Introducing The Strangest Party In Politics – The Pirates Are Coming To Massachusetts
Monday, June 6th, 2011At last it is victory for the “Pirates” in Massachusetts after their hard work. The Massachusetts Election Division finally said “YES” to the Massachusetts Pirate Party as a political designation. A voter in the state is now allowed to register as a “Pirate”. The United States Pirate Party that was organized in 2006 passed through a long recognition process. It took some time for this party to be recognized.
With the party being given its legal status, they can start working toward their vision and mission. The party is known as having its own set of ideals and trying to live up to them. They aspire to “increase government transparency, promote personal privacy, reinforce the spread of knowledge through copyright reform, and abolish patents.”
Personal privacy is one of the foremost areas of reform that the party strives to enhance. It is against the government’s intensification in surveillance and power over its citizens just by citing the 9/11 incident. The government is curtailing the privacy of people through the PATRIOT ACT, wiretapping, surveillance cameras and more. In addition, corporations intensified their spying in order to get more effort out of their personnel.
A different area of worry is government transparency. The party strives to advocate citizens having control of their democratic future. This can be accomplished if people know what the government is doing and which special interests are influencing public elected officials. There seems to be a decreasing openness by government in abiding by open meetings. There are closed door deals that back mostly corporations. Public information is also sold to private interests; all of these are harmful to democracy and privacy.
The Massachusetts Pirate Party has issued a statement, stressing that the government no longer gives people the chance to live up to the old principles. There is no focus on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They also commented about how corporations have overcome the people, with the government intensifying their power. The party hopes that these ideals should be lived once more and be real for all.
As announced by the party’s organizer, the party is in the process of training activists. Once completed, they will work for coordinating and building local chapters. The first move is killing the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA). The government should not be empowered to “take down any web domain found to host copyrighted material without permission”. Next, it will be taking a look at legislation’s that it should support or oppose. There is so much hope that the party will find its bright future in Massachusetts.
We’ve been writing about this for a very long time, privacy is not given, it is taken. You have to protect your own privacy. One way to do that is to use an encrypted Proxy to mask your IP address. For additional ways to protect your Internet Privacy, please visit our website.