Some time ago, the Greek pirates asked to pass them a message for their convention. We gladly joined. The subtitles can be activated in the movie below.
Arrr. Fellow Pirates.
First off: we are thankful that the Greek Pirate Party has approached us, and we imagine others, to ask us for a short message which will be broadcast during your convention.
We are thankful because it shows that our group is able to work across borders. United. That we share the same ground and breathe the same spirit. A spirit of change.
We are grateful our joint message stretches from Iceland in the North, all the way to Greece down-south. From the Western Great-Britain shores and beyond to Russia’s Sakhalin region in the east. Pirates are a global movement. We, are a global movement.
As Belgians having the dubious honour of holding the European headquarters, we felt especially compelled to react to your call-out.
And, although we are not in charge, we apologize for how these headquarters treated and continue to treat your beautiful and significant country and its citizens as if the people themselves are to blame for the strange, maybe dire situation we find ourselves in.
Belgian Pirates are as much against what is happening to your country as you are. And although we don’t live there and do not feel the hardship the capitalist movement has brought us as much as you do, you can rest assured that similar processes are being implemented here. As if that is a reassurance to anyone.
We also feel how society, in our case the Belgian one, is being crushed, and wedged, between the rock of economy and the hard place of austerity. Here too poverty numbers are increasing. Long-term sicknesses are on the increase. Wages are reduced. Contracts are created without a corporate commitment to the well-being of the new hire.
Like you, we feel the results of international conflicts and struggle to cope. We have had attacks on our soil, yet we continue to bomb. We have an influx of refugees, yet decide to continue destabilisation. In our globalized world, we share our problems – so it seems.
It seems an evolution without end. But is it?
We Pirates share a good heart which we should and will cherish. We’ll bring empathy back into politics. We’ll favour dialogue and discourse over positions and discussion to state our points. Points which, to many, are relevant and needed more than another aid package to the economy, another injection of capital. The latter both are good for the market, while citizens are hardly looked at.
That is why in Belgium one of the main core values, as visible on our pirateparty.be website, is our support for a Universal Basic Income. Indiscriminately from who you are and where you’re from. A Basic Income enough to cater for Basic Needs which, according to Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Humans Rights, exactly is that: a right and no wrong. In a way we seek only to implement what our politicians signed for.
But there is more than Basic Income. There also is the need for privacy, transparency and a re-orientation to a local instead of a global economy and entrepreneurship.
To implement that, we should move from electing representatives for the economy to choosing representatives for the people.
As Greeks, you understand better what Democracy means than we do as the origins of the word itself has its roots there.
Pirates stand by each other. We are not a local movement, but a global one.
I pray for a big change with the following elections here in Belgium