The story of status-quo : reality is what you can get away with..

H παρακάτω ιστορία ελπίζω να αποτελέσει ένα πρώτο μόνο μέρος κάποιας ευρύτερης θεματικής που θα ήθελα να (καταφέρω να) αναπτύξω γύρω από την κεντρική έννοια  "status-quo" (literally, "the state in which"),  τις σχέσεις και τις δυνάμεις εξουσίας, τη μάχη για τον ορισμό του "framework της πραγματικότητας" σε κοινωνικό μέχρι σε διαπροσωπικό επίπεδο(!).

Είναι κάτι που με απασχολεί πολύ βαθιά, ένα σημαντικό σημείο-κλειδί (ή καλύτερα, ο χώρος γύρω απ΄ το σημείο θραύσης), σκέψη που πάντως αυτό το διάστημα αναζωπυρώθηκε παρακολουθώντας στενά και με πολύ ενδιαφέρον τις εξεγέρσεις στην  Τυνησία, την Αίγυπτο και τώρα στη Λιβύη, μια χωρίς αμφιβολία  κοσμοϊστορική αλλαγή, την μεγαλύτερη μετά την κατάρρευση του ανατολικού μπλοκ το 1989-90, που (θα) συντελείται στη Β. Αφρική, τη Μ. Ανατολή, ολόκληρη την Αφρική, τον αραβικό, τον ασιατικό και εν τέλει ολόκληρο τον κόσμο. Από μέσα ή απ΄ έξω.

Προηγήθηκε η υπόθεση wikileaks:
Wikileaks affair is the first real battleground between the political establishment and the open web. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.. >>
 

Σε πρώτη φάση δε θα ήθελα να αναλωθώ άλλο σε εισαγωγές. Δεν είμαι έτοιμος για αυτό.
Θα σας διηγηθώ όμως μια ιστορία που μπήκα στον κόπο να ερευνήσω όταν αντιλήφθηκα πως άλλοι, πιο μεγάλοι,  θυμούνται με πολύ  ζωντανά χρώματα και συναισθήματα, ιστορία κοντινή σε αυτές που διαδραματίζονται τις τελευταίες βδομάδες και στην ευρύτερη ιδέα της θεματικής :

By 1989, Ceaușescu was showing signs of complete denial of reality. While the country was going through extremely difficult times with long bread queues in front of empty food shops, he was often shown on state TV entering stores filled with food supplies, visiting large food and arts festivals, while praising the "high living standard" achieved under his rule.
Special contingents of food deliveries would fill stores before his visits, and well-fed cows would even be transported across the country in anticipation of his visits to farms.

Ceaușescu's regime collapsed after a series of violent events in Timișoara and Bucharest in December 1989. In November 1989, the XIVth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) saw Ceaușescu, then aged 71, re-elected for another 5 years as leader of the PCR:

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 Securitate fired on demonstrators on 17 December 1989. On 18 December 1989, Ceaușescu departed for a visit to Iran, leaving the duty of crushing the Timișoara revolt to his subordinates and his wife. Upon his return on the evening of 20 December, the situation became even more tense, and he gave a televised speech from the TV studio inside 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 no information of the Timișoara events from the national media, learned about the Timișoara revolt from western radio stations such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and by word of mouth.




On the next day, 21 December, a mass meeting was staged. Official media presented it as a "spontaneous movement of support for Ceaușescu", emulating the 1968 meeting in which Ceaușescu had spoken against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces.

It was Ceausescu's last speech held  to the public. 80,000 people thronged this square, then called Piata Republica (Republican Square) today Piata Revolutiei (Revolution Square), located on Calea Victoriei. As we said, they were supposedly there for a rally to support the President after riots broke out in Timisoara over the arrest of an outspoken priest. Thinking he was among friends, Ceausescu appeared on the balcony of the Central Committee Building to address the crowd. However, eight minutes into the speech, people began to chant 'Ti-mi-soa-ra, Ti-mi-soa-ra.' As the chanting grew louder, the shock on Ceausescu's face pinpointed the true moment of his downfall - a moment televised all over Romania and, later, the world. Ceauseseceau looked shocked and TV censors pulled the plug on the broadcast. The Romanian Revolution had started. A deified tyrant just a moment before, Ceausescu had turned into a defied and fallen despot the next.

The rest of the day saw an open revolt of the Bucharest population, which had assembled in University Square and confronted the police and army at barricades. The unarmed 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. Nevertheless, these seminal events are regarded to this day as the de facto revolution. Ceaușescu's reaction to the events had already been imprinted on the country's collective memory.

 By the morning of 22 December, the rebellion had already spread to all major cities. The suspicious death of Vasile Milea, the defense minister, was announced by the media. Immediately thereafter, Ceaușescu presided over the CPEx (Political Executive Committee) meeting and assumed the leadership of the army. He made a desperate attempt to address the crowd gathered in front of the Central Committee building. This was rejected by the rioters who forced open the doors of the building, by now left unprotected, obliging the Ceaușescus to flee by helicopter.

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital with Emil Bobu and Manea Manescu headed, by helicopter, for Ceaușescu's Snagov residence, from where they fled again, this time for Targoviste. Near Târgoviște they abandoned the helicopter, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's air space. The Ceaușescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually turned over to the army.

 

On Christmas Day, 25 December, the two were sentenced to death by a military court on charges ranging from illegal gathering of wealth to genocide, and were executed in Târgoviște. The video of the trial shows that, after sentencing, they had their hands tied behind their backs and were led outside the building to be executed. The Ceaușescus were executed by a firing squad consisting of elite  paratroop regiment soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cirlan, while reportedly hundreds of others also volunteered. The firing squad began shooting as soon as they were in position against a wall. The firing happened too soon for the film crew covering the events to record it. After the shooting, the bodies were covered with canvas. The hasty trial and the images of the dead Ceaușescus were videotaped and the footage promptly released in numerous western countries. Later that day, it was also shown on Romanian television.



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

ΤΕΛΟΣ

see also: The Berlin Reunion - arxedia media

# All text:  wikipedia & ceausescu.org