BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol II, No. 06
Feb 09, 2005

 
 
 social criticism by
 Jojo Soria de Veyra

 



Table of
Contents



ARCHIVE:
2004
2005




Literary website:

Warphoto
 



 

A General Against Mines?

 

THE MINING industry is going to breathe out alive a new Frankenstein again, thanks to the Macapagal-Arroyo government’s kowtowing to the opinions of such patriotic elements as the son of Imelda’s brother Kokoy Romualdez, now the mining industry’s new spokesman Philip Romualdez. Thanks likewise is due this government’s obvious ignorance of the fact that even a simple frequent visit of humans to caves distorts the natural behavior of cave-based and cave-using animals. The call of opposing groups like the WWF to respect the greater value of a biodiversity gearing up for a permanent ruin is falling on deaf ears, ably answered by the media-handlers of the government with the lame excuse that anyway the mines are not open-pit mines. A little knowledge (or pretense of a lack of knowledge) is indeed a dangerous thing. In case we forgot what biodiversity is all about, one might consider that when a certain specie signals a creeping population growth (e.g. flies, or ants, or termites, etc.), 90 to 10 that growth has been caused by a change in the ecological balance more than by exportation of devouring species. An unchecked change in the population of one specie denied of its predators necessarily changes the population of this particular specie’s preys, and so on and so forth, inclusive of the vegetation the animal species either nurture or devour. A mining operation’s chance of killing the population of one specie or two or more in a mining area (the biodiversity of which is usually unmapped in this sorry country of ours) is high and almost guaranteed, as are simple frequent human visits to caves by human feet.

Attached to the biodiversity issue, most certainly, is the medical issue, whereby a loss of one plant or animal specie necessarily means another specimen loss for basic medical/pharmaceutical research, which research by the way aims to overtake the burgeoning number of mutating viruses in the world today. Meanwhile, while the Kyoto Protocol as a whole continues to be denied the signature of a super-industrialized nation, thanks to its leader George W. Bush, square miles/kilometers of ice continue to ease towards a global sea now being monitored as generally guaranteed of a radical calamitous level rise in the next ten years (which by the way will reduce island areas as its most obvious effect, aside from the fact that such a rise will bring the tides closer to the lunar and solar magnets). But the car manufacturers are not blinking, and governments such as the Philippines favor the development of private transportation over public.

There is a signed fragment of the Kyoto Protocol, however, that shows another United Nations habit. You see, industrialized countries (mainly of the G7) continue to place its focus cum blame on developing countries. The claim is that developing countries maintain factories the fumes from which fly to the atmospheres of the first world. So what’s the first world’s solution? Subsidize the planting of bio-engineered forests (what environmentalists call “frankenforests”, after Frankenstein) in the third world (better known as the “southern world”). These frankenforests are supposed to sport genetically modified trees that would eat the carbon emissions in the third world, thus protecting the atmospheres of the first world from any carbon fallout from these struggling countries. Aside from the dangers posed by the “frankentrees” on the future of the earth’s vegetation (remember the disastrous failure of the Frankenstein experiment?), the Kyoto Protocol proposal to go on with the plantations also allow the industrialized countries to raise back to a higher level the limits on the first world’s own carbon emissions. Obviously, all in the name of maintaining that world’s headway in the global trade of industrial products while guaranteeing the incapacity of the third world to compete. Note that the third world did counter-propose a global fund whereby developing countries may find assistance in the area of developing sustainable energy, but the frankenforests proposal seemed to have won, thanks of course to the fact that the United Nations is basically an organization designed to always protect and benefit the first world first, the third world’s leaders being always threatened with all sorts of threats.

There are of course third world governments that need not be threatened. Usually these are governments the majority of whose governed peoples secretly regard them (approvingly or disapprovingly) as puppets of either the first world’s economic or military empire.

And one can almost say that this seems to be the case with the Macapagal-Arroyo government's record. As Fidel Ramos’ former right-hand retired general Jose Almonte puts it in a sort of bomb he threw against the present dispensation, the combine of the country’s political elite and the local and international economic elite breeds deals that are far from patriotic or people-leaning. In short, Almonte -- a devout campaigner for a federal form of government and against any form of dictatorship -- is saying that the present centralized national system has maintained a national oligarchy that would certainly not be concerned about such issues as biodiversity, considering the profits to be derived from unhindered corporate activity. In short, Macapagal-Arroyo is our Bush and G7, whose actions and policies have seemingly leaned more towards certain corporate interests than the people’s interests. Her administration’s policy towards the rebirth of a new mining industry (in a delicate archipelagic country) is another signal of that consistent direction that will add to the bomb we’re sitting on, the increasing clamor for all sorts of revolutions.

 

CONSIDER other issues, such as the new campaign against pirated VCDs, DVDs, and music CDs. The glaring eyes are focused on manufacturers. With nary a consideration for the viewpoint of the consumer.

Granted that this particular piracy could affect the budget allocations producers lay out as the incomes of our filmmakers and actors and our already undervalued/underpaid screenwriters. Also the producers themselves and the video dealers, putting aside the suspicion that major producers and video dealers are stakeholders in the lucrative piracy of their own legitimate products or foreign licenses.

Yet nary a whimper came from government regarding the consumer. For if the industry is to learn anything from the piracy boom, aside from the evil join-‘em-if-you-can’t-lick-‘em philosophy, it is that the latter has actually kowtowed to the possibility of selling high-end DVD products at a radically lesser (read: low-end) price. Therefore, why sell a VCD at P300 when you can actually sell a DVD for P80!! The DTI should pose that question to the legal video sellers who have to answer. Sure, there are license fees to pay, but still! Or should we give way once again to the Department of Education philosophy that might here say, if the poor can’t afford to buy cinematic learning, then that is their problem? If the pirates have been stealing intellectual property, aren’t the legal institutions as guilty of different forms of piracy or stealing? By the fees that screenwriters get, for example, wouldn’t that amount to stealing some from the writer? A thankless job, almost, since it’s usually the director who gets the award for a winning film in the international festivals.

Let’s also put aside the fact that the pirates seem to have a wider appreciation of festival films than the legal sellers (assuming the illegal and the legal are really different groups). But it is an unavoidable big Why that the DVD pirates would consider doing a DVD version of Maryo de los Reyes’ Magnifico when the legal sellers are only pushing rated C films. It’s common knowledge that the DVD pirates’ industry has not only become a pirate ship but likewise an alternative tanker with loads of international festival films on its decks the mainstream legal outlets are ashamed to carry.

Our president is an economics graduate who cannot seem to appreciate the fact that acts of piracy (like all business) cannot be governed firstly by an inherent vice of supply but by a can’t-be-ignored law of demand. A pro-people government will consider the rationale behind the demand first before the rationales by the supply. In the same way that a pro-people reason behind an anti-illegal drug consumption program will put a premium on the reasons behind peoples’ falling into illegal drug use before designing an effective anti-drug trafficking campaign. After all, it is almost a rule in business that when people want shit, shit must be produced. The people’s reasons -- like criminals' reasons -- can be good or bad, and are usually bred by the society they derive from.

By the same logic we can say that a pro-environment government will study more the rationales of pro-biodiversity groups before it gets enthusiastic about the economic rationales of profit-motivated individuals like Philip Romualdez and beneficiaries. Also by the same logic, we can say that a pro-people government will put a premium on an environment-reliant long-term livelihood source of people (fishing sea and agriculture soil) before designing a 20-year employment and drilling operation that is cast iron to have a permanent tailings effect on the former.

Or was General Almonte’s bombing quite precise? .

 

 

 

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Posted 02/09/05. Send comments to: bananacue_republic@yahoo.com

 

 



". . . it is almost a rule in business that when people want shit, shit must be produced. The people’s reasons -- like criminals' reasons -- can be good or bad, and are usually bred by the society they derive from."