Cav's Place

A new law has been put up for public debate by the Bucharest City Council. Don’t take the fact that it’s been put up for debate as a good thing in itself. It’s a requirement to put laws up for debate, but not to pay any attention to what people are saying, so they usually don’t. And in this particular case they’ll have quite a lot of ignoring to do, because quite a few people are angry and I for one am livid!
The law I’m talking about deals with stray animals and was written mainly as a means to control the number of stray dogs after another law was passed which no longer allows shelters to kill the animals which are captured and brought to them. That’s not the problem, since a means to do that is indeed required, but the law itself was written by barbarian control freaks!

But let me start from the beginning, with what I believe to be a key paragraph from the “specialist report” the law was supposedly based on. That paragraph says the following:

“For all dog and cat owners who are unable to control their pets’ breeding, sterilizing the animals is required, along with identifying and registering them in the institution’s master database. The abandonment of puppies and kittens in public places, around markets, hospitals, courtyards of educational institutions or other areas where, according to the citizens, there are “kind people” is thus avoided.”

That makes perfect sense, and it certainly should also apply to people who don’t properly control their own breeding, but something got lost on the way between the report and the actual law. The report talks about the owners who are unable to control their pets’ breeding, but the law makes it mandatory for all animals who are not registered breeders according to the Dog Owners’ Association to be sterilized! So even if your pet is never left unsupervised outside and therefore presents no risk of creating unwanted puppies or kittens, it still has to be sterilized unless it’s a “registered breeder”!

But the bigger problem is the way it must be done, according to the law:

“Art. 7
The sterilization of the animals must be carried out by means of ovariohysterectomy for females and orchiectomy for males.”

Yes, sure, that may be “how it’s done”, but it’s barbaric and utterly wrong! Those procedures don’t just remove the risk of unwanted puppies or kittens, but they also change behavior and instincts and likely cause changes in the hormonal balance of the animals in question. Yet instead of trying to find means to just eliminate the risk of unwanted pregnancies without any other side effects, they actually impose these methods!
If you think about it a little, you realize the full impact of that phrase. It means that a pet owner who does happen to desire to sterilize their pet but has found and is willing to pay for a vet who knows of a, shall we say, fairer way to do it, will be unable to do so. Actually, it means the vet will be unable to perform that procedure, because this law forbids them to sterilize a pet by any other means!
I still wish that all those who support such a measure would have it done to themselves. I wonder if they’d like it as much then as they do now…

But what am I going on about here when I haven’t mentioned the part where pet owners are actually required to do this, right? Here it is then:

“Art. 11
(1) Natural and juristic persons who own dogs and cats over 6 months old, within private precincts, without the right to breed and not registered with the Dog Owners’ Association have the obligation of sterilizing, indentifying and registering them in the Administration for the Supervision of Stray Animals’ master database, starting with the date this present decision comes into effect.”

And there you have it. A pet that’s not a registered breeder must be sterilized, and as far as I know only purebreds can have that status. Any pet must also be registered as a potential stray, as the following paragraph specifies that registered breeders are only exempt from the sterilization requirement, not anything else. (I didn’t feel there was a need to translate and include that paragraph exactly as it’s written as well.)

Moving further gets us to yet another issue:

“Art. 14
(1) Owning animals, dogs and cats, on private property is allowed under the following conditions:
a) Identification with a subcutaneous microchip.
b) Registration in the Administration for the Supervision of Stray Animals’ master database.
c) Existence of a health book, with up-to-date anti-rabic vaccines.
d) Sterilization, excepting animals less than 6 months old and those which are exempt from mandatory sterilization by the present decision.”

The new issue I mentioned is the first one listed, namely the microchip. Every animal will need to have one…
To put this into perspective, some two weeks ago we had the law requiring information about all e-mails, chats, SMS messages and telephone calls to be stored for six months and made available upon request, even without a warrant “if the prosecutor considers that waiting for a warrant to be released would harm the investigation”, come into effect. And very recently we got another thing, namely “biometric” passports, which include an RFID chip which stores all the information printed on the passport as well as the owner’s fingerprints.
So, within only a few weeks, we have had three “Big Brother” laws! Granted that this last one doesn’t apply to humans… Yet… But just give them time, they’re only waiting for enough people to be either frightened or disillusioned enough to accept it to be done to themselves as well.

Moving on to the last part:

“Art. 20
The following actions performed by natural or juristic persons constitute misdemeanors, unless they have been committed under such conditions as to be considered felonies according to criminal law:
a) Failure of the dog and cat owner to identify and register their pets in the Administration for the Supervision of Stray Animals’ master database and/or to sterilize individuals over 6 months old, starting 6 months after this present decision comes into effect.
b) Owning dogs or cats on private property, without documents to attest their sterilization, identification data, registration in the master database, health condition and annual anti-rabies vaccination.
c) Leaving animals owned within individual households or the grounds of businesses who declared themselves their owners unsupervised in public places.

Art.21
The actions listed under art. 20 are punished by fines as follows:
a) Actions listed under art. 20 points a), b) are punished by fines between 500 and 700 lei.
b) Actions listed under art. 20 point c) are punished by fines between 200 and 400 lei.”

What I want to point out here is that the penalty for having a pet without a microchip or one that is not sterilized without being a registered breeder is greater than the one for abandoning your pet. I’m saying that because leaving your pet unsupervised in public can be a way to say abandoning it. After all, abandoning something means you left it unsupervised for a long enough amount of time.
Technically, this law says that the actions which can directly increase the number of stray animals are less serious offenses than the failure to submit to the City Council’s desire for control!

I’m not sure how they deal with messages in English, but here are the e-mail addresses you might be able to write to, in case someone from abroad is reading this and wants to help:
– Mayor of Bucharest, Sorin Oprescu: primargeneral@bucuresti-primaria.ro
– Secretary General of Bucharest, Tudor Toma: tudor.toma@bucuresti-primaria.ro
The following two have signed the report this law was supposedly based on. Keep in mind that the report does not include any of the problems I mentioned above as being included in the law itself, so don’t be too hard on them if you decide to send something.
– Executive Manager of the Bucharest Environmental Protection and Eco-civics Education Department, Marius Capanu: marius.capanu@bucuresti-primaria.ro
– Manager of the Bucharest Administration for the Supervision of Stray Dogs, Dr. Simona Panaitescu: director@asa-bucuresti.ro

Two days ago I logged on to Yahoo! Messenger and saw her on! It’s pretty much exactly one year since I cracked when we last talked, since she had been pretty much ignoring me again for about a week at that point and then snapped at me when I sent her a harmless message, and I sent her that e-mail which obviously caused her to truly ignore me from then on…
No idea whether it even really was her on that account at that moment, and either way it could have been a bug which let me see her for a little while, perhaps even though I’m still on her ignore list. Or maybe she had reinstalled and something happened to her ignore list and by sending something I just reminded her to put me back on it. Who knows? But to say that I was shocked would be an understatement.

Actually, as soon as I logged on I had to log off and rush to the bathroom. Spent my time there trying to remember the whole process I once read happens between the moment you see something which produces a great shock and the moment your body decides to unload all, shall we say, excess weight. Luckily I did reach the bathroom in time…
Then I came back, took a deep breath, logged back on, sent her a hug and waited. Had to stop at the hug smiley because I knew I couldn’t actually say anything and not run immediately afterwards. Was really hard to manage to keep myself occupied enough to stick around even so, and some 20 minutes later I realized that’s about as much as I could handle, so I sent a message saying that and left, only to continue being worried sick afterwards, wondering if she ever replied or if it even was her, assuming my messages got through in the first place.

Eventually convinced myself to sign back on yesterday… And saw I had nothing from her, as expected. Also didn’t see her on anymore. So I guess it was either a bug or I actually did remind her to put me back on ignore if I had somehow ended up off that list.
So I guess this is pretty much it. Me getting really worked up over nothing again… But this “nothing” sure looked like a big “something” to me, just seeing that name lit up there… In case somebody’s reading this, don’t mind it. I guess I’m mainly writing to make sure I’ll remember the day.

Nothing’s going to change in what I feel… I’m just so frightened by what might have happened since I last heard from her, especially since this happened so soon after that dream I mentioned earlier…

Awful dream… My worst fear, in its worst form, perfectly realistic and in graphic detail… And these past few days I hadn’t even been thinking about it quite as much as I usually do, so it wasn’t caused by intense thoughts. Actually, I’m quite sure I never thought about it quite like this, never imagined it could go quite so wrong, be quite this bad. Not that there is any way in which it could happen and not be the worst disaster, but I guess… I guess something can be worse than anything else and still far from the worst it itself could be.
I’m just shocked. Woke up and could hardly move. Couldn’t scream, couldn’t hit something, couldn’t whimper (crying’s impossible, as usual). I’m just in a daze, can’t even believe I could dream that. Perhaps I’m hoping I didn’t really dream that. That maybe I just dreamed that I imagined dreaming it, or something like that. Though that’d be awful too…
Most of all… I wish I had some way of knowing it was just a dream, that it isn’t happening… That it won’t happen… That it can’t happen… Please…

Like a good part of the world, a few days ago I was watching Obama’s inauguration, which I keep meaning to call coronation since that’s what it looked like. I found myself rather annoyed by how pompous everything was. True, he wasn’t ostentatious himself and you can’t say there was a significant overall display of wealth for the sake of wealth itself, but the fact remains that the trouble and expenses were outrageous. But what’s much more upsetting is that such, or often even worse, displays are very common among us humans.
You have the desire to show off. You have traditions that appear to require fastuous displays. You have celebrations which are completely out of proportion to their cause or even have no real cause at all. You have displays of mourning which look more like partying. You have attempts to honor people or events with outrageous gifts or displays which have little, if anything, to do with what’s actually being honored. And perhaps I could continue… Why do we insist on such a waste of resources, time and, frankly, of ourselves?

Going back to Obama’s inauguration, instead of the advertised “peaceful transfer of power” I saw a huge national celebration when there was little reason for it. Yes, Bush and the Republicans are now gone, but Obama didn’t achieve that himself; it’d be better to say that he was just the means by which it was achieved. Yet a huge amount of people showed up to cheer as if their problems were already solved, apparently not realizing that the work is just starting and that, if he’s to be able to achieve anything, Obama needs their efforts, their direct help, way more than their cheering and adoration. And if that wasn’t enough, there was also the long parade, followed by the series of balls, all of which were directly or indirectly supported by the government. And if the fact that the vast majority of people are idiots is a given and unavoidable, the fact that governments endorse such actions, especially during such harsh times, is not acceptable.
Dictators and royalty tend to periodically benefit from such fastuous displays without, or at least before, doing anything to deserve them. In those cases the situation is indeed much worse because they, or at least the dictators, not only endorse them but actually tend to demand them. They also use to show off their wealth, either real or perceived, during such ceremonies, therefore pointing out the difference between them and their subjects. And yet those subjects keep coming and providing such dubious entertainment. Granted that some of those who are ruled by dictators do so out of fear and not out of loyalty, but I still wonder why does anyone put up with such expectations and what the point of it all could be… Other than stroking somebody’s ego that is, or even of creating a problematic ego in those who previously knew their place…
And, while I’m at it, I should also mention national holidays, since they also tend to require a lot of planning and use massive amounts of resources. There is usually a past event of great importance for that particular country which is the cause of the celebrations, which take the form of parades and speeches, but sometimes also more regular types of entertainment such as concerts. Sometimes the event happened a very long time ago and any available descriptions are quite inaccurate, sometimes willingly so. And, either way, wasting time and resources in ways which cause a disruption in the lives of those who’d actually intend to do something meaningful that day is far from the right way to honor those who fought and died (since that’s what the past event tends to involve) for your country.

Next come religious holidays and all the flashy celebrations associated with many of them. The fact that these days they have more to do with celebrating consumerism than anything else is also a major issue, but even if the celebrations are done for the right reason it’s still wrong for the state to get involved in organizing them. What happens around Christmas in countries where the majority religion is Christianity is a perfect example of that, with authorities setting up large trees in town squares and decorating the streets with lots of colored lights. All of that takes time and uses up a large amount of resources, which could be better used on many other things.
Somewhat similar are the carnivals. Granted that they are usually local events, not national, but they tend to paralyze the city in question and the surrounding area, so the amount of disruption they cause is massive. Still, if their impact would be limited to their actual duration it wouldn’t be that much of a problem since the tourists they bring tend to generate a lot of income for the host city and could therefore be considered an investment like any other, but the parades they tend to include are a different matter entirely. Those are usually not why tourists come, and yet lots and lots of people spend months preparing to play their part in them. They literally spend their time and use their skills just so they will be able to “properly” waste them for a day or three per year.
And then you have the ceremonies caused by sports events. I’m not talking about more or less spontaneous celebrations triggered by winning a trophy or other similar achievement, as those can be justified, are generally not prepared in advance and the state has little involvement in them. I’m talking about such things as opening ceremonies which are prepared a long time in advance and whose only purpose seems to be grandeur… Especially when they’re also fake, the one for the Beijing Olympic Games being a very good example of that. There could be a purpose for such ceremonies, if they’d be truly meaningful or at least very entertaining, but that rarely happens and all that’s left is mostly meaningless pomp.

Moving on to an individual level, we have the various ceremonies which are part of a person’s life, such as weddings or funerals. While it’s true that the rich and influential tend to be the most outrageous when it comes to these events, the only thing keeping most others from doing something similar is the fact that they have less resources to waste, since they tend to waste as much as they have anyway. I find it especially troubling when it comes to funerals, which end up turned into these ceremonies which can at times resemble parties, albeit subdued ones. You’d think that the deceased’s friends and relatives are actually celebrating the death, though that’s not usually the case. As for weddings, the amount of time and money wasted on the ceremonies and celebrations which are supposedly “required” for such an event often play a rather important part in why so many relationships become strained immediately afterwards.
I could also include other personal celebrations, such as birthdays and other anniversaries, here, but to a much lesser extent. In some cases the preparations for these are also quite stressful and the outcome is not worth it, but there’s far less pressure from society here so I can say that people have only themselves to blame if something doesn’t turn out right, which is not what this post is about. Still, some of the rich and influential do sometimes turn such personal celebrations into public events.

You might say that tradition demands that most of these things happen, but what is tradition? Isn’t it something somebody simply decided to do at some point? If so, why can’t we decide to do something else? Don’t all traditions have a beginning? If so, why can’t they also have an end? You have to keep in mind that most of these traditions started a long time ago, when there were far fewer people in the world, each of them used less resources and the ability to quickly travel from one place to another was rather limited. Traditions can become outdated, no longer being applicable in the current context. Not to mention that some of them are simply stupid…
You might say that many people need traditions and I might agree, but why can’t we use them to create something new and good instead of wasting even what we still have? Efficient traditions can also be created, though of course with much more difficulty than wasteful ones. But nothing worthwhile’s ever easy… And if you’ll invoke the fact that the entertainment potential of these events still makes them worthwhile, despite the inherent problems, for those who wouldn’t be able to obtain any elsewhere, I’m going to ask why aren’t we using the time and resources wasted on such ceremonies to come up with ways of making sure people will be able to have access to many different means of relaxing and having fun? Giving them the ability to choose means they’ll be able to find exactly what suits them and also that the state will be free to take care of more pressing issues.

I went to the CNN site today and noticed an ad on the right side asking me to take a survey about electronics. (It’s actually just about Nikon, especially their advertisements on CNN.) I like surveys, so I clicked it and saw that it says they’ll donate €2 if you’re from Europe or $2 if you’re not to the organization of your choice, out of the four options listed, if you complete it. After doing that, it took me back to the CNN site and I saw an ad for a different survey, about travel, so I did that too. I have to say that you really shouldn’t believe them when they say it’ll be short, because if you intend to do it properly it’ll take quite some time to complete. But at least there are five organizations to choose from at the end of it, since the part about the donation still applies.

Personally, I find it unlikely to be true, that donation made for every single survey taker. The expenses would be huge, considering the amount of visitors a site like CNN has, especially for the Nikon one, since I think that’s short enough for anyone to take. And the other one may be long and complex enough to make many potential takers give up at some point, but that doesn’t mean they won’t complete it; they could just give up on providing serious answers and just click through to the end.
But that’s less important. What I find interesting is the concept, attempting to motivate people to do something by donating money to a cause they support instead of promising them a chance to win something for themselves. It’d be nice if it’d work, it’d mean a fair number of people do care more for a cause than for themselves, at least when it comes to little efforts. Which is exactly why I say it matters less whether it’s true or not…

It’d be good news if this kind of incentive would have the desired effect, even if that would take away most of its “activist” value and leave only the marketing. It’d also be great if they’d keep their promise about the donations. But right now it seems good enough that such a large corporation is looking in that direction, and perhaps even trying to encourage people to get more involved by doing so.
Something like this doesn’t involve trying to educate people or attempting to make those who don’t care start caring. If true, it just provides an easy way to help a little bit. What’s more important, it provides a way to help unwittingly. The world truly needs that, considering how many ways there are to harm unwittingly…