2011/09/18

About time for a new political joke category in Germany

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Politische Piratenwitze - political pirates jokes.

I'll give it a shot with my own creation:
Warum schickt Berlin die die Bundeswehr zur Piratenjagd vor Somalia?  -  Weil die Piraten in Berlin sind!"
(Why does Berlin send the Bundeswehr to Somalia for pirate-hunting?  -  Because the Pirates are in Berlin!"


Background:
The Piratenpartei Deutschland has gained 8% of the seats in the Berlin state elections 2011.
They don't fly the Jolly Roger, but a sail is still in their logo.


What's the reason for the success of such an exotic party (which has about 1 in 3,500 Berlin's inhabitants as members)?

Put simply, the failure of the FDP and the other parties to prevent the slide towards a surveillance and police state, as well as stupid copyright law excesses and similar. The original libertarian political area has been vacated by most of the (so-called) liberals (just like they shed their social wing, too) years ago - save for a single federal minister who does a good job on this. Nowadays they FDP is reduced to shameless promotion of certain business interests, as evidenced quite early during the current federal legislation period when they pushed for a quite inexplicable value added tax cut for the hotel sector.

The FDP has had a major problem in its relative similarity with the greens on many liberal (that is, not shamelessly pro-employers) topics, and now it's even facing a party that specialises on this neglected area. Which is a shame for both (so-called) liberals and greens, of course.


Well, let's hope these pirates aren't as harmless in the pursuit of libertarian agenda as they're unarmed.
Maybe they'll eventually board the Bundestag as well and call for an end of the stupid pirate-hunting off Somalia's coast?

S O
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1 comment:

  1. The FDP, having observed that monied support is a major assistance in elections, seems to have forgotten that actual visceral support from party zealots is actually more important. This seems to be a pretty common occurrence in non-right-wing parties (i.e. the ones where the visceral support isn't already the plutocrats). The same sort of thing seems to be plaguing the Democrats in the USA, the Socialists in France, the LD in the UK, and Labour in Aus/NZ.

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