Always when such protests happen in Romania, all the TV shows and the other mass-media are invaded by various people, who benefit from the money stolen by the government, and who tell a huge number of lies designed to confuse the ignorant or weak-minded. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find such a person trying to influence an Internet forum in the USA, far from home. The lies said above by "Sylphine" are some of the most common lies used by the government propagandists at each protest, during the last 26 years.

1. All such protests, began as a response to some wrong action of the government. However the shills, e.g. "Sylphine", behave as if that action did not exist and say that the protests are instigated by political opponents, foreign corporations and so on, who want to overthrow the innocent government. It is true that the political opponents, e.g. the current Romanian president, always try to use such protests to gain advantages over the target of the protests. However, this has nothing to do with the cause of the protests. No politicians in Romania have enough influence to convince a really large number of people to protest just because they say so.

2. Another frequent lie is that from the message above, which attempts to present the two positions, of those that are pro & contra the government as being two equivalent positions. That is as if one would say that there are 2 equivalent theories, one claiming that 2+2=4 and the other claiming that 2+2=7, and that the truth must be somewhere between these 2 extreme theories.

This is a lie. The counter-protest gathered not even 200 times less people, all who were obviously old and poor. They were unable to explain logically why they protest. It was obvious that someone has scared them with lies, e.g. that the opponents of the government want to decrease their pensions or salaries. Before the government introduced the changes in the penal Code that started the protests, they increased slightly the pensions and the small salaries. They hoped that this will make everybody happy so nobody will protest when they will achieve their main purpose of modifying the penal Code.

While corrupt politicians are everywhere, including in the USA, I am not aware of any other case when they would have been so shameless as to give themselves the permission to steal from the public money, by law, as they tried to do in Romania.

The text of the changes to the penal Code is public, so there is no doubt about their content. It is not possible to argue that any member of the government that voted these changes did not break his/her oath, which said that he/she will observe the Constitution and the Laws and he/she will protect the rights of the citizens (which include the right of property over the public money, which must not be stolen by those hired to administrate it).

So the 2 positions are not equivalent, one is right beyond any reasonable doubt and the other is wrong beyond any reasonable doubt.

This is reflected in the numbers, it is much easier to fool a couple thousand people (counter-protesters) than to fool many hundred thousand people (genuine protesters).