the Key to the Door.

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Thursday December 30, 2004 13:43

by mac d

2004-1984 = 20

:2005
-1984
=21 you get the key to the door now.

Lord Falconer, the minister in charge of freedom of information, emphasises that the act is not solely for the media and researchers to prise secrets out of Downing Street but will give ordinary members of the public a greater chance to get information from the public sector.

But many are sceptical that officials' secretive habits, and this government's reliance on spin and control, will melt away.

Whitehall has taken a long time to get to this position. A freedom of information act was first promised by Labour in 1974, but nothing happened. The Blair government eventually passed the act in 2000, then delayed its introduction for five years.

More than 50 other countries have passed such legislation before now, the first being Sweden in 1766.

Freedom of information will be slow and fraught with difficulties after such a long and entrenched culture of secrecy which brought us ignorance and the darkness and extended evil of gulible men who thought they knew.

Freedom of information is about Liberty.
Liberty is about Freedom of Information.

We in the movements say a lot that "information wants to be free" we prefer that to "information is power".

which is why we oppose many notions of copyright,
patenting and so on.

By now you ought be familiar with this.

We hope you also heard in popular music of the young generation the phrase "there are no secrets".

We hope you proceed through the doors and gates which were always really open though guarded to a better world.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi/story/0,9061,1380722,00.html

This final implementation of the British Act may be seen by young Europeans in tandem with the decision on the 23rd of December by the constitutional experts to return the Archives of Salamanca in Spain to the Catalan authorities. The archives covered the interrogations et cetera of the period of history known as the Spanish civil war during the darkness of Europe.

Bring your light through the door please.
We hold these needs to be self-evident.

save preference

Comments (4 of 4)

tie in from Irish Independent on the Salamanca archive.

Fri Dec 31, 2004 11:43

People always seem to get very upset about the idea of how their grandparents went about winning or losing in the darkness, they do their best to keep it local, as if Ireland really was seperated from Europe during the Emergency as we termed 1939-1945 and had no experience at all, apart from a few Irish airmen of Yeatsian poetry, a few smuggled scientists of DeValera, and nice camp in the Curragh.
That way people think they keep things "safe". But thats not really the way at all in a land and nation or any land or any nation where the majority of people support football teams who's best players are foreigners and (ahem) dark of skin. We don't need barricades anymore.

from the Independent's correspondent in Madrid Elizabeth Nash:-

" A TUG of war over secret police files from the Spanish civil war has re-ignited the hostilities that split the nation regionally and politically nearly 70 years ago - with barricades included.

Spain's socialist government gave the green light this week to return to Catalonia files on Catalan anarchists, republicans, socialists and Freemasons who opposed Franco's forces between 1936 and 1939. The police files, reports on hundreds of thousands targeted for repression, were removed to Franco's military headquarters in the Castilian city of Salamanca in 1940, a year after his victory over Spain's republic.

The conservative mayor of Salamanca, Julian Lanzarote, insists, however, "not one document is leaving the city, whatever anyone says".

Yesterday the bemused folk of Salamanca, a deeply conservative city in a region that staunchly supported Franco's forces, awoke to find the handsome old military library that houses the archive surrounded by barricades, with the street closed to vehicles at both ends."

[[[[ perhaps a football league of them versus them would be too agressive, maybe better a ping pong tournament ]]]]
read all @ link

updates on the antichrist Tony Blair

by pushing you through that door

Fri Feb 25, 2005 21:44

Tony Blair (the anitchrist) reneged the FOI bill (of course) and most people who have asked for information under the new act have found their attempts blocked.
Tony today is backpeddling on his "lock up anyone who says I'm the antichrist" terror laws especially if they're a devout muslim or smellt a rat when Osama came up.
:-
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&sid=a3xclfjYfsJo&refer=uk
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4178629
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/02/24/dl2403.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/02/24/ixnewstop.html

only a week ago the antichrist said he wouldn't be so arrogant in future, but with his support slipping steadily to the Liberals, Conservatives, SNP,, SF, DUP, OUP, Plaid Cymru and BNP (in order of weight)
he's now decided to woo minimum wage voters-
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a1f33f72-8760-11d9-84f3-00000e2511c8.html

you'll remember (please) they were one of the first lobbies he shafted.
along with the Forestry brigade, the anti road campaigners, the south london poor, the biotech campaigners, the civil rights campaigners, the north england poor, the scottish, (remember Dewey doing that John Smithy???) the aristocracy, the royal family (not people enough) the hot countries, the cold countries, the american people (who's coup you think it was?) and of course the UN.

get him out = wake up = cop on.

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.press.release.page&obj_id=120011

the antichrist divided you all to conquer you all.

Today's London Independent led with "publish and be damned"

by -

Fri Mar 25, 2005 21:16

yesterday's Guaridan focussed on the mess left behind by a "handful" of foreign and commonwealth office secret intelligence service agents and analysts who led the USA and UK into a war they can't prosecute.

Now AN independent watchdog is deciding whether ministers are entitled to keep secret the Attorney General’s (lord Goldsmith's) war advice.

It is an open secret that he adviced the war was and is and always would be _illegal_.

It is also an open secret that a "handful" of SIS employees and agents and types lifted a few files off the internet and handed them to "all the facts" Tony Blair, and he went and helped Bush invade Babalon. They have jointly occupied the Babalon square of the global chess board for over two years now. It's a very sticky place to be. Look what it did to Saddam. Look what it's doing to world peace and stability. Look at what it's done to the price of Oil and Smack. Look at what it's doing to kids.

Oh well some people never learn.
which is why they're sent mad.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=623445
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=623446
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=623450
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=318502005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4381379.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4381771.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1445496,00.html

odd. I read this article & see that the Irish Independent 31/12/04 thought "salamanca" was done.

by iosaf

Thu Jan 19, 2006 20:52

At the end of the Spanish civil war, the archives of the Catalan government (generalitat) were removed by the victors and housed in Salamanca. Since the transition to democracy, the Catalans have asked for the return of their property. People often do that after wars. Thats coz in wars some people go robbing. Strange to think, but war is often a very very dirty business. The people of Salamanca led by the mayor though objected in the strongest "PP" terms. They are a bastion of the right wing and since 31/12/04 have done their best to impede the restoration of the archives to their rightful custodians arguing that "the union of Spain would be challanged". Ah! its the anti-Catalanism again isn't it.
The documents weigh many tonnes and need a lot of very big truck containers to move, the sort of containers you normally associate with smothered asian illegal migrants. Last night the final, "ultimate" deadline came. The ministry of culture of the Spanish state went to Salamanca where the archive building has been surrounded in road works, excavated roads, and a security cage ever since the Spanish right in the form of local mayor Julian Lanzarote got wind of the return. A predecessor of his did actually manage to block an earlier return in the late 20th century.

The deal is presently this :-
The ministry of culture will transport these containers of files on Catalan anarchists, republicans, socialists and Freemasons who opposed Franco's forces between 1936 and 1939 back to our city. (you all know where I live).

But Julian Lanzarote who as a Spanish state city mayor may order local police to act mobilised them to "protect" the archive from theft. The result was the order by the Ministry of Culture for "national spanish police" back-up.

The documents will (as part of a Spanish state unity game) pass through Madrid on their roundabout way to Barcelona.

some of the stolen property is coming home.

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Comments (4 of 4)