Staten och kapitalet, revised version

This really says it all. Nevermind the stupid flyers and posters littering your mailbox, this is spot on.

Hell yeah

The importance of a free, growth-driven and entrepreneurial Internet

Two clowns by the name of Gerard Versteegh and Shadi Bitar, representing two companies I can only assume deal with entertainment through the internet, film2home.se and earbooks.se, have a reader's letter published in Svenska Dagbladet today. The letter is so filled with wrong assumptions, logical flaws and plain errors that's it would take me more effort to go through it step by step than I'm willing to put in. I'll take the short version:

The letter is basically a poorly executed attack on the Moderat politician Karl Sigfrid, who has profiled himself as the only Moderat politician interested in questions regarding the Internet and integrity, and of course on the politics of Piratpartiet, the pirate party.

I feel one of the very first sentences of this letter sums it all up pretty nicely:

En moderat internetpolitik bör sträva efter ett fritt, tillväxtdrivande och entreprenöriellt internet.

Translated to English: Moderat internet politics should strive for a free, growth-driven and entrepreneurial Internet.

Umm...well, yes, and that's exactly what Karl Sigfrid is striving for and you two morons are fighting against.

Obviously Mr. Versteegh hasn't succeeded very well in being free nor entrepreneurial, and of course neither Mr. Versteegh nor Mr. Bitar will see any of my money any time soon.

Stockholm tingsrätt dismantling the judicial system

The scandals surrounding the corrupt bastards over at Stockholms tingsrätt continue...

Read Peter Sundes blogpost here, and Piratpartiets press release here.

It seems if you ever end up in Stockholm tingsrätt, unless you've got the mafiosos at Danowsky & Partners representing you, you know you're screwed no matter how good your case is. Way to go completely destroying the public's faith in the judicial system.

Let (s)he who is without sin...

Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen has revealed a political "scandal": One of Piratpartiet's members, Henrik Alexandersson, worked as a cameraman shooting porn for a couple of months back in the 1990's. Oh my God, he was a cameraman - whatever should we do?

Of course, members from the more established parties take the opportunity to score some cheap points by crying out their outrage. Seeing Mona Sahlin standing first in line and saying that she "feels disgust" makes me think of the biblical "let he (or in this case she) who is without sin cast the first stone" incident. Not often has it been more appropriate.

So, in the 1990's, Henrik Alexandersson - far from being a full-time politician - worked briefly in a line of business frowned upon by most. He blew the whistle on this business after discovering unsettling conditions. He did an ethical choice. Mona Sahlin, on the other hand, was at this time a full-time politician, and busy stealing taxpayer's money (as if her salary wasn't enough!) - 53 174 SEK, to be exact, after which she took off on a family vacation to Mauritius, sponsored by - you guessed it - the taxpayers. She was also busy hiring black labour to take care of her children (1990), "forgetting" to pay her public service fee (1993), and "forgetting" to pay her parking tickets -98 in total (1998). Oh yeah, and it continues all the way into this millennium: In 2000 she "forgot" to pay 30.000 SEK in tax arrears, and in 2001 she "forgot" to pay her bills, including the annual car tax. To mention a few.

Sometimes it's just best to keep your mouth shut and stop pointing your finger at others.

Me - a pirate

That' it. I'm officially a pirate. Just signed up as a volunteer. I can't take the corrupted justice system anymore, and I can't take the politicians bending over and spreading their butt cheeks wide open for the entertainment industry to screw them, and more importantly us - the people - senseless. It's disgusting, and it has got to stop.

Goddammit.

Centerpartiet - the new Piratpartiet?

I've written about opportunistic politicians before, who change views and opinions as often as they change their underwear (and that's not to say they are particularly smelly!).

The last in line is Centerpartiet, a political party that has lost all credibility, recently having voted for the FRA surveillance law, and the Ipred "private police law".

With Piratpartiet, the pirate party, flying past them in the latest polls, Centerpartiet appears struck by panic, and has suddenly adopted Piratpartiets views in these questions, more or less to the letter, all in order to win back votes:

I ett yttrande till partistämman i Örebro skriver partistyrelsen att upphovsrätten är i stort behov av en omfattande översyn. I försöken att stävja den illegala fildelningen har "skyddet av upphovsrätten generellt sett värderats för högt i förhållande till skyddet av den personliga integriteten", skriver partistyrelsen.

In other words: "We mean exactly the same as Piratpartiet. Please believe us, and please forget the fact that we've voted for these misanthropic laws, we didn't mean to". Sounds credible.