IN THE NAME OF THE FREEDOM! FROM SWEDEN A SPARK OF HOPE

28/01/2006 Written by divine shadow

A new year brings a fresh start. On the first of Jan­u­ary 2006 Swedish press has announced, with a large echo on the Inter­net, that a new party is born: the pirate party (pirat­par­tiet in Swedish). Maybe the time is arrived for those restric­tive and oppres­sive laws ori­ented against socially innocu­ous activ­i­ties, like things’ shar­ing on the Inter­net, to demo­c­ra­t­i­cally face the increas­ing dis­agree­ment of demo­c­ra­tic nations’ citizens. A new year brings a fresh start. On the first of Jan­u­ary 2006 Swedish press has announced, with a large echo on the Inter­net, that a new party is born: the pirate party (pirat­par­tiet in Swedish). Maybe the time is arrived for those restric­tive and oppres­sive laws ori­ented against socially innocu­ous activ­i­ties, like things’ shar­ing on the Inter­net, to demo­c­ra­t­i­cally face the increas­ing dis­agree­ment of demo­c­ra­tic nations’ citizens.

Some Swedish cit­i­zens have decided to express their dis­sent in the most clas­si­cal demo­c­ra­tic way: the cre­ation of a polit­i­cal party. They aspire to obtain the crit­i­cal num­ber of votes nec­es­sary to be heard by the Par­lia­ment, namely 255.000 votes in the next fall elections!

The name, Pirate Party, is colour­ful and its 4000 found­ing mem­bers declare their dis­ap­proval for a Gov­ern­ment that treats them like a pub­lic enemy, like crim­i­nal or ter­ror­ists, just because they share file on the Inter­net, even if they do it with­out mak­ing any profit.

Inside its man­i­festo (https://​pirat​par​tiet​.se/, for the time being only avail­able in Swedish), the new Party declares that it wants to fight a sys­tem that starves out the devel­op­ing coun­tries in order to make First World Coun­tries to con­tinue in their politic of not shar­ing their knowl­edge in the name of the intel­lec­tual property.

The mes­sage of this lib­erty defend­ers’ group is directed to the multi­na­tional and trans-​national cor­po­ra­tions and indus­tries, which work, like the Mafia rack­ets, to absorb the devel­op­ing coun­tries resources for the ben­e­fit of few indus­trial enti­ties and their few lead­ers, power and money thirsty men who con­sider them­selves above the law and vio­late, scot-​free, cit­i­zens’ free­dom and pri­vacy, with the con­nivance of polit­i­cal lobbies.

The Pirate Party declares it will do every­thing in its capac­ity to repeal those laws that limit the shar­ing of knowl­edge and it will fight to the death against national and Euro­pean Community’s laws ori­ented towards the pop­u­la­tion con­trol (data reten­tion): the Ital­ian Pisanu’s Decree or the Amer­i­can Patriot Act, which allows the indis­crim­i­nate inter­cep­tion of “sus­pect” citizens.

Some years ago, this could be a funny ini­tia­tive, but, as things stand now, while we see our lib­er­ties van­ish­ing day by day, we would pon­der upon it. The protest of the Pirate Party deserves atten­tion and approval, even in case they will not obtain the crit­i­cal num­ber of votes.

Hop­ing that it isn’t just one of the last flashes in the pan of a democ­racy that„ even if is still free, is instead des­tined to look at the world behind the bars of a jail, while it turns into the path of a new, global, dictatorship.