Magnetic Moment

Employment opportunities and the promise of a better life always generate a magnetic field.

Migration Information Source said that last 2004 10 percent of 85 million Filipinos were working and/or residing outside the Philippines.

An article from the Philippine Daily Inquirer today states that “the population in Metro Manila grew by more than one million in the past seven years” and that “NSCB projected the population in the National Capital Region to be 11 million in 2007.”

People are not attracted by the pollution, high cost of living, traffic and malls. There are 17,453 people per square kilometer in Manila because of jobs, employment opportunities and the promise of a better life.

Investments that generate jobs in the provinces are magnets that help keep the people from going to metropolitan areas or abroad.

In our region, Rapu-Rapu Polymetallic Project (RRPP), the biggest private investment in Albay, is the magnet. Around fifty percent of more than 1,000 employees are residents of the host municipality and the rest were magnetized from the neighboring towns, provinces and other regions. That’s 1,000 less people in Metro Manila or 1,000 less OFWs. Not to mention the employment created or maintained by the suppliers and industries that are directly and indirectly involved in the mining operation.

Mining Engineers, Chemists, Geologists, and Metallurgists might have been working abroad, Australia or Canada perhaps, if they were not hired by the company.

For Jovet, the mining project brought him back to his native island after years of pakikipagsapalaran in Metro Manila. He is now working in the mining project earning more than his regular income in the big city. There are other hundreds of employees in the project with similar stories. They went back; they stayed to be with their families. Less absentee parents, more vibrant communities.

In the Physics of magnets, most of the people can be considered as paramagnets. They are attracted to the magnetic fields. There are also those who can be considered as diamagnets. They exhibit magnetic behavior of small magnitudes and when exposed to magnetic fields they will magnetize in the opposite direction.

Rapu-Rapu Polymetallic Project’s magnetic moment remains amidst diamagnetic publicity and paramagnets are benefited without the cost and risk of leaving their community or country.

Let’s keep the magnetic moment alive in the provinces

Have You Hugged A Miner Today?

By Ray Haynes, Republican Assemblyman from Murrieta, CA

Stop demonizing the industries that harvest materials from the Earth. Your car. Your desk. Your computer. Your pots and pans. The road outside. Your lunch. What do these things have in common? All of them involved disturbing the land and the "exploitation" of natural resources in their creation. Anything around you that contains metal, plastic or rubber come directly, from mining and oil drilling Operations somewhere in the world. Anything that is wood, paper or food was either logged or harvested.

Almost everything we have comes from mining, drilling, logging and farming, and yet these industries are increasingly under attack from NIMBYs, regulators and environmentalists.

The public pinion of these industries is now such that if you were to poll people on the least respected careers, you'd wind up with loggers, miners and oil men right down at the bottom of the list with lawyers, telemarketers and, of course, politicians. Farmers and ranchers continue to have a pretty high level of public support as occupations, but their industries are bearing the brunt of some of the newest rounds of regulations and NIMBY attacks. While nobody wants to repeat of the massive pollution caused by some of the older mining techniques, and nobody likes to look a clear-cut forest or an oil rig, these industries have developed much less Intrusive, much more environmentally sensitive methods of extraction, but are still haunted by attacks based on images from long discarded practices.

The regulatory system and local opposition groups have made it nearly impossible For any new mining or logging operations to exist in California, even when our society desperately needs new supplies of wood, gravel, and petroleum based products. Even when all environmental regulations can be adhered to, local opposition can scare a county or city into rejecting a necessary project. Even farmers, who have maintained a high level of support amongst the population, have started to feel the pressure of activists and regulators. It always astounds me when people move to rural area (like much of my district) and then complain about the sights and smells and flies of agricultural operations.

It always astounds me when people move to a rural area and then complain about the sights and smells of agricultural operations.

Dairies have been all but chased out of Southern California by angry neighbors, and air and water regulations. Other livestock operations are being harassed by similar complaints. What was once a thriving industry in Artesia, Chino and other parts of our area is now virtually non-existent. Even simpler farming operations are under attack for use of compost in the growing process and because of "fugitive dust" concerns caused by the planting and harvesting of fields.

And farmers now fear allowing their lands to fallow out of concern that it will become habitat for some allegedly endangered critter and they'll be forbidden from replanting them in the future.

These are all messy industries, but they are all necessary. We have made great strides over the years in making them less polluting and impactful on the natural environment and even visually on neighborhoods nearby. But the increasing costs of these resources in our country are costing all of us. High concrete, steel and lumber costs are driving up the prices of new schools, homes and roads by billions of dollars collectively, and will continue to increase as long as we don't start producing more of these products domestically.

It is time to stop attacking loggers and miners and oil drillers and farmers. Stop accusing them of raping the earth. Stop making their livelihoods more difficult. Start appreciating the benefits we enjoy as a result of their labor and their industries. Next time you see a miner walking down the street, don't turn your nose up at, him. In fact, I think we'd all be better off if you gave him a hug instead.

Babbles to Bubbles

Since January 2006 when the Filipino management took over the Lafayette mining project in Rapu-Rapu, the company opened its doors to the public in consonance with its policy on transparency.

To date hundreds of visitors from the whole spectrum of the society have witnessed the mining operations of the company - teachers, students, nuns, church leaders, bankers, government officials, environmentalists, local residents, foreigners. Most of the visitors have never seen an actual mine before.

The technology amazes them and the employees are always delighted to see new faces in the campsite.

It is quite an experience when facts dispel hearsays. It’s enlightening. New worlds emerge. The visits also played host to those moments when babbles about the mining operations of the company were driven off by facts and firsthand experiences.

Babbles… to bubbles. Like when anti-mining folks say, “If we allow Lafayette to operate, the island of Rapu-Rapu will collapse underwater.” Visitors now know that it won’t happen. The island’s land area is actually more than 5,500 hectares and the mine-pit has an area of only 17 hectares.

Just recently the company welcomed UP students and their professor to the mine complex, drenched in rain. The weather was bad that day due to low pressure and rough seas prevented boat travel. The employees provided accommodations, dry clothing and food. They were also given the usual orientations accorded to visitors. And later a safe trip back to their destination.

But anti-mining groups weaved a different story; they said that UP students who were conducting research were harassed by company employees. Below are some of their pictures at the campsite. Do they look harassed?

Visits are always considered as special delight, especially the boat rides – and of course the facts.

Another fact, hundreds have responded to the company’s invitation to visit the camp; anti-mining proponents declined. These people who made up stories in an effort to stain the company image have never been to the campsite. The spectacle they create out of macadamized stories never fail to gain audience.

They consider themselves as founts of truth… but their creations have nothing but air. Spectacular bubbles.

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Death in Rapu-Rapu?

Comments on “Death in Rapu-Rapu” by Pyrex

Erroneous Detail. Maurita de Ramas died on November 22, 2007, not on the 23rd as reported in the blog. Medical Certificate issued by Rapu-Rapu District Hospital where she died says so.

The Rest of the Write-Up Becomes Suspicious. Having started with a mistake, the rest of the article becomes untrustworthy.

See For Yourself. The item claims that Maurita, after eating fish caught on October 28 “complained of nausea and vomiting immediately” and “was immediately brought to the hospital and was given some medication. For the next few days, she went back several times to the hospital because of her ailment.”

However, a nurse in the only hospital in Rapu-Rapu swears that she never saw Maurita in the hospital during the period October 28-November 18. She saw Maurita only on the 19th of November and the days thereafter.

The medical certificate reflects that she was confined on Nov. 19-22, 2007. She was confined only on the 22nd day after the alleged food-poisoning!

Further, the hospital has no records showing that Maurita was an outpatient anytime during the period October 28-November 18.

Strangers impose the idea of food-poisoning. Maurita’s husband Miguel said that during the burial of her wife, strangers who identified themselves with Sagip Isla approached him, pressing on him the idea that his wife died because she ate fish on Oct. 28. Miguel noted that he never saw these people in Rapu-Rapu before, and they spoke in Tagalog.

The medical certificate identifies the cause of death as Cardio Respiratory Arrest secondary to Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). Nausea and vomiting, of which Maurita allegedly complained of, are symptoms of CHF.

May her soul rest in peace.

"Death in Rapu-Rapu" @ http://firesetternews.blogspot.com/2007/12/death-in-rapu-rapu.html

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Rapu-Rapu residents to militants, outsiders: can you give us jobs?

Rapu Rapu residents asked militant groups if they can help the poor community and create jobs should they succeed in getting Lafayette’s polymetallic project on the island closed down.
“These outsiders are risking our future and our lives in the name of the environment. Their real advocacy is to keep us poor and desperate and we all know why. And they get paid for what they do,” said Ananias Balato, Rapu Rapu resident.

Balato said these militants and even some Church people have resorted to lying to scare the public into non-existent disasters they blame on the project.
“It is not true that there was a fishkill in Pagcolbon, where the project is, and in neighboring barangays. I live here and I can tell you we had a perfectly normal life until these outsiders started telling the world we had a fishkill,” he said.

“The world believed these lies because Rapu Rapu is so remote that there was no immediate way of checking. But if only people can come and see for themselves, including the priests who prefer to just stay in the comfort of Legaspi City, they would realize they are actually putting at risk our present and our future without any basis,” he said.
Militants associated with Sagip Isla, Gabriela, Bayan, and other groups associated with the Left, have camped out in a park in Legaspi to ask for the closure of the project because of the supposed fishkill.

Government experts, however, have ruled out the project as the cause of a supposed fishkill in Poblacion, which is more than 10 kilometers away.
The supposed fishkill, based on reports, involved about ten kilos but no more than two sacks of marine life.

Lafayette has invited the anti-mining groups, including a bishop and his priests, to visit the project in an effort to prove to them it had nothing to hide and nothing to do with the supposed fishkill. The invitation has yet to be accepted.