Russian Money Suspected Behind Fracking Protests

[Ptarmigan]

Russian Money Suspected Behind Fracking Protests
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/world/russian-money-suspected-behind-fracking-protests.html?_r=0

PUNGESTI, Romania — Vlasa Mircia, the mayor of this destitute village in eastern Romania, thought he had struck it rich when the American energy giant Chevron showed up here last year and leased a plot of land he owned for exploratory shale gas drilling.

But the encounter between big business and rural Romania quickly turned into a nightmare. The village became a magnet for activists from across the country opposed to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Violent clashes broke out between the police and protesters. The mayor, one of the few locals who sided openly with Chevron, was run out of town, reviled as a corrupt sellout in what activists presented as a David versus Goliath struggle between impoverished farmers and corporate America.

“I was really shocked,” recalled the mayor, who is now back at his office on Pungesti’s main, in fact only, street. “We never had protesters here and suddenly they were everywhere.”

Hmmmmmmmm. I wonder if some of the anti-frackers here in America are getting money from Russia.

[thundley4]

Or from the Arabs.

[DumbAss Tanker]

The only surprise in this is that the Russians can scrape up the spare change to do it, while their economy implodes, sped along by the costs of unnecessary military adventures and brinkmanship.  Of course when funding enviro-nutters, a little money goes a long way, like pushing a snowball down a mountain...plenty of wealthy 'useful idiots' will flock to the cause and bring their own money.