text:
(purely personal views based on over two decades of prior research and publications)
see also my earlier https://romanianrevolutionofdecember1989.com/a-czech-mate-for-watts-theory/
Dr. Larry L. Watts' argument that the Soviet agents (KGB, GRU, etc.) posing as "tourists" were directly involved in the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu's communist Romanian regime in December 1989 has parallels in the historiography of the collapse of communism elsewhere within the countries of the Warsaw Pact, most notably perhaps, the former Czechoslovakia. Watts never addresses if he believes Romania was part of a similar process that took place in other countries or whether it was unique in the events of the bloc in the fall of 1989–perhaps in part because of his emphasis on the uniquely (for the Warsaw Pact) antagonistic relationship between the Soviet Union and Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania. A comparison of revisionism in the Czechoslovak and Romanian cases suggests interesting similarities.
I first explored the question of the similarity in the historiography of the Romanian and other cases in my Ph.D. dissertation from which I reproduce the fragment below.
https://romanianrevolutionofdecember1989.com/rewriting-the-revolution-1997/
"Yalta-Malta" and the Theme of Foreign Intervention in the Timisoara Uprising
At an emergency CPEx meeting on the afternoon of 17 December 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu sought to make sense out of the news from Timisoara by attempting to fit it in with what had happened elsewhere in Eastern Europe thus far that fall:
Everything which has happened and is happening in Germany, in Czechoslovakia, and in Bulgaria now and in the past in Poland and Hungary are things organized by the Soviet Union with American and Western help. It is necessary to be very clear in this matter, what has happened in the last three countries–in the GDR, in Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, were coups d'etat organized by the dregs of society with foreign help.[1]
Ceausescu was giving voice to what would later become known as the "Yalta-Malta" theory. Significantly, the idea that the Soviet Union and, to different degrees of complicity, the United States and the West, played a pivotal role in the December 1989 events pervades the vast majority of accounts about December 1989 in post-Ceausescu Romania, regardless of the part of the ideological spectrum from which they come.
The theory suggests that after having first been sold out to Stalin and the Soviet Union at Yalta, in early December 1989 American President George Bush sold Romania out to Mikhail Gorbachev during their summit in Malta. The convenient rhyme of the two sites of Romania's alleged betrayal have become a shorthand for Romania's fate at the hands of the Russians and other traditional enemies (especially the Hungarians and Jews). To be sure, similar versions of this theory have cropped up throughout post-communist Eastern Europe among those disappointed with the pace and character of change in their country since 1989.[2] The different versions share the belief that Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet KGB engineered the sudden, region-wide collapse of communism in 1989. Their successors in Russia have been able to maintain behind-the-scenes control in Eastern Europe in the post-communist era by means of hidden influence and the help of collaborators within those countries. "Yalta-Malta" has become the mantra of those who seem to have experienced Eastern Europe's el desencanto most deeply.[3]
[1].. See the stenogram from the emergency CPEx meeting of 17 December 1989 in Mircea Bunea, Praf in ochi. Procesul celor 24-1-2. (Bucharest: Editura Scripta, 1994), 34.
[2].. Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land. Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism (New York: Random House, 1995), 109-117, 235. Rosenberg suggests the theory's popularity in Poland and especially in the former Czechoslovakia.
[3].. Huntington discusses the concept of el desencanto (the characteristic disillusionment or disenchantment which sets in after the transition) in Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 255-256.
The Czech Case
As in the Romanian case, there was an important outside-in dynamic to revisionism in the former Czechoslovakia in 1990. Whereas in the Romanian case, it was largely revelations–often from Romanians–in the French media, in the Czechoslovak case, revelations–often from Czechs themselves–came from British media.
The initial salvo in the Czech case appears to have been Michael Simmons' 23 February 1990 article in The Guardian entitled, "KGB–Prague Plot Claim." Dr. Kieran Williams later clarified, however, how deeply compromised these early commissions to investigate the events of the Velvet Revolution–most notably, the circumstances surrounding the events of 17 November 1989–were (see http://english.360elib.com/datu/U/EM309205.pdf pp. 45-48, pp. 53-54), containing among their ranks, almost inevitably, collaborators of the communist-era Czechoslovak secret service, the StB. Most notably, when one reads the Simmons account, cited by the commission as coming from a "well-placed Czechoslovak source," the outlined conspiracy leaves the impression that 1) the StB did not intentionally engage in violence to prevent the fall of the communist regime (rather it allegedly encouraged unrest to replace Milos Jakes), and 2) they were in control and prepared for the initial stages of what happened. Thus, the StB appears both clean AND competent, only being upended by circumstances beyond their control. One suspects that the commission's "well-placed source" was someone connected to the old regime, and perhaps from the StB itself, and thus with a vested interest in demonstrating retrospectively that their actions were noble and clairvoyant.
By May 1990, the primary public sources of the revisionist KGB theory appear to have been former Prague communist party chief Miroslav Stepan and Milan Hulik, the head of the parliamentary commission investigated the events of November 1989 (note: free and fair parliamentary elections in Czechoslovakia were held only in June 1990). [From Jan Obrman of RFE/RL 6 July 1990, "November 17, 1989: Attempted Coup or the Start of a Popular Uprising?" reproduced in full at https://romanianrevolutionofdecember1989.com/a-czech-mate-for-watts-theory/ ] It is interesting to note, that Stepan, who was awaiting trial at the time, gave his interview to a newspaper (Lidove Noviny) associated with the anti-communist Civic Forum that had been at the heart of the Velvet Revolution, thus suggesting in the Czechoslovak case something that is well-known from the Romanian case: the intermixture of revisionism, opposition, disappointment, skepticism, and the forces of a nascent media market where journalists were intent on reexamining the past and revealing its truths.
The culmination of the burgeoning revisionism was a documentary by the BBC's John Simpson broadcast on 30 May 1990, as described below:
http://articles.latimes.com/print/1990-06-01/news/mn-156_1_secret-police
Czech Revolution: A Secret Police Plot? : Intrigue: The BBC says leaders of the KGB and its Prague counterpart engineered the uprising ending Communist rule.
June 01, 1990|From Associated Press
LONDON — The peaceful revolution that swept away Communist rule in Czechoslovakia six months ago was engineered jointly by leaders of the secret police in Moscow and Prague, the British Broadcasting Corp. has reported.
A BBC television documentary contends that secret police leaders in both the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia conspired to bring down the hard-line Communist leadership in Prague because it rejected Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union.
The plotters planned for more reform-minded Communists to replace the hard-liners but miscalculated the depth of public desire for change, said John Simpson, the BBC foreign affairs editor.
The 50-minute news program, "Czech-Mate: Inside the Revolution," was broadcast on BBC-TV late Wednesday.
According to the broadcast, Milan Hulik, an investigator for the Czechoslovak parliamentary commission probing the plot, said that is not yet known if the revolution was instigated by the Czechoslovak secret police or the Soviet KGB.
"But all the facts point to KGB connivance," he said. "We cannot reach any conclusion other than that the whole affair had been given the blessing of the Soviet political leadership."
The plotters on the Czechoslovak side are now under investigation and some are in prison, charged with misusing their positions as public officials, while a parliamentary inquiry into the plot continues, Simpson said.
(In Prague on Thursday, police chief major Pavel Hoffman said that secret police headquarters have been put under special protection after a heated debate by several dismissed agents ended up in personal threats.)
Simpson said the spark that ignited the Czechoslovak plot was the erroneous report of a death of a youthful demonstrator during an officially sanctioned march in Prague on Nov. 17. The demonstration was held to mark the 50th anniversary of the murder of a Prague student by Nazi troops in 1939.
The plotters believed that a death during the November commemoration "would provoke a hostile reaction," Simpson said.
According to the BBC report, several thousand young demonstrators were lured into a narrow street leading to Wenceslas Square by Lt. Ludek Zivcak, a secret policeman who had infiltrated the student movement.
The documentary showed a photograph of Zivcak apparently urging the marchers to take the narrow street that had not been part of the original route of the demonstration.
Once in the street, marchers were hemmed in by police and brutally beaten. About 560 people were injured.
Zivcak fell to the ground, his body was covered with a blanket and an ambulance took the body away. The event sparked rumors that riot police had beaten to death a student named Martin Smid.
In the days that followed, people poured into Wenceslas Square in the heart of the capital to mourn the death. And the protests continued to grow.
Demonstrations continued even after the only two students named Martin Smid at Prague University were shown to be alive.
The protests finally brought about the downfall of hard-line President Gustav Husak's government, the creation of Czechoslovakia's first non-Communist government in 40 years and the election as president of playwright Vaclav Havel, the country's best-known opposition figure.
Simpson said the chief plotters were the Czechoslovak secret police chief, Gen. Alois Lorenc; the KGB head in Prague, Gen. Teslenko (first name not given), and KGB deputy chairman Gen. Viktor Grushko.
He said the plotters monitored the Nov. 17 demonstration together in Prague and that Grushko returned to Moscow the next day.
The plotters' candidate to replace Communist Party chief Milos Jakes was Zdenek Mlynar, who had been a leading figure in Alexander Dubcek's doomed reform government in 1968.
Mlynar, a friend of Gorbachev when they were law school students together in Moscow, had been purged by his own Communist leaders in 1969.
But Mlynar did not want the job when it was proposed to him, the BBC said, and Havel and his non-Communist Civic Forum were ushered into power by popular acclaim.
The Romanian Case
A week after the Michael Simmons story (23 February 1990) in The Guardian citing a "well-placed Czechoslovak source" on the alleged KGB hand behind the Velvet Revolution of November 1989, Richard Bassett published an article in The Times, citing a source who alleged the KGB was behind not just the revolutions in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, but in Romania too… (I assess it is unlikely, but cannot be completely discounted, that Bassett's source was cognizant of the account in The Guardian…this was after all, five years before the advent of the Internet and it probably would have been difficult to get a recent copy of The Guardian in Bucharest at the time: if anyone knows differently, please correct me!)
from https://romanianrevolutionofdecember1989.com/2014/11/29/schachmatt-strategie-einer-revolution-susanne-brandstatter-the-1989-romanian-revolution-as-geopolitical-parlor-game-brandstatters-checkmate-documentary-and-t/
THE 1989 ROMANIAN REVOLUTION AS GEOPOLITICAL PARLOR GAME: BRANDSTATTER'S "CHECKMATE" DOCUMENTARY AND THE LATEST WAVE IN A SEA OF REVISIONISM
By Richard Andrew Hall
(submitted for CIA PRB Clearance February 2005, cleared without redactions March 2005; printed as it was at the time without changes)
Disclaimer: This material has been reviewed by CIA. That review neither constitutes CIA authentication of information nor implies CIA endorsement of the author's views.
from part 3 of this series
FOREIGN FORUM, ROMANIAN CONTEXT
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact first mention of "the tourists" and their alleged role in the Revolution, but it appears that although the source of the claim was Romanian, the publication was foreign. James F. Burke, whose name is unfortunately left off the well-researched and widely-consulted web document "The December 1989 Revolt and the Romanian Coup d'etat," alludes to the "Romanian filmmaker" who first made these allegations (Burke, 1994). The claims are contained in an article by Richard Bassett in the 2 March 1990 edition of "The Times (London)." According to Bassett,
"Mr. [Grigore] Corpacescu has no doubt that the revolution here was carefully stage-managed—as was the case in Prague and East Berlin—by the Russians…According to Mr. Corpacescu a party of Soviet 'tourists,' all usually on individual visas, arrived in Timisoara two days before the first demonstration outside Mr. [i.e. Pastor] Tokes' house. Police records trace them reaching Bucharest on December 20. By the 24th, two days after Ceausescu fled by helicopter, the Russians had disappeared. No police records exist to indicate how they left the country. ("The Times (London)," 2 March 1990)
But Bassett's interlocutor, Mr. Corpacescu, says some strange things. Bassett is not clear but it appears that Corpacescu suggests that the post-Revolution Interior Minister Mihai Chitac, who was involved in the Timisoara events as head of the army's chemical troops, somehow purposely coaxed the demonstrations against the regime because the tear-gas cannisters his unit fired failed to explode—the failure somehow an intended outcome. But beyond this, Corpacescu, who is at the time of the article filming the recreation of Ceausescu's flight on the 22nd—using the same helicopter and pilot involved in the actual event—makes the following curious statement:
"The pilot of this helicopter is an old friend. I have many friends in the police, Timisoara was not started by the Hungarian pastor, the Reverend Laszlo Tokes [i.e. it was carefully stage-managed…by the Russians]." ("The Times (London)," 2 March 1990)
The pilot of the helicopter was in fact Vasile Malutan, an officer of the Securitate's V-a Directorate. What kind of a person would it have been at that time—and how credible could that person have been–who has the pilot as an old friend and "many friends in the police?" And it would have been one thing perhaps two months after the revolution to talk about the presence of foreign agents "observing" events in Timisoara, but to deny the spontaneity of the demonstrations and denigrate Tokes' role at this juncture is highly suspicious. I have been unable to unearth additional information on Mr. Corpacescu, but his revelations just happen to serve his friends extremely well—particularly at at time when the prospect of trials and jail time, for participation in the repression in Timisoara and elsewhere during the Revolution, still faced many former Securitate and Militia [i.e. police] members.
Although revisionism in the Romanian case may have started in the British press, it was really in the French media that the revisionism played out:
from part 4 of the same series
The Evolution of the Initial French Accounts
The engine of the French revisionism of the first half of 1990 was probably the weekly "Le Point,"—although French Television (FR3) and other dailies and weeklies also played a role. In the 1 January 1990 edition of "Le Point," Kosta Christitch wrote in an article entitled "Romania: Moscow's Hidden Game," that Ceausescu's "fate had [not been determined in December] been sealed in Moscow less than a month earlier." On New Year's Day 1990, French Television broadcast the famous video which shows Ion Iliescu, Petre Roman, and Army General Nicolae Militaru talking on 22 December about what to name the(ir) group that had taken power, and in which Militaru claims that the "National Salvation Front has been in existence for six months already" (for details and a good discussion on this issue, see Ratesh, 1991, pp. 53-55, 81, 89-91). In the 8 January 1990 edition of "Le Point," Radu Portocala entitled his article "Romania: The Hand of Moscow." Portocala insinuated that Hungarian and Yugoslav media had intentionally exaggerated the number of casualties, particularly in the Timisoara repression [numbers which reached upwards of 10,000-12,000, when in actuality 73 died], while "at the same time, everything was put in motion to publicize that it wasn't the [Romanian] Army that had opened fire [on the Timisoara demonstrators], but the Securitate." On 5 February 1990, Portocala returned with an article, "Romania: Troubling Facts," and on 30 April 1990, Olivier Weber wrote a piece, "Romania: The Confiscated Revolution."
However, as Ratesh states, "…a fully developed conspiracy theory would not come to light until late May 1990, when the French magazine 'Le Point' carried a long and sensational article purporting to unveil the truth about the uprising" (Ratesh, 1991, pp. 81-82). The article, "Romania: Revelations of a Plot. The Five Acts of a Manipulation," by Weber and Portocala, continued the themes that the authors had developed in their aforementioned articles, that Ceausescu's overthrow was in fact a coup and that the communist bloc media had distorted information about what was happening inside Romania in order to propel Ceausescu's fall. But it also included two new generally new themes, insinuating that foreign agents on the ground in Timisoara had had some role in the protests there—thereby undercutting the "spontaneity" of the Revolution—and that there had been no genuine "terrorists," only "false terrorists," part of a scenario for legitimating the coup d'etat. It was these newer themes that particularly became the focus of the Romanian media, and that prompted the most controversy.
It is difficult to overestimate the long shadow of the 21 May "Le Point" expose over the historiography of the Revolution. Translated by "Expres," "Nu (Cluj)," and other key opposition publications in May and June 1990, it seemed to crystallize and explain all the doubts Romanians had about the December events—further confirmed, it seemed, by the manifestly unequal and unfair 20 May election results and then the miners' rampage in Bucharest against demonstrators and the opposition press and parties during 13-15 June. The article's trail shows up everywhere. American Romanianists Katherine Verdery and Gail Kligman who, in an article written in November 1990 sensibly inveighed against treating the Front, the former Securitate, and other groups as homogenous wholes operating in lock-step on behalf of Iliescu, discussed the Weber and Portocala as the centerpiece of the debate over December 1989 (Verdery and Kligman, 1992, pp. 118-122). However, although they questioned it, their summary of their own views on the events seemed to repeat many of the arguments of the account.
The Weber and Portocala account also shows up in the travel account of Dervla Murphy—although cited to "Romania Libera," the description and details of her discussion make it clear the "Le Point" article is the source (Murphy 1995). Thus, Murphy floats the idea that perhaps the Reverend Tokes in Timisoara was in collusion with the coup plotters of the Front, and that "Soviet provocateurs and some Rumanian soldiers killed most of the victims—though everyone, in Rumania and abroad, was misled to believe the Securitate responsible." It is telling, that although always somewhat skeptical of the notion of an external hand in sparking and fanning the Timisoara unrest, that in 1990, without having read the "Le Point" expose, but having followed English-language press and traveling for a month in Romania in July 1990 (I had first visited in July 1987), my own understanding was essentially along the same lines—how could it not be? My acceptance of the "staged war" theory would inevitably be strengthened in the following years by the accounts of noted Romanian emigres discussed below.
In Romania, Concern over the Unintended Consequences of the First Wave of French Revisionism
Certain key constituencies in Romania were not amused by the French revisionism in particular. In the wake of a demonstration in the cradle of the Revolution to mark nine months after the December events, Vasile Popovici of the Timisoara Society commented:
"The French press, in particular, with a penchant for excessive rationalization specific to the French, has attempted to accredit the idea of a KGB-CIA scenario, including in Timisoara. This fantasy variant demonstrates that those who sustain it have no idea of the real course of events in Timisoara and cannot explain in any way how people went out three days in a row (17, 18, 19 [December]) to die on the streets (Ciobotea 1990, interview with Vasile Popovici, "Vinovati sint mortii? [The Dead are to Blame?], "Flacara," no. 40, 3 October, p. 3).
It is notable that in the same interview, Popovici who was no friend of the Iliescu regime, denounced the "attacks emanating from anti-FSN [National Salvation Front] publications upon the image of the popular revolt in Timisoara" [emphasis in the original; he included, the anti-Iliescu weekly "Zig-Zag" in the discussion, for more details on "Zig-Zag"'s critical role, see Hall 2002; Mioc 2000). Popovici underlined that the revisionism started in the anti-FSN press, and only then was integrated by the FSN press.
Specifically in reference to Olivier Weber and Radu Portocala's 21 May 1990 expose in "Le Point," (Army) Major Mihai Floca and Captain Victor Stoica declared: "We do not question the good faith of the French journalists, although the idea promoted by them is remarkably convenient to those who are just dying to demonstrate that, in fact, the 'terrorists' did not exist (Major Mihai Floca and Captain Victor Stoica, "Unde sint teroristii? PE STRADA, PRINTRE NOI (I), "Armata Poporului, no. 24 (13 June 1990), p. 3)." As this and other articles by the authors make clear, the reference is to the former Securitate—specifically, journalist Angela Bacescu in "Zig-Zag" (for a discussion, see Hall 1999).
Nor was the source of a key statement in Weber and Portocala's article suggesting a fictitious "staged war" with fictitious "terrorists"—"There needed to be victims in order to legitimate the new power in order to create [the image of] a mass revolution," according to the source—credible (see Hall 1999, p. 540 n. 90). Its source was former Navy Captain Nicolae Radu, a virulently anti-Semitic interloper and mercenary, who would become a regular in the former Securitate's mouthpiece, "Europa," in 1991, alleging all sorts of conspiracies about December 1989 that inevitably bestowed a primary role on Romanian Jewry and the MOSSAD. If Nicolae Radu's claim about a "fictitious war with fictious terrorists," sounds familiar from earlier parts of this series, it is: see, for example, the discussions of Dominique Fonveille (Part 2) and Ion Mihai Pacepa (Part 3).
As the above-cited observation by Floca and Stoica demonstrates, even if initially independent, streams French sensationalism and Securitate-inspired revisionism ended up converging and intermingling—a historical accident that redounded decidedly to the benefit of the latter. This was not only the case with the "terrorists," but also with the issue of alleged "foreign agents" on the ground in Timisoara and their alleged role in the uprising. It is undoubted, has been reported, and has been admitted publicly that at one point or another, particularly in monitoring regime treatment of the Hungarian Pastor Laszlo Tokes, around whom the uprising broke out, that embassy and consulate personnel from the Yugoslavia (which has a consulate in Timisoara), United States, Japan, and other countries (likely to include Hungary, the UK etc.) appeared in Timisoara during these events. It would be naïve to believe that there were no intelligence personnel among those at the scene among these countries' representatives. Of course, monitoring unfolding events is one thing, fomenting an uprising or monitoring the progress of a manufactured uprising by the countries for which they worked, quite another.
It is clearly the latter scenarios that foreign and domestic revisionists have alleged about Ceausescu's overthrow. There are glaring contradictions in the logic of these revisionist accounts on this score, however. For example, accounts of the first Franco-German revisionist wave allege that the Hungarian and Yugoslav media intentionally inflated the casualty counts in Romania to move the coup forward by fueling anger at the Ceausescu regime. In doing so, we are told, these communist services were likely doing the bidding or aiding the effort of the Soviet-backed coup plotters, and thus of the Gorbachev leadership. In their 21 May 1990 expose, Weber and Portocala mention the presence of "Soviet observers" in Timisoara since at least 16 December 1989, when the demonstrations really began to take shape. They cite Tanjug, the Yugoslav news agency, as the source of this claim. Since this claim was first mentioned in the 1 January 1990 "Le Point" article by Kosta Cristitich, I can only surmise that the Tanjug claim was published sometime during the last week of December 1989. (I have been unable to find this reference in FBIS, which translated many Tanjug dispatches at the time, but I have no reason to doubt that this is what Tanjug related. It is therefore unclear who Tanjug heard this claim from—a fact which as we saw in the case of Mr. Corpasescu in Part 3 is important, since the claim could reflect disinformation or rumor.) A similar claim turns up in Andrei Codrescu's book, The Hole in the Flag, in which he maintains that during the first week of January 1990, a Soviet journalist drinking-buddy for that night told Codrescu that he had been in Timisoara and that there in fact had been "a dozen TASS [Soviet news agency] correspondents" in Timisoara since 10 December 1989 (Codrescu, 1990, p. 171).
In essence, we are thus asked to believe that the exact media personnel who were behind a disinformation campaign to exaggerate the death toll in Romania and aid the Soviet-engineered coup, nonchalantly publicized the role of the Soviets in the uprising in Timisoara. This does not make a lot of sense, does it? Moreover, the presence of unhindered "Soviet observers" in Timisoara from 16 December—to say nothing, of the Codrescu claim, of "a dozen TASS correspondents" in Timisoara from the 10th—does not seem realistic. To begin with, Tokes only announced to his congregation on 10 December that the regime was probably going to deliver on their long-existing threat of evicting him on 15 December—meaning that either the "TASS correspondents" would have had to have had advance information of Tokes' announcement or a certain amount of good luck/clairvoyance. Given the well-documented difficulties all journalists experienced in late 1989 in trying to get into the country, especially following the upheaval elsewhere in the bloc, it is hard to believe these " dozen TASS correspondents" would have received visas into the country, presenting themselves as such—they certainly did not do much reporting from Timisoara, as like other news associations it was only on the 23rd that a Soviet journalist filed a report from there.* Moreover, it is significant that on the morning of 11 December 1989, Budapest's Domestic [Radio] Service announced that the day before three staff members of the ruling party daily "Nepszabadsag" were banned for five years for attempting to approach Tokes' residence—their film and tape recordings were also predictably confiscated (FBIS, 11 December 1989, and "New York Times," 12 December 1989). So, how then is it, that the Hungarian correspondents were expelled, but the "a dozen TASS correspondents"—apparently somehow keeping well out of sight, and feeling no compunction to write on the topic of the Hungarian correspondents—were allowed to stay?
*Indeed, there appear to be no TASS dispatches from Timisoara throughout this period. According to FBIS translations, there appear to have been 3 TASS correspondents in Romania, in addition to one from "Izvestiya" and one from "Pravda," all of whom reported during these days from Bucharest. A fourth TASS correspondent reported from Timisoara on 23 December, after the flight of the Ceausescus, and when most foreign reporters were able to enter Timisoara for the first time. Once again, according to FBIS translations, during the events of 15-22 December, TASS correspondents in Bucharest had to rely on other news services and sources in Bucharest to find out what was happening in Timisoara.
"Armata Poporului," 1990.
Brown, J. F., 2001, The Grooves of Change: Eastern Europe at the Dawning of a New Millenium (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Budapest Domestic Service, 11 December 1989, in FBIS, 12 December 1989.
Calinescu, M. and Tismaneanu, V., 1991, "The 1989 Revolution and Romania's Future," "Problems of Communism," Vol. 40, No. 1 (April), pp. 42-59.
Castex, M., 1990. Un Mensonge Grosse Comme Le Siecle (Paris: A. Michel).
Codrescu, A., 1991. The Hole in the Flag. A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution (New York: William Morrow and Company).
Codrescu, A., 2002. "Codrescu Cogitates on Communism," American Library Association Midwinter Meeting 18-23 January 2002, New Orleans, at http://www.ala.org.
"Flacara," 1990, 1991.
Gabanyi, A.U., 1990. Die Unwollendete Revolution, (Munich: Serie-Piper).
Hall, R. A. 1997, "Rewriting the Revolution: Authoritarian Regime-State Relations and the Triumph of Securitate Revisionism in Post-Ceausescu Romania," (Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University).
Hall, R. A., 1999, "The Uses of Absurdity: The Staged War Theory and the Romanian Revolution of December 1989," in "East European Politics and Societies," Vol. 13, no.3, pp. 501-542.
Hall, R. A., 2002, "Part 1: The Many Zig-Zags of Gheorghe Ionescu Olbojan," "The Securitate Roots of a Modern Romanian Fairy Tale: The Press, the Former Securitate, and the Historiography of December 1989," Radio Free Europe "East European Perspectives," Vol. 4, no 7.
"Jurnalul National (online)," 2004, 2005.
"Le Point (Paris)," 1990.
Mioc, M., 2000. "Ion Cristoiu, virful de lance al campaniei de falsificare a istoriei revolutiei" at http://www.timisoara.com/newmioc/51.htm.
Murphy, D., 1995, Transylvania and Beyond. A Travel Memoir (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Books).
"Neue Zurcher Zeitung," 1999, (English edition) at http://www.nzz.de.
"New York Times," 1989.
Ratesh, N. 1991, Romania: The Entangled Revolution, (New York: Praeger).
Shafir, M., 1990, "Preparing for the Future by Revising the Past," Radio Free Europe's "Report on Eastern Europe," Vol. 1, No. 41, (12 October), pp. 29-42.
Stokes, G., 1993, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, (New York: Oxford University Press).
Verdery K. and Kligman G., 1992, "Romania after Ceausescu: Post-Communist Communism?" in Banac, I (ed.)., Eastern Europe in Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), pp. 117-147.
"Zig-Zag," 1990.
(for a summary advocacy of both the Czech and Romanian revisionism, several years later, see John Simpson's "How the KGB Freed Europe," in the 5 November 1994 edition of The Spectator (UK), http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/5th-november-1994/11/how-the-kgb-freed-europe
Five years after the Berlin Wall came down,
John Simpson reveals who really caused the
overthrow of East Europe's dictators
Berlin MOST HISTORIANS, and most journal- ists, instinctively distrust conspiracy theo- ries. They know that reality does not work so tidily: that entropy and Sod's law are the most satisfactory explanations for most events. The instinctive assumption that behind every great event there must be a group of politically motivated conspirators doing the bidding of some great power is not one that sensible, rational people make.
Now that the fifth anniversary of the col- lapse of the Berlin Wall is upon us, there is a welter of television specials and special newspaper articles about the domino effect of 1989: how Hungary opened its borders with Austria, allowing East Germans to flock through the gap in their hundreds of thousands; how the government in East Berlin opened the crossings into West Berlin without meaning to on 9 November; how, eight days later, a peaceful demon- stration in Prague was met with violence by the Czechoslovak authorities and the resulting anger brought down the govern- ment; how, on 21 December, crowds in the main square in Bucharest forced President Ceausescu of Rumania to flee.
The pattern is clear enough; what scope could there be for conspiracy? And yet there is strong evidence that the secret police in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Rumania worked with the KGB, which 'Room service? Send up someone to pay my bill, please.' supported Mikhail Gorbachev's reformist approach, to bring down the old, conserva- tive leaders in these three countries and replace them with glasnost- and perestroi- ka-friendly regimes which would co-oper- ate with the new Soviet Union. The plan succeeded in the first objective and failed in the second: the old guard was indeed swept away, but only in Rumania did a reformist communist government come to power; and soon, anyway, Marxism-Lenin- ism had evaporated in Russia itself.
I first heard about it all in .May 1990, from a Czech dissident who was shortly to return to a senior official position in Prague. We had met at the Chelsea Arts Club and, at her insistence, were sitting in the garden so that no one would overhear us. Soon her story broke down my reserves of politeness. 'Listen,' I said, 'I hate con- spiracy theories. I simply don't believe a word of any of this.' The very suggestion that the peaceful revolution in Czechoslo- vakia, the most moving and impressive event I had ever witnessed, might have been organised by the Czechoslovak secret police, the StB, with the KGB's help, offended every principle I had. 'I don't blame you,' said the woman. `Maybe, though, you should take a look at this.'
She handed me a sheaf of photocopies: it was the report of a ten-man parliamentary commission set up by President Vaclav Havel to look into the circumstances of the demonstration on 17 November 1989, the key moment of the Prague revolution. That evening a student was said to have been killed by the police, and although it turned out later to have been untrue, there was such anger among ordinary Czechs and Slovaks that they came out onto the streets in vast numbers and eventually forced the collapse of the old regime. I leafed through the report: there were interviews with virtu- ally everyone involved, including several with men of the StB who had taken part in the conspiracy. At the end was the summa- ry by one of the most senior figures on the commission, Dr Milan Hulik:
There is no doubt that the leading personali- ty of the whole operation … was General Lorene [the head of the StB] … The con- tacts between Lorenc and KGB officials which have been discovered couldn't, in my opinion, point to any other conclusion than KGB connivance in the whole action .
The man who was supposed to have been killed gave evidence to the commission; he was, in fact, a young StB lieutenant, Ludek Zifcak, who pretended he had been struck over the head by a police baton. Someone covered him with a blanket, and his body was taken away in an unmarked ambu- lance. The news that someone had been killed by the police created a mood of implacable anger in the country. It was 50 years to the day since the German army, entering Prague, had shot dead a student who had demonstrated against them. The symbolism was overwhelming, and within a few days the old communist regime, truth- fully but pointlessly protesting its inno- cence of Zifcak's 'death', simply evaporated. The plot had worked perfectly; the trouble was, no one had the slightest interest in reformist communism any more. Vaclav Havel and his Civic Forum were swept to power on an immense tide of pop- ular enthusiasm.
It would be a mistake to think that under the Soviet system the secret police was nec- essarily against political change. Yuri Andropov, as Chairman of the KGB in the 1970s, realised the terrible condition of the Soviet economy and the need to do some- thing radical about it. When he succeeded Brezhnev as head of the Soviet Communist Party in November 1982, he was too ill, and died too soon, to achieve anything; but he made sure that his protégé, Mikhail Gor- bachev, would be a contender for the top job. After Chernenko's brief reign ended in March 1985, Gorbachev duly took over. The plans which Andropov had first formu- lated as head of the KGB were put into practice; and the KGB supported them.
It wasn't the first time the Russian secret police had espoused ideas which were more radical than those of the established sys- tem; in the 1880s and 1890s, the head of the Tsarist secret police in Moscow, Colonel Zubatov, decided that the only way to protect the power of the throne was to set up unions for the working class which would compete for support with those run by genuine socialists. In 1902, thousands of workers appeared at the Kremlin bare- headed and kneeling and chanting, 'God save the Tsar,' But the mood of the author- ities changed; and when Father Gapon, a secret police agent, led a crowd of support- ers of the Zubatov unions to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg on 9 January 1905, the Cossacks shot them down. It was the start of the 1905 revolution, and of the eventual destruction of Tsarism.
In November 1989, then, the KGB played an active part in the overthrow of the hard-line, anti-reformist government in Czechoslovakia. In Rumania a month later, it is now abundantly clear that the unsavoury President Ceausescu was also the victim of a conspiracy between a pro- Soviet faction within the military and the security police on the one hand, and reform-minded communist politicians on the other. The vast crowd which on 21 December 1989, in full view of the live tele- vision cameras, booed Ceausescu in the square in front of the Central Committee building was carefully organised by the Securitate. As the viewers watched Ceaus- escu's marvellously comical amazement at being given the bird by the huge number of people assembled before him, the chief of his personal bodyguard walked up behind him and said audibly into his microphone, `They're getting in.'
They weren't, and it wasn't until the next day that the crowd broke into the Central Committee building and,Ceausescu had to escape by helicopter from the roof. But the television coverage had alerted people all over the country that the revolution was beginning. Nothing could stop it. Once again, the conspiracy had been successful and an anti-Gorbachev hardliner had been eased out. The new President, Ion Iliescu, was ideal material for the new Eastern Europe Mikhail Gorbachev hoped to cre- ate: flexible yet a faithful communist, pleas- ant-looking, unknown outside Rumania, capable of being elected in a vote that was more or less genuine; though it was already becoming clear that the overall plan, by which a more democratic Soviet Union would surround itself with popularly elect- ed governments favourable to Moscow, would come to nothing.
As for the event which began the revolu- tionary chain, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that was brought about by a more complex set of circumstances. Here too there are signs of a conspiracy, though they are harder to trace. Senior figures in the East German Communist Party, the SED, knew very well that Gorbachev wanted them to get rid of the ultra-conservative Erich Honecker, even though Gorbachev himself was unwilling to give them their instructions directly. Marcus Wolf, the for- mer leader of the espionage branch of the Stasi, the security ministry, was in close contact with the KGB and knew perfectly well what was expected of them. Wolf was the model for John Le Carre's East Ger- man intelligence chief in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and perhaps also for his anti-hero, Karla. Having fallen out with Honecker, he had resigned from the Stasi in 1986, and had lived in retirement ever since. He seems to have been the link between the KGB and the anti-Honecker members of the Politburo.
Honecker was duly deposed in October, and the reformists took power, Thus far the plan had worked. But the new leader- ship had no clearer idea than the old one how to cope with the demonstrations demanding more open government and the right to travel freely to the West. At the Politburo meeting on 9 November it was decided to allow everyone to apply for an exit visa without having to state a reason. No one there foresaw the effect this would have. That evening the Politburo spokesman, Giinter Schabowski, walked into a news conference in East Berlin thor- oughly confused, with his papers in com- plete disorder. It was only as the news conference was drawing to an end that he found the document with the details of the Politburo decision, right at the bottom of the pile. He read it out hesitantly. When he had finished, someone asked when people would be able to apply for the new visas. Forgetting that the Politburo had decided that the process would begin the following morning, Schabowski said, `Unverziiglich: immediately. Someone asked him what that meant. Tired, confused by the shouted questions, blinking in the bright camera lights, Schabowski blurted out the words that brought the Berlin Wall down and led to the collapse of Marxism-Leninism throughout Europe. 'It just means straight- away,' he said. The news conference was broadcast at 7.30 that evening. Within nun" utes people were heading for the crossing- points in the Wall to see if it were true. At several places the VoPo guards, not having any orders about it, let the crowds through. It was all over. In East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Rumania, the secret police began the pro- cess of reform and revolution. But conspir- ators usually get more than they bargain for. As in Russia in 1905, the revolutions took on a life of their own; and in the end the plotters were swept away, as well as those they had plotted against.
John Simpson is an associate editor of The Spectator and foreign affairs editor of the BBC.)
The similarities between the Romanian** and Czechoslovak cases are then pretty clear. The initial sources of the revisionism had a vested, if not always obvious or publicly identified, interest in an account that absolved or even extolled the role of the domestic security services during the momentous events of late 1989. This intersected with the market-driven forces and journalistic culture of local, but also international media, looking for a sensationalist scoop and an advantage against competitors, with a readership at the time still interested in what had then only recently transpired. It is perhaps ironic, that precisely because the opposition, anti-communist media of the time was the most open to journalistic inquiry, that the revisionism alleging a Soviet hand, found its early home in these countries in that section of the media–although other potential factors cannot be totally discounted.
**In the Romanian case, I have outlined such arguments about the confluence of sources on several occasions, especially here: https://romanianrevolutionofdecember1989.com/the-uses-of-absurdity-romania-1989-1999/


He finally saw my report card.
Have you seen my report card?
Mom, I got my report card.
That evening, I altered my report card, then turned to look at my dog.
ذلك المساء، انا عدّلتُ شهادتي ثمّ استدرت لأنظر إلى كلبِي.
النتائج: 34. المطابقة: 34. الزمن المنقضي: 108 ميلّي ثانية.


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A to Z Health Planning
Juul CEO steps down, company promises to follow Trump ban
Posted By: boss September 25, 2019
Juul. | Scott Olson/Getty Images
Juul announced Wednesday morning that its CEO would step down and that the company would not lobby the Trump administration on its looming ban of flavored vapor products.
The nation's largest e-cigarette maker, amid increasing pressure from Washington and state officials over an "epidemic" of teen vaping, also said it will suspend all broadcast, print and digital product advertising in the U.S.
The abrupt shake-up comes as the e-cigarette industry also faces a major threat from the outbreak of a mysterious vaping-linked lung disease that has sickened hundreds and killed nine so far. Officials are still investigating the cause of the outbreak, but it appears to be linked largely to black market vapes.
Juul CEO Kevin Burns will immediately be replaced by longtime Altria executive K.C. Crosthwaite. He joined the tobacco giant when it was still Philip Morris in the 1990s, and until recently headed its growth division.
The leadership move could bring additional scrutiny to the Altria's purchase of a 35 percent stake in Juul last year. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who made a crackdown on teen vaping a signature issue, at the time raised questions about the deal. A House Oversight Committee probing the deal said that Juul has ignored its request to turn over documents, and the panel's chairman, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Calif.), has threatened a subpoena if the documents aren't produced by next week.
Public health groups criticized Juul's decision to install a tobacco executive as its new leader and said the company's new prohibition on advertising was nothing more than a PR move.
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"We are deeply concerned that under the leadership of someone who was most recently responsible for growing the market for Marlboro and other deadly tobacco products, Juul will continue to prey upon youth and mislead the public about the health risks of e-cigarette use," said Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association.
Philip Morris International, which split from Altria in the early 2000s, also announced this morning that the two companies had ended recent talks to rejoin the companies. Instead, it will focus on its own smokeless tobacco product lines in the U.S.
Juul on Wedneday said it will refrain from lobbying the Trump administration as FDA moves to formally roll out the flavor ban the president announced this month. The company said it will fully support and comply with the policy, which is expected in the coming weeks.
Juul did not say whether it would continue battling efforts in states and cities to curb vape sales, and it did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The manufacturer has spent more than $4.5 million in San Francisco on a campaign to overturn the city's first-in-nation e-cigarette ban through a November ballot initiative.
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Several California cities have also banned all e-cigarettes sales, and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, on Tuesday announced a temporary statewide ban of vaping products entirely. Juul had sharply criticized those efforts.
Other states are meanwhile enacting their own restrictions on flavored products. Democratic governors in Michigan and New York this month announced temporary bans, and Rhode Island on Wednesday said it will soon issue its own emergency measure. Some states, including California on Tuesday, have also urged people to avoid vaping while health officials research the vaping-linked illnesses.
It's possible flavor products will return to the market after the Trump administration's ban, but likely in a much more limited way. The administration said it will only clear products that manufacturers can prove are not a threat to public health.
Acting FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless on Wednesday expressed regret that the agency did not act sooner to regulate e-cigarettes. Gottlieb, his predecessor, had initially moved back regulation of the products to 2022 before a court ordered the agency to move up the deadline.
"With retrospect, FDA should have acted sooner, should have regulated these devices sooner," Sharpless told lawmakers at the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee. "But we're going to catch up."
Gottlieb on Twitter defended his decision to delay the regulatory deadline. He said the agency wanted to keep e-cigarettes as a viable options for smokers trying to quit, and that under the previous policy, which was set by the Obama administration, e-cigarettes would have remained on the market through the end of this year.
Altria CEO Howard Willard, who spoke at a tobacco conference in Washington on Wednesday, said he has worked with Crosthwaite for years and believed Juul's new CEO would help the company "confront and reduce" youth vaping.
"This is a pivotal moment for the industry, and strong leadership and action are urgently needed," he said.
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Democrats bet big on Obamacare to win Virginia statehouse
Study: Around the world, troubling levels of vaccine mistrust
Juul arms to fight sweeping e-cig ban on its home turf
The Scoop: September 25, 2019 Edition
Senate Finance pushes ahead on plan to address high drug prices
NIDA director: New pain meds are still years away
New Texas anti-abortion group vies for family planning funds
The ACA increased coverage and access for the chronically ill, but many still face barriers to care
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Health care data-sharing rules touch off intense lobbying fight

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text:
And built some charts.
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The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.
Back in February—a lifetime ago in pandemic time—I spoke with several experts who warned about the United States' ability to sequence and track coronavirus variants. At the time, scientists in the United Kingdom had identified the pandemic's first "variant of concern," a strain later called Alpha. The UK boasted the "gold standard" of genomic surveillance strategies, sequencing about 6 percent of positive COVID samples in early 2021; the US, meanwhile, was sequencing about 0.3 percent. "We're blind to what's happening," one expert in infectious diseases and vaccinology told me.
"I feel like the sentiment this time last year was, the US doesn't sequence enough. We're behind, we're behind. And I think it was a fair argument. But at this point, I think it's just a really lazy argument."
Alpha would eventually be outperformed in the UK (and the world) by another variant, Delta. But its emergence, among the rise of other variants of concern shortly afterward, was a wake-up call: Without a robust genomic surveillance program, researchers warned, the US would fail to monitor variants as they were introduced or to detect new, homegrown ones—leaving us less prepared to fight the virus.
Enter Omicron. First reported to the World Health Organization by South African officials around Thanksgiving, the variant has since been detected in dozens of countries, including the US. And in much of the news media, the prevailing narrative about the US's genomic surveillance has remained the same: The country "lags behind" our foreign counterparts, has been "slow to the party," and is at risk of "flying blind."
But after talking with a few experts last week, it became clear that this isn't exactly the case anymore. In fact, the US is far from straggling behind. And in a sea of alarming headlines about Omicron, this is truly good news.
"I feel like the sentiment this time last year was, The US doesn't sequence enough. We're behind, we're behind. And I think it was a fair argument. But at this point, I think it's just a really lazy argument," says Joseph Fauver, an assistant professor at the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which is working with the state to track variants. "I am unapologetically on the side of, we're doing an exceptional job. That doesn't mean we couldn't be doing things better. But there's so much data being generated right now across the US and across the world."
Here, based on my conversations, is what you need to know about Omicron, future variants, and genomic sequencing:
We've seen a huge increase in SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing. Thank federal funding.
Early this year, when experts called for an investment in the country's ability to track SARS-CoV-2, the Biden administration listened. In February, it announced a $200 million "down payment" to track variants, followed by a $1.7 billion investment in April. "The CDC, with the support of the White House and federal government, really rolled out a robust plan to get genomic surveillance up to speed across the country," says Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance in the Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
The effort was three-pronged: First, federal health officials worked to get the institutions that were doing large scale COVID testing—shops like Labcorp, Quest Diagnostics, Helix, and the Broad Institute, where MacInnis works—to conduct their own sequencing, giving scientists what she calls a "10,000-foot view" of what strains are circulating across the states.
Second, the administration injected funds into local and state labs, giving them the ability to be "more nimble," MacInnis says, and zoom in on local outbreaks or perform targeted sequencing in places where it was needed.
The third piece, MacInnis says, was to continue to support academic research centers like hers that are using their lab capacity to track SARS-CoV-2. "It's not perfect," MacInnis says about the effort as a whole. "It's also not easy. But it is really strong."
By Fauver's estimate, the US has sequenced about as many, if not more, SARS-CoV-2 genomes as we have for all other viruses combined.
The data backs that up: At the start of 2021, the country was sequencing a few thousand genomes per week. In late November, that level hit nearly 100,000 per week. By Fauver's estimate, the US has sequenced about as many, if not more, SARS-CoV-2 genomes as we have for all other viruses combined.
"At the beginning of this year, we still weren't sequencing enough to really get a good snapshot of what was circulating in the US," adds Alexandra Phelan, an assistant professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University, whose work focuses on pandemic preparedness and response. "If we look at us now, we are actually in a much, much better position."
As a result, we have a much clearer view of what variants are circulating here.
In addition to sequencing tens of thousands of samples per week, we're also hitting our goal in terms of percent of cases sequenced. In early 2021, scientists had set a goal of sequencing five out of every 100 positive COVID samples. According to a preliminary but widely cited analysis by Illumina, a San Diego–based company that makes genomic sequencing equipment, the US would need to sequence 5 percent of samples to detect a variant that makes up between 0.1 percent and 1.0 percent of cases.
As of now, on average, we're there: "I would say most states are now at or close to that five percent mark," MacInnis says, "and many are well beyond it." (Last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters the agency is sequencing at a rate of about one in seven positive samples, or about 14 percent.)
"It's unrealistic at this point to sequence every positive case. And it's also kind of unnecessary."
Five percent may not sound like a lot, but testing well beyond that has "diminishing returns," MacInnis says. "It's unrealistic at this point to sequence every positive case. And it's also kind of unnecessary." With a rate of 5 percent, "we have the power to detect emerging threats at an early stage." If a new variant is going to result in "any meaningful number of cases," Fauver adds, "we will absolutely detect it with that level of sequencing."
As cases rise, genomic sequencing gets harder.
One way to make researchers' jobs easier? Lowering the total number of COVID cases. Think of it this way: The rate of genomic sequencing is the number of SARS-CoV-2 sequences divided by the number of positive tests in the US at a given time. If we want to increase our rate, we can either increase the number of genomes sequenced or lower the number of cases. "There's effectively unchecked COVID transmission occurring right now," Fauver says, "making it really difficult to raise that percentage."
This is also partly why countries like Iceland or New Zealand are able to sequence a huge percentage of positive samples: low case counts. The US may rank 22nd in the world for our percentage of sequenced genomes, but we're also dealing with a lot of cases. "The absolute value of that number really matters," Fauver says. "I think it's really easy to sequence 100 percent of cases occurring in a week if you only have 1,000 cases."
Plus, Fauver points out, lowering case counts also reduces the chances of new variants being introduced in the population in the first place. "If you're not infected," he says, "you're not going to be a part of generating a new variant."
We still have some "blind spots" around the country.
While the US is sequencing at a rate of 5 percent, that number, experts emphasize, is an average. Some states aren't sequencing nearly as many genomes as others. Oklahoma, Phelan notes, has sequenced less than 1 percent of all its samples over the pandemic. By contrast, Washington, which was among the first states to be impacted by the coronavirus and is home to several academic institutions, has sequenced at a rate of about 8 percent since January 2020. In Wyoming, it's 20 percent. In Vermont, it's 22 percent.
Those disparities exist, Fauver says, in part because of what kinds of institutions exist in each state. Take California. The state has published nearly 300,000 sequences since the start of the pandemic, more than any other state. Yes, it's a big population—"but," Fauver says, "think of all the groups in California that are producing whole-genome sequencing data." County labs, state labs, institutions like the Scripps Research Institute and UCSF, nonprofits like the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, and private companies like Illumina all operate in the state. "All that is going to push California's numbers up a lot," he concludes. In Nebraska, where Fauver is based, researchers have been able to generate "really high-quality data routinely," he says, but the effort is primarily being run by the state, in combination with a small handful of academic partners.
On top of state disparities, experts are concerned that the states that aren't sequencing as many samples are often the states with lower vaccination rates. That is, states where new variants are most likely to emerge are also the places that aren't looking as closely. "There is a risk that there is undetected spread," Phelan says.
In a 2020 report, Phelan and others called on the federal government to establish a unified approach to genomic data sharing. We still need it, she says: "A lot of this data is fragmented because the country and the health systems are fragmented. We still need a comprehensive and systematic sharing across the country between states and at the federal level."
"If [sharing information] is met with travel restrictions, I don't see the incentive for these folks to share their data."
Travel bans and other measures may disincentivize sharing of genomic data.
Shortly after South Africa reported Omicron to the WHO on November 26, the US instituted travel bans against it and seven other countries, all in Africa. Since then, the Omicron variant has been detected in many other countries, including Canada, the UK, Australia, and Germany, and dozens of others, but the US hasn't issued any new travel bans against them.
While travel bans may slow the global spread of a variant in early stages—"It's just a basic matter of mathematics," Phelan says—they are unlikely to stop a variant in its tracks. For one, they can give governments a false sense of security, Phelan says, and are often "inappropriately targeted" to protect public health. In the case of Omicron, for example, "It's hard to not see that as deeply discriminatory."
Experts also worry these restrictions may discourage other countries from publishing their COVID data in the future. "If [sharing information] is met with travel restrictions, I don't see the incentive for these folks to share their data," Fauver says. "So yeah, I think it sends the exact wrong message."
And "not only does it disincentivize reporting about variants, but this will impact future outbreaks," Phelan says. If imposing discriminatory travel bans becomes the norm, she adds, "I do worry that we're much less prepared for the next pandemic."
This piece has been updated.
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Sometimes it seems like AJAX is a layer of magic for web pages. The ability to drag and drop page "widgets" such as images and chunks of text is definitely one of those features that makes people's eyes light up. Find out how easy it is to enable client-side drag-and-drop using Microsoft AJAX Library (Atlas).
Besides using the <atlas:DragOverlayExtender> control for drag and drop operation on Web pages, you can also use the DragPanelExtender control which is contained in the Atlas Control Toolkit. Basically, the DragPanelExtender control is very similar to the <atlas:DragOverlayExtender> control, except that it does not have built-in capability to persist the positional information of controls that have been dragged.
Two Panels controls (Panel2 and Panel3) embedded within a third Panel control (Panel1).
Panel2 contains a <div> element, which contains a string: "Drag Me."
Here, users will be able to drag Panel2 and the corresponding Panel1 will move with it. That's it! Press F5 to test the application. You will now be able to move the Panel containing the image by just dragging the Panel containing the string: "Drag Me" (see Figure 6).
Figure 6. Using the DragPanelExtender control you can make it more obvious to your users that panels are moveable by nesting panels inside of one another.
Figure 7. You should change the cursor to "move" so the user gets a visual cue that the panel is moveable.
If you are observant, you will realize that when the mouse hovers over the "Drag Me" Panel, the cursor does not change into a "move" cursor (which is a four-pointed arrows icon). This is not a good UI design, as it does not convey information to hint to the user that this is a moveable Panel. To do so, you need add a cascading stylesheet (CSS).
Press F5 to test the application again. When your mouse now hovers over the "Drag Me" panel, it will change to the "move" cursor (see Figure 7).
In this article, you have seen how you can easily implement drag and drop functionality on your Web page using Atlas. Besides extending Panel controls, the <atlas:DragOverlayExtender> control can also be used to extend other Web server controls. Alternatively, you can also use the DragPanelExtender control from the Atlas Control Toolkit to make Panel controls moveable. Finally, you learned how to change the default cursor of a moveable control to the "move" cursor so that it gives the appropriate visual cues to users.


text:
Welfarm to release three shocking videos to call for a long-overdue end to the export of live animals
#Act4
FarmAnimals
Welfarm to release three shocking videos to call for a long overdue end to the export of live animals
WELFARM
It only takes three videos for Eurogroup for Animals' members Welfarm, Animals International and Animal Welfare Foundation to show the French government the horrifying state of play of what exporters and livestock breeders do to animals they export to North Africa and the Middle East. From European ports to Lebanese slaughterhouses to Moroccan cattle markets - four NGOs captured the dreadful fate of the thousands of French cows shipped across the Mediterranean every week. These investigations will be released by Welfarm over the next three weeks.
In a petition to the French government, Welfarm calls for the suspension of live animal exports to third countries. "The Ministry of Agriculture, exporters, breeders and the port of Sète are aware of these violations, yet they continue to export animals" states Adeline Colonat from Welfarm. And for good reason as cattle exports generated nearly 1.5 billion euros in 2018, of which 118 million went to third countries. "France cannot even detect and solve problems in its own slaughterhouses, so how can we imagine that we can have the slightest influence on what happens on the other side of the Mediterranean? The truth is that France no longer has any control as soon as the animals leave our soil. The only way to avoid their suffering is not to send them there alive. "
Eurogroup for Animals and its members urge the EU to stop live transport especially to Third Countries and to prepare a strategy to shift to a meat and carcasses and genetic material only trade.
Video 1: Death before boarding the boat
The first video of the investigation series is from July 2020 and sets the scene in Port of Cartagena, Spain, which calls itself a "pioneer in animal welfare": A cattle with fractured legs is dragging itself along the foot of a ship. Born in the Puy-de-Dôme, exported to Spain for fattening, it is to be shipped to Libya. A tractor will have to drag the paralysed and screaming animal into a lorry. Heading for the slaughterhouse. By law, it should have been euthanised on the spot, but in this case, it would be impossible to profit from his meat... Like this cattle, 425,000 French cattle are exported every year to Spain for fattening. How many then embark in Cartagena? "It's impossible to say since they disappear from French statistics'', explains Adeline Colonat, head of the project team on transport in Welfarm, "but we are the leading supplier of cattle to Spain, which in turn is the leading exporting country in Europe."
Maria Boada (Animal Welfare Foundation), who captured these images alongside Animals International and Welfarm explains further: "In European ports as well as in Third Countries, the lack of controls, infrastructures and sanctions is disastrous for animals. The presence of a veterinarian is not even compulsory on board of ships leaving the EU. Thousands of animals are deprived of care for days or even weeks"
Video 2: Transported like common goods
December 2019, near Rabat, Morocco: The door of an overcrowded cattle house crushes the flanks of a French cow. Exported when it was just a pregnant heifer, it finds itself like the others on a cattle market. Other cattle have their legs tied up, their heads covered with plastic sheeting. Goats are piled up on a wheelbarrow. Despite the fact that French and European exporters claim that the animals sent to Africa are well-treated because they are intended for breeding (like heifers), these new investigations from the non-profit organisation Animals' Angels show that they all end their lives in the same suffering; at the same livestock markets and in the same slaughterhouses.
Video 3: Slaughtered with a cruelty that nothing justifies
August 2020: In the footage taken by Animals International and Animals Angels in Lebanon and Morocco, all of the cattle suffer the same fate: beating, terror, endless suffering. "Both in the Middle East and in North Africa, I have seen French animals endure a slow and painful death because of workers who are neither equipped nor trained and who are afraid of these big cattle," says Gabriel Paun, Animals International's Europe Director. They use ropes to retain them, they stab them and slit their throats. The animals are terrified, they suffer and are conscious until the very end. These practices are extreme, useless and go against all religious precepts in force in the importing countries. And moreover, these practices would be illegal in France".
Read more at source
Action Transports
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text:
Cops: Designated driver's license was revoked for multiple DUIs
EUSTIS — In a strange bit of irony, a man with a long history of drunken driving was jailed Tuesday while serving as the designated driver for a buddy.
The problem is that, while Jeffrey Paul Owens was sober when Eustis police pulled him over on South Bay Street at about 9 p.m. because the tag was partially obscured by a vanity plate, he didn't have a license. It had been permanently revoked in 2012, according to police, because of five prior arrests for DUI, including one that caused an injury in 2003.
Owens, 50, of Eustis, said he was driving because his passenger and friend, Kevin, had consumed a couple of beers.
Owens was charged with driving with a suspended or revoked license.


Ha - that would be fun! Thank you so much!
Oh my - your son! I didn't buy a house until my 30s. How awesome. I think that's one of the best parts of blogging - being like family. I have early blogging friends who remind me that Des was a baby when they "met" me through this!
I love my blog family!
Time does march on, doesn't it. And you have 2 wonderful men that you guys raised so fabulously as part of your life.
Happy blogaversary! That necklace is so beautiful!
I'll have my first teen next month, Nathan will be turning 13!I had to chuckle when you said you don't think your sons have read a single post. Ha!! Yup! That's how my kids are! I love hearing how your sons are doing... wow, a home and vet school!!! So fun! I can tell you are def. a proud mom!!
Thank you! I loved the teen years - yes, it's challenging, but so fun!
They sure do grow up fast. What a blessing to have two wonderful (Good) boys.......:) Lots of exciting times ahead for all of you.
Ha ha - not sure about the sensation part. But it's lots of fun!
Goodness, happy blogiversary! I love that we met all those years ago. Now to keep the posts coming!!!
One of the best parts of blogging - becoming friends with you!!
Congrats on five years! Time goes so fast. Cheers to five more years.
Congratulations! How wonderful to be able to share in the joys and sorrows of life with this great community!
Hello Lana, Wow! Congrats on five years of blogging. I remember when we first met and started out blogging! Five years seems to have gone by so fast. It's such an accomplishment to be blogging that long and I wish you many more years of success with it.
Thank you Julie! It has gone by fast!
Happy Blogversary! Congrats on 5 years! You were one of the first bloggers I connected with when I started blogging in 2014 and time has really flown by! That necklace is so pretty! Thank you for the giveaway!
I remember you as one of my very first blogger friends! I can't believe it's been five years.
I can't imagine not having a Lana in my life- so glad you started blogging!
My world would be sad if it was Deena-less!


A man who miraculously survived Chechnya's relentless anti-gay campaign has stepped forward to share his horrific, distressing story.
For 12 days, Maxim Lapunov said he was held captive in a blood-soaked cell, beaten, threatened, and humiliated by authorities.
The 30-year-old man, originally from Siberia, had been living and working in Chechnya for two years. Then, one night in March, he says he was kidnapped by two men in a car.
By his account, he had been taken to a police facility, where he says he was beaten, interrogated, and forced to name other men.
"They burst in every 10 or 15 minutes shouting that I was gay and they would kill me.
"Then they beat me with a stick for a long time: in the legs, ribs, buttocks and back. When I started to fall, they pulled me up and carried on.
In recent months, nearly 30 men have stepped forward to share similar stories of detainment, torture, and abuse.
One man told the BBC that Checnya's goal was to "exterminate" gay men in the republic.
Although he's free, he is still haunted by the screams of his fellow detainees.
And though he's been threatened to withdraw his account, Lapunov seeks justice.
"It should not be like this. We are all people. We all have rights.


SitePen's deep involvement with the remotely-rooted open source community in addition to our CEO's aversion to fluorescent lighting was what laid the foundation for SitePen's preferred work environment. While having physical office space was attempted in the early days, the idea of going into the office never quite took off. It's easy to see that SitePen's organizational structure is wholly based on an open source software model – many individuals working remotely toward shared goals for the common good. Remote work is like breathing for us – it just is.
Very. By allowing everyone to work from their preferred location, SitePen is able to attract and retain highly-skilled individuals who value work-life balance. When we're competing for talent with the giants like Google and Facebook, it definitely gives us an edge that we offer this kind of flexibility. With a stellar team, we are able to consistently produce high quality results, which allows us to expand our business right along with our team.
The biggest benefit of being remote is the ability to hire the best people for the job, regardless of location and retaining amazing people who share our commitment to work-life balance.
We lean toward people who are active participants in outside communities. This demonstrates leadership, organization and passion being pursued by the applicant, all characteristics that we greatly value!
Arrogance is what we don't want infiltrating our team. Though we're very good at detecting it, we're always surprised that it comes through during an interview!
Oh, and we also really like people who think they're as funny as we think we are — that way you know someone is laughing at your clever wit – even on a muted Skype call.
We conduct a series of graduated tests for all of our positions followed by up to two team fit interviews with various SitePen engineers and managers. These are all done remotely, of course! Our goals are to confirm hard skills while ensuring they have an adequate appreciation of puns and sarcasm.
We are very candid about the potential for isolation in a remote work environment and we stress the importance of taking responsibility for oneself in his or her role at SitePen. We have multiple initiatives going on at any given time and beyond your customer projects, we're expecting everyone to dive in and succeed! Our team is loud and inviting but, as with everything, you only get out of it what you're willing to put in and we have high expectations for very superb source code and quick-on-the-draw animated gifs.
We are proponents of team projects so no one person is out there working on their own. With onsite Customer engagements, we're afforded great opportunities for team get-togethers and bonding. Many members of our team go out of their way to meet up if they're traveling through someone's neighborhood.
Every few years we hold an event called "SitePen Unplugged", where we all head out somewhere for a week and partake in some relaxation time. We met last year for some low-key whitewater rafting!
The hardest part about managing a remote workforce is the propensity for terse communication. Often times, people are chatting, trying to quickly accomplish something or just giving quick answers and through non-verbal communication channels, these can come off harshly or seem to lack empathy. It's important to remember the person sitting at the other end of the interweb is not a bot and to recognize how they may be perceiving certain things. Face-to-face communication is often much friendlier and cordial so sometimes remembering to take a little extra care can be difficult.
SitePen provides all necessary computing equipment and software that is requested by SitePen employees.
On top of 10 company-observed holidays, SitePen offers four weeks of paid time off to start which increases with seniority. Very flexible and always provided when requested!
Organically. We implemented policies where we felt we could do better and from lessons learned over time. Team understanding (why we need it) and buy-in (how it's going to help you) are necessary for implementing any work policy, remote or otherwise! Our team is very opinionated and highly conscious of inefficiencies so we're quickly able to identify what works and what doesn't.
Communication through clear direction, purposeful discussion and thorough documentation should be your top priority. Communication is about engagement, participation and having the right people who will consistently engage, participate and contribute will ensure remote working success!
Running into people who don't have the self-discipline, work ethic, and passion to meet our expectations is one of the greatest challenges however I don't think this issue is specific to remote work. Though these people are probably better managed in an office environment, they're often just a drag on productivity and team morale wherever they turn up.
I live in a tiny house in northern Nevada. One of the bedrooms is my office, and it's pretty much a desk, treadmill desk, cat & dog beds, and an amazing collection of action figures and sci-fi doo dads.
I've worked from home for many years, even before SitePen. Some things I've learned over the years: have a designated office with a door you can shut, move around the house periodically for a change of scenery, and know when to close the laptop and go outside and do something else! We have a flexible schedule, so sometimes I'll break up my hours just for the heck of it. If my brain is burning out, I'll shut down and come back later in the evening when I have good ideas again.
Development is always prone to pitfalls and hiccups, and as consultants we often operate on deadlines. When kicking off a new project, my advice to my team is: Stuff happens. Bigger stuff will happen if you tell me at the last minute.
Worst: Crunching myself into the corner on a tiny table and chair in a hotel room in the hopes of getting enough signal from the wimpy hotel wifi out in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.
Best: Right in front of the fireplace in the middle of a snow day in winter.


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2 Indians who should be role models but should now be on no-fly lists!!
It boils my blood when people behave entitled when flying. I've long believed that while everyone hasn't flown yet, the privilege behind flying is long gone, and it is only a matter of time flights will be a commodity. We just need to get those 50 airports we need to be able to dot the country with tons of flights.
There are some people, who are so very visible and hence should behave responsibly when travelling. Instead, it brings out the trash that they hold in their heads and their hearts, about being above everyone and everything else. Oh yes, you are, but only literally. I fly in a metal tube almost every week, and I can't try and thank enough the crew who take care of us. Do not forget, they are working longer hours than us, getting perhaps lesser sleep than us, and while I may have to get back to a desk the next morning, they have to be with their phone by their side, especially when they are on the reserve.
I wanted to highlight why we perhaps should now think seriously of the no-fly list in India. Two incidents make me believe so. One just happened today, when a politician hit an Air India flight attendant with a slipper in full public view. As per this so called Member of Parliament, he was sold a business class seat and the plane had no business class. Well, maybe we need to de-board him and pursue legal action against him for his violent nature. The crass entitlement here, comes from the fact that he is a Member of Parliament. If he was sold a business-class seat, there was no way he was not aware before coming on the plane that the plane had no J class. Air India may be a badly run airline, but they are not in the business of checking-in people and giving them business class boarding passes and showing them the road to Economy when they arrive.
The other role model is a famous comedian, who perhaps has success going through his head. I don't know the airline he was flying back from Australia to India on Air India, but seems he had chugged down a whole bottle of expensive Whiskey on the plane, and then had an altercation with his own colleague who was travelling along with him. What is it with Indians and Whiskey anyways? Why drink up a whole bottle? I know we show you all the nice champagnes and wines, but we are sipping on a glass, or two, to unwind and then go off to sleep. Not glugging down bottles after bottles without having the capacity to hold our own. Here is an eyewitness account of the incident.
Wishing to stay anonymous, the source who was on-board the 12-hour flight told us that Kapil had consumed an entire bottle of Glenfiddich whisky, and was visibly drunk. When the food was being served by the cabin crew, his team (the crew and cast of Kapil's TV show, The Kapil Sharma Show, who had gone to Australia for a show) started to eat. This angered Kapil, who was still finishing his drink.
I seriously hope the aviation minister takes a cue out of this incident and puts such people in their place, which is on a no-flying list. After all, this is our usual attitude when on a plane, right?
They should also start do not fly this aircraft list too in AIR INDIA.
My cousin and I were flying on Air India, Mumbai-Indore route.
What list should we start for this kind of response?
Your statement on Kapil Sharma is completely illegible. You fist say you dont know whcih airline he was on and then you say Air India.
Why should politicians, celebrities, public figures be a role model? They are just a regular person inside and out, like you and me. What do you expect to learn from them? The problem is we think we need one, choose our own role models while in reality there are none.
Isn't it possible to have a no-fly list at the airline level?


Kajira means slave-girl in Gorean. But when Tiffany Collins was kidnapped from Earth and brought to that orbital counter-world, she found herself on the throne of a mighty city as its "queen." Power seemingly was hers, and she did not realize that her true role was that of a slave puppet of a conniving woman agent of the monstrous Kurii.
But a chained slave she was destined to be, and in the course of the complex, visible and invisible, struggles between warriors and cities, between Kurii and Priest-Kings, she would play a pivotal role.
KAJIRA OF GOR is one of the most excitingly vivid novels John Norman has written. Here is all the color and terror of Gor. Here, between crown and fetters, between adulation and total submission, is the full-scale panorama of that wonderful, barbaric world as only Tarl Cabot knew it.
I en svunnen tid inträffade en våldsam klimatförändring. Somrarna varar i decennier och följs av vintrar långa som en livstid. Längst upp i Norden ligger muren av is, ständigt bevakad av brödraskapet som vigt sitt liv åt uppgiften att skydda de sju konungarikena mot vålnader, kyla och okända faror. Men kusliga händelser vid muren förebådar en framtid av oro och krig.
Robert Baratheon och Eddard Stark befriade en gång i tiden de sju konungarikena från den galne draklorden Aerys och det blev Robert som besteg järntronen medan Eddard drog sig tillbaka till sitt Vinterhed.
Efter en lång tid av fred samlar sig kung Roberts fiender både i Norden och i Södern. Hans närmaste rådgivare har dött under mystiska omständigheter och till och med hans egen drottning smider i hemlighet onda planer. Kung Robert ber Eddard Stark om hjälp och Eddard och hans familj dras obönhörligt in i maktspelet kring de sju konungarikena. Intrigerna och maktkampen vid hovet leder till ett regelrätt krig mellan olika ätter och deras lorder.
Men det största hotet mot kung Robert är den mördade draklordens två barn, en son och en dotter som nu har vuxit upp. De lever i exil och har fått en fristad hos hövdingen över Dothrakiens grässlätter. Med hjälp av hövdingen och hans fyrtiotusen krigare ska så småningom en ättling av drakens blod åter sitta på järntronen.
Kampen om järntronen är tidigare utgiven i två delar: I vargens tid 1997 och Kampen om järntronen 1998.
Prawdziwa wiedźma potrafi latać na miotle, rzucać czary i stworzyć właściwie z niczego całkowity chaos. Jedenastoletnia Akwila tego nie potrafi. Prawdziwa wiedźma nigdy świadomie nie wyszłaby ze swego ciała, zostawiając je puste. Akwili to się zdarza. A istnieje coś, co tylko czeka na poręczne ciało. Coś starożytnego, przerażającego i nieśmiertelnego. Jedyne, co jej teraz pozostaje — to walczyć i czym prędzej nauczyć się, jak być prawdziwą wiedźmą. Z niemałą pomocą arcywiedźmy Weatherwax oraz prawdziwie zadziwiającej panny Libelli.
"Karalių kova" – tai George'o R. R. Martino fantastinės epopėjos "Ledo ir ugnies giesmė" antroji knyga; Joje tęsiama autoriaus vaizduotėje gimusio pasaulio — Septynių karalysčių — istorija. Ilgamečių karalių Targarienų giminę nuvertęs ir Geležinį sostą užgrobęs karalius Robertas Barateonas miręs. Valdžios troškimas begalinis: sosto link nuožmiai stumiasi penki karaliai, paskui save palikdami kraujo, siaubingų paslapčių ir klastingų intrigų šleifą. Septynias karalystes niokoja nuo Roberto maišto laikų neregėtas karas, įtraukęs visas kilmingąsias šeimas; O toli Rytuose paskutinioji Targarienų giminės palikuonė Daneiris iššaukė šimtus metų pasaulyje neregėtą stebuklą — tris drakonus.
"Kardų audra" — tai trečioji George'o R. R. Martino istorinės fantastinės epopėjos "Ledo ir ugnies giesmė" knyga; Joje tęsiama autoriaus vaizduotės sukurto pasaulio — Septynių Karalysčių — istorija. Dėl Geležinio sosto ir valdžios prasideda pražūtingas Penkių Karalių karas, kuriame nugalėtojų nėra, o praradimai tiesiog siaubingi. Vesterosas nusiaubtas ir nuniokotas, žmonės išžudyti, net galingasis Vinterfelas sudegintas. Kiekvieno knygos veikėjo likimas pribloškia netikėtumais; Tik niekas negalvoja apie ateinančią žiemą, apie iš Šiaurės slenkančias Tamsos galias, kurios grasina praryti susiskaldžiusį kraštą ir jo gyventojus; Ir ką čia beras užauginusi savo drakonus Daneiris Targarien?
Set in the late 19th century — when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house — a resourceful group — and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap — a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.
An intelligent, bloodthirsty alien-especially bred for killing – is on the loose in ancient Rome, and Lycon, the great beast hunter, must oppose it in a savage duel to the death. Reissue.