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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>IMPORTANT MATTERS<br><br>Dear fellow brethren, as I have to admire the courage you have all shown<br>in keeping silent about the important matters that haunt our community in<br>the run up to next weekends PPI General Assembly in Kazan...<br><br>... I'll give it one last try before I feel myself obliged (my mental<br>sanity as a Pirate makes it as much as unavoidable) to FORK the whole<br>movement to make sure logic, ethic and true pirate spirit still has a<br>place where it can thrive.<br><br>When I attended the 2012 PPI General Assembly in Prague, I did so because<br>I had ideas and strategies I wanted to share with the broader internatio-<br>nal pirate community.<br><br>There was one known problem though, the bid of the Catalan Pirate Party to<br>become a full member of PPI the year before, and their stated ambitions to<br>have any obstacle that made it impossible then removed from the Statutes<br>of the PPI in Prague. So I remained silent about my ideas and strategies as<br>long as there was no sound conclusion from the international pirate commu-<br>nity on the matter that would tell me I had come to the right place, or<br>not.<br><br>As the Prague PPI GA was held a few weeks prior to two important local<br>elections in Germany, and of course the vote on the catalan amendments<br>would have to pass with a two-thirds majority, I envisaged a pacifying<br>strategy... that would keep irritation and fighting at a minimum. I convin-<br>ced my two fellow delegates of the fact that it would do the pirate move-<br>ment NO good if the GA became such an open fight that the numerously pre-<br>sent german press could paint an image of pirates... as they have been able<br>to do just before the Lower Saxony elections. So I suggested to avoid any<br>direct confrontation with our strayed Catalan brethren and even vote posi-<br>tive to their amendments in public (thank you for tweeting that priceless<br>picture, Slim) to pacify the GA, and instead to lobby the individual dele-<br>gates of the present pirate parties to convince them one by one of the fact<br>that opening the pandoras box of more than one pirate party per country<br>would be a very bad idea. I had to convince only 1/3 of them to have the<br>proposed amendments sacked.<br><br>I can not get rid of the idea that somebody else came up with a different<br>strategy to get rid of the embarassing amendments... to run out of time and<br>have their treatment reported to a future GA.<br><br>This created a situation where of course, by virtue of the lack of resolu-<br>tion on the matter... I kept lobbying, and I kept silent about any other<br>kind of contribution because I would not contribute anything to a communi-<br>ty that created us a second Gibraltar. As a lesser evil, I could accept to<br>have to wait with my ideas.<br><br>So the Prague GA of PPI was heading straight towards leaving all amendments<br>but the ones that had been tabled because they affected Board and CoA com-<br>position untreated... and I imagined that even when I was almost sure of<br>a victory for my strategy... the fact of postponement was only a waste of<br>time and not a defeat... and I accepted that outcome.<br><br>Alas, our Catalan brethren, seeing their ambitions thwarted, and Kenneth<br>almost crying because he was going to miss his most coveted birthday pre-<br>sent... resorted to blackmailing. When Thomas Gaul told them he regretted<br>to have to be seen as the bad boy because he had to end the GA without the<br>catalans having achieved their goals... Kenneth replied that... yeah, he<br>could be the bad boy too...<br><br>... and he really could, he could derail the PPI GA in such a lousy way<br>that the massively present german press would have something nice to write<br>about pirates just a month before two very important regional elections in<br>Germany.<br><br>I have to recognize, Thomas Gaul resisted all that could be deemed reasona-<br>ble, considering the risks.<br><br>But the demagogic and populistic Kenneth, seeing his birthday present va-<br>nish, called for a vote upon the full membership of the Catalan Pirate<br>Party to the PPI, and at some point Thomas had to find a way out.<br><br>It came when the remote delegates of the Australian Pirate Party, unable to<br>follow the incidents in real time only through the limited impressions that<br>went through the video stream... asked merely that the situation be clear-<br>ly explained to them. Somebody at the GA table choose to interpret this as<br>if the Aussies had submitted the motion the Catalans were desperately<br>asking for... as to be able to lower the tension and save the PPI GA for<br>the Germans.<br><br>Where no motion on the subject was possible, by Statutes, a call for clari-<br>fication was converted into an illegal motion.<br><br>So, a vote was organized. Something that could not have been anticipated in<br>any strategy... not the least because it should not be possible according<br>to the current PPI Statutes.<br><br>First point I want to make very clear: nowhere in the current Statutes of<br>the PPI does it allow for any membership decision to be taken as a result<br>of a simple vote of the GA. There are procedures to be followed to become a<br>member of PPI... you present a candidacy following strict formal and con-<br>tent rules at least four weeks ahead of the GA, AND all member parties get<br>that information at least two weeks before the GA so that they can delibe-<br>rate on what their vote towards every candidate should be. Hell, we had a<br>CoA ruling as to whether the candidates that had submitted their paperwork<br>after the deadline were to be pardoned that slight error, and we decided<br>to have them wait one year. The Catalans had not submitted any candidacy<br>papers, as by their own strategy they needed to have the Statutes changed<br>first to allow for more than one full member party per country before they<br>should even try.<br><br>No candidate, no four week prior submittal of papers, no notice to the<br>other members that they had that candidature to consider, no presentation<br>when all candidates presented themselves... no nothing. They had had an<br>other strategy that had been thwarted... and their improvisation on the<br>situation to get what they wanted... had no chance at all to fit within the<br>framework of the existing rules everybody had to abide by.<br><br>The MOTION and VOTE... were illegal and completely void... to begin with.<br><br>Anyone could have them annulled in court, by the simplest of requests.<br><br>But I choose not to do so, in order not to ruin the GA for the Germans...<br>because it could as well be done a week later, without the pesky press as<br>a witness and everybodies guts hostage to the situation.<br><br>Something else I decided on the fly, as we were improvising now, was to<br>keep calm and not deviate from the plan I had been heralding for the votes<br>of the amendments. After two days of telling everyone we would vote green<br>to the amendments to maintain peace as possible in Spain and at the GA, I<br>figured out nobody would understand a red vote on our part, even if for<br>something different as a motion on the core matter of the issue... so I<br>decided to vote green. The motion was VOID anyway and results would be<br>annulled, so I choose not to create confusion and give all the delegates<br>what they were expecting, so that they could proceed the way they had al-<br>ready made up their minds instead of having to improvise upon unexpected<br>conditions at the last minute (funny, the moment in the stream where one<br>delegate tries to pull down the hand with a green card of an other delegate<br>of probably the same party).<br><br>The vote, that was invalid because the supposed motion was illegal... suc-<br>cumbed to the populist approach of the Catalans that had staged a very<br>infantilizing and circuslike presentation by verbally skilled demagogue<br>Kenneth...<br><br>... and resulted in a SIMPLE MAYORITY. If I recall from mind correctly...<br>8 in favour, 5 against, 5 abstentions. Alas, Statutes demand a 2/3 majori-<br>ty of ALL VOTES CAST.<br><br>Gregory Engels, the Überburocrat, has tried to argue with me that 8 is 2/3<br>of 13, even if barely...NOT. Others have argued that if I had explained<br>things better their vote would not have been an abstention...<br><br>... but the fact is that 8 is NOT 2/3 of 18, so I have to thank them for<br>their abstentions as much as I would have thanked them for their NO vote.<br><br>Definitely... not even by the results of that vote, had its casting been<br>deemed valid which it is definitely NOT, the Catalans achieved the acqui-<br>sition of full membership status.<br><br>But soit, the GA ended without further trouble for our German brethren...<br><br>... and the oddyssey before the PPI Court of Arbitration began.<br><br>First, I left it to the initiative of some other Pirate Party to file a<br>complaint. Anyones would do, as the situation was crystal clear. Better to<br>avoid the Civil War at home by being the ones with the initiative if it<br>could be avoided. <br><br>The UK PP gave it a try... and the Court of Arbitration, invested with not<br>logic but surreal powers... came with a resolution that gifted Spain of a<br>second Gibraltar by doing some wishful thinking interpretation of the<br>meaning of the term "country" in our current PPI Statutes. Later develop-<br>ments show that in terms of disambiguation almost all pirates prefer the<br>term "souvereign state".<br><br>But the Court decision served its purpose (even if it rewrote the PPI Sta-<br>tutes to be able to circumvent the lack of discrete decision powers of the<br>GA in granting full membership to anyone out of the blue, as clearly shown<br>by the CoA ruling on candidate members at the GA itself) and PP-CAT got<br>its ill-gotten full member status idioticratically enshrined by the CoA<br>of PPI.<br><br>I could not get the backing of the Board of PP-ES to file a complaint in<br>the name of the Party, because they "wanted no troubles". They preferred<br>the stick of CoA up their arses.<br><br>So I had to fall back to a provision of the provisionally enforced rules<br>of procedure of the PPI Court of Arbitration that stated that anyone<br>could file an anonymous complaint in matters where infringement to the<br>PPI Statutes was involved. As this was the case regarding the motion to<br>vote the full membership of PP-CAT through a "spontaneous" motion, side-<br>tracking normal informed procedure, and also because of the twisting of<br>the wording of the statutes articles in the sentence of the CoA to grant<br>the GA more discretionary powers regarding membership matters than she<br>really has.<br><br>Again our Überchief Gregory Engels tried to argue that PP-CAT did not have<br>to follow the only available standard procedure (submit candidature pa-<br>pers on a four week deadline before GA, all parties informed of the can-<br>didature two weeks in advance of the GA. Sadly... our Statutes do not<br>mention the existence of any other way to obtain any membership status,<br>be it an brand new membership or a membership status change.<br><br>So I filed my anonymous complaint argumented in such a way that there was<br>no legal way to escape the pretended outcome. No argument could derail<br>my reasoning.<br><br>And then, in a shrewd move, our Überchief took advantage of a badly worded<br>complaint of the Swiss Pirate Party threathening to sue PPI... to offer<br>the head of all the members of the CoA on a silver platter as a compromise<br>and be sued in hell if necessary otherwise, and the Swiss took the bait.<br><br>So, without functioning Court of Arbitration... my invincible complaint<br>could not be processed... and remains queued until the General Assembly<br>herself in Kazan, or the Court of Arbitration elected by it, can resume<br>working on the pending cases.<br><br>There is one glitch though... as my complaint is crucial on deciding<br>whether the Catalan Pirate Party has voting rights in the PPI Kazan<br>General Assembly, and the votes of the Catalan Pirate Party can be<br>decisive for any voting done... whether they have the right to vote or<br>not is the FIRST issue the PPI GA in Kazan will have to take a decision<br>about. There is no escaping it. Just in the same way as the CoA had to<br>decide in Prague about whether those candidates that submitted their<br>candidature after the deadline could be allowed in anyway and influence<br>the votes from that moment on, or not.<br><br>Some have been speculating about my ability to defend my pretensions, as<br>when saying that my pirate party, PP-ES, has not submitted any amendments<br>to the PPI Statutes pursuing that goal, or that I have not nor will be<br>elected to be a delegate and thus I will have been denied any right to<br>a voice to have my concerns reach the PPI GA... and what can not reach<br>through the bureaucracy our Überchief controls... simply does not exist.<br><br>I believe that I am a pirate, and that nothing more should be needed to<br>have the oportunity to present my griefs to the General Assembly on such<br>sensible matters.<br><br>For, if we do not respect logic, do not respect ethic, do not respect<br>observance of our own Statutes and internal rules...<br><br>... what good is it to call ourselves Pirates and pretend to not be<br>politics as usual?<br><br>Please excuse me if I have bothered you needlessly, I am working for a<br>better pirate future, against all conceivable odds, either from foes but<br>also from should-be friends, and I have little alternative left to make<br>sure that what I have to say is heard and understood by enough pirates.<br><br>I will not be present in Kazan. Even if I received one very generous offer<br>to have all my expenses funded, my administrative situation in Belgium,<br>together with the fact that my spanish id card and passport are expired,<br>make it extremely hard and costly to obtain the needed russian visa that<br>is required to enter the country.<br><br>And I already wasted 1/3 of my total wealth being present in Prague, it<br>is not reasonable to spend money, mine or otherwise, to gamble on the<br>usefulness of whatever could be decided in Kazan.<br><br>I will decide on what to do further when the results from Kazan reach me.<br><br><br>Antonio García<br>still member of the Spanish Pirate Party<br>still Member of the Board of the Spanish Pirate Party.<br> </div></body>
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