A lot of time has been “wasted” on structure, administrative and other bureaucratic things. I think anyone who was at the last assembly cries a little when they hear the word revision, now. It’s not really wasted, many things are needed even required for simply working as a party. But there also are a few over active people in that regard and sadly, not enough active people in the political aspects. And yes I count myself in the not active enough people for politics, but then I’m currently not really much active at all in the party, past running a local gathering once a month.

With the 6 month mark, the council also sent a newsletter about it. In it, they also mentioned a focus on a few things, which sounds unfortunately not too much like a focus at the moment. But that is something to be seen in the next couple of months. Weirdly I suggested that just before this got mentioned, but I suggested a more precise focus.

It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks pan out.

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I’m ashamed to be Swiss right now. This bigotry smacks of something that should not be happening in a modern country, especially one with such a direct democracy that we have here.

What exactly is it about? Freely translated: “It’s forbidden to build new minarets.”

Yes that’s all. There is nothing about Islam, nothing about the sharia, about scarfs, or anything else for that matter. Yet that is what the people who are for the ban made it about. The main concern I got from everyone was “I don’t want some guy screaming down at me from a turret”. Now that is ignorance squared. This practice was created to help people remember their prayers. In the time of digital watches, cell phones (you can get prayer SMS notifications), PDA’s and all that, this practice has outlived it’s purpose in most modern areas and is not practiced in Switzerland, at all.

On the same note, I get rung out of bed every Saturday and Sunday morning by not one but two church towers close by, that chime for minutes on end. And you hear those babies in the whole town for certain.

Either ban all building of new church towers and the use of their bells (or sometimes just speakers these days) or allow the building of minarets. Everything else is narrow minded and plain offensive.

So with that, I vote for an initiative to ban building new church towers and all the chiming of the church bells in all of Switzerland, no exceptions. No matter if it’s a minaret or a catholic church, everyone gets treated the same. Or allow both sides to do as they please.

Why did they win? It’s the oldest trick: fear, uncertainty and doubt, short FUD. Just make them afraid enough and they do whatever you want. And best of all, they think it was their own idea and best for them too. The opposition did do nothing effective to simply negate all those fears with facts. Sure you can die in a plane crash and when one happens it’s terrible, but you are ten times more likely to die in a car accident and 5 times more likely to be killed while being on foot anywhere. Air travel is still, to date, the safest method of traveling. And just because there are extremists doesn’t mean that we should deny a group that is peaceful at it’s core and vast majority their wish to build a symbol of their religion, that is not different from what we already have everywhere, except for it does not look exactly the same.

If we would be judged by the worst people that Switzerland had to offer we would have been nuked off the face of the earth a long time ago and nobody would have shed a tear. Doing the same believers of Islam is bigotry at it’s highest level.

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What now? Well the party is here and here to stay. A lot now hangs on the shoulders of the newly elected leadership. Our 4 breave men and the one brave woman in there have to prove that they are worthy of their positions.

As for myself, I have to find the motivation to do something now, the only question is what.

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That the time for such a party is ripe in Switzerland is no surprise. In 2008 I was already working on getting to know the party as such and wanted to get active. Several things prohibited me from doing so, but that all changed at the beginning of 2009. Organizing the people that had already collected at piraten-partei.ch was an easy task, not many were very actively following the ideas behind the pirates. A first date to create the party was set in March.

A couple of things made that date not possible and so it was postponed to April. Then a daily newspaper wrote an article, due to the Swedes showing up in the parliament and all hell broke lose.

Over 2000 people are in the Facebook group and a couple hundred roam the forums. The idea of a few people meeting in a living room, died that day rather violently.

Now the founding is scheduled for Juli 12th, 2009 and somewhere in the range of 200 – 400 people are expected officially. I for one bet my money on more, a lot more.

So now what does this pirateparty do? The goals are rather clear, yet broad enough to encompass almost anything that can be or should be important to modern citizens. Among them are privacy (transparency of government and not of the citizen), monopolies and patents, as well as freedom of culture and knowledge (free filesharing for personal use).

Although we are already allowed to download music and movies to our hearts content in Switzerland, the upload is still illegal. And that download right is under attack as well, so there is already a few things to do. Also a hacker law that effectively renders protection against hackers useless is on the table and needs to be fought down.

So as the pirateparty, we have a big job to do, which means countless sleepless nights, lot’s of stress for little yet deep rewards.

The last thing anyone would want is to be in charge of that monster, scratching up the grounds, waiting to be let loose on the political landscape. So it’s just natural for me to do the insane thing and candidate for the job as president.

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