Helped by the Admin

By Estanislao Albano, Jr.

The Admin of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) online tried to rescue my opponent in the readers’ comment space of the letter to the editor “Conjectures and insinuations” (http://opinion.inquirer.net/104103/conjectures-and-insinuations) in its May 19, 2017 issue. The piece is Chamber of Mines of the Philippines EVP Nelia Halcon’s rebuttal of a recent column of Winnie Monsod on the rejection of the appointment of Gina Lopez as DENR Secretary. In one of his answers to another netizen, Rosaddiaq said among other things: “Perhaps you don’t know, and many does not, that everything we need to live from the food we eat, houses, vehicles, gadgets like computers and cellphones, even the clothes we wear needs metals/mining to be produced.” In answer and likewise for another purpose which I will tell you in another column, I replied to him by posting my letter to the editor titled “Flawed promining reasoning” which was printed by the paper on July 6, 2016. He answered as follows:
“Thanks for sending this amateurish editorial with its flawed reasoning. I have not read it when it was posted, otherwise I would have rebutted it, soonest.
1. “Because Filipinos make use of cell phones and other gadgets with metals in them, they must continue allowing the mining of their mountains regardless of the dire consequences, otherwise they have no right to enjoy those things”. We never claim that the dire consequences should be ignored. Irresponsible miners who violate our mining and environmental laws should be fined, suspended, even closed in accordance with the law and due process. This is a false claim, another lie from ignorant anti-mining advocates.
2. Hongkong and Singapore do not have ore in their soil. Otherwise, they would have mine them. This is simple ignorance and this writer do not know how to do fact-checking. What sudents said I think is that when asked, Gina Lopez did not even know her gold jewelry comes from mining. More ignorance.
3. “Lopez’s point that people should not suffer due to mining”. So how come many locals from areas with mining opposed Lopez confirmation?
4. Who has “one track mind” (or confused mind), the anti-miner who wants to stop mining here because gadgets will be available anyway but wait “responsible mining is the name of something that does not exist”, so mining in the rest of the world should be stopped?
Yes, if you don’t appreciate what has mining contributed to civilization’s progress, go back to living in caves and planting your own food without the use of any metal tool. Like go back to the Stone Age. But the Stone Age did not end because the world run out of stones, it’s because smart people discovered metals and mining.
PS. It’s 3 hours past and you have not replied to my email detailing Gina’s lies and that she is a fake environmentalist.”
I responded but the Admin keeps deleting it each time I post it. The disappearing answer is as follows:
““We never claim that the dire consequences should be ignored. Irresponsible miners who violate our mining and environmental laws should be fined, suspended, even closed in accordance with the law and due process.”
Do you remember any DENR Secretary who had the guts, the will and first of all intention to strictly apply mining and environmental laws? We can have the best mining and environmental laws in the world if we have spineless DENR Secretaries who to begin with do not even care about the environment, the mining companies would continue to do as they please. As far as I am concerned, Gina Lopez was the only person who held the position who manifested the desire and capability to crack the whip on the erring mining companies.
“Hongkong and Singapore do not have ore in their soil. Otherwise, they would have mined them”
If you care to read the “amateurish editorial” again, the context of the mention of those two places is that under the reasoning of Austin and the students, we have no right to use metal-made items if we do not produce the metal right in our own yard. Hongkong and Singapore are just two of the places in the world which enjoy metal-made things without contributing an ounce ore ever since their histories began.
““Lopez’s point that people should not suffer due to mining”. So how come many locals from areas with mining opposed Lopez confirmation?” How certain are you that those people from mining areas who opposed Lopez’ confirmation did so for the right reasons? And you seem to belittle the power of mining money to mobilize people.
“Who has “one track mind” (or confused mind), the anti-miner who wants to stop mining here because gadgets will be available anyway but wait “responsible mining is the name of something that does not exist”, so mining in the rest of the world should be stopped?”
There is logic in saying in the same breath that we stop mining in the country anyway we can import and that responsible mining does not exist. We both know that responsible mining is not a condition to the continuing conduct of the activity anywhere in the world. If a country wants to mine even if it destroys its environment, that’s its business. Sample is the country. We have been mining for more than a century without thought if the kind of mining we do is responsible or not. That means that if we choose, we could join the non-mining countries and still enjoy the blessings of mining because other countries would continue mining.
It’s this thought of stopping mining globally that is absurd. Has anyone the power to stop mining all over the world? That the thought ever occurred to you at all makes me remember to what desperate lengths the pro-mining crowd go in defense of mining.
“Yes, if you don’t appreciate what has mining contributed to civilizations progress, go back to living in caves and planting your own food without the use of any metal tool. Like go back to the Stone Age.”
What an absurd statement. Of course even the most rabid anti-miner appreciates the good that mining brings. All human beings in fact. All we local anti-mining people wish is that after producing metals for the human race for more than a century to our own detriment, the country should be given rest from this harmful activity for a while. What you are trying to say is that one either embraces mining or he goes back to the Stone Age. No middle ground. The statement would not hold water unless the following are true: first, it is possible that all mining activities in the entire world would ground to a halt all at once; second, an agent which could effect that global mining stoppage exists and is now poised to push the button. And of course these are in the realm of fantasy.
I got news for you. Last week of March, through an act of its legislature, El Salvador banned metal mining becoming the first country in the world to do so. The shutdown is by nation which makes your Stone Age scenario baseless. With business as usual in the remaining mining countries, there will be enough metal to go around.
About your PS, would you go as far as say that the mining industry people lie less and care for the environment more than Gina Lopez?”
Because Rosaddiaq had contacted me through my email address — he picked it up from my letter to the editor calling Nelia Halcon and Chito Gozar of the OceanaGold brazen liars which I tried to post to inform readers of how Halcon values the truth but which the Admin deletes each time —, I emailed my response to him but he declined to answer in Yahoo or in the PDI forum.
Meantime, I would be happy if you could hazard a guess as to how come the PDI Admin or Opinion people do not allow my answer to Rosaddiaq in their forum.**