[pp.int.general] What is democracy in a party

[Antonio Garcia]

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> Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 18:59:36 -0500
> From: ktetch at gmail.com
...
> In case you were not aware, there is NO CoA - they ALL resigned a few months
> ago.

Norton, get your facts together. I am one of the Spanish delegates to the Prague GA of PPI. I am well aware of what happened there, including the infringement of the PPI Statutes and the hilarious resolutions of the newly elected Court of Arbitration. The Swiss have been fooled by the Board into accepting the resignation of the CoA only, a move that suits the Board fine because it impedes the due process a few very rational complaints presented to it deserve. This way nothing gets done until the next GA, and that one will be desastrous (again) because everyone will be very pissed off cropping up frustration at the idiotic situation.

I personally presented a complaint involving infringement and manipulation of the Statutes, first in the processing of an alleged motion by PPAU... that turned out not to be a motion at all (as could have been expected, because what it was turned into was no competence of the General Assembly the way it was done), second in blatantly rewriting an article of the statutes in the sentence of the Court of Arbitration that did the trick of interpreting the meaning of the word "country" in the statutes with such fantasy as to gift Spain an unasked for second Gibraltar... all with the aim to give the Pirate Party of Catalonia undue access (no evidence of them being an official candidate could be found in the prior due paperwork nor in the proper places in the GA minutes) to full membership of PPI... opening a Pandora's Box that will be difficult to close allowing for many competing pirate parties in any one country... something we are already witnessing.


> The consequences are something you suffer only if you refuse to do
> something.

I've done all I could do on my own, as our former Board of PP Spain had no guts to complain, and I have only be stopped by dirty tricks and sheer incompetence of too many pirates. There is NO way any decent Court of Arbitration nor any decent Board could ignore the righteous and ineludible logic of that complaint. It is up to them to evaluate why they need the Catalan Pirate Party on board that badly that they risk jeopardising the whole Pirate Movement incrustating in its recent history such a manipulative behaviour... no honest pirate should accept to live with.

If they insist... PPI is DEAD, and PPEU... an abortion.

Sure they know what they are playing with.


> > But that being said... I see no way to actually label a non-EU General Assembly of PPI as responsible behaviour. It would force way too many people to incur in expensive travel costs. Something more sensible might be to establish a solidarity mechanism whereby all delegates have equal costs and the fee is established in such a way that those closer to the premises pay a surplus that can be used to subsidize the costs of those that have no alternative than to come from further away.
> >
>
> So forcing the same groups to consistently either pay more, or have the
> most limited participation is the better idea?

What part of "Something more sensible might be to establish a solidarity mechanism 
whereby all delegates have equal costs and the fee is established in 
such a way that those closer to the premises pay a surplus that can be 
used to subsidize the costs of those that have no alternative than to 
come from further away." have you not understood, Norton?

It clearly describes a mechanism whereby ALL pay the same amount for travel and lodging, so that those that live close to the premises pay more than only for their own costs, and those that come from further away are subsidized by these amounts... in such a way that we sum up the costs of EVERYBODY and divide by the number of official delegates. So delegates pay their fair share of the TOTAL COST, and not just their personal expenses. Location could then be chosen to minimize total cost... allowing for delegates from everywhere to be physically present.


> I think a large part of
> the problem is that it keeps being the same people time after time, and
> it's the same people, because the meetings are always the same, in
> Europe. It's PPI, not PP-EU. If it's expensive, don't go, try the remote
> delegate option, see how well that works for you. Here's a hint from
> past times - it doesn't. The people locally don't want to hear from
> people they feel are cheap and 'won't travel'. You're second class
> before you even start, because you're NOT THERE.

The fact that infrastructure for dealing with remote delegates is consistently THAT crappy... is not only the fault of the local organizers... it shows also a big lack of implication and involvement of those that are supposed to benefit from it.

If you keep on not caring about your needs in such kind of setups yourself, and expect everything to be done for you, even at the last minute... you deserve what you get.

PPI GAs and other international meetings such as those for PPEU... have been very crappily organized and very chaotically managed because of the mass dynamics present in most pirate parties that go for last-minute improvisations and anarchic development that needs far more time to get to the end of things than we will ever be able to have. A situation that suits some because they can postpone issues they do not want to handle to that part of the event that will never be reached... having everything there "simply" postponed.


> > Optimization would then be to try to keep total cost of travel and lodging as low as possible.
> >
> For who? the same people? Here's the point. Madness is doing the same
> things over and over and expecting a different result. We keep having
> meetings in Europe, getting europe-centric boards, who focus on Europe
> and ignore the rest, and then when it comes time for the next, it's back
> to Europe, because 'thats where most people are'. Well when you spend
> your time focusing on the European parties, then yeah, non-european
> parties aren't going to grow. Surprising that.

As you have not been aware of what I have said... total cost as low as possible... plus split even among all participants, without any difference on whether they live in town or come from the antipodes. Attendance cost EVEN TO ALL.


> > At some point organizing the PPI GA out of Europe could become efficient cost-wise, or interested parties could subsidize the difference between the cost-efficient solution and their preferred one... putting the money where their mouth is.
> >
> > Organizing a PPI GA out of Europe has not only to do with finding a suitable location... it has much more to do with people finding the funds to travel to wherever it is to be held.

Solidarity mechanisms should work among pirates. And rational behaviour too ;) .


> There's plenty of locations. It's just a will to do it.

There should be a will to behave cost-efficient to the benefit of the whole organization. If you show that it is cost-efficient to organize the event anywhere in the world... go for it. Rational cost efficiency.


> But your fixation on price is telling of one thing. You don't consider
> non-EU pirates to be as important. Because if you did, you'd be worried
> about them ALWAYS having to pay more, OR have to suffer remote
> delegation. So the question the PPI has to ask is, are non-EU members
> second class? If not, why are they treated as such?

You are ranting on based on a misunderstanding on your side, so I'll ignore this.


> > It can not be that deciders become only those that have money to travel around at will, considering the increased amount of international meetings being arranged lately. Meetings with little in the line of practical results, and very bad structure and timing, to add insult to injury, making thm less and less interesting for intelligent people to attend.
> >
>
> That describes every PPI meeting for the last 3 years (Belgium onwards)
> You think that's a good trend to continue?

Not at all. I want it to end. The minimum necessary international meetings should be planned far better to be far more effective and cost-efficient. And the Board and Court of Arbitration, if we are to have them... should be far more reliable AND accountable.

Otherwise, any decisive power will be withdrawn from those meetings and they will become mere occasions for travelling pirates to meet and have fun... where no binding decision is ever taken. Harmless meetings of whoever wants will be no problem.


> And as a closing note, before they claim 'noone else put in a bid',
> that's just lazyness on their behalf. One of the jobs of the board is to
> organise the meeting. Some have managed to pass off that job onto
> volunteers, to get a pirate group to take on the work in the form of a
> 'bid'. However, it's not the ONLY way the PPI GA location can be
> decided, and the meeting arranged. It's just the way the board decides
> to do it, because it's the least work for them.

Not doing a shit about checking if a proper remote delegation system is being set up for the occasion... is also the least work for potential remote delegates, so go look in a mirror before you blame anyone. 


> The end result is,
> they're doing the minimum work possible, and passing off responsibility
> to others. I'm sick of it. Others are too. It's time they got off their
> self-promoting arses and did the job they campaigned on doing. But then
> they can't do anything competently.

To be competent is not only the Boards problem, not the Court of Arbitrations problem... it is every pirates problem.

There are some nasty effects of mass dynamics at work here... pulling us towards an Idiocracy.

You are as much to blame as anybody else. Not too many seem to be aware of the facts.


> "The minutes of the meeting will be published before the next meeting
> and not later than two weeks after the meeting."
> (http://wiki.pp-international.net/PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure 6.1)
> The minutes for December 18 are not up yet, in contravention of that
> (It's not only been more than 2 weeks, but they had a meeting on the 3rd
> (which isn't listed even)

Yes, overall incompetence is being tolerated by a majority of the Assemblies and PPI General Assembly. Who is to blame? How can it be solved?

It is not easy to say when you have majorities that will not understand anyway... at that moment it might already be too late, as the majority does not want the solution.


> Of course, expect the rules to change so they are ok (because section 8
> says they can change the rules any time they want and make it
> immediately applicable - talk about self-serving!)

Please, understand, and stop behaving childishly.


> Maybe you're ok with this bunch of incompetent self-promoting fools but
> I'm not. I'm sorry if having a desire that the board do the job they're
> supposed to do, rather than busy swanning around pretending they're
> people with power.

I am not OK at all... but I am not the majority, and the majority is very difficult to convince.

So I have to rationally go along with whatever is really feasible... or withdraw and give up on pirates.

I choose to have the fight... but I have no means to keep it civilized if they do not want to restrict themselves to rational behaviour.


> Just look at the last meeting with minutes, from a month ago -
> http://wiki.pp-international.net/PPI_Board_Minutes_2012-12-04#3.1_-_Short_report_of_the_board_members
> shows lots of going to conferences and talking to media. Look further
> down. See a lack of actually getting IMPORTANT stuff done. Like the
> financial stuff from the last GA, or 'transfer of the HQ' whatever that
> means. This is stuff from APRIL not done, because it's not as important
> as traveling to a statutes meeting in Manchester....

Oh, yeah, I know, a lot of stupid excuses for not doing really anything else but the funny bits.

They have managed to block the threatening bits and they are sitting out the term having as many fun as possible in this tragedy.

Some may even seek reelection, and eventually get it. Most pirates behave very rationally. 


> For those that forgot, there's a huge thing in the Pirate Ethos about
> 'transparency'. With that goes accountability. The PPI has no
> accountability. it's board doesn't do what it's supposed to, focuses on
> stuff that isn't important and screws over half the membership so that
> those at the top have a better chance of staying on top.

Spare me the transparence bits. See-through does not equal understand-all, even if a majority thinks it might understand everything if it was able to see all.

What we need is a drastic build-up of personal confidence and awareness, people, pirates,l trusting themselves... so as to have a reasonable margin to be able to trust others.

Otherwise, no structures can be built an maintained, no responsibilities assigned, nothing planned either short or long term.

Transparence is a shitty thing when it enables your antagonists to know you better than you know yourself... because you consistently work towards your own automatic and unavoidable defeat... giving them all they need to counter your intended actions even before you deploy them.

Boy, must the other political parties like us. Where does the German Pirate Party actually stand in the polls? 4.5 (already heralded as not enough) and going down? It will need a miracle to counter such organised massive counter-propaganda... I bet it is not even aware that there is a strategy behind it.


> So it's time the board decides. Do they show some honesty, admit they've
> screwed up, and step down, so some competent people can get stuff done.
> OR
> Are they going to continue doing a Julia Schramm - publicly proclaiming
> the pirate philosophy, while at the same time ignoring it in action and
> deed for their own benefit.

They think most are too stupid to care... and they might be right on that one, seeing what they have been able to get away with this far.

Breaches of Statutes are not being processed... because they manoeuvred to avoid it (or were unable to see them, do not know what to label worst).  


> Those in the CoA already threw themselves into the firing line,
> resigning to save you from a lawsuit over your improper actions. There's
> no-one left for you to sacrifice.

They were sacrificed by the Board, trying to do some damage control towards some unknown interests.

Seems to have worked this far.


> And for the journalists on the list, because I do believe in the pirate
> philosophies of transparency and accountability, feel free to contact me
> to find out the story of why the CoA resigned en-masse months ago, and
> get my insight onto why the board refuses to hold elections to refill it
> (hint, the court is the only body that can investigate the board without
> an extensive leadtime to organise an extraordinary GA)

Send me the whole story as you think it is too, maybe I find some more useful facts in there.

> Andrew

Antonio.

PP-ES Board Member.