Category: mining

reappoint gina!

DITCHAY ROXAS:  I just heard that Gina Lopez was not confirmed this morning. That very slight glimmer of light at the end of this fucking dark tunnel has just been diminished even further. Yes she is not perfect. Yes she is an oligarch and bourgeois as hell. Yes she isn’t technical nor legalistic. Yes she is an imperfect human being like all the rest of us but goddamn it she carries a torch for the country and our people, a torch of hope and light that glows from a distance and brightens the horizon. We live in a world that is crumbling, an environment that is dying, and one of the very few in government who has the guts, the heart and the vision to do something about it gets tossed out like rotten fruit by maggots eating at the flesh of our gangrenous society. May they wallow in their stinking rottenness!!!

c’mon, mr. president!  you promised.  a war on drugs.  and. on. mining.   pinaasa mo kami, sir!

High stakes confirmation hearing

Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

On Wednesday, three progressive Cabinet members — Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Gina Lopez, Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo, and Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano — will be up for confirmation by the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA).

They have been twice bypassed by the CA and subsequently twice reappointed in the interim by President Rodrigo Duterte. But because the current CA has approved a rule that a Cabinet member may only be bypassed three times after which the CA will have to reject or confirm the concerned official, it appears that Wednesday will be the final showdown.

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Oceana Gold: History, abuse, mining

… Oceana Gold … despite years of protests, countless studies and reports, and now a suspension order, continues to operate in Nueva Vizcaya (Bulatlat.com, 3 March) like it hasn’t done anything wrong at all.

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Zambales mines: A history of questionable practices

Katrina S.S.

BETWEEN the pro-mining students protesting against the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) officials, and the insistence that we talk only about the jobs to be lost and the stock market crash, it is clear that we are being distracted from the more important questions about whether or not the mining projects that the DENR has ordered closed have in fact been bad for the environment and our communities.

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