Fullbore Friday

A nation without allies. Poor, struggling between the progressive West and the soul crushing oppression of the East.

As its friendly but hapless neighbors to the west dither, the beast from the east consumes its crubling southeastern borders.

Outnumbered, yet defiant. Committed, yet lacking resources.

Some times, all you have is truth. Even a painful truth that you wish to leave behind. To clear the pain, what is better than fresh air and light? When that truth is also seen as a weapon against the Eastern beast ... then even better.

Those who remember the Cold War will understand why this broke above the ambient noise for FbF.

Doing the right thing is ususally difficult - even more so when it angers your enemy.

BZ to Ukraine on the ballsy move.

On April 9, 2015, The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament) approved a government bill No. 2540 opening up access to the archives of repressive bodies of the Soviet Union totalitarian regime of 1917-1991.
Materials will be published not only on the requests of concerned citizens, but the responsibilities of the Institute of National Remembrance will include their systematic publication and promotion.
In the Article 7 of bill No. 2540 is said that access to Archival Information of repressive bodies is provided by:
- providing for everyone concerned the data carrier to review the archival information or its copy;
- access to a digital copy of the archive information;
- publication of the information on the official website of the organizer of a digital archival information and the copy of the archived information;
- making archival references, excerpts from documents;
- publication, exhibition and other forms of popularization repressive bodies’ archival information.

The law also prevents the ability to hide information:

Law on Personal Data Protection does not apply to information from the archives (Art. 1.3)

The assignment of the repressive bodies’ archival information to classified information is prohibited; (Art. 5.4 )

From Article 8:
Access to information can’t be limited in accordance with the laws and international treaties of Ukraine.

It can not be limited the access to repressive bodies’ archived information, which contain secrecy stamps not required by law of Ukraine (for example Soviet stamps “Secret” and “Top Secret”)

It looks like they are going to benchmark what the Germans did with the old GDR files.

Russia will not like this - not at all. The Ukrainians know this, but don't care. This is a twofer for them; helps them break from their past particiaption in evil, and upsets the Russians.

Good all the way around. The dog's bollocks of affordable PSYOPS; Salamander approved.

Maybe they'll get a good movie out of it.




Hat tip JT.