BANANACUE |
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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
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