[pp.int.general] Germany Arrests Paul Watson

Tue May 15 23:38:40 CEST 2012

Someone else may not step up and say it so I will.

I'm not a party leader or official of any of the pirate parties, just
a regular member of the UK Pirate Party who should probably be more
active.

With that out of the way, i'd like to condemn your view here very
strongly in public.

First and most important - pirate politics are about civil liberties
with particular attention to information freedom issues evolving out
of the over-the-top enforcement of an increasingly burdensome
copyright law that holds back technological development and culture.

Environmental issues are important of course and there is some overlap
(for example, holding back eBooks and downloadable movies and software
with stupid DRM measures or requiring multiple physical copies of a
particular copyrighted work is bad for the environment when it means
producing more physical optical discs and so on, alongside the general
wasted resources - why burn up fossil fuels delivering physical DVDs
and Blu Rays etc)

Essentially, it's a huge stretch to say that environmental issues are
part of our civil liberties or anything like a core part of pirate
ideology, even though I imagine most pirates will have fairly green
views due to simple intelligence and foresight or the widespread
anti-corporate bent amongst some of our brothers and sisters. (By the
way, this is one of our strengths - most pirate politics is neither
left or right and can work within both contexts as simple defence of
free market and libertarian principles as applied to copyright laws
and data privacy or as a defence against the perceived unjust power of
corporations to control our culture and government and we have a mix
of supporters from across the political spectrum who have all managed
to agree on our core and rational ideals of freedom and our interest
in preserving and protecting our culture).

One issue that really is a civil rights issue that comes to mind is
drug prohibition and cannabis legalisation in particular. While I
myself personally consider the use of recreational drugs to be a
stupid idea for the most part, I take the libertarian view that people
have the right to do as they please with their own body. But I still
opposed the proposal a while back to make the legalisation of cannabis
part of PPUK's formal platform despite the obvious philosophical
compatibility.

My reason for opposing the cannabis proposal directly leads into the
second reason why I oppose your views here. As drug legalisation is
both a controversial issue and is not part of our core important
agenda, it would be unwise to turn off potential supporters by
formally supporting it. I believe the best policy for pirate parties
in representative democracies is for candidates to look to the party
only for core pirate ideals and to local voters (and thus, hopefully
future constituents) for what issues matter to actual citizens.

As another personal example, I am an autism rights activist (not so
active these days, but a quick google will give you plenty of info on
my past) and have spoken out many times against the practice of using
autism as a "get out of jail free card", as I believe that to have
rights in society we must also abide by our responsibilities. If
autism grants immunity from criminal law on the theory that autistics
are somehow incapable of being law-abiding citizens then autistics can
not expect to have full freedoms either.

So when I was first looking into joining PPUK and heard that the party
was considering officially condoning support for the "free gary
mckinnon" nonsense I very nearly did not sign up - I can not in good
conscience lend my support (even indirectly) to any cause that could
risk impairing my freedom and human rights and have repeatedly held to
my conviction that Gary McKinnon should be treated the same as any
other citizen charged with the same crimes he was charged with.
Otherwise, if autistics are legally exempt from prosecution for
cybercrime offenses then the most rational thing to do would be to
prohibit internet access to autistics as we will be judged incapable
of understanding and abiding by the law in this area.

Only after PPUK dropped the support for the Free Gary campaign could I
lend my support. There are many many other potential issues such as
this which could turn away much-needed allies. We will never know if
for example the above issue turned away another potential strong ally
with much to offer simply due to short-sightedness. Some people would
not have bothered to express their concerns as I did and would see a
cause they strongly disagree with and never look at the party a second
time.

As our movement is already considered fringe by most and is only
recently starting to make strides such as the recent electoral
successes in Germany it is very unwise to turn off potential allies by
adding issues which they may not agree with like this.

A review of Paul Watson's activities show him to be essentially an
animal rights extremist (not animal welfare, animal rights - the
latter being far far more controversial and including other extremists
such as PETA). These are the type who consider meat eaters to be
literal murderers and respond with massive over-reaction, sometimes
resorting to outright murder of their fellow man. I for one consider
such people traitors to the species but that is my opinion and mine
along and I would never expect a pirate party to officially condemn
them as that is not the appropriate place to fight this battle.

Paul Watson has been involved with some of the following, which at the
very least you can see could be turn-offs to otherwise potential
allies and friends:

Assault of a police officer
Anti-immigration politics
Far too many marine sabotage incidents to list - again, this is simple
terrorism and I would argue comes close to literal piracy in the
original meaning of the term (attacking people on the sea), absolutely
not the mental association we want people to have in the media
Various charges of attempted murder

This man does not even deny being a terrorist: "There's nothing wrong
with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the
history."

With regard to the most recent case, what i've been able to find
myself so far shows that there are conflicting stories and some
possible video evidence showing his innocence, and therefore this most
recent case may be one of undeserved charges and the associated
injustice. That still does not mean any of us should openly support
this man and his cause, whether you think it noble or not, is still
extremely controversial and not related to core pirate ideals.

Having said all the above, I urge you to in future keep your personal
support of this man and his cause seperate from your work with any
pirate party or PPI, the negative PR can only harm our cause. I hope
you can find the maturity to realise that your other ideals and causes
need not be linked to pirate politics and doing so may in many cases
cause more harm than good. I appreciate your stating that this is not
an official viewpoint of your party, but that matters little to the
media circus and to copyright maximalists who would love to associate
our movement with criminality and terrorism for cheap character
assassination.

Politics is sometimes a dirty game, our opponents will use any "dirt"
they can to compete, so we should not fuel them.

Although this all may come across as an attack, I offer the above only
in the interest of helping one cause that we obviously do both share -
that of pirate politics.

Best Wishes
Gareth Nelson

---
“Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
Printcrime by Cory Doctrow

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Travis McCrea <me at travismccrea.com> wrote:
> Okay, I know that many of you may have problems with Paul Watson and his organization, but I have spoke out before about how similar our causes are. We are both fighting the same battle in different arenas, as far as I am concerned. Paul Watson was recently arrested for something he was accused of doing years and years ago.
>
> Right now Germany is preparing to extradite him unless the courts block it.
>
> https://my.seashepherd.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=572&srctid=1&erid=3711258 here is the email plea, I never email this list about non-pirate related topics, and I find it annoying when other people do. However, this is important and as I said, I do view this as a pirate issue. Without an environment we cannot live, which seems to me like a violation of our civil liberties.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Travis McCrea
> Deputy Leader, Pirate Party of Canada
> Chief Administrative Officer, Pirate Parties International
> Captain, United States Pirate Party (PNC)
> Member, Washington State Pirate Party
>
> Canada: 1(778)709-4859
> US: 1(206)552-8728
>
> Twitter: @TeamColtra
> Facebook: fb.me/teamcoltra
> Blog: http://travismccrea.com
>
> The views expressed in this email represent my own personal values and not the values of the Pirate Party, the Pirate Ideology, or any of my associations.
>
>
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>