Executing a kick to the solar plexus. Photo credit goes to John Walsh.

The Liechtenstein Garden Palace is a Baroque palace at the Fürstengasse in the 9th District of Vienna, Alsergrund . Between the palace, where the Liechtenstein Museum was until the end of 2011, and executed as Belvedere summer palace on the Alserbachstraße is a park. Since early 2012, the Liechtenstein Garden Palace is a place for events. Part of the private art collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein is still in the gallery rooms of the palace. In 2010 was started to call the palace, to avoid future confusion, officially the Garden Palace, since 2013 the city has renovated the Palais Liechtenstein (Stadtpalais) in Vienna's old town and then also equipped with a part of the Liechtenstein art collection.

Building

Design for the Liechtenstein Garden Palace, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach in 1687/1688

Canaletto: View of Palais Liechtenstein

1687 bought Prince Johann Adam Andreas von Liechtenstein a garden with adjoining meadows of Count Weikhard von Auersperg in the Rossau. In the southern part of the property the prince had built a palace and in the north part he founded a brewery and a manorial, from which developed the suburb Lichtental. For the construction of the palace Johann Adam Andreas organised 1688 a competition, in the inter alia participating, the young Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Meanwhile, a little functional, " permeable " project was rejected by the prince but, after all, instead he was allowed to built a garden in the Belvedere Alserbachstraße 14, which , however, was canceled in 1872.

The competition was won by Domenico Egidio Rossi, but was replaced in 1692 by Domenico Martinelli. The execution of the stonework had been given the royal Hofsteinmetzmeister (master stonemason) Martin Mitschke. He was delivered by the Masters of Kaisersteinbruch Ambrose Ferrethi , Giovanni Battista Passerini and Martin Trumler large pillars, columns and pedestal made ​​from stone Emperor (Kaiserstein). Begin of the contract was the fourth July 1689 , the total cost was around 50,000 guilders.

For contracts from the years 1693 and 1701 undertook the Salzburg master stonemason John and Joseph Pernegger owner for 4,060 guilders the steps of the great grand staircase from Lienbacher (Adnet = red) to supply marble monolith of 4.65 meters. From the Master Nicolaus Wendlinger from Hallein came the Stiegenbalustraden (stair balustrades) for 1,000 guilders.

A palazzo was built in a mix of city and country in the Roman-style villa. The structure is clear and the construction very blocky with a stressed central risalite, what served the conservative tastes of the Prince very much. According to the procedure of the architectural treatise by Johann Adam Andreas ' father, Karl Eusebius, the palace was designed with three floors and 13 windows axis on the main front and seven windows axis on the lateral front. Together with the stems it forms a courtyard .

Sala terrene of the Palais

1700 the shell was completed. In 1702, the Salzburg master stonemason and Georg Andreas Doppler took over 7,005 guilders for the manufacture of door frame made ​​of white marble of Salzburg, 1708 was the delivery of the fireplaces in marble hall for 1,577 guilders. For the painted decoration was originally the Bolognese Marcantonio Franceschini hired, from him are some of the painted ceilings on the first floor. Since he to slow to the prince, Antonio Belucci was hired from Venice, who envisioned the rest of the floor. The ceiling painting in the Great Hall, the Hercules Hall but got Andrea Pozzo . Pozzo in 1708 confirmed the sum of 7,500 florins which he had received since 1704 for the ceiling fresco in the Marble Hall in installments. As these artists died ( Pozzo) or declined to Italy, the Prince now had no painter left for the ground floor.

After a long search finally Michael Rottmayr was hired for the painting of the ground floor - originally a temporary solution, because the prince was of the opinion that only Italian artist buon gusto d'invenzione had. Since Rottmayr was not involved in the original planning, his paintings not quite fit with the stucco. Rottmayr 1708 confirmed the receipt of 7,500 guilders for his fresco work.

Giovanni Giuliani, who designed the sculptural decoration in the window roofing of the main facade, undertook in 1705 to provide sixteen stone vases of Zogelsdorfer stone. From September 1704 to August 1705 Santino Bussi stuccoed the ground floor of the vault of the hall and received a fee of 1,000 florins and twenty buckets of wine. 1706 Bussi adorned the two staircases, the Marble Hall, the Gallery Hall and the remaining six halls of the main projectile with its stucco work for 2,200 florins and twenty buckets of wine. Giuliani received in 1709 for his Kaminbekrönungen (fireplace crowning) of the great room and the vases 1,128 guilders.

Garden

Liechtenstein Palace from the garden

The new summer palace of Henry of Ferstel from the garden

The garden was created in the mind of a classic baroque garden. The vases and statues were carried out according to the plans of Giuseppe Mazza from the local Giovanni Giuliani. In 1820 the garden has been remodeled according to plans of Joseph Kornhäusel in the Classical sense. In the Fürstengasse was opposite the Palais, the Orangerie, built 1700s.

Use as a museum

Already from 1805 to 1938, the palace was housing the family collection of the house of Liechtenstein, which was also open for public viewing, the collection was then transferred to the Principality of Liechtenstein, which remained neutral during the war and was not bombed. In the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called Building Centre was housed in the palace as a tenant, a permanent exhibition for builders of single-family houses and similar buildings. From 26 April 1979 rented the since 1962 housed in the so-called 20er Haus Museum of the 20th Century , a federal museum, the palace as a new main house, the 20er Haus was continued as a branch . Since the start of operations at the Palais, the collection called itself Museum of Modern Art (since 1991 Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation ), the MUMOK in 2001 moved to the newly built museum district.

From 29 March 2004 till the end of 2011 in the Palace was the Liechtenstein Museum, whose collection includes paintings and sculptures from five centuries. The collection is considered one of the largest and most valuable private art collections in the world, whose main base in Vaduz (Liechtenstein) is . As the palace, so too the collection is owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation .

On 15 November 2011 it was announced that the regular museum operating in the Garden Palace was stopped due to short of original expectations, visiting numbers remaining lower as calculated, with January 2012. The Liechtenstein City Palace museum will also not offer regular operations. Exhibited works of art would then (in the city palace from 2013) only during the "Long Night of the Museums", for registered groups and during leased events being visitable. The name of the Liechtenstein Museum will no longer be used.

 

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_Liechtenstein_(F%C3%BCrstengasse)

Greater Manchester Police Bolton executed a series of drug warrants across Bolton this morning,Thursday 15 August 2023.

 

This is part of the ongoing efforts to crack down on criminal activity across the borough and to maintain a visible police presence.

 

You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.

 

You can access many of our services online at www.gmp.police.uk

 

THRASH METAL - RANCAGUA

Portrait of Simelane during Africa Investment Forum 2018 - The Business of Sports - Executing for Success in November 2018, at Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa.

2022 The imposing bewigged bronze judicially robed figure is of John Watts Jr sculpted by George E Bissell erected in 1892 - The statues facial features are based on an earlier bust sculpted from life by Robert Ball Hughes from 1830 - The commission was executed by his grandson General John Watts DePeyster who was concerned his grandfather would be forgotten by the people of Manhattan - John Watts Jr was the only former British official to hold an American office - In 1791 he was elected to the New York State Assembly and two years later to the United States Congress - located in Trinity Churchyard graveyard 05/15/2022

E.J. Viso and Andretti Autosport execute an early pitstop

Visual projects executed by Vicenza High School students are on display near VHS teacher Lisa Balboni’s Honors 10 World History class.

This year’s Honors 10 World History class project was called The Swerve.

About 30 students working in pairs used different creative ideas to show how historical events tie into one other. The project started with Dark Ages and ended with the French Revolution, analyzing political, economic and social change from the 16th to the 18th century.

  

Photo by Laura Kreider, USAG Vicenza/PAO

  

Learn more on www.usag.vicenza.army.mil or www.facebook.com/USAGVicenza.

  

John and Henry Sheares, executed for their role in the 1798 rebellion, and the death mask of one of its leaders, Wolfe Tone.

The plaque on the left: "The Sheares brothers - John Sheares - 1766-1798. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin. He was called to the bar in 1788 and joined the United Irishmen. He visited France and was imbued with the political principles of the French revolution. He was arrested with his brother for complicity in the 1798 rebellion. He was found guilty of treason and executed...

Henry Sheares - 1753-1798: He was educated at Trinity College Dublin. He held a commission in the army and was called to the bar in 1734. He visited France with his brother but returned to Ireland. He was arrested for his political activity in the rebellion of 1798. Later he was executed before Newgate prison..."

The docuiment at right's a copy of the handwritten execution warrant. It specifies that they were to be hung from the neck, but were to be removed from the noose before death, then were to be disembowelled while alive and their entrails to be burned before their eyes, and then they were to be "respectfully" quartered... A real nasty example made of them.

Alex Fletcher retired Army, executes laps at Tucker Indoor Pool, Thursday, as part of the Masters Swim Program, offered by the Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation to enhance the wellbeing of Soldiers and their Families. Swimmers who want to improve their technique as hobbyist or for triathlons participate in the program. photo by Kevin Goode/Paraglide

The Postcard

 

A postally unused carte postale published by Gloria.

 

The photograph presents an image of a crudely executed model of an airship.

 

Although the card was not posted, someone has written the following in green ink across the divided back:

 

"Étampes le 30.12.20.

Chers Oncle et Tante,

Cousins, Cousines,

C'est à l'occasion de le

nouvelle année que je

viens vous renouveler

mes meilleurs voeux et

souhaits de bonheur et

de santé à tous et

l'accomplisement de tous

vos désirs.

Je pense que vous êtes

tous et toutes en bonne

santé, et que mes cousines

travaille toujours bien.

Je les remercie de leur jolie

carte que j'ai reçue avec

plaisir.

Quand à moi la santé est

bonne je vous visite la.

Je vous envoie de loin mes

plus affectionaux baisers.

Votre Niece Madeleine

qui vous aime".

 

Étampes

 

Étampes is a commune in Paris, France. It is located 48 km (30 miles) southwest from the city centre.

 

Étampes, together with the neighbouring communes of Morigny-Champigny and Brières-les-Scellés, form an urban area of 26,600 inhabitants (1999 census).

 

Étampes existed at the beginning of the 7th. century and in the early Middle Ages belonged to the crown domain. In 1652, during the war of the Fronde, it suffered severely at the hands of the royal troops under Turenne.

 

Étampes lies on the river Chalouette, a tributary of the Juine, which borders the eastern outskirts of the town.

 

A good view of Étampes is obtained from the Tour Guinette, a keep (now ruined) built by Louis VI in the 12th. century. Notre-Dame du Fort, the chief church, dates from the 11th. and 12th. centuries; irregular in plan, it is remarkable for a fine Romanesque tower and spire, and for the crenellated wall which partly surrounds it. The interior contains ancient paintings and other artistic works.

 

St. Basile (12th. and 16th. centuries), which preserves a Romanesque doorway, and St. Martin (12th. and 13th. centuries), with a leaning tower of the 16th. century, are of less importance.

 

The civic buildings offer little interest, but two houses named after the charmingly-named Anne de Pisseleu, mistress of Francis I, and Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II, are graceful examples of Renaissance architecture.

 

In the main square there is a statue of the naturalist, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was born in Étampes.

 

Rex Allen

 

So what else happened on the day that Madeleine wrote the card?

 

Well, on Friday the 31st. December 1920, Rex Elvie Allen was born in Wilcox Arizona. He became an American film and TV actor, singer and songwriter, and was known as the 'Arizona Cowboy'. He also went by the name of 'Cactus Rex'.

 

Rex was the narrator of many Disney nature and western productions. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1975 at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.

 

Rex died in Tucson, Arizona on the 17th. December 1999, two weeks before his 79th. birthday, when his caregiver accidentally drove over him in the driveway.

Executation of Sadness, to gain Happiness...

is that possible?

Rancagua Total Thrash

2014

Wir haben Ihren Auftrag ausgefuehrt.

We have executed your order.

Nous avons effectue votre commande.

 

Ihre Bestellung wurde durch unseren Fahrer geliefert.

Eine Fotographie der Blumen ist diesem Mail angehaengt oder folgt in einem separaten E-Mail gemaess den Bedingungen www.maarsen.ch/4

 

Your order has been delivered by our driver.

Attached you will find a photo of your bouquet or it will follow in an other e-mail. Conditions see www.maarsen.ch/4

 

Notre chauffeur a fait la livraison.

Veuillez trouver la photo de votre bouquet ci-dessous ou dans un prochain message electronique. Conditions voir www.maarsen.ch/4

 

Danke fuer Ihren Einkauf! Thank you for shopping at Maarsen's! Merci de votre confiance.

Blumen Maarsen AG

 

---

 

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Blumen fuer die Hochzeit: www.maarsen.ch/hochzeit

Dekoration von Anlaessen www.maarsen.ch/deco

 

PS: Spielen und gewinnen - jouez et gagnez: www.maarsen.ch/game

 

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Blumen Maarsen AG

Moserstrasse 9

3014 Bern, Switzerland

info@maarsen.ch

Telefon 0800 30 30 33

Phone +41 31 332 62 00

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Iran executes man convicted of ‘enmity against God’ j.mp/1ryxshn

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Nicolae Ceaușescu

 

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Ceaușescu" redirects here. For other people, see Ceaușescu

Constantin Dăscălescu

President of the State Council

In office

9 December 1967 – 22 December 1989

Prime Minister

Ion Gheorghe Maurer

Manea Mănescu

Ilie Verdeț

Constantin Dăscălescu

Preceded byChivu Stoica

Succeeded byOffice abolished

Additional positions

Personal details

Born5 February 1918 (Old Style: 23 January)

Scornicești, Kingdom of Romania

Died25 December 1989 (aged 71)

Târgoviște, Socialist Republic of Romania

Cause of deathExecution by firing squad

Resting placeGhencea Cemetery, Bucharest, Romania

Political partyRomanian Communist Party (1932–1989)

SpouseElena Petrescu

​

​(m. 1946; their deaths 1989)​

Children

Valentin Zoia Nicu

Signature

Military service

Branch/serviceRomanian Army

Years of service1949–1954

RankMareșal

Battles/warsRomanian Revolution Executed

Criminal conviction

Conviction(s)Genocide

TrialTrial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu

Criminal penaltyDeath

Details

VictimsRomanian dissidents

Nicolae Ceaușescu (/tʃaʊˈʃɛskuː/ chow-SHESK-oo, Romanian: [nikoˈla.e tʃe̯a.uˈʃesku] (listen); 5 February [O.S. 23 January] 1918[1] – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician and statesman. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and the second and last communist leader of Romania. He was also the country's head of state from 1967, serving as President of the State Council and from 1974 concurrently as President of the Republic, until his overthrow and execution in the Romanian Revolution in December 1989, part of a series of anti-Communist uprisings in Eastern Europe that year.

Born in 1918 in Scornicești, Ceaușescu was a member of the Romanian Communist youth movement. He was arrested in 1939 and sentenced for "conspiracy against social order", spending the time during the war in prisons and internment camps: Jilava (1940), Caransebeș (1942), Văcărești (1943), and Târgu Jiu (1943). Ceaușescu rose up through the ranks of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's Socialist government and, upon Gheorghiu-Dej's death in 1965, he succeeded to the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party as general secretary.[2]

Upon his rise to power, he eased press censorship and openly condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in his speech on 21 August 1968, which resulted in a surge in popularity. However, the resulting period of stability was brief as his government soon became totalitarian and was considered the most repressive in the Eastern Bloc at the time. His secret police, the Securitate, was responsible for mass surveillance as well as severe repression and human rights abuses within the country, and controlled the media and press. Economic mismanagement due to failed oil ventures during the 1970s led to skyrocketing foreign debts for Romania. Ceaușescu's attempts to implement policies that would lead to a significant growth of the population led to a growing number of unsafe abortions and increased the number of orphans in state institutions. In 1982, Ceaușescu directed the government to export much of the country's agricultural and industrial production in an effort to repay these debts. His cult of personality experienced unprecedented elevation, followed by the deterioration of foreign relations, even with the Soviet Union.

As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceaușescu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country.[3] The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the course of the Revolutions of 1989.[4] Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital in a helicopter, but they were captured by the military after the armed forces defected. After being tried and convicted of economic sabotage and genocide,[5] both were sentenced to death, and they were immediately executed by firing squad on 25 December.[6]

Early life and career

 

Arrested in 1936 when he was 18 years old, Ceaușescu was imprisoned for two years at Doftana Prison for Communist activities.

Ceaușescu was born in the small village of Scornicești, Olt County, being the third of nine children of a poor peasant family (see Ceaușescu family). Based on his birth certificate, he was born on 5 February [O.S. 23 January] 1918,[7] rather than the official 8 February [O.S. 26 January] 1918—his birth was registered with a three-day delay, which later led to confusion. According to the information recorded in his autobiography, Nicolae Ceaușescu was born on 26 January 1918.[8] His father Andruță (1886–1969) owned 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of agricultural land and a few sheep, and Nicolae supplemented his large family's income through tailoring.[9] He studied at the village school until the age of 11, when he left for Bucharest. The Olt County Service of National Archives holds excerpts from the catalogs of Scornicești Primary School, which certifies that Nicolae A. Ceaușescu passed the first grade with an average of 8.26 and the second grade with an average of 8.18, ranking third, in a class in which 25 students were enrolled.[8] Journalist Cătălin Gruia claimed in 2007 that he ran away from his supposedly extremely religious, abusive and strict father. He initially lived with his sister, Niculina Rusescu.

He became an apprentice shoemaker,[9] working in the workshop of Alexandru Săndulescu, a shoemaker who was an active member in the then-illegal Communist Party.[9] Ceaușescu was soon involved in the Communist Party activities (becoming a member in early 1932), but as a teenager he was given only small tasks.[9] He was first arrested in 1933, at the age of 15, for street fighting during a strike and again, in 1934, first for collecting signatures on a petition protesting the trial of railway workers and twice more for other similar activities.[citation needed] By the mid-1930s, he had been in missions in Bucharest, Craiova, Câmpulung and Râmnicu Vâlcea, being arrested several times.[10]

The profile file from the secret police, Siguranța Statului, named him "a dangerous Communist agitator" and "distributor of Communist and antifascist propaganda materials".[10] For these charges, he was convicted on 6 June 1936 by the Brașov Tribunal to 2 years in prison, an additional 6 months for contempt of court, and one year of forced residence in Scornicești.[10] He spent most of his sentence in Doftana Prison.[10] While out of jail in 1939, he met Elena Petrescu, whom he married in 1946 and who would play an increasing role in his political life over the years.

 

Ceaușescu and other Communists at a public meeting in Colentina, welcoming the Red Army as it entered Bucharest on 30 August 1944

Soon after being freed, he was arrested again and sentenced for "conspiracy against social order", spending the time during the war in prisons and internment camps: Jilava (1940), Caransebeș (1942), Văcărești (1943), and Târgu Jiu (1943).[10]

In 1943, he was transferred to Târgu Jiu internment camp, where he shared a cell with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, becoming his protégé.

Enticed with substantial bribes, the camp authorities gave the Communist prisoners much freedom in running their cell block, provided they did not attempt to break out of prison.[11] At Târgu Jiu, Gheorghiu-Dej ran "self-criticism sessions" where various Party members had to confess before the other Party members to misunderstanding the teachings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin as interpreted by Gheorghiu-Dej; journalist Edward Behr claimed that Ceaușescu's role in these "self-criticism sessions" was that of the enforcer, the young man allegedly beating those Party members who refused to go with or were insufficiently enthusiastic about the "self-criticism" sessions.[12] These "self-criticism sessions" not only helped to cement Gheorghiu-Dej's control over the Party, but also endeared his protégé Ceaușescu to him.[12] It was Ceaușescu's time at Târgu Jiu that marked the beginning of his rise to power. After World War II, when Romania was beginning to fall under Soviet influence, Ceaușescu served as secretary of the Union of Communist Youth (1944–1945).[13]

 

Ceaușescu holding a speech in 1954

After the Communists seized power in Romania in 1947, and under the patronage of Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceausescu was elected as a member of the Great National Assembly, the new legislative body of communist Romania.

In May 1948 he was appointed Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, and in March 1949 he was promoted to the position of Deputy Minister.[14] From the Ministry of Agriculture and with no military experience he was made Deputy Minister in charge of the armed forces with the rank of Major General; later promoted to the rank of lieutenant general he became First Deputy to the Ministry of Defense and head of the Army's Higher Political Directorate.[15] Ceausescu studied, 1951 and 1952, for two consecutive month's a year at the Soviet Frunze Military Academy in Moscow.[15]

In 1952, Gheorghiu-Dej brought him onto the Central Committee months after the party's "Muscovite faction" led by Ana Pauker had been purged. In the late 1940s-early 1950s, the Party had been divided into the "home communists" headed by Gheorghiu-Dej who remained inside Romania prior to 1944 and the "Muscovites" who had gone into exile in the Soviet Union. With the partial exception of Poland, where the Polish October crisis of 1956 brought to power the previously imprisoned "home communist" Władysław Gomułka, Romania was the only Eastern European nation where the "home communists" triumphed over the "Muscovites". In the rest of the Soviet bloc, there were a series of purges in this period that led to the "home communists" being executed or imprisoned. Like his patron Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceaușescu was a "home communist" who benefited from the fall of the "Muscovites" in 1952. In 1954, Ceaușescu became a full member of the Politburo and eventually rose to occupy the second-highest position in the party hierarchy.[citation needed]

Ceaușescu during the collectivization process

As a high-ranking state official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Defence Ceaușescu had an important role in the forced collectivisation, according to own Romanian Workers' Party data, between 1949-1952 there were over 80,000 arrests of peasants and 30,000 ended with prison sentences.[16][17] One example is the uprising of Vadu Roșca (Vrancea county) who opposed the state program of expropriation of private holdings, Ceaușescu personally led the military units that suppressed the uprising and ordered the opening of fire from the machine guns in the trucks accompanying the tanks killing 9 and wounding 48, while 18 peasants were imprisoned for "rebellion" and "conspiring against social order".[18][19][17]

Leadership of Romania

See also: De-satellization of Communist Romania

 

Ceaușescu with Deng Xiaoping and Leonid Brezhnev in 1965

When Gheorghiu-Dej died on 19 March 1965, Ceaușescu was not the obvious successor despite his closeness to the longtime leader. However, widespread infighting by older and more connected officials made the Politburo turn to Ceaușescu as a compromise candidate.[20] He was elected general secretary on 22 March 1965, three days after Gheorghiu-Dej's death.

One of his first acts was to change the name of the party from the Romanian Workers' Party back to the Communist Party of Romania and to declare the country a socialist republic, rather than a people's republic. In 1967, he consolidated his power by becoming president of the State Council, making him de jure head of state. His political apparatus sent many thousands of political opponents to prison or psychiatric hospitals.[citation needed]

Initially, Ceaușescu became a popular figure, both in Romania and in the West, because of his independent foreign policy, which challenged the authority of the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, he eased press censorship and ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact, but Romania formally remained a member. He refused to take part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces and even actively and openly condemned that action in his 21 August 1968 speech. He travelled to Prague a week before the invasion to offer moral support to his Czechoslovak counterpart, Alexander Dubček. Although the Soviet Union largely tolerated Ceaușescu's recalcitrance, his seeming independence from Moscow earned Romania a maverick status within the Eastern Bloc.[20]

All of Ceaușescu's economic, foreign and demographic policies were meant to achieve his ultimate goal: turning Romania into one of the world's great powers.[21] In October 1966, Ceaușescu banned abortion and contraception and brought in one of the world's harshest anti-abortion laws,[22] leading to a large spike in the number of Romanian infants abandoned to the country's orphanages.

During the following years Ceaușescu pursued an open policy towards the United States and Western Europe. Romania was the first Warsaw Pact country to recognize West Germany, the first to join the International Monetary Fund, and the first to receive a US president, Richard Nixon.[23] In 1971, Romania became a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Romania and Yugoslavia were also the only Eastern European countries that entered into trade agreements with the European Economic Community before the fall of the Eastern Bloc.[24]

A series of official visits to Western countries (including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia) helped Ceaușescu to present himself as a reforming Communist, pursuing an independent foreign policy within the Soviet Bloc. He also became eager to be seen as an enlightened international statesman, able to mediate in international conflicts, and to gain international respect for Romania.[25] Ceaușescu negotiated in international affairs, such as the opening of US relations with China in 1969 and the visit of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to Israel in 1977. Also Romania was the only country in the world to maintain normal diplomatic relations with both Israel and the PLO. In 1980, Romania participated in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow with its other Soviet bloc allies, but in 1984 was one of the few Communist countries to participate in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (going on to win 53 medals, trailing only the United States and West Germany in the overall count)[26][27] when most of the Eastern Bloc's nations boycotted this event.[28]

 

Ceaușescu with Indira Gandhi during his visit to India in 1969

Ceaușescu refused to implement measures of economic liberalism. The evolution of his regime followed the path begun by Gheorghiu-Dej. He continued with the program of intensive industrialization aimed at the economic self-sufficiency of the country which since 1959 had already doubled industrial production and had reduced the peasant population from 78% at the end of the 1940s to 61% in 1966 and 49% by 1971. However, for Romania, like other Eastern People's Republics, industrialization did not mean a total social break with the countryside. The peasants returned periodically to the villages or resided in them, commuting daily to the city in a practice called naveta. This allowed Romanians to act as peasants and workers at the same time.[29]

Universities were also founded in small Romanian towns, which served to train qualified professionals such as engineers, economists, planners or jurists necessary for the industrialization and development project of the country. Romanian healthcare also achieved improvements and recognition by the World Health Organization (WHO). In May 1969, Marcolino Candau, Director General of this organization, visited Romania and declared that the visits of WHO staff to various Romanian hospital establishments had made an extraordinarily good impression.[29]

The social and economic transformations resulted in improved living conditions for Romanians. Economic growth allowed for higher salaries which, combined with the benefits offered by the state (free medical care, pensions, free universal education at all levels, etc.) were a leap compared to the pre-WWII situation of the Romanian population. Certain extra retributions were allowed for the peasants, who started to produce more.[29]

1966 decree

In 1966, in an attempt to boost the country's population, Ceaușescu made abortion illegal and introduced Decree 770 in order to reverse the Romanian population's low birth and fertility rates. Mothers of at least five children were entitled to receive significant benefits, while mothers of at least ten children were declared "heroine mothers" by the Romanian state. Few women ever sought to receive this status.

The government targeted rising divorce rates, and made divorce more difficult—it was decreed that marriages could only be dissolved in exceptional cases. By the late 1960s, the population began to swell. In turn, a new problem was created, child abandonment, which swelled the orphanage population (see Cighid). Many of the children in these orphanages suffered mental and physical deficiencies.[30]

Measures to encourage reproduction included financial motivations for families who bore children, guaranteed maternity leave, and childcare support for mothers who returned to work, work protection for women, and extensive access to medical control in all stages of pregnancy, as well as after it. Medical control was seen as one of the most productive effects of the law, since all women who became pregnant were under the care of a qualified medical practitioner, even in rural areas. In some cases, if a woman was unable to visit a medical office, a doctor would visit her home.[31]

Speech of 21 August 1968

Main article: Ceaușescu's speech of 21 August 1968

Ceaușescu's speech of 21 August 1968 represented the apogee of Ceaușescu's rule.[32] It marked the highest point in Ceaușescu's popularity, when he openly condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

July Theses

Main article: July Theses

 

Ceaușescu meeting with North Korean Premier Kim Il Sung in 1971

Ceaușescu visited China, North Korea, Mongolia and North Vietnam in 1971. He took great interest in the idea of total national transformation as embodied in the programmes of North Korea's Juche and China's Cultural Revolution. He was also inspired by the personality cults of North Korea's Kim Il Sung and China's Mao Zedong. Journalist Edward Behr claimed that Ceaușescu admired both Mao and Kim as leaders who not only totally dominated their nations, but had also used totalitarian methods coupled with significant ultra-nationalism mixed in with communism in order to transform both China and North Korea into major world powers.[33] Furthermore, that Kim and even more so Mao had broken free of Soviet control were additional sources of admiration for Ceaușescu. According to British journalist Edward Behr, Elena Ceaușescu allegedly bonded with Mao's wife, Jiang Qing.[33] Behr wrote that the possibility that what Ceaușescu had seen in both China and North Korea were "vast Potemkin villages for the hoodwinking of gullible foreign guests" was something that never seemed to have crossed his mind.[33] Shortly after returning home, he began to emulate North Korea's system. North Korean books on Juche were translated into Romanian and widely distributed inside the country.[34]

On 6 July 1971, he delivered a speech before the executive committee of the Romanian Communist Party. This quasi-Maoist speech, which came to be known as the July Theses, contained seventeen proposals. Among these were: continuous growth in the "leading role" of the Party; improvement of Party education and of mass political action; youth participation on large construction projects as part of their "patriotic work"; an intensification of political-ideological education in schools and universities, as well as in children's, youth and student organizations; and an expansion of political propaganda, orienting radio and television shows to this end, as well as publishing houses, theatres and cinemas, opera, ballet, artists' unions, promoting a "militant, revolutionary" character in artistic productions. The liberalization of 1965 was condemned and an index of banned books and authors was re-established.

The Theses heralded the beginning of a "mini cultural revolution" in Romania, launching a Neo-Stalinist offensive against cultural autonomy, reaffirming an ideological basis for literature that, in theory, the Party had hardly abandoned. Although presented in terms of "Socialist Humanism", the Theses in fact marked a return to the strict guidelines of Socialist Realism and attacks on non-compliant intellectuals. Strict ideological conformity in the humanities and social sciences was demanded.

In a 1972 speech, Ceaușescu stated he wanted "a certain blending of party and state activities... in the long run we shall witness an ever closer blending of the activities of the party, state and other social bodies". In practice, a number of joint party-state organizations were founded such as the Council for Socialist Education and Culture, which had no precise counterpart in any of the other communist states of Eastern Europe, and the Romanian Communist Party was embedded into the daily life of the nation in a way that it never had been before. In 1974, the party programme of the Romanian Communist Party announced that structural changes in society were insufficient to create a full socialist consciousness in the people, and that a full socialist consciousness could only come about if the entire population was made aware of socialist values that guided society. The Communist Party was to be the agency that would so "enlighten" the population and in the words of the British historian Richard Crampton "...the party would merge state and society, the individual and the collective, and would promote 'the ever more organic participation of party members in the entire social life'".[35]

President of the Socialist Republic of Romania

 

Standard as President of Romania

In 1974, Ceaușescu converted his post of president of the State Council to a full-fledged executive presidency. He was first elected to this post in 1974, and would be reelected every five years until 1989.

Although Ceaușescu had been nominal head of state since 1967, he had merely been first among equals on the State Council, deriving his real power from his status as party leader. The new post, however, made him the nation's top decision-maker both in name and in fact. He was empowered to carry out those functions of the State Council that did not require plenums. He also appointed and dismissed the president of the Supreme Court and the prosecutor general whenever the legislature was not in session. In practice, from 1974 onward Ceaușescu frequently ruled by decree.[36] Over time, he usurped many powers and functions that nominally were vested in the State Council as a whole.[37]

Effectively, Ceaușescu now held all governing power in the nation; virtually all party and state institutions were subordinated to his will. The principles of democratic centralism, combined with the legislature's infrequent sessions (it sat in full session only twice a year) meant that for all intents and purposes, his decisions had the force of law.

Oil embargo, strike and foreign relations

 

Nicolae Ceaușescu (left) with Hafez Al Assad (right) during a state visit to Ba'athist Syria, 1974

Starting with the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo against the West, a period of prolonged high oil prices set in that characterised the rest of the 1970s. Romania as a major oil equipment producer greatly benefited from the high oil prices of the 1970s, which led Ceaușescu to embark on an ambitious plan to invest heavily in oil-refining plants.[citation needed] Ceaușescu's plan was to make Romania into Europe's number one oil refiner not only of its own oil, but also of oil from Middle Eastern states such as Iraq and Iran, and then to sell all of the refined oil at a profit on the Rotterdam spot market.[38] As Romania lacked the money to build the necessary oil refining plants and Ceaușescu chose to spend the windfall from the high oil prices on aid to the Third World in an attempt to buy Romania international influence, Ceaușescu borrowed heavily from Western banks on the assumption that when the loans came due, the profits from the sales of the refined oil would be more than enough to pay off the loans.[38] The 1977 earthquake which destroyed much of Bucharest led to delays in the oil plan.[38] By the time the oil refining plants were finished in the early 1980s, a slump in oil prices had set in, leading to major financial problems for Romania.[38]

 

Ceaușescu in a meeting with Robert Mugabe in 1976

In August 1977 over 30,000 miners went on strike in the Jiu River valley complaining of low pay and poor working conditions.[21] The Jiu valley miners' strike was the most significant expression of opposition to Ceaușescu's rule prior to the late 1980s. The striking miners were inspired by similar strikes along Poland's Baltic coast in December 1970, and just as in Poland in 1970, the striking Romanian miners demanded face-to-face negotiations with their nation's leader.[21] When Ceaușescu appeared before the miners on the third day of the strike, he was greeted (in the words of the British historian Richard Crampton) "... once again à la polonaise, with cries of 'Down with the Red Bourgeoisie!'".[21] Ceaușescu ultimately negotiated a compromise solution to the strike.[21] In the years after the strike, a number of its leaders died of accidents and "premature disease". Rumors emerged that Securitate had doctors give the strike leaders 5-minute chest X-rays to ensure the development of cancer.[21]

He continued to follow an independent policy in foreign relations—for example, in 1984, Romania was one of few communist states (notably including the People's Republic of China and Yugoslavia) to take part in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, despite a Soviet-led boycott.

 

Ceaușescu with Jimmy Carter during a visit in Washington, D.C. in 1978

Also, the Socialist Republic of Romania was the first of the Eastern bloc nations to have official relations with the Western bloc and the European Community: an agreement including Romania in the Community's Generalised System of Preferences was signed in 1974 and an Agreement on Industrial Products was signed in 1980. On 4 April 1975, Ceaușescu visited Japan and met with Emperor Hirohito. In June 1978, Ceaușescu made a state visit to the UK where a £200m licensing agreement was signed between the Romanian government and British Aerospace for the production of more than eighty BAC One-Eleven aircraft. The deal was said at the time to be the biggest between two countries involving a civil aircraft.[39] This was the first state visit by a Communist head of state to the UK, and Ceaușescu was given a knighthood by the Queen, which was revoked on the day before his death in 1989.[40][41] Similarly, in 1983, Vice President of the United States George H. W. Bush and in 1985 United States Secretary of State George Shultz also praised the Romanian dictator.[42]

Pacepa defection

In 1978, Ion Mihai Pacepa, a senior member of the Romanian political police (Securitate, State Security), defected to the United States. A two-star general, he was the highest ranking defector from the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. His defection was a powerful blow against the administration, forcing Ceaușescu to overhaul the architecture of the Security. Pacepa's 1986 book, Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief (ISBN 0-89526-570-2), claims to expose details of Ceaușescu's government activities, such as massive spying on American industry and elaborate efforts to rally Western political support.

Foreign debt

Main article: 1980s austerity policy in Romania

 

By the 1970s, the Ceaușescus had developed a personality cult.

Ceaușescu's political independence from the Soviet Union and his protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 drew the interest of Western powers, whose governments briefly believed that he was an anti-Soviet maverick and hoped to create a schism in the Warsaw Pact by funding him. Ceaușescu did not realise that the funding was not always favorable. Ceaușescu was able to borrow heavily (more than $13 billion) from the West to finance economic development programs, but these loans ultimately devastated the country's finances. He also secured a deal for cheap oil from Iran, but that deal fell through after the Shah was overthrown.

In an attempt to correct this, Ceaușescu decided to repay Romania's foreign debts. He organised the 1986 military referendum and managed to change the constitution, adding a clause that barred Romania from taking foreign loans in the future. According to official results, the referendum yielded a nearly unanimous "yes" vote.[43]

Romania's record—having all of its debts to commercial banks paid off in full—has not been matched by any other heavily indebted country in the world.[44] The policy to repay—and, in multiple cases, prepay—Romania's external debt became the dominant policy in the late 1980s. The result was economic stagnation throughout the 1980s and, towards the end of the decade, the conditions were created for an economic crisis. The country's industrial capacity was eroded as equipment grew obsolete and energy intensity increased, and the standard of living deteriorated significantly. Draconian restrictions were imposed on the household energy use to ensure an adequate supply for the industry. Convertible currency exports were promoted at all costs and imports were severely compressed. In 1988, real GDP contracted by 0.5%, mostly due to a decline in industrial output caused by significantly increased material costs. Despite the 1988 decline, the net foreign balance reached its decade peak (9.5% of GDP). In 1989, GDP slumped by a further 5.8% due to growing shortages and the increasingly obsolete capital stock. By March 1989, virtually all of the external debt had been repaid. The entire medium- and long-term external debt was repaid. The lingering amount, totalling less than 1 million, consisted of short-term credits (mainly short-term export credits granted by Romania). A 1989 decree legally prohibited Romanian entities from contracting external debt.[45] The CIA World Factbook edition of 1990 listed Romania's external debt as "none" as of mid-1989.[46]

Yearly evolution (in billions of dollars)

1995 was the last year in which Romania's economy was dominated by the state. From 1996 onwards, the private sector would account for most of Romania's GDP.[47]

Data for 1975, 1980 and 1982–1988 taken from the Statistical Abstract of the United States.[48]

Data for 1989–1995 provided by the OECD.[49]

Data for 1981 and 1985 provided by the World Book Year Book.[50]

By April 1989, with its debt virtually zero, Romania was a net external creditor. Foreign borrowing was resumed after December 1989.[51] In order to maintain net creditor status, Romania had to keep its external debt under $2.5 billion, the low estimate of the amount it was owed by oil producers and other LDCs. This was first achieved in 1988[52] and continued through the early 1990s.[53]

19751980198119821983198419851986198719881989199019911992199319941995

Gross external debt2.99.410.29.88.87.16.66.45.12.20.00.22.23.54.55.56.7

Net statusdebtordebtordebtordebtordebtordebtordebtordebtordebtorcreditorcreditorcreditorcreditordebtordebtordebtordebtor

1984 failed coup d'état attempt

A tentative coup d'état planned in October 1984 failed when the military unit assigned to carry out the plan was sent to harvest maize instead.[54]

1987 Brașov rebellion

Main article: Brașov rebellion

 

Communist leaders Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania (left) and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union in 1985

Romanian workers began to mobilize against the economic policies of Ceaușescu. Spontaneous labor conflicts, limited in scale, took place in major industrial centers such as Cluj-Napoca (November 1986) and the Nicolina platform in Iași (February 1987), culminating in a massive strike in Brașov. The draconian measures taken by Ceaușescu involved reducing energy and food consumption, as well as lowering workers' incomes, leading to what political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu called "generalized dissatisfaction".[55]

Over 20,000 workers and a number of townspeople marched against economic policies in Socialist Romania and Nicolae Ceaușescu's policies of rationing of basic foodstuffs, rationing electricity and central heating.

The first protests began practically on 14 November 1987, at the 440 "Molds" Section of the Red Flag truck company. Initially, the protests were for basic needs: "We want food and heating!", "We want our money!", "We want food for the children!", "We want light and heat!" and "We want bread without a card!". Next to the County Hospital, they sang the anthem of the revolution of 1848, "Deșteaptă-te, române!". Upon arriving in the city center, thousands of workers from the Tractorul Brașov and Hidromecanica factories, pupils, students, and others joined the demonstration. From this moment on, the protest became political. Participants later claimed to have chanted slogans such as "Down with Ceaușescu!", "Down with communism!", "Down with the dictatorship!" or "Down with the tyrant!". During the march, members of the Securitate disguised as workers infiltrated the demonstrators, or remained on the sidelines as spectators, photographing or even filming.[56]

By dusk, Securitate forces and the military surrounded the city center and disbanded the revolt by force. Some 300 protesters were arrested and in order to hide the idea that the Brașov uprising had been a political one, the protesters were tried for disturbing the public peace and outrage against morals.

 

Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1986

Those under investigation were beaten and tortured, 61 of them receiving sentences ranging from 6 months to 3 years in prison, without deprivation of liberty, with execution at work in various enterprises in the country, although previously, in many party meetings, the death penalty was even required for the participants in the uprising, to set an example. In addition, at the trial it was decided to deport them and to arrange compulsory residence in other cities, although the decisions on such administrative measures had been repealed as early as the late 50s. The whole process took only an hour and a half.[56]

A few days after the workers' revolt, Cătălin Bia, a student at the Faculty of Forestry, sat in front of the canteen with a placard that read: "The arrested workers must not die". He was joined by colleagues Lucian Silaghi and Horia Șerban. The three were arrested immediately. Subsequently, graffiti of solidarity with the workers' revolt appeared on the student campus, and some students distributed manifestos. The security team conducted a total of seven arrests. Those arrested were investigated then expelled from the Faculty; returned to the localities from whence they came and placed under strict supervision along with their families.[56]

Romani minority rights

During the Ceaușescu regime, the Romani were largely neglected. This can be seen, perhaps most blatantly, with a motion from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers Party, which largely laid the foundation for the Ceaușescu regime's policies regarding the rights of ethnic minorities. The motion entirely ignored the Romani.[57]

Under the regime, the Romani were excluded from the list of "co-inhabiting nationalities" which was drafted by it, and as a result, they lacked any representation as an ethnic group in the government. This was still the case even after representation increased for other minorities such as Hungarians and Germans. Ceaușescu largely wished to conjure away the living conditions of the Romani, which were ignored by his predecessors and put in place as early as the regime of Ion Antonescu.[57]

The result of the neglect of the Romani, who had long been a highly vulnerable ethnic minority group across Europe, left the majority of the Romani people in Romania in significant poverty and it also left them at risk of becoming victims of hate crimes. Such conditions have lasted into modern-day Romania as demonstrated by the policies of several subsequent presidents.

Revolution

Main article: Romanian Revolution

 

Ceaușescu in 1988

In November 1989, the XIVth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) saw Ceaușescu, then aged 71, re-elected for another five years as leader of the PCR. During the Congress, Ceaușescu made a speech denouncing the anti-Communist revolutions happening throughout the rest of Eastern Europe. The following month, Ceaușescu's government itself collapsed after a series of violent events in Timișoara and Bucharest.

Czechoslovak President Gustáv Husák's resignation on 10 December 1989 amounted to the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, leaving Ceaușescu's Romania as the only remaining hard-line Communist regime in the Warsaw Pact.[58][59][60]

Timișoara

 

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Demonstrations in the city of Timișoara were triggered by the government-sponsored attempt to evict László Tőkés, an ethnic Hungarian pastor, accused by the government of inciting ethnic hatred. Members of his ethnic Hungarian congregation surrounded his apartment in a show of support.

Romanian students spontaneously joined the demonstration, which soon lost nearly all connection to its initial cause and became a more general anti-government demonstration. Regular military forces, police, and the Securitate fired on demonstrators on 17 December 1989, killing and injuring men, women, and children.

On 18 December 1989, Ceaușescu departed for a state visit to Iran, leaving the duty of crushing the Timișoara revolt to his subordinates and his wife. Upon his return to Romania on the evening of 20 December, the situation became even more tense, and he gave a televised speech from the TV studio inside the Central Committee Building (CC Building), in which he spoke about the events at Timișoara in terms of an "interference of foreign forces in Romania's internal affairs" and an "external aggression on Romania's sovereignty".

The country, which had little to no information of the events transpiring in Timișoara from the national media, learned about the revolt from radio stations (such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe) and by word of mouth. On the next day, 21 December, Ceaușescu staged a mass meeting in Bucharest. Official media presented it as a "spontaneous movement of support for Ceaușescu", emulating the 1968 meeting in which he had spoken against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces.

Overthrow

Speech on 21 December

Main article: Ceaușescu's final speech

The mass meeting of 21 December, held in what is now Revolution Square, began like many of Ceaușescu's speeches over the years. He spoke of the achievements of the "Socialist revolution" and Romania's "multi-laterally developed Socialist society". He also blamed the Timișoara riots on "fascist agitators who want to destroy socialism".[61]

However, Ceaușescu had misjudged the crowd's mood. Roughly eight minutes into his speech, several people began jeering and booing, and others began chanting "Timișoara!"[62] He tried to silence them by raising his right hand and calling for the crowd's attention before order was temporarily restored, then proceeded to announce social benefit reforms that included raising the national minimum wage by 200 lei per month to a total of 2,200 per month by 1 January. Images of Ceaușescu's facial expression as the crowd began to boo and heckle him were among the most widely broadcast of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.[20]

Failing to control the crowd, the Ceaușescus took cover inside the building that housed the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. The rest of the day saw an open revolt of Bucharest's population, which had assembled in University Square and confronted the police and army at barricades. The rioters, however, were no match for the military apparatus concentrated in Bucharest, which cleared the streets by midnight and arrested hundreds of people in the process.

Flight on 22 December

By the morning of 22 December, the rebellion had already spread to all major cities across the country. The suspicious death of Vasile Milea, Ceaușescu's defence minister, later confirmed as a suicide (he tried to incapacitate himself with a flesh wound but a bullet severed his artery),[63] was announced by the media. Immediately thereafter, Ceaușescu presided over the CPEx (Political Executive Committee) meeting and assumed the leadership of the army. Believing that Milea had been murdered, rank-and-file soldiers switched sides to the revolution almost en masse. The commanders wrote off Ceaușescu as a lost cause and made no effort to keep their men loyal to the government. Ceaușescu made a last desperate attempt to address the crowd gathered in front of the Central Committee building, but the people in the square began throwing stones and other projectiles at him, forcing him to take refuge in the building once more.[citation needed] He, Elena and four others managed to get to the roof and escape by helicopter, only seconds ahead of a group of demonstrators who had followed them there.[20] The Romanian Communist Party disappeared soon afterwards; unlike its kindred parties in the former Soviet bloc, it has never been revived.

The Western press[who?] published estimates of the number of people killed by Securitate forces. The count increased rapidly until an estimated 64,000 fatalities were reported across front pages.[64] The Hungarian military attaché expressed doubt regarding these figures, pointing out the unfeasible logistics of killing such a large number of people in such a short period. After Ceaușescu's death, hospitals across the country reported a death toll of fewer than 1,000, and probably much lower than that.[65]

Death

Main article: Trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu

 

Ceaușescu's original grave, Ghencea Cemetery, Bucharest (photographed in 2007)

 

The current resting place of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu at Ghencea Cemetery (photographed in 2018). Note that Elena Ceaușescu's year of birth is incorrectly recorded as 1919; her actual year of birth is 1916.

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital with Emil Bobu and Manea Mănescu and flew by helicopter to Ceaușescu's Snagov residence, from which they fled again, this time to Târgoviște. They abandoned the helicopter near Târgoviște, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's airspace. The Ceaușescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually handed over to the army.

On Christmas Day, 25 December 1989, the Ceaușescus were tried before a court convened in a small room on orders of the National Salvation Front, Romania's provisional government. They faced charges including illegal gathering of wealth and genocide. Ceaușescu repeatedly denied the court's authority to try him, and asserted he was still legally the President of Romania. At the end of the trial, the Ceaușescus were found guilty and sentenced to death. A soldier standing guard in the proceedings was ordered to take the Ceaușescus outside one by one and shoot them, but the Ceaușescus demanded to die together. The soldiers agreed to this and began to tie their hands behind their backs, which the Ceaușescus protested against, but were powerless to prevent.

The Ceaușescus were executed by a group of soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergeant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cîrlan,[66] while reportedly hundreds of others also volunteered. Before his sentence was carried out, Nicolae Ceaușescu sang "The Internationale" whilst being led towards the wall. The firing squad began shooting as soon as the two were in their positions up against the wall.[citation needed]

Later that day, the execution was also shown on Romanian television.[67] The hasty show trial and the images of the dead Ceaușescus were videotaped and the footage released in numerous Western countries two days after the execution.

The manner in which the trial was conducted has been criticised. However, Ion Iliescu, Romania's provisional president, said in 2009 that the trial was "quite shameful, but necessary" in order to end the state of near-anarchy that had gripped the country in the three days since the Ceaușescus fled Bucharest.[68] Similarly, Victor Stănculescu, who had been defence minister before going over to the revolution, said, in 2009, that the alternative would have been seeing the Ceaușescus lynched on the streets of Bucharest.[69]

The Ceaușescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on 7 January 1990.[70]

Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were originally buried in simple graves at Ghencea Cemetery, in Bucharest, on opposite sides of a path; their graves were often decorated with flowers and symbols of communist rule. In April 2007, their son, Valentin Ceaușescu, lost an appeal for an investigation into whether the graves were genuine. Upon his death in 1996, the younger son, Nicu, was buried nearby in the same cemetery.[71] According to the Jurnalul Național,[72] requests were made by the Ceaușescus' daughter, Zoia, and by supporters of their political views, to move their remains to mausoleums or to purpose-built churches. These demands were denied by the government.

Exhumation and reburial

On 21 July 2010, forensic scientists exhumed the bodies to perform DNA tests to prove conclusively that they were indeed the remains of the Ceaușescus.[71] The body believed to be Elena's had decayed too much to allow for a positive identification, but Nicolae was easily identifiable, wearing the bullet-riddled black winter coat he had been wearing during the execution. DNA tests were able to conclusively prove his identity.[73][74] His family organised a funeral service for the couple,[71] and they were reburied together at Ghencea under a tombstone.[75]

Ceaușescu's policies

See also: National Communism in Romania and Neo-Stalinism

While the term Ceaușism became widely used inside Romania,[citation needed] usually as a pejorative, it never achieved status in academia. This can be explained by the largely crude and syncretic character of the dogma. Ceaușescu attempted to include his views in mainstream Marxist theory, to which he added his belief in a "multilaterally developed Socialist society" as a necessary stage between the Leninist concepts of Socialist and Communist societies (a critical view reveals that the main reason for the interval is the disappearance of the State and Party structures in Communism).[citation needed] A Romanian Encyclopedic Dictionary entry in 1978 underlines the concept as "a new, superior, stage in the Socialist development of Romania ... begun by the 1971–1975 Five-Year Plan, prolonged over several [succeeding and projected] Five-Year Plans".[76]

Ceaușism's main trait was a form of Romanian nationalism,[77] one which arguably propelled Ceaușescu to power in 1965, and probably accounted for the Party leadership under Ion Gheorghe Maurer choosing him over the more orthodox Gheorghe Apostol. Although he had previously been a careful supporter of the official lines, Ceaușescu came to embody Romanian society's wish for independence after what many considered years of Soviet directives and purges, during and after the SovRom fiasco. He carried this nationalist option inside the Party, manipulating it against the nominated successor Apostol. This nationalist policy had more timid precedents:[78] for example, Gheorghiu-Dej had overseen the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1958.

 

Moldavian workers during Ceaușescu's visit to Soviet Moldavia in 1972

It had also engineered the publishing of several works that subverted the Russian and Soviet image, no longer glossing over traditional points of tension with Russia and the Soviet Union (even alluding to an "unlawful" Soviet presence in Bessarabia). In the final years of Gheorghiu-Dej's rule, more problems were openly discussed, with the publication of a collection of Karl Marx's writings that dealt with Romanian topics, showing Marx's previously censored, politically uncomfortable views of Russia.

Ceaușescu was prepared to take a more decisive step in questioning Soviet policies. In the early years of his rule, he generally relaxed political pressures inside Romanian society,[79] which led to the late 1960s and early 1970s being the most liberal decade in Socialist Romania. Gaining the public's confidence, Ceaușescu took a clear stand against the 1968 crushing of the Prague Spring by Leonid Brezhnev. After a visit from Charles de Gaulle earlier in the same year, during which the French President gave recognition to the incipient maverick, Ceaușescu's public speech in August deeply impressed the population, not only through its themes, but also because, uniquely, it was unscripted. He immediately attracted Western sympathies and backing, which lasted well beyond the 'liberal' phase of his rule; at the same time, the period brought forward the threat of armed Soviet invasion: significantly, many young men inside Romania joined the Patriotic Guards created on the spur of the moment, in order to meet the perceived threat.[80] President Richard Nixon was invited to Bucharest in 1969, which was the first visit of a United States president to a communist country after the start of the Cold War.

Alexander Dubček's version of Socialism with a human face was never suited to Romanian Communist goals.[citation needed] Ceaușescu found himself briefly aligned with Dubček's Czechoslovakia and Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia. The latter friendship was to last until Tito's death in 1980, with Ceaușescu adapting the Titoist doctrine of "independent Socialist development" to suit his own objectives.[citation needed] Romania proclaimed itself a "Socialist" (in place of "People's") Republic to show that it was fulfilling Marxist goals without Moscow's oversight.

The system's nationalist traits grew and progressively blended with North Korean Juche and Chinese Maoist ideals.[citation needed] In 1971, the Party, which had already been completely purged of internal opposition (with the possible exception of Gheorghe Gaston Marin),[78] approved the July Theses, expressing Ceaușescu's disdain of Western models as a whole, and the reevaluation of the recent liberalisation as bourgeois. The 1974 XIth Party Congress tightened the Party's grip on Romanian culture, guiding it towards Ceaușescu's nationalist principles.[81] Notably, it demanded that Romanian historians refer to Dacians as having "an unorganised State", part of a political continuum that culminated in the Socialist Republic.[81] The government continued its cultural dialogue with ancient forms, with Ceaușescu connecting his cult of personality to figures such as Mircea cel Bătrân (lit. "Mircea the Elder", whom he styled "Mircea the Great") and Mihai Viteazul (Michael the Brave). It also started adding Dacian or Roman versions to the names of cities and towns (Drobeta to Turnu Severin, Napoca to Cluj).[82] Although Ceaușescu maintained an independent, "national Communist" course, his absolute control over the country, as well as the intensity of the personality cult surrounding him, led many non-Romanian observers to describe his rule as one of the closest things to an old-style Stalinist regime. The last edition of the Country Study on Romania, for instance, referred to the PCR's "Stalinist repression of individual liberties".[83] A new generation of committed supporters on the outside confirmed the administration's character. Ceaușescu probably never emphasized that his policies constituted a paradigm for theorists of National Bolshevism such as Jean-François Thiriart, but there was a publicised connection between him and Iosif Constantin Drăgan, an Iron Guardist Romanian-Italian émigré millionaire (Drăgan was already committed to a Dacianist and protochronist attitude that largely echoed the official cultural policy).

Nicolae Ceaușescu had a major influence on modern-day Romanian populist rhetoric. In his final years, he had begun to rehabilitate the image of pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu. Although Antonescu's image was never a fully official myth in Ceaușescu's time, after his overthrow politicians such as Corneliu Vadim Tudor have coupled the images of the two leaders into their versions of a national Pantheon. The conflict with Hungary over the treatment of the Magyar minority in Romania had several unusual aspects: not only was it a vitriolic argument between two officially Socialist states, it also marked the moment when Hungary, a state behind the Iron Curtain, appealed to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe for sanctions to be taken against Romania. This meant that the later 1980s were marked by a pronounced anti-Hungarian discourse, which owed more to nationalist tradition than to Marxism,[84] and the ultimate isolation of Romania on the world stage.

The strong opposition to Ceaușescu on all forms of perestroika and glasnost placed Ceaușescu at odds with Mikhail Gorbachev. He was very displeased when other Warsaw Pact countries decided to try their own versions of Gorbachev's reforms. In particular, he was incensed when Poland's leaders opted for a power-sharing arrangement with the Solidarity trade union. He even went as far as to call for a Warsaw Pact invasion of Poland—a significant reversal, considering how violently he opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia 20 years earlier.[85] For his part, Gorbachev made no secret of his distaste for Ceaușescu, whom he called "the Romanian führer". At a meeting between the two, Gorbachev upbraided Ceaușescu for his inflexible attitude. "You are running a dictatorship here", the Soviet leader warned.[20]

In November 1989, at the XIVth and last congress of the PCR, Ceaușescu condemned the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and asked for the annulment of its consequences. In effect, this amounted to a demand for the return of Bessarabia (most of which was then a Soviet republic and since 1991 has been independent Moldova) and northern Bukovina, both of which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and again at the end of World War II.

Non-aligned policy feats

 

Warsaw Pact leaders in 1987 from left to right: Husák of Czechoslovakia, Zhivkov of Bulgaria, Honecker of East Germany, Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, Ceaușescu, Jaruzelski of Poland, and Kádár of Hungary

Ceaușescu was among the most ardent supporters of dimming lingering tensions between different Balkan states,[86] and went as far as to establish friendly relations with the vituperatively anti-communist Regime of the Colonels in Greece to pursue his objectives of cooperation between Balkan countries.[87]

Ceaușescu's Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that retained diplomatic relations with Israel and did not sever diplomatic relations after Israel's pre-emptive strike against Egypt at the start of the Six-Day War in 1967, to the consternation of the Soviet Union.[88] Ceaușescu made efforts to act as a mediator between the PLO and Israel.

Similarly, Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country to attend the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which had been boycotted by the Soviets and the rest of their allies in response to the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Ceaușescu's Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country that did not sever diplomatic relations with Chile after Augusto Pinochet's coup.[89]

Nicolae Ceaușescu was a close ally and personal friend of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre. Relations were in fact not just state-to-state, but party-to-party between their respective political machineries, the MPR and the PCR. Many believe that Ceaușescu's death played a role in influencing Mobutu to "democratise" Zaïre in 1990.[90]

Ceaușescu reduced the size of the Romanian People's Army by 5%, for which he organized a mock referendum.[91] In line with his policy of keeping a façade of "popular democracy", he also ordered large rallies for peace to be held.

Bessarabia

In August 1976, Nicolae Ceaușescu was the first high-level Romanian visitor to Bessarabia since World War II. In December 1976, at one of his meetings in Bucharest, Ivan Bodiul said that "the good relationship was initiated by Ceaușescu's visit to Soviet Moldova".[92]

Personality cult and totalitarianism

Main article: Nicolae Ceaușescu's cult of personality

 

Stamp commemorating Ceaușescu's 70th birthday and 55 years of political activity, 1988

 

Ceaușescu receiving the presidential sceptre, 1974[93]

 

Propaganda poster, Bucharest 1986)

Ceaușescu created a pervasive personality cult, giving himself such titles as "Conducător" ("Leader") and "Geniul din Carpați" ("The Genius of the Carpathians"), with inspiration from Proletarian Culture (Proletkult). After his election as President of Romania, he even had a "presidential sceptre" created for himself, thus appropriating a royal insignia. This excess prompted painter Salvador Dalí to send a congratulatory telegram to the Romanian president, in which he sarcastically congratulated Ceaușescu on his "introducing the presidential sceptre". The Communist Party daily Scînteia published the message, unaware that it was a work of satire.[citation needed]

The most important day of the year during Ceaușescu's rule was his official birthday, 26 January—a day which saw Romanian media saturated with praise for him. According to historian Victor Sebestyen, it was one of the few days of the year when the average Romanian put on a happy face, since appearing miserable on this day was too risky to contemplate.[20]

To lessen the chance of further treason after Pacepa's defection, Ceaușescu also invested his wife Elena and other members of his family with important positions in the government. This led Romanians to joke that Ceaușescu was creating "socialism in one family", a pun on "socialism in one country".[citation needed]

Ceaușescu was greatly concerned about his public image. For years, nearly all official photographs of him showed him in his late 40s. Romanian state television was under strict orders to portray him in the best possible light.[20] Additionally, producers had to take great care to make sure that Ceaușescu's height (he was only 1.68 metres (5 ft 6 in) tall[94]) was never emphasized on screen. Consequences for breaking these rules were severe; one producer showed footage of Ceaușescu blinking and stuttering, and was banned for three months.[20]

As part of a propaganda ploy arranged by the Ceaușescus through the consular cultural attachés of Romanian embassies,[citation needed] they managed to receive orders and titles from numerous states and institutions. France granted Nicolae Ceaușescu the Legion of Honour. In 1978 he became a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the UK,[95][circular reference] a title of which he was stripped in 1989. Elena Ceaușescu was arranged to be "elected" to membership of a science academy in the US.

To execute a massive redevelopment project during the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the government conducted extensive demolition of churches and many other historic structures in Romania. According to Alexandru Budistenu, former chief architect of Bucharest, "The sight of a church bothered Ceaușescu. It didn't matter if they demolished or moved it, as long as it was no longer in sight." Nevertheless, a project organized by Romanian engineer Eugeniu Iordachescu was able to move many historic structures to less-prominent sites and save them.[96]

Legacy

Ceaușescu had a mixed reputation among international leaders of his time. In his memoir The Artful Albanian, Albanian leader Enver Hoxha remarked "As if Ceaușescu and company are to bring down imperialism! If the world waits for the Ceaușescus to do such a thing, imperialism will live for tens of thousands of years..."[97] According to Pacepa, Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi had an opposite interpretation, allegedly saying, "My brother! You are my brother for the rest of my life!".[98] Ceaușescu even received praise from anti-communists with the Shah (King) of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi acclaiming Ceaușescu leadership: "I would like to salute [Ceaușescu's] intransigent patriotism and ferocious will for independence. A veritable amity links me to him."[99]

He directed the construction of the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, which broke ground in June 1984. It was previously called The House of the People and The People's House. The building of the Palace of the Parliament was the most extreme expression of the systematization program imposed by Nicolae Ceaușescu upon Romania. The systematization was a program of urban planning carried out by Ceaușescu. The goal of this program was to create new urban areas by converting villages into miniature cities. The main architect of the building was Anca Petrescu (1949–2013), who began her work on this building when she was 28 years old. The building was completed in 1997, after Ceaușescu's death in 1989. The Romanian Senate, which was originally housed in the former building of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, has been headquartered in the Parliamentary Palace since 2004.

The Parliamentary Palace building has 1,100 rooms and is the largest civilian government building in the world as measured by volume in one continuous structure. (There are larger private sector buildings, mainly for the construction of aircraft, that have more continuous volume in one building, such as the Boeing Everett Factory.) Much of the building remains empty, being larger than the Parliament needs, though Parliament shares it with three museums and an international conference center.[100] It is also the heaviest building in the world, being constructed of 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze, a million square feet of marble, and large amounts of crystal and wood.[101][102]

 

His successor, Ion Iliescu, and Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1976

Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu had three children: Valentin Ceaușescu (born 1948), a nuclear physicist; Zoia Ceaușescu (1949–2006), a mathematician; and Nicu Ceaușescu (1951–1996), a physicist. After the death of his parents, Nicu Ceaușescu ordered the construction of an Orthodox church, the walls of which are decorated with portraits of his parents.[72]

Praising the crimes of totalitarian governments and denigrating their victims is forbidden by law in Romania; this includes the Ceaușescu era. Dinel Staicu was fined 25,000 lei (approx. 9,000 United States dollars) for praising Ceaușescu and displaying his pictures on his private television channel (3TV Oltenia).[103] Nevertheless, according to opinion polls held in 2010, 41% of Romanians would vote for Ceaușescu[104][105] and 63% think that their lives were better before 1989.[105][106] In 2014, the percentage of those who would vote for Ceaușescu reached 46%

Earlier this week Andrew Connell ran into a weird issue with workflows in his SharePoint 2013 (SP2013) Beta 2 environment. He is sharing the details of the issue as well as the resolution in this post just in case someone else runs into the same issue. If you were in his webinar last week, saw the issue. Read the entire post here:

www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2012/08/14/troubleshoo...

 

Interested in SharePoint 2013 training? Critical Path Training is the industry leader in SharePoint 2013 developer training:

www.criticalpathtraining.com/Pages/SharePoint+2013+Traini...

from London Remembers 1st November 2015 " Born in Ireland 390 years ago today, Oliver Plunkett was convicted of involvement in the 1678 Popish Plot, tried in Westminster Hall and subsequently hanged at Tyburn, and drawn and quartered. Canonised in 1975, by which time his quarters had been distributed across 3 continents, to six locations - eh, um - further division must have taken place."

 

"St. Oliver Plunkett, the last Catholic priest to be executed in England. He wasn't arrested in England for being a missionary priest, however: he was the Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland and was brought to England to stand trial in connection with the Popish Plot! Pope Benedict XV beatified him in 1920; Pope Paul VI canonized him, the first of the Irish martyrs of the English Reformation era and its aftermath, in 1975.

 

When Pope Paul VI canonized the martyr, he began his remarks in Gaelic:

 

Dia's muire Dhíbh, a chlann Phádraig! Céad mile fáilte rómhaibh! Tá Naomh nua againn inniu: Comharba Phádraig, Olibhéar Naofa Ploinéad. (God and Mary be with you, family of Saint Patrick! A hundred thousand welcomes! We have a new Saint today: the successor of Saint Patrick, Saint Oliver Plunkett). Today, Venerable Brothers and dear sons and daughters, the Church celebrates the highest expression of love-the supreme measure of Christian and pastoral charity. Today, the Church rejoices with a great joy, because the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, is reflected and manifested in a new Saint. And this new Saint is Oliver Plunkett, Bishop and Martyr-Oliver Plunkett, successor of Saint Patrick in the See of Armagh-Oliver Plunkett , glory of Ireland and Saint, today and for ever, of the Church of God, Oliver Plunkett is for all-for the entire world-an authentic and outstanding example of the love of Christ. And on our part we bow down today to venerate his sacred relics, just as on former occasions we have personally knelt in prayer and admiration at this shrine in Drogheda." from supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com/2019/06/tomorrow-first-...

 

A poorly executed Self portrait with my cellphone to rub in the fact that I was at the Tiger game while my co-workers had to work. Na na na na na! Oh yeah, and the buffet was excellent. The Tigers went on to stomp the Indians 12 to 3.

Officers from Greater Manchester Police’s County Lines team executed seven warrants across Bolton this morning, working alongside specialist Challenger and complex safeguarding teams to secure several arrests.

 

The early morning wake-up calls for the residents across the various addresses was a direct result of the team’s work in tackling county lines drug supply and the exploitation of vulnerable people in the Bolton area.

 

Additionally working with members of GMP’s Serious and Organised Crime team, four arrests were made:

Three men, aged 21, 24, and 26, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to supply drugs, participation in an organised gang and modern slavery offences.

One man, aged 26, was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of drugs.

 

During searches of the properties, numerous items were discovered and seized, including an e-bike, Class A and Class B drugs. The four remain in custody for questioning.

 

County Lines is the use of dedicated phone lines to deal drugs from one location to another. In some instances of county lines gangs, vulnerable people are exploited in order to sell and store drugs.

 

This can include young children who are lured into a life of crime by older people seeking to convince them to take part in illegal behaviour.

 

Vulnerable adults may also be forced into similar acts – by people who pretend to be their friend or otherwise threaten them for not assisting with their criminality. In some cases, homes will be taken over and taken advantage of.

 

Across Greater Manchester, officers work tirelessly every day to tackle drugs and the people who supply them. From our specialist Programme Challenger teams to neighbourhood officers in your local community, GMP seizes significant quantities of drugs and ill-gotten money every week, combatting everything from anti-social drug users to organised criminal dealers.

 

Detective Inspector Zoe MacDonald, from GMP’s County Lines Team, said: “Drugs and the people who supply them can cause an incredible amount of harm in our community. From addiction to the exploitation of the most vulnerable, illicit substances cause so many types of hurt and criminality across so many towns and cities.

 

“This morning’s work has targeted reports of county lines operating in Bolton, and the drug supply in the town and wider area. We have successfully hit several addresses across the district and shown criminals that we will never tolerate them.

 

“I want the people of Bolton to know that we are dedicated to protecting them and ensuring we keep criminals off the streets.

 

“From regular patrols to intelligence gathering to crucial work with partner agencies, we put considerable resources in to tackling the scourge of drug-related criminality on our streets.

 

“If you have any concerns about drug supply or county lines operating in your area or feel like you have witnessed something suspicious, please do get in touch with us. You can report information to the police on 101, via gmp.police.uk, or by calling the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

 

A spokesperson for Bolton Council said: “County lines gangs exploit the most vulnerable in society and inflict considerable harm on the wider community.

 

“As part of our safeguarding responsibilities, we have worked jointly with Greater Manchester Police to disrupt the activity of these gangs and hold those responsible to account.

 

“As a council, we will always be relentless in identifying anyone who exploits others and take decisive action to keep Bolton’s children and vulnerable adults safe.

 

“Our specially trained staff continue to work with the victims and to support all those affected.”

 

You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.

 

You can access many of our services online at www.gmp.police.uk

Theobald Wolfe Tone - United Irish leader Tone was captured in the Rebellion of 1798 and committed suicide before he could be executed

 

Further reforms for Catholics continued to 1793, when they could again vote, sit on grand juries and buy freehold land. However they could neither enter parliament nor become senior state officials. Reform stalled because of the French war (1793), but, as the French republicans were opposed to the Catholic Church, in 1795 the government assisted in building St. Patrick's College in Maynooth for Catholic seminarians.

 

Some in Ireland were attracted to the more militant example of the French Revolution of 1789. In 1791, a small group of Protestant radicals formed the Society of the United Irishmen in Belfast, initially to campaign for the end to religious discrimination and the widening of the right to vote. However, the group soon radicalised its aims and sought to overthrow British rule and found a non-sectarian republic. In the words of Theobald Wolfe Tone, its goals were to "substitute the common name of Irishman for Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter" and to "break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils".

 

The United Irishmen spread quickly throughout the country. Republicanism was particularly attractive to the Ulster Presbyterian community, being literate, who were also discriminated against for their religion, and who had strong links with Scots-Irish American emigrants who had fought against Britain in the American Revolution. Many Catholics, particularly the emergent Catholic middle class, were also attracted to the movement, and it claimed over 200,000 members by 1798. The United Irishmen were banned after Revolutionary France in 1793 declared war on Britain and they developed from a political movement into a military organisation preparing for armed rebellion. The Volunteer movement was also suppressed. However, these measures did nothing to calm the situation in Ireland and these reforms were bitterly opposed by the "ultra-loyalist" Protestant hardliners such as John Foster. Violence and disorder became widespread. Hardening loyalist attitudes led to the foundation of the Orange Order, a hardline Protestant grouping, in 1795.

 

The United Irishmen, now dedicated to armed revolution, forged links with the militant Catholic peasant society, the Defenders, who had been raiding farmhouses since 1792. Wolfe Tone, the United Irish leader, went to France to seek French military support. These efforts bore fruit when the French launched an expeditionary force of 15,000 troops which arrived off Bantry Bay in December 1796, but failed to land due to a combination of indecisiveness, poor seamanship, and storms off the Bantry coast.

Wir haben Ihren Auftrag ausgefuehrt.

We have executed your order.

Nous avons effectue votre commande.

 

Ihre Bestellung wurde durch unseren Fahrer geliefert.

Eine Fotographie der Blumen ist diesem Mail angehaengt oder folgt in einem separaten E-Mail gemaess den Bedingungen www.maarsen.ch/4

 

Your order has been delivered by our driver.

Attached you will find a photo of your bouquet or it will follow in an other e-mail. Conditions see www.maarsen.ch/4

 

Notre chauffeur a fait la livraison.

Veuillez trouver la photo de votre bouquet ci-dessous ou dans un prochain message electronique. Conditions voir www.maarsen.ch/4

 

Danke fuer Ihren Einkauf! Thank you for shopping at Maarsen's! Merci de votre confiance.

Blumen Maarsen AG

 

---

 

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Blumen fuer die Hochzeit: www.maarsen.ch/hochzeit

Dekoration von Anlaessen www.maarsen.ch/deco

 

PS: Spielen und gewinnen - jouez et gagnez: www.maarsen.ch/game

 

www.maarsen.ch

Blumen Maarsen AG

Moserstrasse 9

3014 Bern, Switzerland

info@maarsen.ch

Telefon 0800 30 30 33

Phone +41 31 332 62 00

Fax +41 31 332 76 92

 

www.maarsen.ch/livecam/

 

--

Ich verwende die kostenlose Version von SPAMfighter für private Anwender,

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A dancer executes the "Aurresku" in front of the bones of a republican soldier imprisioned and killed by the fascist militars during the Spanish Civil War. It was found and exhumated in December of 2007.

 

Contax G2+Biogon 28mm+Ilford Delta 400+Tetenal Ultrafin (1+10)

Officers from Greater Manchester Police’s County Lines team executed seven warrants across Bolton this morning, working alongside specialist Challenger and complex safeguarding teams to secure several arrests.

 

The early morning wake-up calls for the residents across the various addresses was a direct result of the team’s work in tackling county lines drug supply and the exploitation of vulnerable people in the Bolton area.

 

Additionally working with members of GMP’s Serious and Organised Crime team, four arrests were made:

Three men, aged 21, 24, and 26, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to supply drugs, participation in an organised gang and modern slavery offences.

One man, aged 26, was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of drugs.

 

During searches of the properties, numerous items were discovered and seized, including an e-bike, Class A and Class B drugs. The four remain in custody for questioning.

 

County Lines is the use of dedicated phone lines to deal drugs from one location to another. In some instances of county lines gangs, vulnerable people are exploited in order to sell and store drugs.

 

This can include young children who are lured into a life of crime by older people seeking to convince them to take part in illegal behaviour.

 

Vulnerable adults may also be forced into similar acts – by people who pretend to be their friend or otherwise threaten them for not assisting with their criminality. In some cases, homes will be taken over and taken advantage of.

 

Across Greater Manchester, officers work tirelessly every day to tackle drugs and the people who supply them. From our specialist Programme Challenger teams to neighbourhood officers in your local community, GMP seizes significant quantities of drugs and ill-gotten money every week, combatting everything from anti-social drug users to organised criminal dealers.

 

Detective Inspector Zoe MacDonald, from GMP’s County Lines Team, said: “Drugs and the people who supply them can cause an incredible amount of harm in our community. From addiction to the exploitation of the most vulnerable, illicit substances cause so many types of hurt and criminality across so many towns and cities.

 

“This morning’s work has targeted reports of county lines operating in Bolton, and the drug supply in the town and wider area. We have successfully hit several addresses across the district and shown criminals that we will never tolerate them.

 

“I want the people of Bolton to know that we are dedicated to protecting them and ensuring we keep criminals off the streets.

 

“From regular patrols to intelligence gathering to crucial work with partner agencies, we put considerable resources in to tackling the scourge of drug-related criminality on our streets.

 

“If you have any concerns about drug supply or county lines operating in your area or feel like you have witnessed something suspicious, please do get in touch with us. You can report information to the police on 101, via gmp.police.uk, or by calling the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

 

A spokesperson for Bolton Council said: “County lines gangs exploit the most vulnerable in society and inflict considerable harm on the wider community.

 

“As part of our safeguarding responsibilities, we have worked jointly with Greater Manchester Police to disrupt the activity of these gangs and hold those responsible to account.

 

“As a council, we will always be relentless in identifying anyone who exploits others and take decisive action to keep Bolton’s children and vulnerable adults safe.

 

“Our specially trained staff continue to work with the victims and to support all those affected.”

 

You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.

 

You can access many of our services online at www.gmp.police.uk

China Forum III: Executing Joint Ventures in China. Structuring the Optimal Relationship guests in the Empire Room at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.

 

www.onemedplace.com/forum/china-forum-iii

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published in 2007 by the Trustees of the British Museum. The card was printed in China.

 

On the back of the card it states:

 

'Original excavated in 1998

from Pit K9801.

Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC).

Limestone: height 74 cm, width 31 cm.

Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological

Institute, Xi'an..'

 

The First Emperor of China controlled a vast territory, and wielded enormous power. He summoned 700,000 men to build his tomb and other structures.

 

These were designed to reproduce the First Emperor's empire underground for eternity.

 

These perfectly executed, life-size sculptures, some over 190cm in height, were an early feat of mass production: a small and quite limited repertoire of body parts were joined together in a multitude of combinations, with details worked by hand afterwards.

 

The Terracotta Army

 

The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting the emperor in his afterlife.

 

The figures, dating from approximately the late third century BCE, were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong County, outside Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.

 

The figures vary in height according to their roles, the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses.

 

Estimates from 2007 were that the three pits containing the Terracotta Army held more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remained buried in the pits near Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum.

 

Other terracotta non-military figures were found in other pits, including officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians.

 

History of the Terracotta Army

 

The construction of the tomb was described by historian Sima Qian (145–90 BCE) in Records of the Grand Historian, the first of China's 24 dynastic histories, which was written a century after the mausoleum's completion.

 

Work on the mausoleum began in 246 BCE soon after Emperor Qin (then aged 13) ascended the throne, and the project eventually involved 700,000 conscripted workers.

 

Geographer Li Daoyuan, writing six centuries after the first emperor's death, recorded in Shui Jing Zhu that Mount Li was a favoured location due to its auspicious geology:

 

"Famed for its jade mines, its northern side was

rich in gold, and its southern side rich in beautiful

jade; the first emperor, covetous of its fine reputation,

therefore chose to be buried there".

 

Sima Qian wrote that the first emperor was buried with palaces, towers, officials, valuable artifacts and wondrous objects. According to this account, 100 flowing rivers were simulated using mercury, and above them the ceiling was decorated with heavenly bodies, below which were the features of the land.

 

Some translations of this passage refer to "models" or "imitations"; however, those words were not used in the original text, which makes no mention of the terracotta army. High levels of mercury were found in the soil of the tomb mound, giving credence to Sima Qian's account.

 

Later historical accounts suggested that the complex and tomb itself had been looted by Xiang Yu, a contender for the throne after the death of the first emperor. However, there are indications that the tomb itself may not have been plundered.

 

Discovery of the Terracotta Army

 

The Terracotta Army was discovered on the 29th. March 1974 by a group of farmers—Yang Zhifa, his five brothers, and neighbour Wang Puzhi—who were digging a well approximately 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) east of the Qin Emperor's tomb mound at Mount Li (Lishan), a region riddled with underground springs and watercourses.

 

For centuries, occasional reports mentioned pieces of terracotta figures and fragments of the Qin necropolis – roofing tiles, bricks and chunks of masonry. The farmers' discovery prompted Chinese archaeologists, including Zhao Kangmin, to investigate, revealing the largest pottery figurine group ever found.

 

A museum complex has since been constructed over the area, the largest pit being enclosed by a roofed structure.

 

The Necropolis

 

The Terracotta Army is part of a much larger necropolis. Ground-penetrating radar and core sampling have measured the area to be approximately 98 square kilometers (38 square miles).

 

The necropolis was constructed as a microcosm of the emperor's imperial palace or compound, and covers a large area around the tomb mound of the first emperor.

 

The earthen tomb mound is located at the foot of Mount Li and built in a pyramidal shape, and is surrounded by two solidly built rammed earth walls with gateway entrances. The necropolis consists of several offices, halls, stables, and other structures as well as an imperial park placed around the tomb mound.

 

The warriors stand guard to the east of the tomb. Up to 5 metres of reddish, sandy soil had accumulated over the site in the two millennia following its construction, but archaeologists found evidence of earlier disturbances at the site.

 

During the excavations near the Mount Li burial mound, archaeologists found several graves dating from the 18th. and 19th. centuries, where diggers had apparently struck terracotta fragments. These were discarded as worthless and used along with soil to backfill the excavations.

 

Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor

 

The tomb appears to be a hermetically sealed space roughly the size of a football pitch (c. 100 × 75 m). The tomb remains unopened, possibly due to concerns over the preservation of its artifacts. For example, after the excavation of the Terracotta Army, the painted surface present on some terracotta figures began to flake and fade. The lacquer covering the paint can curl in fifteen seconds once exposed to Xi'an's dry air, and can flake off in just four minutes.

 

The Pits at the Excavation Site

 

Four main pits approximately 7 metres (23 ft) deep have been excavated. These are located approximately 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) east of the burial mound. The soldiers within were laid out as if to protect the tomb from the east, where the Qin Emperor's conquered states lay.

 

-- Pit 1

 

Pit 1, which is 230 metres (750 ft) long and 62 metres (203 ft) wide, contains the main army of more than 6,000 figures. Pit 1 has eleven corridors, most more than 3 metres (10 ft) wide and paved with small bricks with a wooden ceiling supported by large beams and posts.

 

This design was also used for the tombs of nobles and would have resembled palace hallways when built. The wooden ceilings were covered with reed mats and layers of clay for waterproofing, and then mounded with more soil raising them about 2 to 3 metres (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in) above the surrounding ground level when completed.

 

-- Pit 2

 

Pit 2 has cavalry and infantry units as well as war chariots, and is thought to represent a military guard.

 

-- Pit 3

 

Pit 3 is the command post, with high-ranking officers and a war chariot.

 

-- Pit 4

 

Pit 4 is empty, perhaps left unfinished by its builders.

 

Some of the figures in Pits 1 and 2 show fire damage, while remains of burnt ceiling rafters have also been found. These, together with the missing weapons, have been taken as evidence of the reported looting by Xiang Yu and the subsequent burning of the site, which is thought to have caused the roof to collapse and crush the army figures below.

 

The terracotta figures currently on display have been restored from the fragments.

 

Additional Pits

 

Other pits that formed the necropolis have also been excavated. These pits lie within and outside the walls surrounding the tomb mound. They variously contain bronze carriages, terracotta figures of entertainers such as acrobats and strongmen, officials, stone armour suits, burial sites of horses, rare animals and labourers, as well as bronze cranes and ducks set in an underground park.

 

The Warrior Figures

 

The terracotta figures are life-sized, typically ranging from 175 cm (5.74 ft) to about 200 cm (6.6 ft) (the officers are typically taller). They vary in height, uniform, and hairstyle in accordance with rank.

 

Their faces appear to be different for each individual figure; scholars, however, have identified 10 basic face shapes. The figures are of these general types: armored infantry; unarmored infantry; cavalrymen who wear a pillbox hat; helmeted drivers of chariots with more armor protection; spear-carrying charioteers; kneeling crossbowmen or archers who are armored; standing archers who are not; as well as generals and other lower-ranking officers.

 

There are, however, many variations in the uniforms within the ranks: for example, some may wear shin pads while others not; they may wear either long or short trousers, some of which may be padded; and their body armors vary depending on rank, function, and position in formation.

 

There are also terracotta horses placed among the warrior figures.

 

Pigments Used on the Terracotta Warriors

 

Originally, the figures were painted with: ground precious stones, intensely fired bones (white), pigments of iron oxide (dark red), cinnabar (red), malachite (green), azurite (blue), charcoal (black), cinnabar barium copper silicate mix (Chinese purple or Han purple), tree sap from a nearby source, (more than likely from the Chinese lacquer tree) (brown).

 

Other colors used included pink, lilac, red, white, and one unidentified color. The colored lacquer finish and individual facial features would have given the figures a realistic feel, with eyebrows and facial hair in black and the faces done in pink.

 

However, in Xi'an's dry climate, much of the color coating would flake off in less than four minutes after removing the mud surrounding the army.

 

Some scholars have speculated a possible Hellenistic link to these sculptures, because of the lack of life-sized and realistic sculptures before the Qin dynasty. They argued that potential Greek influence is particularly evident in some of the terracotta figures such as those of acrobats, combined with rare bronze artifacts made with a lost wax technique known in Greece and Egypt.

 

However, this idea is disputed by scholars who claim that there is "no substantial evidence at all" for contact between ancient Greeks and Chinese builders of the tomb, and the bases of such speculation are often imprecise or false interpretation of source materials or far-fetched conjectures.

 

They argue that such speculations rest on flawed and old "Eurocentric" ideas that assumed other civilizations were incapable of sophisticated artistry and thus foreign artistry must be seen through Western traditions.

 

Fabrication of the Terracotta Army

 

The terracotta army figures were manufactured in workshops by government laborers and local craftsmen using local materials.

 

Heads, arms, legs, and torsos were created separately and then assembled by luting the pieces together. When completed, the terracotta figures were placed in the pits in precise military formation according to rank and duty.

 

The faces were created using molds, and at least ten face molds may have been used. Clay was then added after assembly to provide individual facial features to make each figure appear different.

 

It is believed that the warriors' legs were made in much the same way that terracotta drainage pipes were manufactured at the time. This would classify the process as assembly line production, with specific parts manufactured and assembled after being fired, as opposed to crafting a figure as one solid piece and subsequently firing it.

 

In those times of tight imperial control, each workshop was required to inscribe its name on items produced to ensure quality control. This has aided modern historians in verifying which workshops were commandeered to make tiles and other mundane items for the terracotta army.

 

Weaponry

 

Most of the figures originally held real weapons, which would have increased their realism. The majority of these weapons were looted shortly after the creation of the army or have rotted away.

 

Despite this, over 40,000 bronze items of weaponry have been recovered, including swords, daggers, spears, lances, battle-axes, scimitars, shields, crossbows, and crossbow triggers.

 

Most of the recovered items are arrowheads, which are usually found in bundles of 100 units. Studies of these arrowheads suggests that they were produced by self-sufficient, autonomous workshops using a process referred to as cellular production or Toyotism. Some weapons were coated with a 10–15 micrometer layer of chromium dioxide before burial that was believed to have protected them from any form of decay for the last 2200 years.

 

However, research in 2019 indicated that the chromium was merely contamination from nearby lacquer, not a means of protecting the weapons. The slightly alkaline pH and small particle size of the burial soil most likely preserved the weapons.

 

The swords contain an alloy of copper, tin, and other elements including nickel, magnesium, and cobalt. Some carry inscriptions that date their manufacture to between 245 and 228 BCE, indicating that they were used before burial.

 

Scientific Research

 

In 2007, scientists at Stanford University and the Advanced Light Source facility in Berkeley, California, reported that powder diffraction experiments combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and micro-X-ray fluorescence analysis showed that the process of producing terracotta figures colored with Chinese purple dye consisting of barium copper silicate was derived from the knowledge gained by Taoist alchemists in their attempts to synthesize jade ornaments.

 

Since 2006, an international team of researchers at the UCL Institute of Archaeology have been using analytical chemistry techniques to uncover more details about the production techniques employed in the creation of the Terracotta Army.

 

Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry of 40,000 bronze arrowheads bundled in groups of 100, the researchers reported that the arrowheads within a single bundle formed a relatively tight cluster that was different to other bundles. In addition, the presence or absence of metal impurities was consistent within bundles.

 

Based on the arrows’ chemical compositions, the researchers concluded that a cellular manufacturing system similar to the one used in a modern Toyota factory, as opposed to a continuous assembly line in the early days of the automobile industry, was employed.

 

Grinding and polishing marks visible under a scanning electron microscope provide evidence for the earliest industrial use of lathes for polishing.

 

Terracotta Warrior Exhibitions

 

The first exhibition of the figures outside of China was held at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 1982.

 

A collection of 120 objects from the mausoleum and 12 terracotta warriors were displayed at the British Museum in London as its special exhibition "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army" from 13 September 2007 to April 2008.

 

This exhibition made 2008 the British Museum's most successful year, and made the British Museum the UK's top cultural attraction between 2007 and 2008. The exhibition brought the most visitors to the museum since the King Tutankhamun exhibition in 1972. The 400,000 advance tickets sold out so fast that the museum extended its opening hours until midnight.

 

Many people had to be turned away, despite the extended hours. During the day of events to mark the Chinese New Year, the crush was so intense that the gates to the museum had to be shut.

 

The Terracotta Army has been described as the only other set of historic artifacts (along with the remnants from the wreck of the Titanic) that can draw a crowd by the name alone.

 

Warriors and other artifacts were exhibited to the public at the Forum de Barcelona in Barcelona between May and September 2004. It was their most successful exhibition ever.

 

The same exhibition was presented at the Fundación Canal de Isabel II in Madrid between October 2004 and January 2005, their most successful ever.

 

From December 2009 to May 2010, the exhibition was shown in the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago de Chile.

 

The exhibition traveled to North America and visited museums such as the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, Houston Museum of Natural Science, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, National Geographic Society Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

 

Subsequently, the exhibition traveled to Sweden and was hosted in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities between August 2010 and January 2011.

 

An exhibition entitled 'The First Emperor – China's Entombed Warriors', presenting 120 artifacts was hosted at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, between December 2010 and March 2011.

 

An exhibition entitled "The Warrior-Emperor of China and his Terracotta Army, featuring artifacts including statues from the mausoleum, was hosted by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from February 2011 to June 2011.

 

In Italy, from July 2008 to November 2008, five of the warriors of the terracotta army were displayed in Turin at the Museum of Antiquities, and from April 2010 to September 2010 nine warriors were exhibited in Milan, at the Royal Palace, at the exhibition entitled "The Two Empires". The group consisted of a horse, a counselor, an archer and six lancers.

 

The "Treasures of Ancient China" exhibition, showcasing two terracotta soldiers and other artifacts, including the Longmen Grottoes Buddhist statues, was held between February 2011 and November 2011 in four locations in India.

 

Soldiers and related items were on display from March 2013 to November 2013 at the Historical Museum of Bern.

 

Several Terracotta Army figures were on display, along with many other objects, in an exhibit entitled "Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from April to July 2017.

 

An exhibition featuring ten Terracotta Army figures and other artifacts, "Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor," was on display at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington, from April 2017 to September 2017 before traveling to The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to be exhibited from September 2017 to March 2018 with the addition of augmented reality.

 

An exhibition entitled "China's First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors" was at the World Museum in Liverpool from February 2018 to October 2018. This was the first time in more than 10 years that the warriors had travelled to the UK.

 

An exhibition tour of 120 real-size replicas of terracotta statues was displayed in the German cities of Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Oberhof, Berlin and Nuremberg between 2003 and 2004.

This was executed much more successfully by one of my classmates in high school, mainly because he shaved his entire face, and I'm not quite ready to give up the goatee yet. I might revisit this if I choose to get rid of it this year.

 

Strobist info: 430ex above camera @ 1/16 through umbrella

Tied to a post and shot. Or maybe snowballed to death.

www.myspace.com/executethesinner

Officers from Greater Manchester Police’s County Lines team executed seven warrants across Bolton this morning, working alongside specialist Challenger and complex safeguarding teams to secure several arrests.

 

The early morning wake-up calls for the residents across the various addresses was a direct result of the team’s work in tackling county lines drug supply and the exploitation of vulnerable people in the Bolton area.

 

Additionally working with members of GMP’s Serious and Organised Crime team, four arrests were made:

Three men, aged 21, 24, and 26, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to supply drugs, participation in an organised gang and modern slavery offences.

One man, aged 26, was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of drugs.

 

During searches of the properties, numerous items were discovered and seized, including an e-bike, Class A and Class B drugs. The four remain in custody for questioning.

 

County Lines is the use of dedicated phone lines to deal drugs from one location to another. In some instances of county lines gangs, vulnerable people are exploited in order to sell and store drugs.

 

This can include young children who are lured into a life of crime by older people seeking to convince them to take part in illegal behaviour.

 

Vulnerable adults may also be forced into similar acts – by people who pretend to be their friend or otherwise threaten them for not assisting with their criminality. In some cases, homes will be taken over and taken advantage of.

 

Across Greater Manchester, officers work tirelessly every day to tackle drugs and the people who supply them. From our specialist Programme Challenger teams to neighbourhood officers in your local community, GMP seizes significant quantities of drugs and ill-gotten money every week, combatting everything from anti-social drug users to organised criminal dealers.

 

Detective Inspector Zoe MacDonald, from GMP’s County Lines Team, said: “Drugs and the people who supply them can cause an incredible amount of harm in our community. From addiction to the exploitation of the most vulnerable, illicit substances cause so many types of hurt and criminality across so many towns and cities.

 

“This morning’s work has targeted reports of county lines operating in Bolton, and the drug supply in the town and wider area. We have successfully hit several addresses across the district and shown criminals that we will never tolerate them.

 

“I want the people of Bolton to know that we are dedicated to protecting them and ensuring we keep criminals off the streets.

 

“From regular patrols to intelligence gathering to crucial work with partner agencies, we put considerable resources in to tackling the scourge of drug-related criminality on our streets.

 

“If you have any concerns about drug supply or county lines operating in your area or feel like you have witnessed something suspicious, please do get in touch with us. You can report information to the police on 101, via gmp.police.uk, or by calling the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

 

A spokesperson for Bolton Council said: “County lines gangs exploit the most vulnerable in society and inflict considerable harm on the wider community.

 

“As part of our safeguarding responsibilities, we have worked jointly with Greater Manchester Police to disrupt the activity of these gangs and hold those responsible to account.

 

“As a council, we will always be relentless in identifying anyone who exploits others and take decisive action to keep Bolton’s children and vulnerable adults safe.

 

“Our specially trained staff continue to work with the victims and to support all those affected.”

 

You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.

 

You can access many of our services online at www.gmp.police.uk

Executing one of the biggest Ad reveals to date, FCB New York launches a two-part campaign platform for Amtrak entitled “Break the Travel Quo,” highlighting the frustrations associated with air and car travel, and causing consumers to rethink their travel options. From its inception, the... campaignsoftheworld.com/digital/break-the-travel-quo-amtrak/ #AdvertisingCampaign, #Amtrak, #AmtrakReservation, #BreakTheTravelQuo, #DigitalFilms, #FCB, #MultiPlatformCampaign, #Travel, #TravelCampaigns

The Postcard

 

A postally unused carte postale bearing no publisher's name.

 

Lille

 

Lille is a city at the northern tip of France, in French Flanders. On the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region.

 

Lille in the Great War

 

During the Great War, Lille was occupied by the Germans. The occupation began on the 13th. October 1914 after a ten-day siege and heavy shelling. Repeated bombardments destroyed 882 apartment and office blocks and 1,500 houses, mostly around the railway station and in the town centre.

 

By the end of October, the town was being run by German authorities. Because Lille was only 20 km from the battlefield, German troops passed through the city regularly on their way to and from the Front.

 

As a result, occupied Lille became a place both for the hospitalisation and treatment of wounded soldiers as well as a place for soldiers' relaxation and entertainment. Many buildings, homes, and businesses were requisitioned in order to fulfil these roles.

 

Lille was also the hunting ground of World War I German flying Ace Max Immelmann who was nicknamed "the Eagle of Lille".

 

Lille was liberated by the Allies on the 17th. October 1918, when General Sir William Birdwood and his troops were welcomed by joyous crowds.

 

The only audio recording known to have been made during the First World War was recorded near Lille in October 1918. The two minute recording captured the Royal Garrison Artillery conducting a gas shell bombardment.

 

Monument to the Executed of Lille

 

The Great War monument in the Square Daubenton in Lille shows four leaders of the city’s Resistance standing against a wall just moments before their execution by the German Army in the dungeons of the citadel.

 

Along with Léon Trulin, who can be seen lying at their feet, Eugène Jacquet, Georges Maertens, Ernest Deceuninck and Sylvère Verhulst set up a network for communicating information to the Allies about the German occupiers of Lille.

 

They were eventually betrayed and executed on the 22nd. September 1915.

 

In total, twenty-five individuals were executed in Lille by firing squad under the occupation. Notices were posted informing the public about executions of political prisoners, saboteurs, and hostages in response to attacks or acts of sabotage against the German occupiers.

 

An estimated 500,000 French men and women worked for the Resistance during Germany's occupation of France. Resistance workers carried out thousands of acts of sabotage against the German occupiers, even though the risks were great. More than 90,000 members of the Resisters were killed, tortured or deported by the Germans.

Another well executed seat tube cluster.

U.S. Army Spc. Ricky Brown, 114th Signal Battalion, grabs the arm of Spc. Kimberly McKinney, 114th Signal Battalion, on Fort Detrick, Md. on Jan. 28, 2010. Spc. Brown demonstrates the proper way to execute an arm bar on Spc. McKinney during a level one combatives certification class. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Walter Reeves/ Released)

The pair of geese I'd been observing eventually took off over the frozen lake, giving me an opportunity to use my long lens to catch them in flight. This was the best of a bunch of photos I took as I tried to track them.

not executed as best as i was hoping

as far as the lighting went on the illustration.

but kinda happy. will be making more

of these fellows in the future.