YES

YES

I’ve just watched one (1) episode of Suits and I already ship Harvey and Mike

Cool Beanz

So i was reading a bit of Filipino folklore ‘cause I was real bored, and i read one of the darkest shit ever.

b r o k e n

When Paulette sings the ‘Hey, you look like that poster for Ireland. Long blonde hair and the sweet sunny face- Oh no wait that’s the poster for Sweden Oh screw it. I’ll never see either place!’ part in Ireland. That hurts. 

And also that bit in the actual song Legally Blonde where Elle sings ‘Some girls fight hard. Some face the trial. Some girls were just meant to smile’ and then ‘Its not up to me, just let me be Legally Blonde’ TWICE?! Yeah, that still breaks something in me. Ah. 

Trump: I ended Racial Sensitivity training because it was racist 

WHAT

At least 272 environmental defenders were killed between 2001 and 2019, according to the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, a network of Philippine environmental organizations. More than half of them were protesting mines, like the three young farmers in Masbate province on the island of Luzon, who were killed in October 2017 after they were red-tagged. The three farmers had opposed the Masbate Gold Project, the country’s top gold producer, according to Kalikasan.

A third of those killed were Indigenous, like the Lumad leaders from the island of Mindanao in 2015. The Lumad have long been displaced by the encroachment of mining companies on their homes. [E.C.] vividly remembers the events of September 1, 2015, when armed men came to their Indigenous community in Sitio Han-ayan, Diatagon, and gathered roughly 200 men, women, and children in a local basketball court. Then, in front of them, the gunmen shot community leaders Dionel Campos and Juvello Sinzo – [E.C.’s] uncle. […] “It felt like our world had collapsed.”

After the September killings, about 3,000 Lumad evacuated their ancestral lands and moved to the town of Lianga, over 25 kilometres away.

“We are basically living with half of our body already six feet under.”

Since Duterte came into power in 2016, extrajudicial killings, including those of land defenders, have skyrocketed. Environmental watchdog Global Witness declared the Philippines the deadliest country for land and environmental defenders in 2018, when 30 people were killed. Last year [2019], over half of the 212 reported killings worldwide occurred in just two countries: Colombia, with 64 activists killed, and the Philippines, with 43. […]

A number of activists and experts say some of the extrajudicial killings and forced displacement are byproducts of Canadian mining in the Philippines. In most cases, the Canadian government offers little recourse for those harmed. The activists point out that because the Philippines is rich in natural resources, and law enforcement violently punishes people resisting development, the country is attractive for companies that want to mine with few regulations. […]

“The mining industry is Canada’s flagship industry overseas,” said Catherine Coumans, a research coordinator with MiningWatch Canada. […]

Australian-Canadian company OceanaGold, owner of one of the largest gold-copper mines in the world out of the Philippines, said […] “[w]e do not have firsthand knowledge of what is happening at other mine sites across the Philippines […].”

One of the Philippines’ worst ever environmental disasters took place in March 1996 at a Canadian mining site in Marinduque, an island in the southwest. […] The waste flooded nearby villages and the Boac River, which was full of fish and shrimp. Hundreds of people were displaced, including 400 families who lived in Barangay Hinapulan, a village that was buried in 6 feet of muddy water. […] According to a 2019 two-part series by independent media outlet VERA Files, the Boac river is still biologically dead and local residents in Marinduque […] continue to suffer from skin irritation, fatigue, and body aches as a result of heavy metals – like lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, copper, and chromium – flowing through their blood.

Things are getting worse.

This is not surprising, given Duterte’s ongoing brutal drug war that has resulted in the deaths of about 27,000 Filipinos through alleged extrajudicial killings at the hands of police. […]

Canada is turning a blind eye. […]

In the Philippines, most activists and Indigenous peoples continue to defend their communities and the environment largely on their own.

—–

Anya Zoledziowski and Natashya Gutierrez. “Land Defenders Are Killed in the Philippines for Protesting Canadian Mining.” Vice World News. 1 October 2020.

TL;DR Both parties are baaaad bad, but Trump and Pence suck the most so we gotta get them the fuck out of here