A precious gift for Rizal's 150th birthday

First of all I join all Filipinos, here and abroad, to greet a happy birthday to our national hero Jose Rizal. There will be a lot of merry making, unveiling of a monument, plays to honor him and that is all to be welcomed. What are birthdays for especially of great men but an occasion to celebrate.

But I still want to give the celebrant a precious gift that I am sure he would like. It would be fitting that Dr. Helene Goujot’s “Reforme ou revolucion?” be translated for the occasion. It is written in French and I have had many queries if they could read it in English.

As it is, only a few Filipinos would have access to what this book is trying to say. After 12 years of research, Goujot maintains that Rizal had a change of mind and evolved from reformist to revolutionary. This is an important book and should be read by more Filipinos. How about the Alliance Francaise?

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In one of my trips to the US to visit relatives, I had a discussion with my niece’s husband, UCLA political science professor Tim Grosclose about the media and politics in the US. He is a Republican and probably more conservative. So I, being more center or left of center on many issues, had a lively discussion with him. Tim passionately believes that “liberal media distorts news.” Since I would fall within the liberal side of politics, I did not object too much about the media bias in American politics.

Tim went further and decided to write the book “Left Turn” to probe his conclusions in a scientific way. This was just after the American elections.

“Left Turn” may be about American media and politics but it is also about media in general. It has been under attack for its biases and in some cases even for pushing for hidden agenda in other countries. The book is out today.

In Tim’s opinion “the liberal bias of the mainstream media tilts so far left that any outlets not in that political lane, like the Drudge Report and Fox News Channel, look far more conservative than they really are.”

Paul Bedard reviewed the book and calls it a crushing body blow to the pushers of the so-called “Fox Effect”. The consequence of the “Fox Effect” is that media does not serve the public as it should. The Fox effect he says is dragging the left into the center.

Tim did a scientific measurement of mainstream news outlets and all are guilty of liberal bias in their reporting. That is harmful he says because “it makes even moderate organizations appear out of the mainstream and decidedly right wing to news consumers who are influenced by the slant.”

He arrived at his conclusion by developing a calculation to figure out the “political quotient” to find the bias of media outlets and the average slant of an organization.

Groseclose opens the book by pointing to “a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent, while the nation is split about 50-50. “So it is not surprising that most reporters write with a liberal filter.

“Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass — a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see.”

The same can be said of Philippine media that get away with its biases and sets the political agenda for unwary readers except that it is less about issues or ideologies than it is about personalities.

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I am glad that Philippine mining companies are now becoming more conscious of the need to communicate what they do to a wider public.

Indeed, those who want to know what is really happening in mining in the Philippines should venture to the mining sites and talk to communities that benefit from it. This does not in anyway infer that there are no illegal activities or harmful activities. But we must not throw the baby with the bathwater.

In a recent lunch, Ian Holzberger, the executive chairman of Metals Exploration, presented their Runrono project. This mining project is located 200 miles north of Manila in the mineral rich province of Nueva Vizcaya. The area has been known to be abundant in gold and other precious metals since the early 1960s and has enjoyed a varied exploration history.

The capital cost is forecast to be $149.3 million, with payback within 3.5 years at $1,000/oz gold.

Sandy Gillies, First Metro Securities Brokerage Corp., was on hand to talk about how the project would translate to pesos and centavos for stock buyers.

Also there was Atty Leo Dominguez, CEO, of Leo G. Dominguez Consultancy, Inc. He is also a Director of Global Terra Resource Advisors, Inc., a JV with Resource Advisors Pty Ltd, an Australian entity.

It was interesting to hear from him that the JV specializes in executive search, mainly for mining professionals (such as geologists, metallurgists and mining engineers), for placement with Philippine mining companies. He and Graeme Deegan search for mining professionals badly needed by the mining companies in the Philippines. Many Filipino mining professionals have left the country because of the lack of opportunities. They ought to be persuaded to come back to the Philippines to help projects get moving.

We need to enhance the profile of the Philippine minerals industry and highlight its contribution to growth and employment in the Philippine economy. The lunches give access to key leaders in the minerals industry — both local and global. It is not just for mining people but for a broad range of people in business, including bankers, stockbrokers, people from media, government, investors, service providers, professionals, buyers, sellers.

That is a welcome development to counteract disinformation about mining. People want to know what specific mining companies are doing in the Philippines, who they are, what they are about, and very importantly what they are doing to help lift our people from poverty.