[pp.int.general] Germany Arrests Paul Watson

Wed May 16 03:01:45 CEST 2012

I was under the impression that the Pirate Ideology was to protect  
civil liberties online and off. This includes unfair trials and  
extradition in my opinion – this is not really an environmental issue,  
but a consideration of whether this is "right". I don't think Travis  
was expecting Pirate Parties to run off and form policy on these sorts  
of things, but individual Pirates may have an interest in this.

Pirates come from all sorts of other movements. Anonymous, Occupy,  
Catalan Separatist, LGBT rights, and I'm sure many former Greens Party  
supporters. To disregard things as being "not Pirate issues" would be  
like telling Richard Stallman that no one is interested in the FSF –  
some Pirates are!

--
Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer
Pirate Party Australia
Pirate Parties International Court of Arbitration
W: www.olbrychtpalmer.net
T: @OlbrychtPalmer

On 16/05/2012, at 8:55 AM, Marko Mitrovic wrote:

> I'm with Gareth here.
>
> This Watson guy is total nutjob.
>
> On May 15, 2012 11:38 PM, "Gareth Nelson" <gareth at garethnelson.com>  
> wrote:
> 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.
> >
> >
> > ____________________________________________________
> > Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> > pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> > http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
> >
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/attachments/20120516/4fe0209d/attachment-0001.html>