Cav's Place

What was supposed to be one protest turned into an ongoing movement, so here is a summary of what happened in Bucharest over these first five days. There have been major protests on this issue in other cities as well, the biggest on the first day being in Cluj and Iasi, while on the third day at least three cities actually had more people attend than Bucharest, but I’m focusing on what I know from here. I must also specify that I left around 10:15 PM on each day, so I only took part in the early moments of the “occupation” of a piece of road on the first two days and none of it during the rest, since the “troop movements” started later then.

Day one: With some 10000 people saying they’ll attend on Facebook, we expected the usual turnout of around 5% and were thinking we’ll be sure to get 500, but even 1000 would be lucky. However, there were probably more than that already present at the announced start time of 5 PM and two hours later, when some pushed on into the road, our numbers were around 3000. That caught the gendarmes completely unprepared as well and they were overwhelmed by our numbers, retreating to keep us into a section of the road and diverting traffic elsewhere.
After a short amount of time standing on that section of road, we started marching to the Government building, the gendarmes content to simply keep us on one side of the road as our numbers grew to probably over 4000 before reaching our destination, where we protested for a while in front of a thick line of gendarmes backed by a double line in full riot gear right in front of the fence. A couple of shots of tear gas were fired, but that only happened when a group tried to keep marching further from there, so it actually aided us in keeping everyone together until it was eventually decided to march back to University Square.
Just before returning to the fountain area there, which is the usual meeting place, a line of people simply sat down on the street and shouted for everyone to do the same, which most did within seconds. The gendarmes were again caught unprepared and quickly decided to simply allow us to sit there, only deciding to fine one person around 2:30 AM, when there were only about 200 left. That caused the rest to split, some rushing ahead to see what was going on, and offered them an opportunity to form another line that divided the group into two, leading the people to decide to leave by 3 AM.

Day two: Around 2000 people gathered at the fountain and by 9 PM, so two hours after the new start time, when another attempt to push into the street was made, gendarmes had surrounded the area with a triple line in that direction and a double one on the sidewalk, left and right. That resulted in the group of protesters moving around for about an hour, trying to find a way to break through, until eventually we were allowed to take the side roads that are behind the fountain and come back out on the other side of the intersection, on Elisabeta boulevard.
That can’t be considered any sort of victory, as the move was completely allowed by the gendarmes, but it nevertheless resulted in another night spent on the street. The last people left at 4 AM, though that apparently was only to spite the gendarmes who attempted to fine one of the 30 or so people who were left at 3 AM, as otherwise that group said they were planning to leave within at most 15 minutes at that point.

Day three: I’ll say some 1500 people gathered around the fountain, and only a part of them protested during the evening, since discussion groups were also organized and those who wanted to attend broke away from the rest to do so. This obviously marked a switch in strategy, everything becoming far more tactical, and the way in which those who were still in the area after I left broke through proved it.
While I was there, I didn’t notice any sign of people trying to break through the thick lines of gendarmes, but shortly after I left it appears that hundreds of protesters broke up in small groups and left in various directions, as if they were going home, only to regroup within minutes behind the gendarmes, on the street, and offer those who were left around the fountain the opportunity to join them in the momentary confusion, resulting in another march.
The gendarmes attempted to stop the march at various points, but the protesters broke up in groups repeatedly and used side roads or narrow passages until they were finally stopped for good in Revolution Square, where they spent the night until around 3 AM. The gendarmes initially tried to push through, for the first time issuing a warning and having a van try to enter the occupied area, but after one man stood in front of it and another set himself down right in front of its wheels, they gave up and were content to simply keep the protesters from pushing on further during the night.

Day four: People were slow to gather this time, perhaps not even 100 being present around the fountain at 7 PM and the number growing by about 300 per hour until around 10:20 PM, when the call was made to try to march again, after the discussion groups had finished for the night. Some, myself included, went in the opposite direction and were allowed to leave at that time by the gendarmes, but the remaining roughly 1000 people were blocked as they tried first one and then the other side road, being forced to return to the fountain area.
Once back there, the protesters tried to simply overpower the gendarmes, a small number of more violent individuals causing some incidents and one person even throwing a bottle. The gendarmes gave warnings that they will respond in force and a small quantity of pepper spray was used, but people nevertheless managed to occupy a small part of the street and sat down, the situation remaining largely calm until 11:20 PM, when at least 1000 others suddenly flooded in behind the gendarmes and occupied the same section of Elisabeta boulevard we had been allowed to occupy on day two, forcing their lines to break in order to deal with the new issue.
After that, most protesters gathered on Elisabeta, even more people coming in even later, so at one point there were close to 3000 people on the street and some attempts to once again occupy the section of road right in front of the fountain were made. Those were taken care of by the gendarmes relatively quickly and without any violence, however, and the night ended earlier than before, nearly everyone leaving by 2:15 AM.

Day five: On top of the usual protest around the fountain, where perhaps around 1000 people gathered, another group apparently independently decided to gather in front of the Palace Hall, where some of the classical music concerts that make up the George Enescu Festival take place. This second group was initially very small, but eventually grew to over 100 people and started marching back towards University Square, blocking the road completely unopposed, though when two gendarmes caught up with them and kindly asked them to at least leave one lane free they agreed to do so.
Once this smaller group reached University Square, they walked through an area set aside for another small festival that takes place there, then marched through the Old Town and split into smaller groups that sort of played tag with the gendarmes, offering the diversion needed for the ones from the fountain area to break through and once again occupy that section of Elisabeta boulevard, despite the gendarmes attempting to stop them from doing so this time around.
Once the gendarmes backed away, the situation seemed to have calmed down for a while, but eventually a call was made pointing out that this area is as much of a “pen” as the one around the fountain, being a place where the gendarmes willingly allow the protesters to gather, so they tried to break through again, perhaps around 50 people managing to make it out as the gendarmes once again used some pepper spray.
This small group marched on unopposed to Constitution Square, in front of the Parliament building, where perhaps a few hundred others joined them later, as the gendarmes seemed to not even bother with them. Calls were made for those occupying Elisabeta boulevard to leave in small groups and join them as well, but many didn’t listen, seeing as Constitution Square is a “dead” zone when it comes to protests, so two areas were occupied by significantly smaller groups than on previous nights, and everything seems to have ended around 2 AM, though I heard that a small number of people stayed in Constitution Square until later, protesting in the middle of a large empty space surrounded by huge empty buildings.

Otherwise, a sustained and largely successful effort is being made to maintain focus on the Rosia Montana issue despite all attempts made by the authorities to dilute the message and create diversions, and current plans call for the protests to continue as long as necessary. The next major step will be this Sunday, a week after the first protest, and in Bucharest it will take the form of multiple marches, one starting from each of the city’s six sectors, meeting at the statues in University Square, then going to the fountain and moving on from there together, assuming we will manage to do so.

As I already said, tomorrow I’ll be attending what I sure hope will be a reasonably large protest and only one of the many scheduled to take place that day. At the time I’m writing this, the official list, which is in Romanian but should be usable for those who don’t know the language as well, includes 25 cities in Romania and 21 more abroad, though not all protests planned to take place abroad are also scheduled for tomorrow, the one in Berlin being listed as taking place today and those in Luxembourg, Paris and Vienna being scheduled for September 3, 5 and 6, respectively. Admittedly, these protests organized abroad are generally also organized by the local Romanian communities, but the fact that they exist implies a need for an explanation of the issue that’s not only in Romanian, so I thought I’ll add one here as well, just in case somebody’ll happen to be interested.

To start from the beginning when it comes to this day, September 1 was initially supposed to be a day of protests against fracking. However, besides the major planned event in Barlad, news of that didn’t catch on and when some activists reacted to what our Government did this Tuesday by calling for a protest regarding the Rosia Montana issue on the same day, the date quickly became a national, and then international, day of protest on this topic instead. This obviously caused some tension between the two sides initially, but that was quickly smoothed over by joining the two events, so the Barlad protest will also tackle the Rosia Montana issue and the events related to Rosia Montana have a mention about the anti-fracking protest in the description and specify that those who attend may bring signs and chant slogans against fracking as well, the two topics being the only ones that should be brought up.

So what did our Government do on August 27? Well, despite the fact that stopping the Rosia Montana open-pit gold mining project was point eight of the 15-point program the current ruling coalition originally presented, they now approved a law proposal that literally puts Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC) above the other laws and courts. This in effect admits that the the Rosia Montana mining project is illegal, but states that it is of national interest and strategic importance and, in short, must go forward regardless of any other laws it breaks or any other interests it comes in direct conflict with.
With the Parliament back in session as of Monday, the law is expected to be voted on quickly and, seeing as the ruling coalition controls about 70% of seats and at least two of the three opposition parties have been strongly in favor of the project in the past as well, most probably approved by the end of September. Admittedly, party leaders seem to be backing off slightly and claiming that it will be a free vote, with each member being able to vote as their conscience dictates without risking any sanctions, and several members of the Parliament have announced that they will make full use of this freedom and oppose the law, but overall that seems to be nothing more than a desperate attempt to defuse the situation.

If you want specifics, we’re talking about a law that states, among other things, that:
– In case any documentation or procedure required by RMGC has been declared null and void, the state has the obligation to issue new and valid documentation.
– RMGC can relocate natural monuments found within the allocated perimeter.
– RMGC is permitted to perform mining activities in the areas where mining is otherwise expressly forbidden, namely on sites with historical, cultural or religious significance, archaeological sites of special interest, nature reserves, areas protected for sanitary reasons or the protected perimeters of water sources.
– While the environmental impact assessment for plans and programs otherwise requires a minimum of eight months, any such procedure requested by RMGC must be finalized within three months.
– While any other mining operation can start 180 days after depositing the security against environmental damage in full, RMGC can do so 30 days after depositing the amount required for a single year of operations.
– The perimeter covered by the license has no fixed limits and the authorities must reconfigure it whenever RMGC requests it.
– While the state otherwise has priority in purchasing areas that are part of or next to publicly-owned forests, RMGC can mark any forested areas within the allocated perimeter as urban and gain ownership of them.
– RMGC represents the state in any expropriation procedure for plots of land necessary for the mining operation.
– RMGC can lease any expropriated buildings within the allocated perimeter for 49 years.
– RMGC has the right to use and change the use of any expropriated buildings and sites within the allocated perimeter, including places of worship, monuments, historical sites, graveyards or other important locations, as long as the company creates replicas elsewhere.
– RMGC is not required to obtain documentation stating that areas of known archaeological importance found within the allocated perimeter and where further research based on existing studies and information is set to take place are no longer of archaeological interest.
– While otherwise, in case of an accidental archaeological discovery, the construction permit is suspended until the site is declared as no longer being of archaeological interest, RMGC can continue construction work on the rest of the perimeter covered by the permit while archaeologists analyze the area where the accidental discovery took place.
– Any archaeological work on a plot of land within the allocated perimeter must not take more than three months.
– RMGC can purchase or lease any property owned by the state or local administration within at most 45 days of making such a request.
– RMGC can mark any plot of land registered as a pasture as urban and no longer for agricultural use within 30 days of submitting a request to do so, during which time the state or local authorities must grant the company an equivalent plot of land previously owned by the state in order for it to recreate the pasture on the new location.
– The preliminary documentation obtained by RMGC is valid forever and may be used to obtain the final permits at any point in time.
– While any construction permit is otherwise valid for no more than 12 months, during which time the construction work must start, RMGC can start construction work up to 36 months after being issued a permit, which in itself will be valid indefinitely.

We’re talking about one of Europe’s seven most endangered monuments and sites. We’re talking about four mountains being wiped off the face of the Earth, a large and beautiful area being turned into a dead zone, a gigantic quantity of cyanide being used and then left in an artificial lake which may at any point in the future create yet another catastrophe, and a large number of monuments, sites and artifacts of historical and cultural significance being destroyed. We’re talking about priceless Nature and thousands of years of history, the site having been a gold mine since ancient times, set to be replaced with nothing but poison, death and emptiness solely because a Canadian corporation wants to get rich from the gold, silver and rare earths found there and some, or in fact all, Romanian officials can be bought or pressured into agreeing with their plans.

So these would be some of the reasons why we’re protesting yet again against the Rosia Montana mining project. Some are also bothered by how little the Romanian state stands to gain from it financially, or by the fact that the mine won’t stay open for decades and any jobs created in the area will vanish once again as soon as it will close, but I definitely wouldn’t care even if the state would get 100% of the revenue and a few hundred people, or even a few thousand people, would get jobs for the rest of their lives. Nature and health have no price, and many would include history and culture into that category as well, yet unfortunately politicians do.

This is a fight that has been going on since the ’90s, yet it’s also a fight that the people have kept winning, stopping the company at every turn and obtaining more than 20 court victories despite the fact that governments and local authorities have always struggled to aid RMGC. This new law may be the hardest hurdle any government has dared throw in our path, but if much smaller groups with fewer resources have managed to beat back the threat before, we can do so again now, together!

Picked this up for free and I’m rather sorry I did. A fair amount of work seems to have gone into it, but I couldn’t even tell you precisely what it wants to be, and the writing style and the approach, not to mention the rushed ending pulled out of a hat, certainly ruin any potential the topic might have had.
The little action is no more than an excuse for convoluted descriptions and confusing references which may perhaps have some appeal for those with a particularly keen interest in the time and place the story is set in, but will probably be largely ignored by most others. Add the fact that everything takes the form of paragraphs that can stretch for a page or more, containing entire dialogues, multiple confusing descriptions and rushed mentions of entire lists of complicated names, as well as events and myths likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, and you end up with something that’s quite a pain to read.

Rating: 2/5

Despite the long title, this will be as quick as I can make it, so let me start with the fact that last night marked the first time I was unable to reboot since switching to Windows 7. Under Vista, this happened if some Internet Explorer processes failed to close properly, though I was sometimes able to still reboot normally if I managed to disable BitDefender quickly enough, while until the UPS failed completely under warrantly and I had it repaired, it also happened after very brief brownouts that it apparently couldn’t handle properly, for some reason making my computer very sluggish and unresponsive, and freezing completely if I tried to reboot normally. Last night, however, I unplugged the network cable while eating since there was a storm, put it back in when I got back, had it diagnose problems so it will get a valid IP address again, and watched it apparently unable to reset the network adapter. Hit cancel, tried again, it seemed stuck at diagnosing problems. So I meant to reboot, but it wouldn’t, hanging on the shutting down screen.
I had to enable the network again manually after the required hard reset, but it seemed fine after that. Just to check, today I reset the network adapter once again manually and also rebooted just fine, though I did also notice that I was unable to reopen a closed tab at one point. This last part was probably just a minor momentary issue, but what happened last night sent me rushing to the bathroom, so this definitely didn’t make me feel any better. The issue itself seems familiar, but the exact symptoms preceding it are not, so I don’t know whether this is how Windows 7 reacts to an ongoing driver or even hardware glitch or it’s something new altogether, which is clearly not what I want to be worrying about…

Otherwise, I’ve been struggling with another one of the ebooks I picked up for free off Amazon at some point. It’s short, but this Sunday it’ll be two weeks since I started it and I hope I’ll at least manage to finish it by then, just to say I didn’t give up on a book, because the writing style makes reading it quite tedious and the approach pretty much wastes the potential the topic would otherwise have, at least from my point of view.
Writing seems to be going slightly less terribly though, albeit largely thanks to the fact that I largely ignored the not particularly relevant action taking place in my story at the moment and focused on some of the characters talking to each other privately. Even that was far from what it should have been, but at least such talks are much easier to write and come out somewhat less dreadful than action scenes, not to mention descriptions, so two nights ago I passed the 300000-word mark as well. I’m still only at about 55% of one of six, so the estimated amount of time needed to finish it all is still around two lifetimes, and it’s still just a big pile of shit, but some sort of need to at least try writing it remains.

The part about OkCupid has to do with what’s obviously the next stage of the continued effort to drive that site into the ground, several particularly useful things being removed these days. The statistics you used to see while looking through somebody else’s question answers have been replaced by something that only tells you how many questions you have answered out of those they have answered, the navigation that allowed you to quickly skip to a certain page while looking through questions or on the forums has been replaced with nothing but one huge “next” button and one “previous” button, the search function has been completely removed when looking through someone else’s questions, the “activity partners” and “long-distance penpals” options have also vanished from what you could say you’re looking for, and I see on the forums that people say the notes feature is also gone, though I never personally used that to have noticed it myself.
Quite frankly, after driving the tests completely into the ground, greatly reducing the importance of answering questions, thoroughly ruining the matching system and all the other terrible changes implemented as a result of the “get a date or get the fuck out, and preferably pay us while you’re at it” attitude that has become the rule in the years since they were purchased, which either way followed several other bad decisions that they had taken themselves in the years before that, I’m surprised they even left the “new friends” option under “looking for” and that you’re still allowed to create and answer countless questions without being limited to strictly what they deem best suits their vision and interests there as well… But I guess there’s still time for those options to be removed as well, or at least removed for free users, and the worst part is that I still don’t know of any site that at least tries to be what OkCupid originally was.

Last but definitely not least, Sunday from 5 PM I guess I will be going to another protest, against the Rosia Montana mining project and fracking, though I imagine that other themes may be brought up as well. The one in Bucharest was originally announced as being only against the Rosia Montana mining project, since the Government has just drafted a law that the Parliament is set to approve as soon as possible and which essentially puts that project outside the scope of other laws, literally guaranteeing that the corporation behind it will get all required approvals and be allowed to do whatever it wishes regardless of any other existing laws or court orders, but another large protest against fracking was already announced on September 1 in Barlad, so after some initial disagreements the two events were joined and the others that were announced since then, both across the country and abroad, seem to follow this plan of action. As such, there is some hope that at least a few hundred people will attend, possibly even more, though there is also an obvious risk of problems with the police.

Saw a BBC analysis today claiming that the recent use of chemical weapons, which is now accepted as fact even by the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies, lifted the crisis to such a high level that all sides, and the USA and Russia in particular, should be far more likely to put their differences aside and find that they have more in common than meets the eye while struggling to find a political solution that will restore peace and stability. Admittedly, the author appears to realize at the end that such a view is overly optimistic to say the least, yet publishing such an analysis of an ongoing and extremely important situation only to genuinely dismiss it at the end would serve no purpose and definitely fail to meet the standards such a reputable news source is justifiably expected to meet, so I can’t believe that this final part is meant to imply that the entire piece is otherwise little more than wishful thinking. Unfortunately, however, it seems to me to be precisely that.

About the attack itself, I have to say that it’s certainly strange. On the one hand, the fact that it took place shortly after UN inspectors were finally allowed inside Syria does for once make the regime’s version, namely that the rebels or “terrorists” are to blame, seem rather plausible. On the other, pulling off such a move precisely when everybody is certain to think you couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to do so may be seen as a stroke of genius. And then there’s a third option as well, namely that what happened was at least in part an accident, though that’d obviously still require one or both sides to have been preparing to launch such an attack, be it at another time, another target or, and perhaps most likely, on a smaller scale.
It may be that the regime launched it trying to blame the rebels, that the rebels launched it themselves trying to blame the regime, or that the fundamentalists launched it against the moderates while at the same time trying to blame the regime and therefore strike at both enemies at once. It may be that it was an act of sabotage, either somehow tricking the regime into using the chemical weapons we know it has or causing a discharge from some the rebels had either captured or were trying to create. It may be that the rebels had captured or were trying to create chemical weapons in that area and the regime’s heavy bombardment, intentionally or not, caused a massive discharge. Or, of course, it may be some sort of combination of these.

It’s this level of uncertainty that seems to me to serve only to make any sort of action even less likely. A line has definitely been crossed, but unless how and why it happened and, most importantly, who was behind it can be determined and undeniably proven very quickly, any desire for actual involvement will be dampened even further by the fear of an even worse backlash, and the West was never keen on involvement in the first place. The only outcome which both the West and Russia, and possibly also China, may be looking forward to is finding a way to claim that it was an attack staged by the fundamentalists against the moderates, but even the USA and Russia allying against those and defeating them is unlikely to result in peace, and will definitely not result in anything good for the people of Syria, seeing as removing those when the moderates have been nearly wiped out will hand over victory to the regime and therefore mean that all these years of war, the deaths and the suffering of so many Syrians, have been for nothing.
The problem, or one of the most important problems, is that the world stood by far too long and the regime is no longer under any threat of being defeated by anything short of a full assault by foreign troops. It may be unable to win the war, but it’s been several months since it could lose it, so even if the West would somehow get past empty threats and do at least as much for the rebels as Russia has done all along for the regime, it still won’t be enough. The only way to end that war is, and has perhaps always been, direct foreign intervention, yet if nobody had the guts to do anything so far, the uncertainty surrounding this attack seems to make such a course of action even more unlikely, despite the most recent wave of threats.

The regime refused to negotiate even while it appeared to be losing, so it certainly won’t now that it’s no longer under any real threat. The fundamentalists will neither negotiate nor surrender because they never do. The moderates, while the only ones who may deserve support, have nobody to negotiate with and, either way, have become largely irrelevant due to having always been targeted by both the regime and the fundamentalists and never managing to stop bickering long enough to form a cohesive and believable force. Russia and Iran want to make sure they won’t lose their ally in the region and, seeing as the regime’s defeat is no longer a real possibility, have no reason to negotiate either, which is almost certainly true for China as well. As for the USA and EU countries, which also have nobody to negotiate with, I highly doubt that a major event shrouded in uncertainty and likely to aggravate the negative reaction to any sort of intervention will make them decide to actually get involved for a change, not after having proven unwilling to do anything more than utter empty threats for over two years, during which time over one hundred thousand people died, millions were displaced and their only potential partners on the ground have been almost completely wiped out.
So no, I don’t see how this may even bring an end to the current war, much less actual peace. It changes nothing on the ground, makes the regime’s allies no more, and perhaps even less, likely to accept any course of action that may do so, and probably makes direct Western intervention even more unlikely despite all the threats. It makes a peaceful solution no more likely than it ever was and, while it certainly might have been, it wasn’t immediately used as an excuse for anything which might have had positive results, and by now it’s probably too late to do so and still maintain any credibility.