Veles protests against smelting factory restart
Today, on 9th of November 2011 the citizens of Veles and their friends have clearly shown their opinion about the possible restart of the lead smelting factory. Massively supporting the protest scheduled at 17:00 today, the families, school children and elders joined forces. Being there I saw people from all backgrounds - the non-governmental sector, doctors, blue collar workers, politicians including former and current mayors and members of the parliement and local council, mothers and daughters, from all ranges of age, social and ethnic background. They protested in unison, NO RESTART! for the smelting factory.
I was never good at guessing numbers, but the group of NGO's called "Green coalition" have managed to gather more participants than any party on a political rally even when they want to boast with numbers carrying people from other cities to enrich the scenery. Some guesses were in the range of 10.000 participants.
The organization was quite good, the people were loud but very polite, the whole process finished without any recorded incident. The protest was lead by an excavator, symbolic image of the vision of the citizens - to dig up the old shadow factory and plant the perimeter with trees in order to decontaminate the land from cancerogens and active chemicals that modify the DNA of the unborn children.
The message was clear and far-reaching - NO MORE POISONING! Now, the state should show its support for the locals not only by speeches and through columnists, but by clear actions. And the solution is simple - rejecting the application of the investor to restart the factory - which everyone is sure that must be done based on strict following of the environmental legislation. Even the investor has admitted that they will pollute in their environmental impact study submitted to the Ministry of environment of Republic of Macedonia (image of the table follows, and remember the fact - the author of this document is the investor itself):
After this night - it should be clear to all, whoever tries to do more harm to the citizens of Veles will be punished severely.
Some photos and video follow. Thanks to GlobalVoices, for mentioning my previous posts and tweets on the front page story.
Additional reading:
- Photo gallery from the event (Author: @samoglaska)
- My live tweeting from event (including some mobile phone pictures): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
- Link to the original post explaining the background of the protest
- Twitter hashtags: #Veles, #Велес
- Official FB group [macedonian]
Veles, the city of the lead soldiers
Although happily closed for almost 10 years, the zombie is re-appearing from its grave and showing its ugly face. A company unoficially linked with metals trading corporation has bought the factory from the banks and the state (which were the main share holders of the bakrupt company). Further more, a 8 year long legal battle "Veles vs. Macedonia" has ended with case closure (1) with no clear reasons why and how the decision was made.
The citizens of Veles are angry of this Fukushima/Chernobyl reappearance and are planning to fight back, starting with protests on the day of the city (9th of November, 10AM). It is time to take our future (or what is left of it, for the good of our offsprings) and fight back, since honestly we are tired of "entities" making us leave our homes. So many left or died, there is no turning back - we must fight back and bring up our pride. We want green and prosperous city and we are going to fight for it. Hopefully the consensus which remains across all parties will remain and will be proven in action. Both the former and current mayors are supporting the movement lead by a set of local ecological NGO's (1).
EU is quite clear about the lead production health and environmental effects. For instance, Bulgaria had to close a factory earlier this year having in mind that it is a member state and has to follow strict standards unlike us.
A documentary about the alarming health and environmental impact of the factory follows, subtitled in english. The beast must go down, and now it is personal - it is either the factory or citizens of Veles.
Please share the facts and help us spread the word, Veles should be green not black!
(Some facts and links follow after the videos, I will try to live stream the protests, so keep visting)
Important links:
- Position on Lead production (European Union) http://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/pdf/pp_pb.pdf
- Bulgaria closing Lead smelting facility due to EU health and air quality conditions http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-18/bulgarian-lead-smelter-ordered-to-close-because-of-pollution-1-.html
- Macedonian news aggregation portal Time.mk - articles on Veles and Lead factory (1) http://bit.ly/rEb9tZ
- Macedonian twitter community hashtags: #Veles, #Велес (Macedonian)
- Facebook groups: 1, 2, 3
Update 1 (30.10.11 12:00): Satellite photo of the industrial complex, zoom out and understand the obvious danger - the factory is within the city perimeters, 2km close from every home! Look for the large black hills in the photo - toxic production materials left in the open:
UPDATE 2 (9.11.11): The protest was rescheduled for 17:00 impacting the size of the event. Report is available here.
(1) - All links with this remark use automatic translation, source: Macedonian.
When poverty reaches your modest neighborhood and bursts your bubble
I spent my childhood in Veles, Macedonia as part of former socialist Yugoslav federation. Life was OK, social welfare state was somewhat functional, unemployment was high but still two times less then now. Jobs were mediocre, slow, poorly paid, but without much stress. By chance, I am still living with my family in the same city right now and commuting to Skopje.
I consider myself quite lucky when it comes to travelling. I have been in many places, having spent quite some time in small and big cities, meeting interesting people. I feel quite safe when travelling and I could honestly live in such environment. You change few behaviours and keep up with your life. To be honest, I really love metropolitan areas - they are ripe with culture, business and potential to have different finish for every day of your life.
I am not weak of heart, and I have definitely seen a lot and managed some nasty situations previously. Still I was not prepared (mentally) for the image that I saw that morning. When I was locking my door on my way out I noticed that there was something on the level below the first set of stairs. Rarely a dog spends the night in the hall taking refuge from the cold night. I am used to deal with it. But unfortunately what I saw was a grown up person lying on the ground covered with card boards to minimize the chilly draft across the hall. I am still not sure if it was a girl (having long pony tail, dark blonde hair) or a guy since his face was directed towards the wall below the hall windows.
In my small (then industrial) town of Veles, 30 years ago there were 0 registered homeless persons out of 50.000 residents (actual wandering-the-streets type of homeless people). The image of homeless person sleeping under the open sky in makeshift cardboard house was something you would see in a pirated movie on VHS tape rented from the local "video club". This "bad parts of New York in the seventies" image was something unseen of in the community where I grew up.
(S)he was probably sleeping and I was quite early that day, around 6 AM, probably the first person to go through the stairway. (S)he moved a bit, it felt like (S)he was trying to make some room so I can pass without hitting her with my shoes.
I never, not even in a split second, feared for my security, and even more interestingly, for the security for my family left at home. I was also well prepared for the scene, although unfortunate - it was something I saw too many times to make it awkward for my stomach. Two stairways down, nearby the post boxes there was not-yet-dried out urine by the wall. And wide open hallway door with brisk morning air. Smelled like the Brussels subway, or some very bad part of the Paris metro station. But 4m from my home. The place with untouched sanctity. At least until now.
A totally different feeling overwhelmed me. I was sad. Depressive kind of sad. Very depressive kind of sad. Although Macedonia was never the leader in payroll levels, although we were the latin part of Europe for quite some time, I grew up with the notion of relative equiality, that every man or woman and child would have enough to eat, enough to keep her safe, under the roof, warm, at least over the night even if it was state run building for social welfare.
I guess the simple answer is - my bubble busted. Nobody is safe. Even if someone is modest, does spend as much as she earns, takes care of family as much as she can... She can still end up on the street, alone, sleeping on cardboard bed. And not on the movies, not far far away, but here, really really close to my home. It could happen to anyone in the community... Even to the ones I love most.
Probably Maslov kicked in, making me feel insecure. But I still think that the main reason why I felt sad is that the community I live in, the broken image of the past I have with me is no more. The harsh reality is that I live in the eye of the storm. Harlem, Bronx, Tottenham or Clichy-sous-Bois are not different than Veles. A city with 40% unemployment [Census 2002, page 40] is a ticking bomb waiting to go off. Even one of the main reasons why Egypt rose was "high level of unemployment" which, although alarmingly high, was 2.5 times lower than the unemployment rate in my own city. We all live in the ghetto. And even more scarier, the ghetto is spreading westwards, as we speak. So next time when you accuse someone protesting for social rights of being "left wing extremist" or "finding an excuse to loot and steal" better think twice who's next in the cardboard box near you. Or dealing drugs or weapons near your home. We need deep changes, and we need them now, and common politics does not have a clue how to provide them!
Great news for the niche players: the long tail in action
- Internet consumers derive significant surplus from increased product variety, and in particular, the “Long Tail” of niche products that can be found on the Internet at retailers
- Trends in the Amazon.com distribution curve and comparison from 2000 and 2008 and how this impacts the resulting consumer surplus gains from increased product variety in the online book market.
- Tail has grown longer over time, with niche books accounting for a larger share of total sales - niche books account for 36.7% of Amazon’s sales
- The consumer surplus generated by niche books has increased at least five fold from 2000 to 2008.
- What is the concept of the “Long Tail”? http://amzn.to/9JEuVt
- Thanks to Tim for the Link http://bit.ly/9dWrL1
- Link to the paper http://bit.ly/9c1Cgj
The religion of freedom
The inevitable will happen. One lives, another one dies. Higher order, prophecy, the meaning of life, sub-ordinance, willingness to become one with the group... All these questions force us to seek answers. And if they remain unanswered, we seek our meaning in religion.
Being an atheist or agnostic is not easy, even in "modern times". The re-emergence of group psychology supported by neoconservative populists in many countries forces "us" in front of "me". And with "us" comes god as common denominator in contrast to "them".
And I dare to ask, what is god without believers? What are believers without god? The heavenly omnipotence gains the social, psychological and political energy from the power of individual believers. Brave (and honest) thing to say is: there would be no god, if there is not a single person believing in "it". Thus the gods of Mohicans live no more. The modern living transformed our lives, but also produced modern gods. The only true antipodes of regressive religion remain to be science, education, liberalism, modern communication technologies, globalization, travel and books. And this leads me to Dawkins. A video valuable to share:
Choice is never an odd number
One of my mentors, a Canadian consultant, thought me a valuable lesson - never give people odd number of choices when scaling between negative and positive feedback. They will always choose the neutral option for the feedback in conformity.
I then realized that by doing so you also force them to put more deliberation having to clearly take a side.
I wonder if there are some methodologies to discover the bias offset in individual responses.
Review point: survey psychology.
textgeek
