Nations: Ministry: LadoniaNations: Ministry: Ladonia
MINISTRY FILE: LHST-B
FILLETED: 29.01.06
CLEARED FOR: PUB/17
The Ministry of Undisclosable Purpose is part of the government of the Remony of Ladonia. In order to understand the work of the Ministry, it is vital to understand the history of the nation that we serve.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
John W. Gardner (1912 - )
History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we made today.
Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)
Nimis: 'too much'
Artist Lars Vilks stands on topOn a secluded spot on the coast of the Scandanavian peninsula stand two scupltures by artist Lars Vilks. Nimis, Latin for too much, is 75 tonnes of driftwood built into a towering, sprawling scaffold. Arx is made of stone, and is described as an unreadable book, the pages of which cannot be turned.
For two years they graced the lives of only the birds and the hedgehogs, and silently rebuked the foolishness of those empiricists who once wondered if something unobserved would continue to exist. One may imagine too military experts in the United States of America pouring over huge satellite photograps of this natural enclave, quietly asking themselves if Nimis was natural, or if it was art, and never realising the true philosophical complexity of these questions in their anxiety that it might be another machine to launch death.
Arx: the unreadable bookBut it was a force far more destructive than American cruise missiles which threatened Lars' work. It was the local council, who demanded the destruction of what they had previously been ignorant of, and were clearly still ignorant of. For years our artist hero fought legal cases in defence of his work, and in doing so defending also human freedom, and sanity.
Of the forces in this war, special mention must go to the Gyllenstiernska Krapperup Foundation, a satirical organisation highlighting the hypocrisy of government bodies nominally formed to promote of art and culture by pretending to be one. When they discovered a third sculpture, Omphalos, they reported it to the police, and in a protacted public theatre of the absurd performance which toured the Swedish courts, demanded the destruction of all three sculptures.
Map showing position of Ladonia on the Scandanavian
peninsula and internal georgraphy of Ladonia
Note the flag: a green cross on a green backgroundLars' found the only adequate human response. In 1996, he seceded the square kilometre of land on which his sculptures stood from the state, announced it to be the independent country of Ladonia, and declared war on Sweden.
He created a website for the new nation, which can now be found at www.ladonia.net: and though no-one lives in Ladonia (as the founder puts it himself, all her citizens are nomads), it soon became clear that he was not the only person seeking liberty, and people have sought Ladonian citizenship from all over the world. A census of the population in October of 2005 put the population at 11,800. Ladonia has citizens in 113 countries, including the US and Iraq, India and Pakistan, China and Japan, and Israel and Palestine.
Ladonian government: Royal family (top left)
President Kiki Hankell (bottom left)
Vice President Daniel Jimenez (bottom centre)
Minister of Art and Jump performing his duties (right)Ladonia is a Republican Monarchy, or Remony, and the head of state is simultaneously Queen Ywonne I Jarl, and President President Kicki Hankell. Day to day government is carried out by a council of 30 or so ministers, including such officers as the Minister of Unnumbered Things, the Minister of Art and Jump, and the Minister of Mythological Beasts. Lars' himself acts as Secretary of State.
Secretary of State and Ladonian founder Lars Vilks surveys his homeland
Ladonian currency: the OrtugThe Ladonian flag features a green cross against an identical green background, and though this appears to many simply as a green rectangle, true Ladonians are thought capable of dicerning the cross. While this design is still considered the spiritual or true flag, Ladonia also has a flag which makes life a little easier for foreigners, picking the cross out with a thin white border. The green, incidentally, represents a mixture of the blue and yellow of the Swedish flag, which sounds like a tribute until you hear it described as the colour of the Swedish flag when boiled.
The national anthem of Ladonia is performed by flinging a stone into water, and the country has its own national time zone, which is three minutes behind the time across the border in Sweden. Thus, as the motto has it, Ladonia gives you three minutes more.
My Ladonian passportI became a citizen of Ladonia on the 20th of December 2005, and proposed the formation of the Ministry of Undisclosable Purpose. I was elected to the Ladonian cabinet three days later on the 23rd. Ladonia became the first nation to formally recognise the sovereignty of Mania on the 28th of January 2006, and Lars Vilks himself is the Ladonian ambassador to Cxitie.
Certificate of Doctor Manny Neira PhD (hc)For Ladonia's national alliance and friendship, Lars Vilks was awarded the Manic civil honour the Friend of Mania. In a very kind reciprocal gesture, on 9 April 2006 the University of Ladonia awarded me a Honorary Doctorate, for my work on micronationalism the contribution it made to the case for Ladonian independence.
Long live Ladonia!
Manny Neira
Minister of Undisclosable Purpose