Khiam and its surroundings witnessed fierce confrontations, during which the Resistance fighters fought valiantly against the advancing tanks and infantry troops in the eastern and southern neighborhoods, inflicting a large number of casualties among the enemy. The intensity of the clashes prompted the enemy to launch airstrikes close to the engagement points, fearing that Zionist soldiers might be captured. Under a barrage of heavy artillery and phosphorus shelling, the advancing forces retreated towards Wata-Khiam to the east and then to the al-Amra area near al-Wazzani. Enemy bulldozers were seen retrieving tanks that had been destroyed by guided missiles. The incident ended with a complete withdrawal of enemy forces from Khiam and its surroundings, with all troops retreating from al-Hamames and al-Wazzani back to the Metula settlement and the Ma’ayan Baruch site after the enemy’s failure to achieve an infiltration into the city of Khiam.

    On the front of the Shebaa Farms, Kfarchouba Hills, Halta, and Kfar Hamam: some hills and high grounds in the area are witnessing infantry and vehicle movements towards the Saddeneh high ground and the Shebaa entrance. These movements are being targeted with rocket barrages, while the remaining forested areas in the 2 towns are exposed to artillery shelling and airstrikes from time to time.


      • Al_Sham [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        5 hours ago

        The crazy thing is that each of these towns has no more than a few dozen Hezbollah fighters at the very most. We’re talking squads of 8-10 holding down most of these smaller villages.

        This was one of the strategies they revealed in the Secrets of the Second Liberation documentary I posted awhile back. I think it was the battle of Mando Hill where the commander talked about it? Something like 12 Hezbollah fighters holding off over 100 daesh.

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 hours ago

    So what’s the over/under on Iran launching Operation True Promise 3 before the election tomorrow is called? My gut tells me they don’t give a shit, and the attack will happen regardless of who’s elected and neither Trump nor Harris will meaningfully change US policy in West Asia so who cares, but there is always a chance Iran decides to do something Extremely Funny, not an October surprise but a November surprise.

    • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 hours ago

      I don’t think so. Like yeah it’d be funny but I think Iran has other things they are waiting for to strike. Like maybe fixing some radar systems or moving AA so that they are ready for the response.

    • sewer_rat_420 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      8 hours ago

      My money is on intense US-led strikes on Yemen, Iraq, and maybe Syria starting after the election before Iran will respond. After True Promise 3 US will do their first “limited strikes” inside Iranian territory

  • NoLeftLeftWhereILive [none/use name, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    On this sad day the Lenin museum in Finland is closed.

    The warmongering nation and it’s revisionist bourgeoisie will reopen the museum at a later date as “the museum of eastern relations”, the name will be Nootti which refers to the diplomatic note the Soviet Union sent Finland that was used heavily as an anti-communist propaganda tool that coloured for example my childhood and the discussions around finlandization (the CIA term that is now being plastered on Ukraine and Georgia, searcing for this term nowadays is eye-opening)

    The museum was the birthplace of the Soviet Union. soviet-heart

    Edit. Adding that the statement of the new museum (that you can find in the link) claims that there was no external influence in this decision. This is absolutely not true. There has been media discourse, opinion pieces and the curator of the museum is a turbolib who was first in line to say sorry about the museums name when the ukraine crisis started. They have also removed statues of Lenin and renamed places with his name in them in the country in the last few years.

    The word “nuance” is used a lot in this explainer of the new museum, it doesn’t take a genius to see this for what it is.

    • VHS [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      In addition to reasons already mentioned (phones, big cars, COVID), I wouldn’t be surprised if the aging population was a factor. There are way more old people now then there were in 2010 and that means worse vision and reflexes. Modern cars also offer less visibility which makes it harder to be aware of your surroundings even for good drivers.

      We really need slower streets and smaller vehicles as well as public transit. I also don’t like how EVs are marketed largely for being super-fast. They accelerate way too quickly and reckless drivers love flooring it from stop lights

    • Ivysaur [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      8 hours ago

      https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/01.wnl.0001051276.37012.c2

      Findings indicate an association between acute COVID-19 rates and increased car crashes with an OR of 1.5 (1.23-1.26 95%CI). The analysis did not find a protective effect of vaccination against increased crash risks, contrary to previous assumptions. The OR of car crashes associated with COVID-19 was comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol at legal limits or driving with a seizure disorder.

      pretty easy to explain imo

    • Hexboare [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      13 hours ago

      Most of the fatality growth has been at night - so SUVs (and increase in car mass generally), poor infrastructure and increased number of people walking around. Phone usage for both drivers and pedestrians.

      • SchillMenaker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 hours ago

        Yeah, even the best phones in 2010 were pieces of shit compared to what we have now. I’d blame the vast majority of that increase on smart phones and the internet (with the entirety of the underlying blame being on cars and car infrastructure obviously).

    • YEP [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      14 hours ago

      While the size is a contributing factor the main factor is widespread decreases in traffic enforcement by cops. Across the us police and hand out way less tickets for speeding running red lights and things of that nature. Lazy bums

      • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 hours ago

        Policing has never really been much of a deterrent anyway. To get people to drive safer, you really have to engineer the actual, material conditions to make driving slower and paying more attention a necessity. Like, you have to make negligent driving as dangerous to the driver as to the pedestrians and cyclists and shit they may hit. This means narrow lanes, bollards, etc. And it means making the other participants safer through actual physical protection. Don’t make pedestrians and cyclists “share the road” with the murder mobiles, but give them their own space.

        And huge vehicles is part of this problem. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t necessarily make the driver/passengers safer*, but it DOES make you more dangerous to everyone else on the road. So that calculus of whether you are putting yourself in as much danger as you are putting other people in still shifts when you introduce and multiply the urban tanks.

        Anyway, traffic (non-)engineering has increased the number of “stroads” and outdoor-shopping-malls-and-parking-lot zones over time, on top of ever-increasing vehicle size. On the major street nearest my house, they decided that the number of accidents meant they should put in a center turn lane for people to aim for and loiter in. But far from making things safer, it just means you have more lanes to worry about traffic being in (one of them from both directions!), merging into, and turning out of as you pull out or try to cross a driveway on foot or whatever. And having so much more apparent room due to the turn lane, people of course drive faster! Fucking brilliant!


        * Back in the decades of land-boat-style station wagons and stuff, they started putting weights in the doors of cars, because feeling the heft and solid slam of the door made people feel like they were safer in them. But they were literally just bulk weight, rather than any kind of actual structural enhancement. Great stuff!

    • Chronicon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      15 hours ago

      I’m a bit baffled that the annual figure only has a datapoint every two years. especially because of covid, a little more resolution might shed a lot of light on the trends

      but I’m not surprised. I’ve been driving in some capacity for quite a while and I don’t think the roads have ever been quite this bad and full of complete lunatics, often in vehicles that should be illegal like the one in the pic. In my area, 2023 and 2024 really saw the full force return of traffic congestion, but the dangerous driving habits picked up during the pandemic didn’t go away, at least that’s my pet theory

      Edit: there was a drop in 2023, but still well above even 2020 levels, still in early 80s territory

      • john_browns_beard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        15 hours ago

        I could probably write a book about my theories on why driving has gotten so bad. I know that people owning monster trucks for personal use is definitely a contributor, but there has been a dramatic increase in reckless and aggressive driving since the pandemic began.

        Everyone is (on average) more angry than they used to be, and since people tend to disconnect while driving, it’s an easy way to express anger against others who you will likely never have to see or interact with again. Driving interactions are as close as you can get to the internet while still being real-life.

        • I’ve also read speculation on neoliberalism (individualism) impacting this.

          Prior to our hyper-individualized times people had more awareness on behaving according to collective norms and in taking others needs into consideration also in traffic behaviour. Our me first-style atomized existance likely produces this behaviour.

          I think it makes sense in a system like traffic that breaks down when people stop caring or even noticing other people.

        • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          I don’t think its that complicated imo.

          US roads were built like in the 1950s and it is lacking maintenance already, poor conditions leads to more accidents.

          The population growth pushing people away from jobs to the suburbs means even more people driving. I found this

          US driving schools and what it takes to get a license is incredibly behind the standards of almost every other country? Its extremely obvious the auto industry wants no restrictions.

          Then yeah you can add the modern psychological pressures of work culture expectations, more assholes in general, more stress, less healthy eating and sleep before driving etc.

          • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            8 hours ago

            I also wouldn’t be surprised if there were a general decrease in the availability an accessibility of public transportation.

            Like, a form of public transportation I rarely see discussed is school busses. When I was a kid, most of us rode buses, and there’d be a route right outside your house unless you lived down at the end of a rural dead-end road or something. Either way you’d just have a short walk, or your parents could drop you off at the stop on their way to work wherever they were headed. And it was always, always free. Now the bus routes are few and far between, many kids have to traverse a deadly obstacle course to get to one, many schools have you pay an extra fee to get bus services, and the number of cars converging on schools at the beginning and end of the school day is ENORMOUS.

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    15 hours ago

    The possibilities of a US civil war lies in one place only, the factional rifts (potential and actual) among armed Federal agencies and the true identities of their capitalist suppliers, backers, investors and patrons; the 18 intelligence agencies of the United States would obviously form the nexuses of new leadership castes, absorbing or leveraging the 3,000 or so private intelligence companies active in the US

    It’s a path of least resistance that flows towards whatever government entities has the most guns, and these new power blocs will scramble to absorb the various branches of the US military (assuming of course the various officer corps of the US military don’t somehow overcome the combined pull of 18 intelligence agencies)

    The police will obey, or they’ll be branded foreign infiltrated rogues and destroyed (this may have the unfortunate effect of confusing certain leftist radicals who may form incorrect assumptions about the new “cop-killing federal government”)

    Militias will either be absorbed a la Azov battalion-style or suffer a similar fate to the more uppity pigs

    This picture is likely to emerge by the mid 2040s