Yeah so as expected, it seems like first quantum minerals will be taking the panamanian government to an international court now (arbitration will apparently take place in florida).
I guess there's nothing panama can do at this point but just present our case and hope they don't win, but honestly it's making me angry. I can't even tell you guys how shady this company is.... They did so much illegal shit and covered it up, but bc they have so much money and power/influence nearly every news outlet in other countries is like "well the company denied those allegations" and leaves it at that.
I also want to add that they did something really similar in the congo, where the DRC government revoked a contract and forced FQM out bc they had breached it's terms SO many times. They also left the congo completely in ruins with massive amounts of pollution and damage to the land (which is exactly what they want to do to us here, and would have if we hadn't fought against it and managed to win), and contributed massively to the situation going on in the congo right now too. Not to mention how much damage they were ALREADY doing here in panama, like the locals have been getting sick for years and the water supply is already poisoned in the region where their mine is.
And it still seems like barely anybody in canada has a clue this is all going on??? It sucks knowing I don't have a big enough platform to bring more international awareness to all this myself, but I also am not good at writing and putting things into words lmao.
But anyway... now that they can't tell photographers to go away, we have more pictures of the mine itself (as it is right now) and it really is enormous already. Like knowing how much more it was going to expand is insane, and right in the middle of a rainforest literally full of endangered animals. It's still such a relief to know this was stopped for good even though its pissing me off how they won't even leave without trying to suck as much money as possible out this country and hurt us as much as possible in the process.
(Here's some of those pictures before I end up ranting more though lmao)
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Something else that makes me sympathetic to Pharma's situation is like. Idk if there's an actual term for this or if someone smarter and more academic wrote it about some real life context that actually matters.
But, so we've already established among Pharma stans that the circumstances at Delphi were blackmail/torture with no real way out that wouldn't involve Pharma being responsible for people getting killed (either killing patients for the deal or having everyone die bc he failed his end of the deal).
And I feel like while "he's still in the wrong because he killed people" is part of it, another sort of implicit part is the idea that Pharma should've been willing to take more personal risk, maybe even risk dying? I mean, Ratchet does ask "why didn't you just detonate it near the DJD" (to which Pharma responds that he did try to get Sonic and Boom to do it, but they refused) so like
Idk I feel like we do have this social notion of martyrs as a very romantic ideal, people you can praise for being so brave and strong and righteous that they ended their own lives for their cause, while you can also coo about how sad and tragic it is that dying is what it took for them to do the right thing. But at the same time I feel like in reality, having an expectation that people become martyrs is kind of a toxic social norm bc like. It's very easy to demand that others sacrifice their lives for some Ultimate Moral Good when you yourself aren't experiencing the same hardships as they are. And ultimately it is kind of fucked up to tell someone "the moral thing you should've done was risk your life/kill yourself" because asking someone to pay their life to do the right thing is no small request. And sure, the typical response would be to call them a "coward" for caring more about saving their own skin instead of doing the right thing... but again, death is a really scary thing and self-preservation is a really strong instinct, so it kind of feels like having this binary view of "you're either a Brave Hero who sacrifices your life for everyone else or a Dirty Coward who's too scared of dying to do what's right" is kind of fucked up?
I guess the best way to describe it is that if someone willingly gives up their life as a sacrifice to others, it can be a noble thing because it's a choice they made willingly, but if it becomes a Moral Standard that in order to be a Good Person you have to be unafraid of throwing your life away and if you aren't willing to die you're a Cowardly Bad Person, that's when it becomes toxic.
Idk, I guess how this ties back to Pharma is that he was never in a position where he expected to make these kinds of moral decisions/ultimatums. He's a doctor who doesn't even get into combat, his job is to heal and not to kill, he's behind the front lines in a hospital that's supposed to be a safe, neutral place for him to heal people. So in the face of suddenly having a "murder people on behalf of me, or I murder everyone you swore to protect" ultimatum thrust upon him, I understand why Pharma wasn't """"""""""brave enough"""""""""" to "do the right thing" (whatever that would've been in the case of Delphi). You could argue that maybe a frontliner soldier accepted the burden of possibly dying for their cause and they've become used to it as someone who lives that reality every single day, but I feel like for Pharma, who's a doctor and a protected non-combatant (from what we can tell), that sort of risking of his life/living with the fact his life could be snuffed out any day isn't something he would've been prepared for at all.
And for me personally, from an outsider's perspective, it strikes me as kind of unethical to go "oh well he should've just detonated the bomb himself even if it killed him" bc again, there's a difference between witnessing a moral conundrum as a bystander versus being the person living with it and being under time pressure where it's do-or-die. Just as part of my personal standards, I feel like death is such a huge consequence/burden of someone's actions (literally you are no longer alive, any potential you had left is cut short, you cease to exist on this plane) that it feels rather callous to go "Well you should've just been willing to die for your beliefs if you really cared that much!!!"
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this is going to be an annoying rant so feel free to ignore it but so actually are there no good universities in all of the united states that don't leave you in lifelong debt?????? like hello???????? everywhere i look at that seems interesting and doesn't have reviews talking about how no one cares about you and you're on your own the entire time you're there or the staff/students are -ist/-phobic or no one does work and just goes to parties or other such things they're talking about the expenses. i want a degree because i need one if i want to do anything but i don't know if i want it enough to be in debt for my whole life. and why is the us like this. i just want to go somewhere else this country does not seem worth it to me. i want to go back in time and find a way to sink every european colonizer ship that landed on the land of the americas
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If there's one thing I like more than time travel it's crossover reincarnation, so.
Botk link reincarnated as Damian Wayne.
An incredible weapon master of all types, but especially prodigious with a sword - he was beating knights at the age of 4 and with his memories as intact as they get for him I can see that goalpost moving even further (probably with traps and tricks, a 3yo doesn't exactly have great bodily control).
He's an excellent survivalist, agile, strong, durable, cunning and creative. He can move like a feather in the breeze, strike from behind with ease. His first kill, an animal, did not stir him as it did the other children. With his poise, grace, skills, obedience, he ought to be ra'as' finest assassin in the making, a jewel in the crown of the league.
Except he never speaks a word. Half his targets escape unscathed. He skates by true punishment on the merit of his skills and achievements in other missions. Testing has shown it is not a physical deformity that prevents his speech, but not even talia has been able to coaxe a word from him past his second birthday.
It is a defect ra'as is growing more and more frustrated by, as each attempt to fix these two final flaws ends in resounding failure. Less extreme solutions are running dry.
Talia fears those solutions. Her child does too, she knows. For them, there is a possible solution, more extreme than anything ra'as would tolerate.
She sends him out of the league. To his father.
To Gotham.
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