[pp.int.general] Pirate Manifesto First Draft

[Andrew Norton]

Jens Seipenbusch wrote:
> Hi Carlos, hi international pirates,
>
> i briefly read the first Draft of the proposed manifesto and must say,
> that i disagree on many places.
> As i have written the preamble for the german party platform, i know,
> how difficult it is (even in your native language) to express thoughts
> about the information society and the changes in society due to
> globalization and such. What is written in the preamble of the draft is
> imho not suitable for our manifesto. I also disagree with the whole
> passage "about non-core issues".
> Regarding the politics of our core issues, i can only say, that for the
> german party we are conform with the politic points of the Uppsala
> declaration, so we might just refer to those (maybe in a more abstract way).
> Of course the german party has some more issues, but since they are
> probably the ones we wont agree upon anyways, it will not be useful to
> try to reach an agreement on those.
>
>   
The downside, as I see it, of the preamble is that it exemplifies "do as 
I say, not as I do".
I'm sure I'm not the only party officer around the world, that didn't 
even hear of the existence of this document, until after it had been 
released to the media. A day later in my case. HOW can we make any 
arguments for government transparency 
(http://int.piratenpartei.de/Pirate_Manifesto_parties_at_a_glance#Government_Transparency) 
if we can't even manage it between ourselves?

That, as I see it, is the major difference between the Uppsala 
declaration, and the PPI manifest;. throughout, the PPI manifesto has 
been transparent. It has been over a month of work through regular, OPEN 
meetings to which you had unconditional access to. The preamble was 
written at the meeting. I wrote it, and based the style on those of 
other documents. The point of a preamble is to be bold, to make a 
statement without specifics, and that statement is to establish the 
reason for this document. I think of them as speeches, and wrote 
accordingly.

Finally, you say there are issues. Are they in direction, or in 
severity. On a few issues, there were long discussions about the extent 
of some points. If you see 'reduce' and believe it should be 'abolish' 
or 'remove', remember that it's a commonality between parties, and that 
removal is total reduction. In order to get to removal, you have to go 
through reduction. There is also nothing stopping you as a party from 
going further. That was what some failed to understand. This is not 
setting a limit on you. This is just stating how far we all can go and 
ALL be together. It is not a restriction on how far your party can go 
separately. If you would prefer, think of the Pirate Parties as a Venn 
diagram. The bit in the middle where we all overlap, that's this 
document. That's the way to think about it, and that's the way to treat it.

Andrew
PPUS