Swarm Management: If the last chapter was about the first six to eight days of the swarm’s lifecycle, this chapter is about the first six to eight weeks.

While the effective swarm consists almost entirely of loosely-knit activists, there is a core of people – a scaffolding for the swarm – that requires a more formal organization. It is important to construct this scaffolding carefully, paying attention to known facts about how people work in social groups. Without it, the swarm has no focal point around which it can… well, swarm.

Swarmwise chapters – one chapter per month
1. Understanding The Swarm
2. Launching Your Swarm
3. Getting Your Swarm Organized: Herding Cats (this chapter)
4. Control The Vision, But Never The Message (May 1)
5. Keep Everybody’s Eyes On Target, And Paint It Red Daily (Jun 1)
6. Screw Democracy, We’re On A Mission From God (July 1)
7. Surviving Growth Unlike Anything The MBAs Have Seen (Aug 1)
8. Using Social Dynamics To Their Potential (Sep 1)
9. Managing Oldmedia (Oct 1)
10. Beyond Success (Nov 1)

The actual book is expected to be available by June 1, 2013.

In building this scaffolding of go-to people, of the swarm’s officers, it is your responsibility to be aware of limits to group sizes that prevent further growth once reached, and break up the groups that reach these sizes into smaller subgroups when that happens.

You also need to be aware that any organization copies the methods and culture of its founder. This means that the swarm will do exactly as you do, regardless of persistent attempts to teach them good manners. The only way to have the swarm behave well is to behave well yourself. We’ll be returning to this observation later in this chapter.

THE THREE MAGIC GROUP SIZES

The few people upholding the scaffolding of the swarm will resemble a traditional hierarchical organization. However, it is important to understand that the role of this scaffolding is not directing and controlling the masses, as it would be in a corporation or other traditional organization. Rather, its role and value is in supporting the other 95% of the organization – the swarm – which makes its own decisions based on the values you communicate, and looks to the scaffolding only when assistance, support, or resources are needed.

Nevertheless, to build an efficient scaffolding, we must understand the human psyche as it comes to optimal group sizes and organization theory.

It can be easily observed in any organization that working groups larger than seven people fragment into two smaller groups. There are several theories as to why this happens, but the prevailing theory has to do with the amount of effort we need to spend upholding and caring for relationships within a working group. Let’s illustrate with an example.

In a group of two people, there is just one relationship that the group needs to care for.

In a group of three people, there are three relationships.

In a group of five, there are suddenly 4+3+2+1 = ten relationships. And if we up the group size to the critical seven people, there are twenty-one relationships between people that the group needs to maintain in order to function as a working group.

As we can see in this math, the social complexity of the group increases much faster than the group size. At some point, the group becomes inefficient, having to spend so much effort just on cohering the group that it gets very little or no actual work done.

When we add an eighth member to a group, the number of relations to maintain climb from 21 to 28. So while adding an eighth member to the group adds 14% work capacity to the group compared to seven people, it also requires the group to spend 33% more of their combined work capacity on the task of maintaining the group itself, on maintaining 28 relations instead of 21. At this point, or sometimes at a ninth member (36 relations), the group falls apart.

What we learn from this is that the scaffolding needs to be constructed so that no more than seven people work closely to one another in a given tight context.

We do this in the classical way, by constructing the scaffolding’s organization chart so that no person has more than six people working with him or her in a given context. This means that, for a given geography (like any state, country, city, et cetera) in the organization chart, that geography must subdivide into at most six smaller geographies which has other people responsible for those smaller geographies.

For now, we call this type of officer a geography leader for the swarm. They could be state leaders, city leaders, circuit leaders – any size of geography, but their duties will basically be the same.

(You will recall that we kickstarted the swarm by subdividing it by geography and letting geography leaders emerge through self-organization.)

Also, for every geography, we will probably have four function officers and one or two deputies in addition to the geography leader. (We’ll be returning to these terms and a sample organization chart later in this chapter.) This, again, makes a group of at most seven in total.

So the key message here is that no geography leader should have more than six people working directly with him or her in a given context. This means that we construct a number of organizational mini-pyramids from the top down in the scaffolding, each with (at most) seven people in it, where each geography leader is both at the bottom of one pyramid and at the top of another, the one immediately below, as shown here:

So the smallest of the three magic social group sizes is 7.

The largest is 150.

There is no relationship between these numbers. The number seven appears to come from a practical limit to the effort spent on maintaining a group, as previously explained. The more elusive number 150 appears to be a limit hardwired into our brains.

The number 150 appears in tons of places through human organizational history. It is our maximum tribe size. In a given context, we have the capacity to know this many people by name and have the loosest of bonds with them.

Anthropologists, looking at the size of our neocortex part of the brain and comparing it to those of other primates and their tribe sizes, tend to regard this number as a biological limit.

This limit is also known as Dunbar’s Number, or the Dunbar Limit, from British anthropologist Robin Dunbar who first wrote about it.

If you are working at a company which has less than 150 employees, odds are that you know them all by name – or at least, you have the capacity to do so. Beyond that size, you start referring to anonymous people by their function rather than referring to people you know by their name. You’ll go see ”somebody in Support”, rather than ”having a talk with Maria or Dave”.

The most successful companies, organizations, and cultures are keenly aware of this human limit. To take the Amish as one example, as their settlements approach 150 in size, they split the settlement into two. The company Gore and Associates – more known as the makers of the Gore-Tex fabric – never puts more than 150 employees in a single plant. There are many more examples.

The effect on your organization-building is the same as in every other successful organization: you need to know that groups above 150 people in size will lose the social bonding required for efficiency and, well, the fun.

However, you probably won’t have any formal group of this size. Rather, it is the informal groups that inevitably form that you need to pay attention to, and how they – once they hit this limit – can prevent further growth of the swarm.

In particular, you need to pay attention to the initial and horizontal team of people that will gather in a chat channel or similar, probably titled “chat channel about everything related to the swarm”. This organically-formed group will have a glass ceiling of 150 people in size, and unless you are aware of these mechanisms, that glass ceiling won’t be noticed. When this happens, further necessary growth of the swarm will be prevented, as more people can’t be socially integrated into that initial chat channel.

Therefore, it is your task to make sure that there are social subswarms everywhere that can attract and retain new people, and not just one centrally located chat channel. These subswarms, too, will have that social maximum size of 150.

Finally, the third magic group size is 30. This is a group which falls between our tight working group and those we know by name, but not much more: we are capable of knowing more than just their names in the group of 30, we know a couple of interests and curious facts about the others in this group, but we can’t work tightly with all of them. It can be thought of as an extended family.

You will probably have a couple of formal groups that are about 30 people in size, like the assembled group of all officers and leaders for a certain function or geography, but in general, you should strive for the seven-person group. When looking at how several of these groups cooperate on a daily basis, if you notice that some groups cooperate closer than others, you should be aware of the 30-person group size limit. For example, if the people coordinating all the aspects of the work in a particular city starts approaching 35 people, then that group is blocking further growth of the swarm and should be divided into two, allowing for more growth: divided into two groups handling the north and south parts of the city, for example.

After reviewing this, we also realize why we divided the swarm by geography in chapter two, and tried to have not more than 30 geographies. There’s you, who founded the swarm, and you communicate directly with the (at most) 30 geography leaders.

If you did this, then three to four weeks into the swarm’s lifecycle, it is suitable to insert a layer of officers between you and those 30, so that you communicate directly with five or six newly-inserted geography leaders, and they in turn communicate with five or six each of the original geography leaders.

So to summarize the important part of this: keep formal working groups in the scaffolding to about seven people. When several groups are working together, try to keep the size at or below 30. Finally, pay close attention to when informal swarm groups approach 150 people in size. When that happens, take steps to break them up in smaller subgroups.

(I first learned of the different dynamics of these three group sizes – 7, 30, and 150 – as part of my Army officer’s training in my early 20s. It is no coincidence that they correspond to squad, platoon, and company size, respectively. Since then, these group sizes have reappeared in almost every leadership training and management workshop, from one aspect or another. More importantly, all my experience with building swarms confirm their importance.)

SELF-ORGANIZATION

All this talk about leaders and formal structure sounds very… conventional, doesn’t it? We’re building this thing called a scaffolding, but it sounds very much like a traditional, hierarchical, boring organization. So what is new?

The new part is the entire swarm around the scaffolding, and the role that these officers – these geographical and functional leaders – must take in order to support it.

One key insight is that the responsibility of the swarm leaders is not so much managerial, as it is janitorial. Nobody answers to them, and their task is to make sure that the swarm has everything it needs to self-organize and work its miracles.

Remember, leadership in a swarm is received through inspiring others: standing up, doing without asking permission, and leading by example. In this task, the various officers and leaders have no organizational advantage over other people in the swarm: those who inspire others in a swarm, cause things to happen.

Put another way, the leaders and officers are not somebody’s boss just because they have some responsibility.

The first time you see people self-organize, it feels like magic. What you need to do is to communicate very clearly what you want to see happen and why. If people agree with you, they will make that happen, without you telling a single person what to do further. They will self-organize, and people interested in making it happen will gravitate by themselves to a subtask where they can help deliver the desired result. Each person will do this in their own way according to their own skill set, with no assignment or microsupervision necessary, causing the whole of the task to happen.

This is also a key mechanism in swarm organizations. You cannot and should not try to tell anybody in the swarm what to do; rather, your role is to set goals and ambitions, ambitions that don’t stop short of changing the entire world for the better.

We have seen something similar happen already, when the first onslaught of activists happened in chapter one, and several hundred people were waiting for instructions. You told them to self-organize by geography and choose leaders for the geographies. That was a form of self-organization, albeit a rudimentary one.

In a swarm, working groups will form by themselves left and right to accomplish subtasks of your overall vision, subtasks you haven’t even identified. This is part of how a swarm works and why it can be so effective.

So once the scaffolding of officers is in place, with its responsibility to support the swarm, groups and activities will form all over without any central planning – and importantly, without any central control.

Your passion for the swarm’s mission is going to be key in making this happen. You need to constantly show your passion for the end goal, and those who see and pick up on your passion will seek out things they can do to further it – all on their own.

Your role in this is to lead by example. People will copy you, in good weather and bad. Therefore, make sure you’re being seen in good weather. More on this later.

Another thing you will notice as the self-organization starts to happen, is that it doesn’t necessarily follow geographical boundaries. This is fundamentally good; you will have groups that form around accomplishing specific tasks that are geographically unbound, as well as groups that form around tasks that are bound to a specific area by nature. The task of producing a press center isn’t tied to a city, but the task of handing out flyers is. When people self-organize, this is taken care of by itself.

ORGANIZATION CHARTS AND ORGANIC GROWTH

There are three key concepts the swarm organization is optimized for: speed, trust, and scalability. When building the Swedish Pirate Party, this was a deliberate decision from the start, and it proved very successful.

We can optimize for speed by removing all conceivable bottlenecks. A swarm is typically starved of money, so it must compete on other grounds. Its reaction speed and reaction weight are more than enough to offset the lack of funds.

We can optimize for trust by keeping the swarm transparent and giving everybody a very far-reaching mandate to act on their own. We would establish this mandate by very clearly communicating that different people drive the swarm’s goals in different ways, and that we all trust one another to do what they believe is best, even if we don’t understand it ourselves. The three-activist rule, which we will discuss shortly, is a very efficient way to achieve this.

We can optimize for scalability by constructing the entire scaffolding at its finished size at the swarm’s get-go, providing space in the organization chart for geography leaders down to neighborhood level. However, we would leave upwards of 99% of the roles in the scaffolding empty for now – below the original 30 geography leaders, nothing has been appointed yet, despite us having another six or seven layers of empty boxes in the scaffolding’s organization chart. This means that these geography leaders can and will grow the organization downwards as activists volunteer to become new geography leaders at lower levels in the scaffolding. Then, those leaders will grow the organization in turn, and so on.

A swarm optimizes for speed, trust, and scalability.

The first time you notice that somebody you’ve never heard of has been appointed to formal responsibility, it feels like magic, and it shows that the scaling-out is working.

A swarm grows by people who are talking to people at the individual activist level. You don’t have the luxury of putting out ads, but your passion and desire to change the world for the better (along with a complete denial of what other people would call the impossibility of the task) makes people talk among one another. This is how your swarm grows: one conversation at a time, one person at a time.

This is how the Swedish Pirate Party grew to 50,000 members and 18,000 activists. One conversation at a time between passionate activists and potential new passionate activists.

In general, we can divide the people of the swarm into three groups by activity level: Officers, activists, and passive supporters. The officers are the people in the scaffolding, people who have taken on formal responsibility of upholding the swarm. Activists are the actual swarm, the people that make things happen on a huge scale. The passive supporters are people who agree with the goals as such, but haven’t taken any action beyond possibly signing up for a mailing list or membership. (The passive supporters may sound less useful to the swarm, but that’s not the case: they are the primary recruiting base for the next wave of activists. We’ll discuss this more in chapter eight, as we look at the Activation Ladder.)

So let’s take a look at what officers would typically be needed to support a swarm. In other words, let’s look at a template organization chart.

Let’s take a typical geography as an example. It could be a county, it could be a city, it could be a state, doesn’t matter. From the experience with the Swedish Pirate Party, we know that a particular geography works best when there is not just one geography leader, but a leader and a deputy that divide the work between them and who cover for one another. These people become go-to people for everything that happens in the area. The advantage of having two people is that people can drop out for a while from time to time. We can change jobs, we can fall madly in love, we can get sick, or lose interest in activism briefly for a myriad of other reasons. This is human, and always okay. If there are two people sharing the workload, the activity doesn’t stop when one drops out for a while. Most geographies had one deputy geography leader, some had two.

“If you feel you need to take a break from activism, that is always the right thing to do. It’s always better to get rested and come back, than to burn out and get bitter. There will always be something to do when you come back: you don’t have to worry about the world running out of evil while you’re away.” — Christian Engström, Member of European Parliament

Over and above this, drawing from experience if designing an activist swarm today, I would have four function leaders at every geography in addition to the overall leaders: one function leader each for PR/media, for activism, for swarmcare, and for web, information, and infrastructure. (These are roughly in order from most extroverted to most introverted.) All of these could – and maybe should – have their deputy in turn.

The person responsible for PR/media would be responsible for interfacing the swarm to legacy media at his or her particular geography. That includes sending press releases, making sure press kits with information are available, and other things related to serving oldmedia with information about the swarm and its activities. (We’ll be returning to exactly what this is in chapter nine.)

The activist leader would not lead activism as such, but rather, support it (as is the case with all of these roles). Whenever activists decide swarmwise that they want to stage a rally, hand out flyers, put up posters or do some other form of visible activism, this is the person responsible for the practical details such as PA equipment, permits, and other details on the ground to make things happen.

The person responsible for swarmcare would welcome new activists into the swarm, and continually measure the overall health of it. A typical task would be to call new activists just to make them feel welcome, and tell them when the next events – social as well as operational – take place. This is more than enough for one person to chew.

Finally, the information-and-web guy is the person who maintains the infrastructure of a blog or other web page that summarizes the relevant information of the swarm in this particular geography. (This person also communicates internally when events, such as rallies, happen. The swarm decides when and if they happen; it is the job of this person to communicate the consensus.)

Of course, your needs may vary. Consider this a template that you can use as a starting point. In any case, these boxes are all empty to begin with; organic growth is crucial.

People should not be appointed to these positions just because it’s fun to have a title; rather, the organization chart should lag slightly behind the observed reality. When somebody has already taken on the de-facto role of fixing all the practical stuff for rallies, for example, and everybody already knows that that person is the one to call to sync things up to get the PA – that’s when the org chart should be updated to reflect that. The person who should update the formal roles is the geography leader, who is responsible for keeping the swarm at optimal conditions in this particular geography.

One person should have one role in the scaffolding, with any kind of multi-role person being a temporary measure. In this, watch out for people who start advertising many titles in their signature or similar places – that’s a sign they’re more after the titles themselves than a single responsibility to do well.

Empty boxes in the scaffolding’s organization chart are not bad. They can and will fill up as time passes and groups fill up to the magic size limits, and need to break out into subswarms. Don’t unnecessarily appoint people to roles because you think empty boxes look bad: an occupied box will block somebody else from filling that role, and so, may be preventing the overall growth of the swarm if the person originally appointed to the box wasn’t really interested.

Do not be afraid of empty boxes in the organization chart.

So do not be afraid of empty boxes in the organization chart. They provide opportunity for somebody to step up to the plate informally, at which point the chart can be updated to reflect reality. It can help to think of the organization chart as the map rather than the terrain – when there’s a conflict between the two, the terrain wins every time. The organization chart is an estimate, at best, of what the organization actually looks like.

(This does not apply to military maps. When those have misprints, the military modifies the terrain to match the map, which happened at least once during my Army term.)

MEETINGS AS HEARTBEATS

In a typical office setting, people keep in touch about day-to-day operations in quite natural ways – by bumping into each other in the corridor, over coffee, but also in formal meetings. When working with a swarm, almost all of the cooperation happens over a distance – so you must find ways to compensate for the lack of eye contact and subtle body language that otherwise keeps a team jelled.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to have regular meetings over the phone or over a chat line where you just synchronize what’s going on and where people are with their respective work items (volunteered work items) to make that happen. The purpose isn’t for you to check up on what’s going on – the purpose is for everybody to know the state of the whole.

These meetings should be limited to 7 people if on the phone, or 30 people if in a chat channel. Otherwise, they can quickly turn into noise. You should have such regular heartbeat meetings once a week or once every other week with the people closest to you in the swarm’s scaffolding, and those people in turn should ideally have heartbeat meetings with their nearest crew, as well.

Some swarms or subswarms have preferred physical meetings. While such meetings provide for a lot higher bandwidth and opportunities to sync up, prevent conflicts and brainstorm ideas, their timing and location can also serve to lock out activists from engaging in the swarm – often inadvertently. For example, if you have a subswarm in a city that meets every Sunday afternoon, you can get lots of students engaged in the swarm – but the choice of Sunday afternoons will make sure that no working parents will ever show up to the meeting, as this is prime family time. Such factors need to be considered, and it is easy to be blind for limitations outside of your own demographic that prevent people in a certain stage of life from attending.

Once method I used to make it easier for people to attend the party management meetings when I was party leader was to limit the meeting to a strict time frame. We would start the meeting at 8pm on Tuesdays, and the meeting would end at 9pm, no matter whether everybody thought we were finished or not. That made sure that two things happened: it let people know that they could plan things with their family from 9pm in the Tuesday evening, and it forced people to take the important things first, as the meeting cutoff would happen whether they were done or not.

In short, the simple rule of having a hard meeting cutoff time made sure that people (including me) didn’t waste other people’s time.

MEETINGS GONE OVERBOARD

Speaking of wasting other people’s time, some activists will tend to take meetings a little too seriously. It is important that you maintain meetings as a necessary evil, because people who are eager to be part of the swarm can easily see meetings as the purpose of the swarm – they will tend to see meetings as work itself, rather than the short timeframe where you report and synchronize the actual work that you do between the meetings.

Bureaucracy and administration will very easily swell to become self-justifying, even in a swarm of activists. Do not let this happen. Keep reminding people that meetings are there for the purpose of synchronizing the work done to forward external purpose of the swarm, and that every minute spent with each other is a minute not spent changing the world.

In particular, activists in a subswarm dealing with oldmedia (newspapers, television, etc) can easily become self-absorbed in their own titles: “I attend the media meetings, therefore, I work with media, and thus, I am really cool”. We’ll return to that particular problem in chapter nine.

A CULTURE OF LEADERSHIP AND TRUST

As the swarm’s founder, you must be aware of human psychology of leadership. People will do as you do, exactly as you do, even if and when you are having one of the worst days of your life.

If you show yourself in a thoroughly wretchy mood to a swarm of 50,000 people, they will all emulate your behavior from that day, down to the most minute of details. This is not what you want.

So, ironically, one of the most important parts in founding and leading a swarm is to take good care of yourself. Sleep well, eat well, work out, allow yourself time and space to breathe. This is for the good of the swarm, and has the nice side effect of being good for you, too. If you feel aggressive, short-tempered and frustrated one day, you should probably refrain from all interacting with the swarm until that passes; if you don’t, those moods will become core organizational values.

If you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not taking care of your swarm.

On the flip side of that coin, understanding, patience, collegiality, and passion are values that you want to show. Be aware of your own mood, and know that the swarm copies from you – whether you are behaving in ways that sets the swarm up for long-term success or catastrophic infighting, the swarm copies your behavior in more detail than you can notice consciously.

One value that you must absolutely communicate for the swarm to work is trust. You need to trust in people in the swarm to further the swarm’s goals, even if they choose a different way of doing so than you would have chosen, and even if you can’t see how it could possibly work.

You also need to communicate that everybody must trust each other in this regard. Leading by doing is necessary here, but not sufficient; you need to periodically repeat that one of the core values of the swarm is that we trust each other to work for the swarm in the ways that we can do so as individuals.

It turns out that one thing that makes swarms so outstanding in efficiency is their diversity. People come from all walks of life, and once they realize they have a full mandate to work for the swarm in the ways that they can, they will just do so.

In the Swedish Pirate Party, we had manifested this through a three-pirate rule, which can easily be translated into a three-activist rule for any swarm. It went like this: if three activists agree that something is good for the organization, they have a green light to act in the organization’s name. It’s not that they don’t need to ask permission – it goes stronger than that. Rather, they should never ask permission if three activists agree that something is good.

Asking permission, after all, is asking somebody else to take responsibility for your actions. But a swarm doesn’t work like that. Also, the person who would have given that permission would probably be in a worse situation to determine if this action would work in the context the original activists had in mind.

Of course, many balk at this. Letting activists run loose like this? Trusting them with your name and resources to this extent? I heard frequently that it would be a recipe for disaster.

In the five years I led the Swedish Pirate Party, peaking at 50,000 members in this time, this was not abused once. Not once.

It turns out, that when you look people in the eyes and say ”I trust you”, and give them the keys to the castle, many are so overwhelmed by the trust that they don’t hesitate a second to accept that mantle of responsibility.

It’s also important that this was only a mechanism for self-empowerment, and never a mechanism that allowed three activists to tell somebody else what to do or not do.

As a final note on trust, the part about trusting people to act for the best of the swarm is crucial. This means that there is never a blame game; if something goes wrong, the swarm deals with it after the fact, and never spends time worrying what may go wrong in advance.

If something doesn’t go as intended, the swarm learns from it and moves on. On the other hand, if something is wildly successful, it gets copied and remixed across the swarm to new variants to get even better. This happens organically, without you needing to interfere, as long as activists can publish their successes.

In the next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at how activists of the swarm interact with the outside world, learn from mistakes, and remix the successes to evolve and improve.

 

This is the third chapter of Swarmwise, a book arriving this summer. Did you like it? It’s going to be free to share (it, like this excerpt, is CC-BY-NC), but you can also buy it as a paper book.

 

EXCERPT FROM UPCOMING BOOK

This is a part of the upcoming book Swarmwise, due in the summer of 2013. It is an instruction manual for recruiting and leading tens of thousands of activists on a mission to change the world for the better, without having access to money, resources, or fame. The book is based on Falkvinge’s experiences in leading the Swedish Pirate Party into the European Parliament, starting from nothing, and covers all aspects of leading a swarm of activists into mainstream success.

Pirate Parties – Zacqary Adam Green: On this day of April 1st, 2013, I’m pleased to announce that MPAA Chairman Former Senator Chris Dodd is now a member of the US Pirate Party, and we will be running him for President in 2016. Now, he’s not aware of this, and he’s finding it out right now just like the rest of you. But in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to draft people into political parties and presidential candidacies without their knowledge or consent.

April Fool’s
Needless to say, this article was an April Fool’s joke. Unfortunately, the fact that it’s legal in the US for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors is not an April Fool’s joke.

MPAA Chairman Former Senator Chris Dodd — who by Official Pirate Unbreakable Law may never, ever be referred to simply as “MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd” — has long been a proponent of copyright maximalism, of draconian anti-piracy measures that violate privacy and break the Internet, and of demonizing everyone who has ever watched a movie at a friend’s house as a “thief.” During his career in public office, one of Dodd’s top campaign contributors has been General Electric, the parent company of MPAA member NBC Universal.

On this historic April 1st of 2013, Former Senator Dodd has had a change of heart. He is now a full-blown, bleeding-heart blackbeard, not only supporting a complete abolition of all copyright, patent, and trademark laws, but demanding that Hollywood refund the American people for every dime they spent on the filmography of director Michael Bay. “Transformers: Dark of the Moon was a national tragedy on par with slavery,” he said in a statement this morning. “It is our moral duty to begin paying reparations to each and every American citizen lured into cinemas by that piece of garbage.”

The former senator may deny this change of heart or these statements, but don’t believe him.

Dodd has also announced his choice of Althing member Birgitta Jónsdóttir as his vice presidential running mate. As an Icelandic-born non-US citizen, you’d think Birgitta would be ineligible for the US vice presidency. But in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to run and elect a vice presidential candidate who was not born in the US.

Unlike other third parties, the Pirate Party is in this presidential race to win it. Rick Falkvinge has announced that he will be pulling a full half of his Bitcoin savings out of his secret underground lair, and donating them to the campaign. Instead of using these Bitcoins for traditional campaign techniques like advertising, we’re just going to straight up give them to people in exchange for a vote for Dodd. Because in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to accept unlimited foreign donations and use them to literally bribe voters.

We’ve also recruited hacktivists who’ve been involved in Wikileaks, Anonymous, and LulzSec to assist with, um, “election monitoring.” I mean, hell, in a country where it’s legal for a former senator to be hired by the lobbying organization for one of his top 20 campaign contributors, it must be legal to hack into electronic voting machines around the country to tilt the outcome of the election in our favor.

This is some of the most exciting news that the Pirate Party has ever been able to announce. We believe that today — April 1st, 2013 — will be a day that goes down in the history books as the day that the Pirate Party truly became a force to be reckoned with in the United States. Remember that date: the first of April. Chances are, we’ll all be celebrating this date for years and years to come.

Satt och läste om Facebooksidan “I Fucking Love Science”, följd av över fyra miljoner användare. Tjejen som drivit sidan har aldrig mörkat med att hon är tjej, men då hon vid en statusuppdatering berättade om sitt nya Twitter-konto, så var det ändå en överraskning för väldigt många. Att hon var tjej, alltså.

Reaktionerna har varit många — en del har blivit generade över att de förutsatt att en kille satt vid spakarna, andra har fokuserat på hennes utseende. “Oj vad söt du är!”-fenomenet. En annan stor grupp har ifrågasatt hela sidans existens och anser den värdelös, hennes karaktär och personlighet har utmålats som alltifrån gnällig till uppmärksamhetskrävande.

Jag kan inte låta bli att fundera på hur lika reaktionerna är “fake gamer girl”-kontroversen, som går ut på slutsatsen att tjejer bara “låtsas” gilla spel. Som summering av kontroverserna kan man säga, att om unga tjejer visar minsta intresse för något som stämplats som killgrejer, så fejkar de. Det kan aldrig handla om genuint intresse eller ordentlig kunskap är en starkt närvarande regel i retoriken. Tjejer är ytliga och vill bara ha uppmärksamhet och det är dåligt, punkt.

Tjejen som drivit “I Fucking Love Science” har använt sig av humor för att dela med sig av kunskap. Genom små, och enkla knep, har hon skapat lättsmälta versioner av normalt sett ganska svårsmält kunskapsmaterial och det ses plötsligt som ett bevis på att hon inte är seriös, där man tidigare sett det som ganska smart.

Själv blir jag nästan avundsjuk på hennes talang — för gudarna ska veta att läsare inte är särskilt tålmodiga. Vi vill ha enkelt, lättsmält och gärna roligt material. Det är det vi belönar med våra likes, rekommendationer och våra klick.

Att det lättsmälta serveras av en tjej blev plötsligt för ett stort antal människor — både killar och tjejer – något helt annat. Något värdelöst. Kränkande, rent av. Det blir så ruskigt tydligt att det handlar om vad man upplever tjejer ska vara och hur lågt det bör värderas, när man helt vänder i sin åsikt om en Facebooksida pga könet på den som driver den. Men extremt få förstår den reaktionen hos sig själva och letar fel hos tjejen, för att få utlopp för sitt obehag, istället för att idka lite självrannsakan.

Det här är inte gamla människor med utdaterade värderingar som borde veta bättre — det här är unga människor som hänger online och vräker ur sig den här för- och motretoriken. Skapar en konstruerad skiljelinje mellan män och kvinnor och får mig att fundera på varför det finns ett behov av att göra det.

För mig är det liksom inte sexismen som är anmärkningsvärd, utan behovet av ett motsatsförhållande. En värdering som borde kännas unken men av nån anledning inte gör det, det hängs fast vid den som det vore en livslina av något slag. Lagmentaliteten, kanske? Själva grupptillhörigheten är viktig för oss alla. Vilka vi är jämbördiga med, och vilka som är våra fiender.

För- och emot. “Om det här är bra, måste det där vara dåligt.” Saker behöver vara motsatser för att förstås. Det är det enklaste och det är ett socialt klister till och med. Men det är dumt, rent ut sagt. Färger är inte “motsatser” bara för att de är olika, det förstår vi ju, så varför inte när det gäller det här?

Vi har inte varit helt bra på att lära ut det, blir slutsatsen när jag ser mig omkring online. Alldeles för många killar och tjejer har under sin uppväxt inte lärt sig att umgås med varandra, får jag intryck av. Lärt sig förstå eller göra sig förstådd. Undrar om det handlar om det där med att inte tillåta barn att spika för att det är enklast när de inte skadar sig, och sen när de är arton bli förvånad över att de inte kan svinga en hammare?

Omedvetet verkar vi i vilket fall som helst stänga av möjligheter, där vi borde fundera på att barn inte blir vuxna, de växer in i vuxenskapet. Då det kanske är mer självklart att lära en unge att slå i en spik, är det kanske inte lika självklart att lära ungar att bara för att man är olika är man inte motsatser?

Summa summarum, så vill jag verkligen inte låta påskina att alla ungdomar beter sig såhär. Finns massvis med klokhet bland de yngre. (Nåt som vi vuxna borde lyfta mer antagligen, till och med.) Däremot så tänker jag många gånger att de lyckas trots, inte tack vare, oss.

För att barn ska lära sig, behöver vi antagligen lära oss något vi också. Det verkar inte finnas någon generell medvetenhet om att dagens ungdomar ofta lever i en extraordinärt sexistisk kultur och till och med ser kön som motsatser, trots att mobbingkulturer ofta diskuteras. Kulturer som vi i vuxenvärlden har mer med att göra än vi orkar tänka på, inbillar jag mig.

Transparency: With banks opening on Cyprus, many entrepreneurs realized they had been wrecked overnight by their government’s dishonesty. The so-called bank bailout was in reality a death sentence for many small businesses, who saw their operating capital confiscated to save the government’s face. This move will create an inevitable uncertainty throughout the Eurozone: who will dare put their operating capital in a bank in a troubled country, when politicians keep saying everything is fine – until one day, the money is just gone?

In a post this morning in the Bitcoin forums, user zeroday complains that 700,000 Euros were robbed by the European Commission. They’re not some Russian oligarch, the user writes, but a typical medium-size European IT business, and the result of this is that the entire Cypriot workforce will have to be laid off. The screenshot from the bank speaks a thousand words:

Bank screenshot from the Cyprus-based European IT company. The entire operating capital is practically gone overnight, confiscated to save the government’s face.

Thousands of other companies based in Cyprus are in the same situation, zeroday writes. This is not just problematic, but catastrophic on so many levels.

First, the ability for a troubled government to just go in and take money wherever it damn well pleases goes counter to pretty much every crucial principle of law – that laws need to be predictable, equal, proportional, and its rules known in advance. In this case, neither applied.

Second, the problem here isn’t so much that somebody who invests in a troubled bank goes bust with the bank. That wouldn’t be a problem in itself. The problem is that this happens despite governmental guarantees to the contrary. If governments published bank data openly so every small business in the Eurozone would be able to judge the solvency of their banking partner and make proper risk assessments, this would be proper, and it would be tough but just if a bank went insolvent and its accounts were closed to cover the losses.

But governments keep insisting that this is never going to happen, until it just did. Then, governments go back into denial mode that it will never happen again, with a “would I lie to you twice?” face plastered on, expecting to be believed.

This sends a very clear message to small Eurobusinesses across all of Europe: “governments cannot be trusted when guaranteeing your money in the bank, and you may be next if you keep trusting European governments”. In particular, I expect small businesses in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Italy, and France to start relocating their operating capital out of the Eurozone, come the very first weekday after Easter.

Zeroday writes further,

We are moving to small Caribbean country where authorities have more respect for people’s assets. Also, we are thinking about using Bitcoin to pay wages and for payments between our partners.

I expect many, many small Eurozone business to do the exact same thing, after seeing this bank screenshot. Reading about it in the news is one thing. Seeing exactly what happened to this small entrepreneur is another, and realizing that this may be your bank screen tomorrow.

This was the death of the small Eurobusiness climate. At the same time, it was not just the end of the beginning of the Euro, but also the beginning of the endgame.

What we learn from this is that the transparency that would have been necessary at the Euro’s conception is still denied the public at large by banks and governments, and that this lack of transparency brings nothing good at all. Small Eurobusinesses are now dying and not coming back to the Euro, and for very good reason.

Click to read the earlier parts of Kopimism: The Creation

(This is a continuation of the Kopimist Creation Myth, which is also available in Swedish)

In the previous Kopimist sermons, we have seen how the laws of nature predict doom and gloom, and preach that everything is just a meaningless consequence of how it accidentally happens to be. Does this mean that scientists generally feel gloomy and sad when they think about the universe?

No, not at all, quite the opposite in fact.

You don’t have to see many science documentaries about life, the universe and everything to be drawn in by the enthusiasm and sense of wonder that both the narrator and any scientists that appear in the program communicate. The mathematical formulas that they have discovered to describe the universe may be ever so depressing. The scientists who say they believe in those formulas, and only in the formulas, tend to be as cheerful and optimistic about the future as ever.

Richard Dawkins is a leading evangelist for believing in science, and science alone. Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme, Wikipedia tells us.

In his book The Magic of Reality from 2011, Dawkins summarises his views like this [in my translation back from Swedish]:

The real world, as seen by science, has its own magic — the kind of magic I call poetic magic: an inspiring beauty that is so much more magical because it is real, and because we can understand how it works. Compared to the true beauty and magic of the real word, magical formulas and sorcerers’ tricks seem cheap and superficial. The magic of reality is neither supernatural nor a trick, but quite simply wonderful. Wonderful and real. Wonderful just because it is real.

This is a very good, sensible and beautiful position, and in fact very similar to what Kopimism is saying as well. We Kopmists see the world as a magic, exciting work in progress, driven by the four fundamental principles Creativity, Copying, Cooperation, and Quality. The quote from Dawkins expresses what we Kopimists believe, in a very concise and beautiful way.

In the Kopimist faith, we have added the four fundamental principles, in particular Creativity and Quality, to the foundation of science that we share with Dawkins. This makes it easy for us Kopimists to justify our positive outlook on life.

We believe that there is Quality that guides us in the right direction towards the good, we believe that Creativity will continue to spur us onwards, and we believe that Copying and Cooperation provide tools to transform creative ideas into new reality. When the beauty of nature fills us with a sense of wonder in the way that Dawkins describes so well, we have a sound theological and philosophical argument to justify the happy smiles on our faces.

But Dawkins himself has a lot less theoretical justification for his positive world view, if he wants to base it entirely on science, and nothing but science.

According to evolutionary biology, which is Dawkins’ primary field of science, the entire miracle of life on earth can be described as the influence of random noise in the sexual reproduction process, combined with a crude mechanism for weeding out individuals that are unsuccessful in the all-out conflict over scarce resources. What’s so wonderful about that?

If there is beauty in a universe controlled entirely by chance and mechanical laws, that beauty would have no meaning anyway. According to science and Dawkins, that beauty has just appeared by accident, like if there happens to be beautiful reflections in the pieces of glass on the ground after someone has broken a shop window. Even if it looks like a heap of sparkling and valuable diamonds on the ground, this is just an illusion, and there is little to miss once it gets swept away by the street cleaners.

Dawkins of course has every right in the world to have his positive and confident view of the universe and the future, and we Kopimists share it. We believe that many people would become happier if they joined us in this belief. But if Dawkins wants to maintain that he is basing his positive world view on science alone, there appears to be quite a gap between what the scientific laws say about the universe, and how the scientists actually perceive it on an emotional level.

Albert Einstein is another example of an eminent scientist holding a world view that is atheistic, but filled with a sense of wonder and trust in the future. Dawkins uses Einstein as an example in the book The God Delusion, and (on page 36) he quotes Einstein saying:

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

Again, a very sensible and positive way of looking at the world, but the positive emotion seems to be quite out of touch with the equations he was basing his model of the universe on.

According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, the destiny of the universe is to become either a black hole where everything has been crushed, or an ever thinner emptiness where everything is too far away from everything else to do anything interesting. Which version of infinite boredom represents the future of the universe, according to Einstein’s theory, depends on the value of a cosmological constant that may or may not exist, and that nobody likes anyway.

This is what Einstein’s theory says about the universe we live in. What does he have to be so confident and positive about?

Kopimism solves the apparent contradiction between the scientists’ gloomy theories and cheerful outlook on life by adding the four fundamental principles to the laws described by science, in particular Creativity and Quality. These principles do not contradict science. They are merely an addition to the strict scientific natural laws, and help explain the magic of reality and give us a reason to feel trust in the future, even though we cannot say what that future will contain.

When Dawkins speaks about the inspiring beauty of reality, he is absolutely right. Nature is filled with the most stunning beauty, from the tiniest detail of an insect’s antenna up to magnificent ecosystems that go from horizon to horizon. This is what Robert M. Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance calls Romantic beauty, the kind of beauty that is immediately apparent to the eye.

Dawkins is also right when he talks about how wonderful it is that we can understand how reality works, that we can learn to see and appreciate what Pirsig would call the Classic beauty of the universe, the structural beauty that makes it all fit together.

For a Kopimist, it is easy to agree with both Dawkins and Einstein in their sense of awe an wonder. This is how we feel as well.

But even if we agree, we should note that the minute these prominent scientists started to talk about beauty, they left the realm of science and entered that of philosophical speculation.

”Beauty” is not a scientific term within either physics or biochemistry. As Pirsig points out, there are no scientific instruments that can measure beauty or Quality objectively, and nobody expects that anybody will be able to design such instruments in the future either. A cornerstone in Pirsig’s philosophical reasoning is that he refuses to provide a scientific definition of Quality, as any attempt to do so would reduce it into something different and smaller.

The Quality that Pirsig is talking about is not a part of science as we know it, but neither is it opposed to science in any way. It is an addition, not a replacement. The reason that Pirsig started to think about Quality in the first place was that he wanted to defend Science, which he called The Church of Reason, from real or imagined metaphysical threats.

So even if both Dawkins and Einstein and Pirsig are outside the realm of science when they are talking about beauty, there is noting wrong with that. Beauty is not anti-sientific concept, it is an extra-sientific one. It does not contradict science, it just goes outside it, and talks about things that are not described by the mathematical formulas that represent our laws of nature.

Nothing wrong with that, but it deserves to be pointed out for clarity.

I think Dawkins and other evangelists for what they call a ”scientific” atheist world view would do well to admit that their belief system does not just consist of the laws of science and nothing more, but of additional components as well.

I think many people who are considering giving up their old religious beliefs in favour of a more atheist world view get a feeling of philosophical claustrophobia when the case for a scientifically based world view is presented as ”science, and nothing but science”.

Since Dawkins is talking about ”beauty”, which is not a scientific concept, he has obviously  taken at least one step beyond science as such in the world view he is preaching.

Why not admit that, when doing so would remove a barrier that at least some people feel they must overcome before they can seriously consider the message that Dawkins and others who agree with him are trying to share?

We Kopimists believe in the laws of science, but we believe there is more to the universe than just that. We believe not only in science, but also in the four Fundamental Principles, the Four Kopimist K’s of Creativity, Copying, Cooperation, and Quality.

With Quality as one of our Fundamental Principles, we can agree wholeheartedly that reality is indeed beautiful, both in a Romantic and Classic sense, as Pirsig explains those terms in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Kopimism does not go against science, so just like for Dawkins, our beliefs are not anti-scientific. But we point out that in order to believe in the beauty of science, it is not enough to believe in science alone. You have to believe that there is something worth calling ”beauty” as well.

We Kopimists acknowledge that we do, that we see a universe that is full of it.

This is an insight and a world view that we want to share.

Copy and Share!

…………

CC-BY-NC Christian Engström

Läs Teresa Küchlers krönika i SvD

Vilka EU-nyheter är viktiga, på riktigt? Var fattas besluten i EU, egentligen? Det är frågor som Svenska Dagbladets Teresa Küchler tar upp i sin EU-krönika den 26 mars. Frågor som är stora, viktiga och svåra att svara på.

Men det är nödvändigt att söka svar. 60 till 80 procent av alla svenska lagar och regleringar kommer från EU. Tyvärr får svenska folket nästan aldrig veta vad som är på gång, vilket är ett demokratiskt problem. Politik är en verksamhet som medborgarna bör vara delaktiga i – inte något som plötsligt drabbar passiva och oinformerade åskådare.

Küchler går hårt åt sina kollegor i media, som hon menar bara går på de allra enklaste och rubrikvänligaste nyheterna. Det ligger något i detta. Därmed inte alls sagt att de enkla och rubrikvänliga nyheterna skulle vara oviktiga. Men man skulle kunna önska sig en mer blandad kompott.

Problemet är inte att svenska media rapporterar för mycket från EU. Det allvarliga är allt man missar. Saker som kommer att påverka vanligt folk, företag och den svenska politiken – som nu ofta kommer som en blixt från klar himmel, när allt redan är för sent för att påverka.

Vill man veta vad som sker i EU, då måste man ofta välja utländska media eller följa ett antal av de rätt specialiserade politiska bloggar som bevakar EU. Detta lämnar det stora flertalet, som är beroende av etablerade svenska media, i okunskap om vad som sker i en central del av politiken.

Küchler tar också upp den känsliga frågan om var beslut egentligen fattas. Spelar den formella behandlingen av ett ärende hos de folkvalda i Europaparlamentet egentligen någon roll? Görs allt ändå upp av ett litet frimureri av icke-valda byråkrater bakom stängda dörrar? Vad säger det, i så fall om tillståndet för vår demokrati? Och vad skall vi göra åt saken?

Vi piratpartister vill reformera EU genom att ta fram ett nytt fördrag. Det skall fokusera på att göra EU till en demokratisk verksamhet. Det skall slå fast våra medborgerliga fri- och rättigheter. Det skall ange enkla och begripliga spelregler för EU. Och politiskt skall det fokusera på fri rörlighet för varor, tjänster, människor och kapital.

Ett sådant nytt fördrag skall sedan underställas alla européer i en gemensam folkomröstning, vid ett och samma tillfälle. Därefter är det upp till medlemsstaterna att godkänna eller förkasta fördraget, på det sätt varje land finner lämpligt.

På detta sätt ger man demokratin i EU nytt liv. Om både folket och medlemsstaterna får säga sitt – då finns det i vart fall förutsättningar för ett mer demokratiskt, mer begripligt och rimligare fördrag. Vilket är ett första och helt nödvändigt steg för att komma till rätta med de problem som nämns i texten ovan.

För att media skall kunna rapportera från EU måste verksamheten vara begriplig. För att medborgarna skall kunna vara delaktiga krävs att EU är öppet och transparent. För att den demokratiska processen skall vara meningsfull krävs en möjlighet att utkräva ansvar. Det borde vara självklart.

EU måste bli mer demokratiskt, mer begripligt och mer transparent. Och det måste ske inom överskådlig tid. Om detta inte sker – då är det dags för Sverige att lämna EU. Det finns helt enkelt gränser för vad vi kan finna oss i.

Swarm Economy: Yesterday, news broke that the Expensify service has enabled bitcoin payments. With the rapidly expanding number of businesses accepting bitcoin as payment method, one could think that this was merely another player in the pool of bitcoin’s expanding economy (which just broke the one-billion-USD barrier, by the way). But Expensify is something much more than that.

Let’s first discuss the concept of expense reports to understand Expensify’s important role in the subsurface payments ecosystem. On all companies I’ve worked for lately, you don’t ask the company to buy something you need for your work – it’s just too much paperwork, too much red tape to make it happen. Instead, you get a small budget for discretionary stuff you need to do your job, and you just buy stuff as you need it with your private credit card, send in the receipts to your employer, and get reimbursed on the next paycheck, which arrives before the credit card bill is due.

This system is pervasive and ubiquitous. Sending in receipts for payment like this is known as submitting an expense report. It’s still bureaucracy and red tape and it still sucks, but it sucks considerably less than asking for approval in advance.

Enter Expensify, a service that markets itself straightforwardly as “Expense reports that don’t suck”. I’ve been using Expensify through its development for the past couple of years and have also contributed my use case (frequent travel outside of internet coverage), which led them to implement important new features – meaning, they’re a responsive bunch, too.

I don’t know anybody who submits expense reports who doesn’t use Expensify.

They have reduced the hassle from spreadsheets and forms and manual calculations down to using your phone to shooting the receipt you get as you get it, then throwing it away, forgetting about the whole deal until it’s time to press the button marked “reimburse me”, at which point that happens. Expensify saves me and people similar to me – to use a technical term – a metric fuckton of paperwork and boredom.

What this means is that Expensify is deeply integrated into the existing payments workflow at many workplaces, mine included.

As of yesterday, Expensify added a new checkbox when summarizing photographed receipts and submitting them for reimbursement:

Image from Expensify.com (courtesy of Expensify).

This is a big deal because it means that the payment processing departments of corporations are going to get a lot of requests for bitcoin payment within their existing payment workflow. It’s going to be presented – and regarded – as just another payments method alongside SWIFT, bank wire, Paypal, cash, and bank check.

Up until today, bitcoin has spread by mutual agreement between payer and payee, and to some lesser extent, by the profit pressure generated in retail from the lack of credit card processing fees. But with Expensify adding it as a payment option in a lot of companies’ existing workflows, enabling people to request payment in bitcoin in addition to bank wire and paypal, there is unilateral social pressure within an existing payments structure for the payer to use Bitcoin. This is new. Plus, the fact that the payments structure in question is bloody everywhere – especially as it’s subsurface (below the corporate level), so it changes much quicker.

Expensify adding bitcoin to its workflow gives bitcoin social virality and social, directed pressure for corporate uptake.

I’m very much looking forward to see statistics from Expensify in bitcoin use, but I expect that bitcoin pressure won’t come from the reimbursement departments, but rather from workers who request reimbursement in bitcoin (as per the image above) – particularly when being paid internationally.

To quote a tweet from yesterday: I love the fact that a geek experiment in decentralized, anonymous payments is now worth one billion USD and has come to compete with national currencies.

Pirate Parties: Two more Pirate Parties are approaching electoral victory scenarios. Iceland’s Píratar is polling just below the parliamentary threshold for their elections one month out, and Croatia’s Piratska Stranka is polling at levels that may give it a seat in the European Parliament in three weeks. This is a very positive sign for the movement, as it is much harder for new countries to enter the political fray than it is to defend existing positions.

The Pirate Party movement is moving at glacial speed compared to normal internet communities, and yet with lightning speed compared to previous waves of political changes. In the UK, I learned that it took the Green Party movement 18 years (?) to get their first seat; meanwhile, it took our movement three and a half years until Christian Engström took office as Member of European Parliament, and yet from our perspective, that was insanely slow: after all, we are used to changing the world considerably in a weekend of intense coding.

On each success, we learn new things, just like we learn from each failed contestation for office. Every obstacle encountered is one we circumnavigate come next election, much to the disappointment of those who like to ridicule each of our non-successes (also known as our “learning by doing”).

One month ahead of the Berlin election success in the fall of 2011, I predicted (correctly) that even though the German Piratenpartei were polling at sub-parliamentary levels at the time, they would succeed since the media had discovered them as a credible newcomer.

The first shout-out for today goes to Pirate Party of Croatia, the Piratska Stranka, who are polling at 6.4% with elections on April 14. This is well above the psychological “wasted vote” barrier, and real parliamentary numbers. However, only twelve seats are up for grabs in the election – so come the election, six point four percent would be a coin toss whether they get one of the seats or not. It’s definitely doable, and I’d bet my money on success, but it’s far from a done deal at this point.

The more interesting thing is that those twelve seats are with the European Parliament, as part of Croatia’s accession to the European Union. Thus, the Croatian Pirate Party has a real shot at being the second Pirate Party represented in the European Parliament, which would be a huge boost to the movement’s influence (and to the Croatian Pirates).

The second shout-out goes to the Pirate Party of Iceland, the Píratar, founded by (among others) the Wikileaks activist and present Member of Parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir. Their parliamentary election for the Icelandic parliament is on April 27, and they’re currently polling at 3.9%, with five per cent required for entry. This is one percent unit short of the barrier – but just like the German Piratenpartei started climbing one month ahead of the election once they caught the spotlights, the Icelandic Píratar can play the same scenario.

At present, only one Pirate Party has won seats at the national level: the Czech Pirate Party managed to put a Senator into office (which is a feat in itself). Having the Icelandic Píratar join the international community of election successes would be great for the movement as a whole.

As an international movement, the Pirate Parties are now present in 70 countries, contesting elections and making policy. As a movement who took its first baby steps in 2006, and had its first electoral victory in 2009, that is practically a wildfire spread of the ideas and organization. Still, the really hard thing for the movement is getting elected from more countries, generating more blueprints for success for the movement as a whole.

I’d be very happy to see Iceland and Croatia submitting such success blueprints in the coming month. While far from certain, it’s definitely within reach.

Watch my speech in IMCO on how snus could save lives in the EU (6 min)

Sweden has by far the lowest rates of people dying from smoking related diseases, compared to the other EU countries. The reason is very simple: we have by far the lowest rates of smoking.

In Sweden, smoking prevalence is 13%, compared to the EU average of 28%. (The second best EU country has a smoking prevalence of 23%, close to the average.) Half as many people smoke, which has led to half as many people dying from smoking in Sweden compared to the rest of the EU.

This is because snus is legal in Sweden (but not in any other EU country), which has given Swedish smokers the possibility to switch from smoking cigarettes to using snus. This represents a major health benefit, because although snus is not a healthy product in itself, snus is between 90 and 99% less dangerous than smoking.

If you are a smoker, the best thing is of course if you can give up all forms of nicotine use completely. But if you are unable or unwilling to do this, switching from cigarettes to snus is almost as good from a health perspective. Thanks to snus, Sweden is a remarkable success story in the fight against tobacco induced death and diseases.

It can often be tricky to compare numbers between different countries, as there can be many different factors that explain any differences in the numbers, but in this particular case it is pretty clear.

Sweden’s two closest neighbours, Denmark and Finland, both have twice the smoking prevalence of Sweden: 26% in Denmark, and 25% in Finland. Both Denmark and Finland are very culturally similar to Sweden, but yet smoking is twice as common there as it is in Sweden.

There simply is no other plausible explanation than snus why Sweden is doing so much better in its efforts to reduce smoking than the rest of Europe, including culturally similar Denmark and Finland.

Smoking kills 700.000 persons per year prematurely, according to the statistics presented by the European Commission. I have no reason to doubt these statistics. Tobacco smoking is the number one preventable cause of death in the developed world.

This means that if we could reduce smoking in the rest of the EU down to Swedish levels, we would save 350.000 lives per year.

Against this background, I find it completely unacceptable that the EU Commission proposes to continue the present ban on snus in all the EU countries except Sweden. With this many lives at stake, it is quite simply immoral that the Commission is not even prepared to let member states who would want to follow Sweden’s example, and use snus as part of a harm reduction strategy, to do so if they want to.

This is, in essence, what I said last week in the Committee for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection IMCO, when we had an exchange of views on the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive.

By lifting the ban on snus on the EU level, and allowing each member state to develop its own policy in this area, we can potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives per year in Europe. Not exploring this possibility is just immoral.

You can watch the video of my intervention on Youtube (6 min).

Read more about how the European Commission is actively massaging and distorting its own scientific evidence to support a continued ban on snus.

With so many lives at stake, we have an obligation to address this matter in a calm and evidence based manner, rather than upholding the EU ban on a smoke-free product that demonstrably saves lives.

…………

Declaration of interest: I am a snus user, which has allowed me to cut down my smoking drastically, even though I have not stopped completely yet. My wife used to smoke, but gave it up completely several years ago by switching to eucalyptus flavoured snus.

Infrastructure: The Pirate Bay is a site that has remained online for ten years come this summer, despite attempts from almost every Ancient-Power-That-Be to shut it down. It has often been said that The Pirate Bay hasn’t evolved much at all in the past five years; I disagree, it has adapted and overcome everything thrown in its path. There may soon come a time when we need to learn from its experiences in resilience just to safeguard freedom of speech.

The Pirate Bay went through a user-interface redesign some time late 2005 or early 2006, when it went multilingual, and has remained fairly constant since then. The only other site in the world’s top 100 that has remained similarly consistent could possibly be Wikipedia; for every other site, it’s a necessity to evolve, modernize, and meet new user demands.

It is not without irony that Hollywood’s nemesis number one in distribution technology hasn’t innovated in user experience in almost ten years, and still outcompetes the copyright industry hands down when it comes to who provides better service.

But I would argue that The Pirate Bay has been remarkably innovative, just not in the user experience field – a lot of other sites are blazing that trail. Rather, The Pirate Bay has been a trailblazer in resilience. After all, a number of bought-and-paid-for or just plain misguided legislatures and courts have tried to eradicate the site, and yet, it still stands untouched.

As the freedom-of-speech wars escalate, we will need to start taking cues from what The Pirate Bay has learned in the art of staying online, and that time may be approaching fast. This was never a war over the copyright monopoly; it was a war over the concept of the letter as such, over the right to communicate in private, over the right to publish and broadcast ideas that somebody else wouldn’t like the world to see or hear.

For this is what we see – the techniques originally used to attempt silencing The Pirate Bay have already come to be used against activists trying to highlight abuse of power, and corporations and others are trying the might-makes-right approach. You have the example with Greenpeace’s protest site being silenced in the exact same way by an oil company, just to take one example among many.

There is the idea among people with money and power that they have the right to control what other people can say about them. Unfortunately, they are starting to enforce that idea with what amounts to mafia tactics, using the threat of courtrooms as their battlefield, and using intimidation to squelch dissent. (The Pirate Bay themselves were victims of law in this very manner.)

As this war on freedom of speech escalates, we would do well to study the methods for staying online that The Pirate Bay has pioneered.

NYTimes hade en intressant artikel om hur folk påverkas av kommentarsfält. En studie har genomförts som visade att folk väljer att bli mer polariserade, när förekomsten av lågkvalitativ kritik dyker upp i kommentarsfälten.

“Resultatet var både överraskande och störande. Oförskämda kommentarer skapade inte bara polarisering bland läsare, de förändrade även deltagarnas tolkning av själva nyhetsartikeln i sig.”

Precis hur det går till går att se i Anna Trobergs inlägg, där hennes syfte var att konstatera att det självklart finns plats även för feminister i Piratpartiet, men ska man tolka en stor del av de ifrågasättande kommentarerna har de inte förstått det.* Om det beror på att de läst andra kommentarer och påverkats, är svårt att säga. Men när inlägget publicerades, var diskussionen först i sak, men har nu utvecklats till något helt annat efter att några stycken dykt upp med alarmerande språkbruk.

Det känns nästan som att delta i ett experiment när jag lägger in kommentarer under inlägget. Kanske är det nån som inte alls har Piratpartiets bästa för ögonen, som är där mest bara för att det är kul att härja lite i kommentarsfält. Kanske är anonyma inlägg gjorda av en och samma person eller något fåtal, hela vägen, och vågen av protester kanske är mindre än den ser ut att vara.

Summan är att om man skummar igenom diskussionerna som skett hittills i ämnet, så framstår Piratpartiet vara en av de värsta auktoritära organisationerna i modern tid, som dessutom inte har något till övers för kvinnoperspektiv. Det är vad det samlade surret domineras av, och det gör mig såklart väldigt orolig. Jag kanaliserar lite av min mamma, erkänner jag, när jag får en släng av “men vad ska folk tro?”, när hon tyckte att det inte var välstädat nog hemma.

Vad i jösse namn ska folk tro när Jerker sitter i den här tråden och jämför feminism med nazism? Jerker är självklart inte alla, jag tror inte ens att han är särskilt representativ för de som har problem med feminism — men han dominerar diskussionen med sina galenskaper. Det är det som hörs i surret, det är det man känner av när man som nyfiken på partiet läser igenom diskussioner. Det är sånt som gör att vissa undviker Piratpartiet som pesten, för alldeles uppenbart vill man inte sammanblanda sig med galningar.

Flera kommentarer under Annas inlägg är riktigt bra, genomtänkta och välskrivna. Men det drunknar lätt i en veritabel flod av ovidkomligheter, där några få profilerar sig — och därmed hela partiet, för en åskådare.

När såna här situationer uppstår, så får jag ofta en insikt i varför det finns PR-byråer och åsiktsfrisering. Varför det råder en viss diskussionsförbistring i samhället. Det är en sån där fråga som jag ofta resonerar kring, hur håller man balansen? För att demokrati ska utvecklas behöver det finnas transparens och utrymme för diskussioner. Det kan liksom aldrig handla om att inte tillåta såna som Jerker att inte uttala sig i debatter han uppenbarligen inte har ett sakligt förhållande till. Det skapar ett sluttande plan och är inte alls bra utveckling.

Å andra sidan, så skapas det ett smalare utrymme — för att inte säga att utrymmet försvinner helt, för de som är mogna och vill föra en dialog om ett ämne, om en handfull människor helt dominerar i diskussionen med bisarra fundamentalistiska synpunkter. Den enes yttrandefrihet blir plötsligt den andres totala inskränkning av densamma.

Det är en riktigt stor och svår frågeställning dessa dagar och jag vet faktiskt inte riktigt hur man tacklar det. Annat än att fortsätta envisas med att lyfta ämnet, antar jag. Och hoppas att de som blivit avskräckta nån gång hittar tillbaka in och får se att det verkligen inte är så illa som det framstår i vissa trådar. Jag skulle vilja se fler yttra sig, skulle vilja se bloggar och trådar på olika sociala medieplattformar där nyans och kunnande tar plats. Göra det svårt för den nischade enstakigheten att tysta nyanserad diskussion.

I Piratpartiet finns det stor politisk potential och plats för mognad på ett sätt som inte existerat på länge i Sverige. Hjälp gärna till att få det att hända. Sätt emot när de enstaka drygar sig. Visa att det inte är den typen av resonemang som driver engagemanget i partiet. För i förlängningen kommer det att handla om vilka som har kunskapen — och därmed makten.

För det är ett problem att så få kvinnor engagerar sig i nätfrågeställningar. Jag läste nånstans att det är endast 9 procent av de som engagerar sig i Wikipedia som är kvinnor. En undersökning som gjorts (PDF) visar att det är fjuttiga 6 procent kvinnor som fildelar. Kasta gärna ett öga på den sneda åldersfördelningen också… Det är den framtida klass-skillnaden, om man så vill, vi ser uttryckas i såna här siffror. Det är alarmerande på ett sätt vi behöver ta politiskt intryck av.

De som förstår tekniken och kan använda den är de som har makten. De som kan tillgodogöra sig information och data är de som kommer att ha makten. Om vi tycker att det här angår alla, så måste vi faktiskt ta vårt engagemang på allvar och se vad vi kan göra för att påverka de här skillnaderna så att det blir bättre. Det får inte handla om VEM som ska ha makten, utan att alla ska ha den.

För att citera en riktigt tänkvärd kommentar under Anna Trobergs inlägg, av Amanda Eriksson: “Frågan är inte varför en pirat ska kalla sig feminist; frågan är varför en feminist ska kalla sig pirat.” Det är inte andra grupper som har förklaringsskyldighet, det är vi som är pirater, som vill introducera nya tankar och bättre utveckling som har den skyldigheten. 

* * *

*För det kan ju rimligtvis inte handla om att ett parti som värnar om mänskliga rättigheter, yttrande- och åsiktsfrihet, verkligen anser att feminister inte har något existensberättigande i partiet..? Om det nu skulle vara så att nån verkligen uppfattar det som så, kanske de har missuppfattat den humanistiska principiella grund partiet står på, och ska leta sig nån annanstans. Seriöst, byt parti. För vilken är nästa grupp ni tänkt er inte “ska få finnas”, i så fall?

Jag var på en mottagning arrangerad av den amerikanska handelskammaren AmCham tidigare ikväll. Det var tal från podiet om hur fantastiskt bra det kommer bli med det nya frihandelsavtalet som ska börja förhandlas mellan EU och USA.

Medan jag lyssnade stod jag bredvid en handelsattaché från den amerikanska ambassaden, som jag just hade börjat prata med, och förklarat för att jag representerade det svenska Piratpartiet.

När talen var slut (och gudskelov var de faktiskt korta på riktigt den här gången), vände jag mig mot attachén och sa att jag höll med om att det kommande frihandelsavtalet var en jätteintressant fråga.

- Vi är så otroligt stolta över att vi lyckades stoppa ACTA-avtalet, sa jag och log med hela ansiktet. Och det är fantastiskt, nu finns det flera hundratusen människor som har varit ute på gatorna i Europa och demonstrerat mot ett frihandelsavtal. Om det nya EU-USA-avtalet innehåller ett ”IP-kapitel” om upphovsrätt och patent kommer det bli så mycket lättare att mobilisera motstånd nästa gång.

Och så log jag en gång till.

Det är verkligen kul att ha förmånen att få representera Piratpartiet i Europaparlamentet, och få den här typen av tillfällen.

Det var alla engagerade medborgare som tog till gatorna eller mejlade EU-parlamentariker som gjorde att vi kunde stoppa ACTA-avtalet.

Ryktesvis pratas det om att EU-kommissionen (som fungerar som EU’s regering, fast den inte är vald) blev uppriktigt skakad när hundratusentals medborgare, först i Polen och sedan i resten av Europa, gick ut i januari- och februarikylan 2012 och protesterade mot ett ”frihandelsavtal” som inte hade ett dugg med frihandel att göra, utan bara var ett försök att gå runt de demokratiskt valda lagstiftande församlingarna och bakvägen tvinga internetleverantörerna att bli fildelningspoliser.

Det är väldigt bra om EU-kommissionen kommer ihåg den känslan, och det är ännu bättre om USA förstår att det inte kommer att fungera att försöka köra samma trick en gång till.

Jag hoppas den amerikanska attachén gör det som diplomatiska attachéer är till för, och rapporterar den här konversationen hem till dem som kommer sköta förhandlingarna mellan USA och EU.

Annars kan det bli så att vi måste ut och demonstrera igen i femtongradig kyla för att få behålla friheten på nätet. Men behövs det så gör vi det. Vi har redan gjort det en gång och vunnit.

…………

Läs mer om det kommande Tafta-avtalet hos DN

Reflections: After the attempted tolls on bank savings in Cyprus for saving the Euro, a new kind of tolls can be heard in the distance for the currency. The fundamental trust in the currency as a store of value has been broken, according to multiple signs across Europe. Even with the Cypriot parliament backpedaling frantically, the situation appears snowballing – there could be a bank run in two weeks.

When I was speaking at the first European Bitcoin conference in Prague, another speaker was a seasoned economist whose name I forget. He described how today’s bank system with so-called fractional reserve banking is essentially a crumbling Ponzi scheme. In summary, banks have the right to conjure up money out of thin air and lend that money to you against interest that they get to keep. (Yes, really, that’s actually how it works today, although it is admittedly a very simplified description.) As part of the Q&A, I asked him what the first sign of a collapse scenario materializing would be.

He responded that a first sign of collapse would be that people didn’t trust their holdings in the currency to retain their value, so they would actively seek to trade it off for other stores of value – other currencies or just about anything else. This was an answer that made sense in the light of the history of known hyperinflations and currency collapses.

In the past days with the Cypriot bailout measure, these first signs of a currency collapse scenario have materialized. People are now actively seeking to trade off their Euros, no longer trusting them as a store of value. When this has happened in the past to currencies, they have not survived.

This was visible on first on Cyprus, where people made a so-called run on the bank to get their money in cash to save it from the negotiated 6-10% “save-the-Euro” toll from all bank accounts, except the banks were closed, so it became a run on ATMs which predictably drained of cash in a heartbeat (and deliberately were not refilled).

A “run on the bank” means that people no longer trust the banks to hold their savings, so everybody tries to withdraw their money at the same time – something that no current bank survives, as the customers’ money isn’t in the bank vaults. This is a scenario that can develop in hours in any economy, when some people start withdrawing in a sign of distrust and more people follow suit to not be the one left standing when the music stops.

The tremors of the bank run – or the attempted bank run, thwarted only by a bank holiday – were felt far and wide across the entire Eurozone. People in several countries got the message loud and clear: it’s their savings, their retirement money, that may be next up for a shave.

One obvious alternative store of value is Bitcoin, which is gaining in popularity. Over the weekend, Bitcoin apps soared in popularity in Spain. That is no coincidence; Spain is one of the plummeting countries badly in need of a parachute.

Unsurprisingly, Bitcoin has not just soared in interest, but also in value the past days to meet increasing demand as people flee the Euro – it has climbed almost 50% in value since news broke of the Cypriot bank account toll a few days ago, topping 65 USD per bitcoin today, up from the 40s a week ago. (Those who hold their savings in bitcoin, which is unseizable, would not be affected by a bank account toll.)

Another such country is Italy, a country in a thorough financial mess. A few days ago, one German banking chief suggested that all Italian savings need a 15% one-time toll per the Cypriot model to save Italy’s economy. Guess what happens next.

So what brought us to this situation? Two things.

The first thing was the process of introducing the Euro, the common currency, which was an ivory tower project from the get-go. Europe’s political leaders had simply decided to create a prestige project of a common currency of the world’s largest economy, the European Union. In making this happen, any criticism that could suggest weaknesses in the idea were simply not allowed to percolate up to the decision-makers.

The second thing is the insane idea that bank profits are privatized and bank losses are socialized – meaning that bank owners get to pocket any profits, and taxpayers get to cover any losses that banks make. This is a recipe for disaster that needs to stop yesterday. There is simply no reason at all to treat banks differently from any other company. Yes, they keep the economy going – which is all the more reason to subject them to the rules of the economy, namely that when you risk money, you risk your own money and not the taxpayers’ money.

When banks started failing, governments unwisely stepped in and covered their losses. In this move, insolvent banks became insolvent governments while bank owners walked away. Tax payers have been footing the bill – and now, it appears to be the turn of the small savers.

The Euro is gone; bells are tolling its demise in the distant background. When the highest politicians in a Eurozone country told its people that the Euro is not trustable as a store of value, that was the point of no return. It won’t be here in a couple of years, at least not in its current form. The only conceivable way out I see that would allow the Eurocrats to keep some form of professional honor is to divide the Euro into two or more subcurrencies while it can still be done in some kind of order.

But such a move would require Eurocrats to admit that a failed policy could be caused by bad fundamentals, rather than insufficient effort (aka the “if it’s not working, you’re just not trying hard enough” mentality). Don’t hold your breath.

(End note: it could be argued that the problem isn’t with the Euro as such but with bank solvency, as the currency as such doesn’t look threatened on the surface – after all, people who manage to withdraw their savings into cash, still denominated in Euro, aren’t threatened; it’s having money in a bank that’s bad. However, in reality, that isn’t really an option, and the reason we’re in this situation in the first place is because the economies have been locked together in a common currency in a most unhealthy way.)

Freedom of Speech – Christian Engström: The European parliament’s vote earlier this week on a resolution that asked for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media was not entirely easy to interpret, but the most reasonable political interpretation is to say that the parliament said No to a ban on porn.

But let’s take a closer look at the different articles that the parliament voted on.

First, Article 14:

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere;

The parliament rejected this article completely, which is very good. If it had not, it would have called for turning the internet service providers into some kind of private ”porn police”, very much along the same lines as the ACTA treaty that wanted to turn them into a private file sharing police.

The rejection of this article was a clear and very important victory for free speech and information freedom.

Then, Article 19:

19. Calls on the Member States to establish independent regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and advertising industry and a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls;

This article asked member states to establish regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and a mandate to impose sanctions on companies and individuals. That kind of mechanism has no place in a democratic society.

The rejection of this article as well was another clear victory for freedom of speech.

Finally, Article 17:

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism

Here, the parliament rejected the second half of the article with the explicit call for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media, but kept the first part with the indirect reference to the resolution from 1997.

This is where it gets tricky and a bit ambiguous.

On the one hand, the parliament rejected the direct call for a ban. So far, so good. The parliament no longer highlights that particular article in the old resolution. If the highlighting had remained, it would have been clear that the parliament did in fact want a ban on porn in media, but since it was taken away,

But on the other hand, Article 5 of the 1997 resolution still contains a call for ”statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media”, and the parliament expressed that it wanted that resolution implemented, without mentioning any exceptions.

So how should we interpret this?

The reasonable political interpretation is that the parliament does not want to ban pornography on the internet or in the media.

If this had been a legislative report, it would have been correct to say that the parliament wanted to ban porn in magazines, TV and DVDs. Legal texts are quite similar to computer code (although courts are quite different from computers), so in that case an indirect reference would be just as strong as a direct mention of the porn ban.

But this is a political resolution where the parliament just expresses an opinion, and then it has to be read in a different way. From a political perspective, the important thing is that the parliament actively removed the wording ”a ban on all forms of pornography in the media” (and remove all the sharp proposals on how to enforce it). If the majority had in fact been in favor of a ban, it would have had no reason to do this. Since it did, the only reasonable conclusion is that the majority of members didn’t want a ban.

This is a victory, and that’s what counts in the political landscape in Brussels.

Thank you, all activists who contributed by sending emails to MEPs or in other ways!

This article was originally published on MEP Engström’s blog.

The European parliament’s vote earlier this week on a resolution that asked for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media was not entirely easy to interpret, but the most reasonable political interpretation is to say that the parliament said No to a ban on porn.

But let’s take a closer look at the different articles that the parliament voted on.

First, Article 14:

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere;

The parliament rejected this article completely, which is very good. If it had not, it would have called for turning the internet service providers into some kind of private ”porn police”, very much along the same lines as the ACTA treaty that wanted to turn them into a private file sharing police.

The rejection of this article was a clear and very important victory for free speech and information freedom.

Then, Article 19:

19. Calls on the Member States to establish independent regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and advertising industry and a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls;

This article asked member states to establish regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and a mandate to impose sanctions on companies and individuals. That kind of mechanism has no place in a democratic society.

The rejection of this article as well was another clear victory for freedom of speech.

Finally, Article 17:

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism

Here, the parliament rejected the second half of the article with the explicit call for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media, but kept the first part with the indirect reference to the resolution from 1997.

This is where it gets tricky and a bit ambiguous.

On the one hand, the parliament rejected the direct call for a ban. So far, so good. The parliament no longer highlights that particular article in the old resolution. If the highlighting had remained, it would have been clear that the parliament did in fact want a ban on porn in media, but it was taken away.

But on the other hand, Article 5 of the 1997 resolution still  contains a call for ”statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media”, and the parliament expressed that it wanted that resolution implemented, without mentioning any exceptions.

So how should we interpret this?

The reasonable political interpretation is that the parliament does not want to ban pornography on the internet or in the media.

If this had been a legislative report, it would have been correct to say that the parliament wanted to ban porn in magazines, TV and DVDs. Legal texts are quite similar to computer code (although courts are quite different from computers), so in  that case an indirect reference would be just as strong as a direct mention of the porn ban.

But this is a political resolution where the parliament just expresses an opinion, and then it has to be read in a different way. From a political perspective, the important thing is that the parliament actively removed the wording ”a ban on all forms of pornography in the media” (and remove all the sharp proposals on how to enforce it). If the majority had in fact been in favour of a ban, it would have had no reason to do this. Since it did, the only reasonable conclusion is that the majority of members didn’t want a ban.

This is a victory, and that’s what counts in the political landscape in Brussels.

Thank you, all activists who contributed by sending emails to MEPs or in other ways!

…………

Republished at Falkvinge on Infopolicy

Others on the topic: TechEye

The big screen after a roll call vote [in 2010]. Click to find details about the vote at VoteWatch.eu

After this week’s vote on the Report on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU, where we (mostly) managed to get rid of a proposal to ban all forms of porn in media and on the internet, several people have asked what the numbers were in the key votes, and which members of the European parliament voted for or against the porn ban, respectively.

Unfortunately, there is no way I can answer those questions, as the votes were done by a show of hands, and the exact results were not recorded. Strange as it may seem, this is how most votes in the European parliament are conducted.

I republish a blog post I wrote in 2011 that explains the background:

The European institutions need to become a lot more transparent, if they want to have any chance of gaining the confidence of increasingly eurosceptic citizens. The European Parliament is by far the best of the three institutions, and much more open and transparent than the Council or the Commission.

But the Parliament could improve, too.

When we vote in plenary in the European Parliament, we have an electronic voting system that is used to make ”roll call votes” (RCV). It works just as you would expect. A big screen tells you which item you are voting at the moment, and you have a few seconds to press one of the three buttons for yes, no, or abstain.

When the vote has been closed, the big screen displays the votes cast, both in numbers and with little green, red or white dots representing the individual members (MEPs) who took part in the vote. Afterwards, the information about how each MEP voted is made public, and there are sites like ItsYourParliament.eu and VoteWatch.eu where you can check how individual MEP voted.

It is a perfectly good system, but there is one problem.

For most of our votes, the electronic system is not used. Instead, we vote by raising our hands the second the President (speaker) says ”in favour”, ”against”, or ”abstentions”. The President then makes a judgement as to whether it was a yes or a no, and calls out his decision.

If he is uncertain, he can call for an ”electronic check”. We then redo the vote using the electronic system.

If an MEP feels that the President may have misjudged the outcome of a vote done by show of hands, he can demand an electronic check by shouting ”Check!” when the President has made his call. As I understand the Rules of Procedure for the Parliament, a check should always be carried out if a MEP requests it, but frequently the President ignores calls of ”Check!” from the floor, if he feels confident that he was right in his call.

After an electronic check the number of votes in favour, against, and abstentions are displayed on the big screen, but not the little dots representing the individual MEPs.

No data on how the individual MEPs voted is saved in these normal votes, regardless of whether they are completed by show of hands (where it would be impossible) or electronic check (where the data exists, but is discarded).

In the majority of votes that are not roll call votes, neither citizens nor other MEPs can check how a particular MEP voted.

I think all votes in plenary in the European Parliament should be carried out as roll call votes (except possibly minor points of order). This is a way to increase the transparency of the Parliament in a simple and straight-forward way, that can be implemented immediately and does not even cost any money. The electronic voting system is already there and has been paid for, whether we use it or not.

The standard argument against having all votes as RCVs is that it would take more time. I seriously doubt that this is true. The show-of-hands procedure is perhaps slightly quicker when everything goes smoothly, but if you add the time that the (fairly frequent) calls for electronic checks take, it often feels like it would have been quicker if we had done it all by roll call votes from the start.

There was a discussion in plenary in Strasbourg this week [in 2011] that resulted in one member asking for all the votes of a (random) report to be carried out as RCVs. The President granted the request, and it did not feel like the vote took any longer than it would have if we had voted the way we normally do.

And even if it were to be shown that it does in fact take slightly longer on average, I think we should still use roll call votes all the time. The Swedish national parliament has done so since it first got an automatic voting system, and I believe it is the same in national parliaments more or less everywhere.

MEPs are elected to represent the people who voted for them. Of course the voters should have the possibility to check how their representatives are doing their job.

To have all votes in plenary as roll call votes is a straight-forward reform to increase transparency in a concrete way. The European Parliament can implement at no cost and without delay, it it wants to.

I think we should.

Se mitt tal i EU-parlamentet (1 min)

I måndags debatterade EU-parlamentet rapporten ”Avskaffande av könsstereotyper i EU”. Jag fick en minuts talartid och sa så här:

Herr talman! Jag håller helt med rapportören fru Liotard om att gammaldags och omoderna könsstereotyper är något dåligt som borde elimineras, eftersom de låser fast både män och kvinnor i roller som kanske inte passar just dem som individer. Målet måste vara ett samhälle där varje individ är fri att vara sig själv, vare sig hon är man eller kvinna.

Men jag kommer ändå att rösta nej till rapporten på grund av dess innehåll. I artikel 17 ber man om ett förbud mot all form av pornografi i media. Det tycker inte jag är acceptabelt. Jag ser inget negativt med pornografi. Det är en populär form av underhållning och det ska var och en vara fri att bestämma själv.

Ännu värre blir det om man tittar på artikel 14, som säger hur det ska förbjudas. Det är internetoperatörerna som ska tvingas eller pressas eller uppmanas att skriva på en ”frivillig” stadga. Det är precis samma mekanism som i Acta-avtalet som parlamentet sade nej till. Vi bör säga nej också till den här resolutionen också, fastän målet med den är gott.

Omröstningen i plenum hölls i tisdags, och för att göra en lång historia kort så vann vi i huvudsak.

Vi stoppade förslagen om att internetleverantörerna skulle bli porrpoliser och att det skulle inrättas myndigheter med rätt att övervaka och bestraffa media. Rent tekniskt blev den antagna resolutionen delvis otydlig, men den rimliga politiska tolkningen är nog att EU-parlamentet sa nej till tanken att försöka förbjuda porr.

Tack alla som mejlade ledamöter i EU-parlamentet i frågan, eller hjälpte till att uppmärksamma den på andra sätt. Det var det som ledde till den här politiska framgången. Aktivism gör skillnad.

P3 Nyheter rapporterar om EU-parlamentets tilltag att blockera mejl från medborgare som ville protestera mot EU-förslaget att förbjuda alla former av pornografi på internt, och citerar mig:

– Alltså, det är ju fullständigt absurt! Ett parlament som betraktar sina medborgares åsikter som spam – de personer som tycker det borde omedelbart avsäga sig sitt uppdrag, säger Christian Engström.

Läs mer eller lyssna hos P3 Nyheter

Som jag bloggade om igår har jag har skrivit till parlamentets talman och protesterat och bett om en förklaring.

OBS! Det här är teorier och funderingar. Om jag inte serverar den här texten som absolut sanning, varför skriver jag den då? Jo, för att redovisa en känsla som finns med och som påverkar vad jag drar för slutsatser i olika situationer. Det var grundtanken i mitt förra inlägg som handlade om att jag ofta ser saker ur ett feministiskt perspektiv och vad det innebär, och är grundtanken bakom denna fortsättningsfundering om kvinnor och Piratpartiets frågeställningar. Det här handlar om mig, inte om dig.

Varför är så få kvinnor medlemmar i Piratpartiet? Varför verkar kvinnor ointresserade av informationspolitik? Frågorna dyker upp jätteofta, och det har varit svårt att besvara den. Jag vet inte med säkerhet, men jag har några teorier.

Kvinnor är alltid övervakade. Kvinnor är dessutom alltid tillåtna att bedömas, värderas och betygssättas i allmänhetens ögon.

Kvinnor får lära sig att det är deras ansvar när skit händer. Det ansvaret utsträcks lätt i att ta integritetsinskränkning, om tanken är att man som individ ska få leva ett tryggare liv.

Kvinnor ska inte ta risker. Kanske finns det en och annan som uppfattar det som en överdrift — det är det sannerligen på ett individuellt plan, men sammantaget är det här rätt så massiva budskap som flickor, tjejer, kvinnor och tanter får motta genom livet.

Kvinnor som inte märks slipper kritik. Den här lite lurig — men faktum är att ju mindre du säger eller profilerar dig åsiktsmässigt som kvinna, desto trevligare och acceptablare framstår du för omgivningen.

Just de här sidorna av könsdebatten upplever jag i högsta grad angå Piratpartiet. Det feminismen lyfter när det handlar om kvinnorollen i samhället och vardagen — är de själva principiella saker som Piratpartiet är rädda för ska hända medborgare generellt, på grund av bland annat övervakning, som jag ser det. I mitt personliga fall har ovanstående lista varit starkt bidragande till varför jag engagerat mig i Piratpartiets frågeställningar, till och med. Det var väldigt lätt att identifiera problematiken.

Jag är definitivt inte ett offer. Jag är nog ett av de minsta offren jag känner till, som till största delen valt mitt liv. I alla fall på ytan, måste jag lägga till med ett visst mått av syrlighet. Vissa strider har jag undvikit att ta, för att jag nånstans vet att jag inte kan vinna den och det skulle vara alldeles för energikrävande att ta den för den goda sakens skull. Det är såklart inte en frivillighet som är särskilt smaklig då. Att välja minst stridbara väg, är kanske ett val på ytan, men jag tror ni förstår vad det skapar för psykologi när man tvingas tänka så, systematiskt.

När jag lagt ut orden om min oro för att vi håller på att skapa ett samhälle av lögnare, så vet jag vad jag pratar om. Är det några över huvud taget, jag upplever förstår det så är det piratpartister. Åtminstone borde den genomsnittlige piraten förstå det. Det är det här vi försöker motverka: ett samhälle som består av människor som inte vågar leva eller uttrycka sig som de vill, för att det är så många ögon på en. Där individens frihet är avhängig av auktoritetens godtycke.

Listan ovanför har fungerat som motivering för mig som person att vilja sparka bakut och göra något åt det. Men samma lista kan även förklara varför färre kvinnor letar sig till Piratpartiet. Som kvinna tar man ansvar, både för sin egen säkerhet och för andras. Att bli förbannad för att få sitt privaliv invaderat kan sitta längre in, när man har den psykologiska positionen av att ha ett smalt privatliv redan från början. Övervakning är ett normaltillstånd, “nu har jag varit tvungen att acceptera det, så varför ska inte du acceptera det”?

Frågeställningarna kan alltså antagligen vändas, och ligga som grund till avsaknad av känsla för hur akut eller problematiskt det är, till och med. Att acceptera underlägsenhet inför auktoriteten säljs oftast som ansvarsfullt beteende. Och jag skulle vilja att detta är något som folk som är informationspolitiskt intresserade reflekterar över lite mer medvetet: Det vi inte vill ska hända medborgare, har varit och är en verklighet för kvinnor sen hur länge som helst, på väldigt personliga plan. Det skapar mest bara olika reaktioner och konsekvenser beroende på individ och erfarenhet.

Det finns inget facit: så här gör man för att locka kvinnor; så här för att locka män. Det måste finnas ett ömsesidigt intresse, tror jag, för att politik ska växa. Kanske är det värdefullt för några av er att se att sambandet mellan feministiskt synsätt kan för vissa av oss vara intimt förknippat med Piratpartiets syn på mer frihet i samhället. Inte en motsättning alls — och att alla övertalningsförsök till att se det som en motsats blir misstänkt likt det auktoritära, där någon ska vara lydig. Istället för fri.

Pressmeddelande från Piratpartiet:

På tisdagen uttryckte Europaparlamentet sitt stöd för en resolution om att förbjuda all slags porr i media.

- Detta är oacceptabelt vad gäller viktiga demokratiska värden som yttrandefrihet och tryckfrihet, säger Christian Engström som är ledamot av Europaparlamentet för Piratpartiet.

Det märkliga är att Europaparlamentet beslutade att stödja den tidigare resolutionen (A4-0258/97) om att bland annat förbjuda all slags porr i media – och samtidigt att stryka de ord i dagens resolution som förklarade att det är just det man gör.

- Det här är nipprigt. Det avgörande är ju vad man har beslutat i sak, nämligen att stödja en resolution som bland annat vill förbjuda porr i media. Att stryka de delar av texten som förklarar vad man gjort, det ändrar inget i sak. Det är bara att försöka vilseleda medborgare och media, säger Christian Engström.

- Den goda nyheten är att de delar av resolutionen som ville reglera internet och media ur ett könsperspektiv föll. Det får ses som ett resultat av att Piratpartiet lyft fram det problematiska med dessa förslag. Nu slipper internetoperatörerna bli porrpoliser, säger Christian Engström.

Dagens resolution är inte lagstiftning, utan en så kallad inititivrapport. Vilket innebär att det är en uppmaning till EU-kommissionen (som är den enda institution i EU som har initiativrätt) att lägga fram lagförslag i linje med dagens beslut.

- Vi får hoppas att EU-kommissionen inser det orimliga i det beslut som har fattats i dag och därför avstår från att gå vidare med dessa frågor, avslutar Christian Engström.