The United States Pirate Party
Yep, it's real. (The Bus 3.43)
Welcome aboard The Bus!
The Stop
The United States Pirate Party (USPP) is a political party1 founded in 2006 by Brent Allison and Alex English. Aligned loosely with the International Pirate Movement,2 the party supports reformation of ‘intellectual property (IP) laws, true governmental transparency, and protection of privacy and civil liberties.’ The core of the party’s beliefs is that people - not corporations - should come first in lawmaking.
The platform of the USPP is straightforward, and includes tenets such as:
Putting People Before Corporations
The USPP aims to reverse Congressional and Supreme Court decisions that have favoured the interests of corporations over people. They believe cutting corporate tax rates while raising personal income tax is wrong as it means ‘real people end up with the short end of the stick.’
Opening Up Government
The USPP believes that - in order to control democracy - citizens need to know what their government is doing and which special interests influence elected officials. By reforming laws which put deals with corporations behind closed doors, sell public data to private interests and prevent the recording of public officials in their duties (such as a police officer making an arrest), the USPP aims to ensure government is transparent and accountable.
Promoting Culture and Knowledge Through Copyright Reform
Believing copyright laws were created to ‘promote knowledge and culture by giving the creator a limited monopoly over their creations,’ the USPP maintains that Congressional decisions - ‘under the influence of corporations’ - to expanded this limitation to seventy years after the death of the creator is wrong.3 To correct this, the USPP intends to ‘limit the copyright to five years for electronic media and fourteen years for tangible objects, [and] make sure that all non-commercial copying, sharing and remixing are legal ….’ The party believes the ‘internet has the potential to be a new Library of Alexandria,’ but that this will be endangered if ‘corporations and government lock it down.’
There are other concerns, too: abolishing patents, reforming what they see as an over-militarised police, fighting against any type or form of bigotry, and encouraging a productive pan-Americanism by creating a ‘stronger bond between every American, from Greenland to Patagonia’ and thus changing the ‘paradigm of United States dominance to [one of] genuine collaboration and friendship.’
Needless to say, in the structure of American politics the USPP is a far-less-than-minor player. However, as of June 2023 the party has five active State-level parties (in California, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania) and is becoming officially active in at least 19 more. This relative success is much greater than what Pirate Parties have had in other countries (in the UK, Australia and several others, for example, their parties dissolved in 2020 as a result of no successful elections), but far less than that in Germany, the Czech Republic and Iceland where, collectively, their Pirate Parties hold hundreds of local and national seats.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a yo-yo routine (4:37) recently performed by the reigning world champion at WYCC2023 - the World Yo-Yo Contest held in Osaka, Japan. Hajime Miura does unbelievable things with a pair of yo-yos, and the constant appreciation from the crowd who knows what’s really going on shows how special it is.
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012),4 a 3D stop-motion animated film produced by the British studio Aardman Animations. Based on the children’s novel of the same name by Gideon Defoe, the film is directed by Peter Lord and stars the vocal talents of an all-star cast including Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, David Tennent and Martin Freeman. The story tells the adventure of the Pirate Captain who is on a mission to win the Pirate of the Year award against his arch-rivals, Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz. The quest takes Captain and his crew from Blood Island to Victorian London - and they happen to capture Charles Darwin (and a very rare dodo) along the way. It’s a great example of Aardman’s animation - and a fun film, too.
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012) Trailer
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! streams on various platforms.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is, of course, based on pirate and pirate-y things: ‘Friggin’ in the Riggin’ (Sex Pistols, 1979), ‘Thirsty Dog’ (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, 1994), ‘Madeleine Mary’ (Three Queens in Mourning, 2020), ‘Keelhauled’ (Alestorm, 2008) and ‘I’m Shipping Up to Boston’ (Dropkick Murphys, 2005).5 Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from Thomas Jefferson, and often cited in the philosophy behind the USPP:6
‘Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
Yes, there are more political parties in the US than Democrat, Republican and the ephemeral Independent - though you’d never know it from the news/media. Until yesterday, I had never heard of the USPP - but in true Bus fashion, as soon as it crossed my eyes I knew I had to investigate what turned out to be quite an interesting movement. Sources for today’s Stop include USPP (Uspirates.org) and Pirate Parties International, and Pirate Party (Wikipedia).
The International Pirate Movement is a ‘non-profit international non-governmental organisation with its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Formed in 2010 it serves as a worldwide organisation for Pirate Parties, currently representing members from 43 countries. The Pirate Parties are political incarnations of the freedom of expression movement, trying to achieve their goals by the means of the established political system rather than through activism.’ The very first Pirate Party was formed in Sweden in 2006, and it - like the later IPM - took its name from the idea that piracy (whether in the form of online pirates, pirate radio, or … pirates) operates outside the economic realm of mainstream society.
More recently, this includes corporation efforts to pass and enforce ‘broader laws to ensure that they control and profit from more of our culture,’ including the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies which the USPP believe ‘have locked down our culture, hindered sharing and criminalised their customers.’
The film was released in the US as The Pirates! Band of Misfits because the original title was deemed either too long or too ‘British’ for American audiences. This isn’t the first time, of course, such a change has happened: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) was released in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - largely because the US publisher (Scholastic) believed ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ was too archaic a concept for the American market. Oh, well.
These are five great tunes - though the last two are relatively new to me. The Sex Pistols song is so offensively wrong that it’s right in so many ways (and the fact it doesn’t rate an E whereas the Nick Cave track does just shows the inaccuracy of letting algorithms decide such things - it’s definitely not for children), and the Cave track is one of my favourites from that album. I first heard ‘Madeleine Mary’ on Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s first live album - Summer in the Southeast (2005) - and while my intention to include his version was scuppered when I discovered neither it nor the earlier version from I See a Darkness (1999) was on Spotify, this is a fine, fine substitute.
For more information about the brilliant, but controversial, 3rd American president see: The Bus (1.26) ‘Monticello’ (paywalled) or Thomas Jefferson (Britannica).
I live in Indiana and I had no idea that this political party existed. Can’t say I love any of their ideas either. Which is perhaps why I haven’t heard of them.... 🤔 Interesting read!
While the phrase “people before corporations” sounds good, the reality is we live in a world economy where over 80% of the GDP of the entire world is dominated by the 200 largest transnational oligopolistic corporations on the planet.
Individual countries are powerless to control wealth, cash flows, tax rates, and employment generated by these corporations. Any legislation passed by nations are met by these corporations simply optimizing and shifting their markets, revenues, costs and taxes by shifting operations and activities to the most lucrative and least expensive countries.
This leaves countries competing for these corporate to do business in their jurisdiction by offering tax concessions, environmental concessions, cheap labor, and resources.
If the US Supreme Court reversed Citizens United, and other “people first” legislation, these transnational oligopolies would simply shift their operations, markets, and employment accordingly.
National Politicians and lawmakers - including the US Republican - Democrat duopoly are no match for these global oligopolies.
Hate to poop on your parade, but the US Pirate Party is already dead on arrival.