Chancellor Merkel’s Internet Group is a cynical if not laughable answer to the Pirate Party’s success.
The reader should be reminded that the center-right-bottom party CDU/CSU coalition set up ACTA, INDECT, Internet Data Retention and Zensursula, which is some kind of unethical Child Pornography Censorship, following closely in the footsteps of clerical child abuse censorship, for instance the Irish Church, whose 18 religious orders were fined for for Child Abuse and Censorship of it with $1.8 Billlion (Molloy 2009).
Those who believe that the CDU or SPD have any idea of the digitally networked landscape - let alone copyright and data protection issues - shouldn’t get themselves fooled by their million-euro PR campaigns. In reality, Theodor zu Guttenberg, one of the Christian Democrat’s shooting stars had been forced to give up his Ph.D. and step down for his own likings of copyright infringement - in his case the plagiarism of his judicial dissertationat the University Regensburg. Some may call such actions rotten, which they undoubtedly are - but rest assured that it’s only a glimpse at the power-abusing methods politicians - worldwide - use to forge themselves to power.
Merkel’s coalition partner, the FDP, that portraits themselves as a civil liberties force - which they are not, were punished with all severity required in the recent election of Saarland with scoring only 1.2% of total votes - that is less than invalid votes were counted. It’s a sorely needed and overdue lesson for their corruption-led style of politics, for instance taking money from the Movenpick restaurant group and then policing a tax break affecting that very same restaurant group.
Other self-proclaimed winners of the Saarland state elections, for instance the ex-communist Die Linke or The Greens have been given a lesson for their encapsulated way of policy making as well - in the form of a disappointingly low voter turn out. Actually on the 26th of May, 56.000 voters who did vote for a party in the last election chose not to vote this time, whereas the Pirateparty retrieved 8000 frustrated German voters back to the political landscape (Infratest Dimap 2012).
Civil liberties and democratic participation in a liquid form and to vote more often than every 4 or so years on a broader selection of topics; these are only a few of the many fortés of the Pirate Party that voters and activists think are attractive attributes.
Only the blind would think that the ruling Parties could imitate or copy the Pirate’s manifest of honesty, transparency and new form of citizens’ rights. The Pirates are every ruling politicians’ nightmare - they are the common geek, many with higher education in ICTs or systems analysis - surfaced as a political party.
Being a party in the fourth largest economy worldwide and being not excessively burdened by neither a communist nor a capitalist agenda - this broad international Pirate movement that even had a Pavillion at the 2009 Venice Biennale has every right and duty to give the malignant politics of our time the boot.
(Disclosure of conflicts of interests: The author is a Pirate. And proudly so.)
References:
Molloy, Cian. Catholic News Service. ”Irish religious orders agree to boost compensation for abuse victims”. Last modified June 4, 2009. http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0902564.htm.
Infratest Dimap. “Shift of non-voters in Saarland, March 2012”. Accessed March 27, 2012. http://wahlarchiv.tagesschau.de/wahlen/2012-03-25-LT-DE-SL/analyse-wanderung.shtml.
