Reader Fernando sent me this item from the New York Times; I had no idea there were such shenanigans going on in Iceland!
It turns out that there is a political party in that country called The Pirate Party (“Píratar”) that appears to have an extreme left-wing political agenda. Apparently there are “pirate parties” in several countries, and Wikipedia characterizes them like this:
Pirate Party is a label adopted by political parties in different countries. Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy and participation in government, reform of copyright and patent law, free sharing of knowledge (open content), information privacy, transparency, freedom of information, anti-corruption and network neutrality.
Iceland’s Pirate Party won three seats (out of 63 total) in parliament in the 2013 election, becoming the first Pirate Party in the world to actually sit in a national legislature. Here is its symbol:
And some Pirates:
Their platform includes making Iceland a member of the EU only by national referendum, and to grant Edward Snowden Icelandic citizenship (the latter bill failed).
But the Pirates have just had a notable legislative success. According to the Times, the party was the driving force behind a bill that makes blasphemy legal (it was previously illegal in Iceland):
The repeal of Iceland’s 75-year-old law, which protected religions against insult and mockery, came in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre:
Birgitta Jonsdottir, one of three Pirates in the Althing, Iceland’s Parliament, was among party activists celebrating the vote in favor of their bill to repeal the prohibition on impious irreverence, which had been in force since 1940.
The measure to repeal the law, which made “ridiculing or insulting the dogmas or worship of a lawfully existing religious community” an offense punishable by a fine or up to three months in jail, was introduced in January, in the wake of the deadly attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly that enraged devout Muslims with its mocking portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad.
While the vote was underway in the Althing on Thursday, The Iceland Monitor reported, all three of the party’s members took the floor to say, “I am Charlie Hebdo.” After the bill was made law, the party said in a statement, “The Icelandic Parliament has issued the important message that freedom will not bow to bloody attacks.”
Ms. Jonsdottir is a free speech advocate who helped script and edit the WikiLeaks video “Collateral Murder,” made from American military footage leaked by Bradley Manning, now known as Chelsea, that showed the killing of Iraqi civilians and journalists by fire from United States Army helicopter gunships.
So congratulations to the Pirates! Now, says the Times, their Party may become a formidable force in Parliament, in fact, it may become the dominant party. If so, watch out! And Iceland’s Prime minister is worried: “‘Pirate rule, Mr. Gunnlaugsson added, ‘would take society in a whole other direction, where it would be difficult to hang onto those values that we possess and have been building on for decades.’” Yeah, like values that protect religion from criticism. . . .
All in favor, say “Arrrgh!”
Arrrrgh!!
Arrrrgh!!! (With one extra r and !)
Oops Arrrrrgh!!!
Arrrrgh!!! With gusto!! My kind of pirates. Now for the Pirate Pub Crawl!!!
well, then you should start with this:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/beertourprod/beers/pictures/000/000/106/original/piraat_beer_900.jpg?1416496601
Movie trivia buffs will know this saying did not become associated with pirates until Disney’s film of Treasure Island.
Nonetheless, aaarrrrggh.
Ahem–pirate pedantry (who knew?):
*
While some disagree, many think the g-less arr is the most accepted term.
*from http://www.talklikeapirate.com/howto.html
Now that I know this vitally important bit of information:
ARRR! 🙂
Pedantic pirates of the Pacific archipelago. Sounds like a good musical!
LOL @ both of you! 😀
(How did that asterisk of mine end up outside the blockquote?! <–rhetorical question)
I move that we push to make “blashphemy” a new word: “a crime against a non-existent entity, esp. when one has had a few too many”.
Aaargh!!
Dagnabbit if this Youtube poster didn’t leave off this most important letter.
A few too many beers, or a few too many doobs?
Good on Iceland! I’m embarrassed to say that New Zealand still has a blasphemy law, and atheist and secular groups here can’t even get parliament to consider abolishing it. We made fresh attempts following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but they were unsuccessful.
People just don’t think it’s a big deal because there’s only ever been one successful prosecution, and that was almost a century ago.
well, considering the biggest city being named Christchurch…
In Iceland, or in NZ? Or neither.
If I remember my geography of NZ, I don’t think so. And I’m certain not so for Iceland. I’d be hard put to say Auckland or Wellington for the largest city of NZ. But not Christchurch, for sure.
You may be conflating because of the Christchurch earthquake of … 3 years ago?
Auckland wins by a country (or should I say urban) mile, having approximately 25% of the population. However, Christchurch used to have the largest area, as defined by the territorial area of the Christchurch City council. In those days Auckland urban area still had the largest population, but was split up between several boroughs.
“Auckland wins by a country (or should I say urban) mile…”
You should probably say, “a country kilometer.” (Kilometre?) 😉
Quite! Showing my age.
Definitely kilometre!
No 1 size = Auckland (1.5 million)
2 = Wellington (capital, 400,000)
3 = Christchurch (375,000, biggest in South Island, it will probably overtake Wellington by 2020)
4 = Hamilton (220,000, also growing fast, aka Kirikiriroa)
5 = Tauranga (140,000, fastest growing city)
6 = Dunedin (115,000)
7 = Palmerston North (80,000)
These are also our university cities.
Some people put Napier and Hastings together as they’re only 10kms apart, and if you do that, they come in 5th with 130,000.
Whole country: 4.6 million
Atheists: 1.9 million
“Whole country: 4.6 million
Atheists: 1.9 million”
Damn. I had no idea.
Yeah NZ is full of godless socialists yet most of my family is religious. I figure when Canada tires of me (there is a bit of a backlash vs. dual citizens at the moment), I’ll go there and annoy my relatives with my atheism & make NZ even more godless and socialist. 🙂
I’d always thought of Wellington as much bigger than that, but that’s probably because of the way the approach roads run along narrow valleys or coastal strips so you have literally miles and miles of wretched ribbon development to traverse before you can get out of the built-up area.
You sound like me – I don’t do well in cities. I find I am uneasy & stressed when I have to be in them & I think it is because I don’t like crowds of people around me nor the smelliness nor the concrete.
@Diana
I don’t mind city centres when I’m in them on foot (so long as they’re not too crowded), it’s traffic I hate, specially slow traffic, and how long it takes to get out of the urban sprawl.
cr
“Auckland wins by a country mile,”
Depends how you define ‘win’. I live in Auckland and the bloody place is way too big already. Will everybody please piss off and go live somewhere else?
cr
I noticed a huge change in Auckland from when I visited it in the 90s then in 2009. I can only imagine how enormous it must be now!
Coincidentally, that’s how my friends in North Dakota feel, and that started even before the current oil boom. I don’t blame them. ND was beautiful, wide open and with scant traffic.
In Iceland, place names are more likely to be derived from the names of the pagan gods.
Like your cats, right?
Not entirely. Astrid (Old Norse Ástríðr) is just a common personal name. Thorbjorn (ON Þórbjörn) means “bear of Thor”, Freti means “little foul-fart”, Kveldulf (ON Kveldúlfr) is “evening wolf”, Isa (ON Ísa) is derived from “dísa” which means “handmaiden of the goddess” (in this case Freyja) and Samone is the only one of my cats to keep her shelter name and not get an Old Norse one.
“Ástríðr” is an interesting name because although it is a woman’s name, it is grammatically masculine and declined as if it were a masculine noun. There are also some men’s names that are grammatically feminine.
Furthermore, the name of Hägar the Horrible’s daughter, “Honi”, if it were not an invented name, would be a man’s name. The equivalent for a woman would be “Hona”.
Cool names!
How did you become such an Old Norse expert, E.A.?
Replying to Diane G.:
When I was a college freshman, my placement scores exempted me from having to take English 101 (aka Freshman Composition), so I was free to start with lit courses. In my second semester, I decided to take Old English. The professor who taught it had his degree in comparative Germanic philology, and taught the course with a strong emphasis on the grammar and technical aspects of the language. That got me interested in linguistics, and when I had to do a project on a dead language, I went to the prof who taught me Old English for advice. He recommended that I take on Old Frisian, as it is both little studied and a direct contributor to Old English.
He lent me his files on the topic, warned me that if I did not return them intact that he would track me down and kill me. Then he informed me that I would be taking Old Norse the following year. I think he was just looking for someone to practice on. So in my sophomore year, I was enrolled in English 999: Independent Study and the student/teacher ratio was 1:1. He became my adviser, and I continued with those studies for the remaining seven semesters of my undergrad work, (I had reasons for taking an extra senior semester) and for a year of grad school. I also spent a summer at the University of Iceland after graduation doing independent course work.
Unfortunately, my hoped-for academic career never came about, but I’ve tried to keep my interest in Old Norse and linguistics fed. I’ve even rubbed elbows with Nordic Neopagans, though I’ve avoided the ones with white supremacist tendencies. They gave me an eager audience for classes in Norse mythology and history, which came in handy when I was between jobs.
E.A., that is really fascinating! And a testament to the extraordinary value of running into the right mentor at the right time.
(And to a lot of raw talent, of course!)
I would have loved studying that! You’re so lucky you happened upon a professor that could teach you. I took Middle English literature in university but I would have jumped at the chance to learn Old English – I’ve only read a bit of it and tried to understand it in passing on my own both in high school and in univeristy (I’m a language geek).
I thought about studying linguistics as well but it was part of the anthropology department and in order to get an anthro degree, I had to do statistics. I figured I’d probably pass but it would bring my GPA down ridiculously low and effect my overall academic performance. I met some people doing a linguistics degree in my Ancient Greek classes. They had to take a few indo-european languages and then a non-indo-european one. Some were taking Japanese while a few were taking Mohawk (I totally would have taken Mohawk).
But that’s so wonderful, it would be a shame not to share it! Does anyone here have academic connections to help E.A. get where this knowledge can be shared?
So does Canada but it looks like there is a Pirat Party here but I suspect it is only in tidings in Quebec. If I get an opportunity, I may vote for them in our 2015 federal election.
Risings.
Me help! Me help!
Ridings.
Ha ha. Why do even try to type on an iPad without a keyboard? Right now I have the keyboard hooked up to it.
We get to cheer for another ridiculous law going down that says you can not criticize religion without possibly being fined or jailed.
Was the blasphemy law actually enforced?
They don’t have to be enforced locally to cause harm. There is a politicised Islamic lobby at the United Nations that has been trying for some time now to get blasphemy criminalised globally at UN level; and every time they do they point at Western nations that still have it on their law books as justification.
Ironically the victims of these laws (and there are many every single year) are always believers (usually of a minority religion) who pay the price for believing in the “wrong” god every time.
That’s an excellent point about the push for international blasphemy laws, what we do certainly matters outside our own borders.
There is also harm in actions not taken out of fear. Many laws are on the books, and rarely enforced; but the threat of enforcement can change behavior.
CFI in Canada has been working (to the limited extent possible for a charity) to get the Canadian law removed. Apparently Saudi Arabia for example has said (wrt Raif Badawi) something like “you guys have a blasphemy law too, we’re just disagreeing on the punishment”. So removing this (bad) argument is a goal …
I love how they all have Dwarven names that wouldn’t be out of place in Erebor.
But then, seeing as Tolkien stole his names straight out of the Poetic Edda, I guess they would.
Quite often when I’m reading Anglo-Saxon history, and Scottish history from the same period, which both have major Viking elements, I feel like I’m reading research for Tolkien.
since you brought up the Poetic Edda, I’ll have to add Egil’s Saga. It’s amazing the vikings ever left home, as drunk as they were. Guess they sobered up just long enough to fight.
For the troglodyte hewers of ore and forgers of metal, he raided lots of the Eddas, Beowulf et Al. But for the Elves and Elf-a-like hoomin, he had composed the Elvish languages from Finish, who are a very different group of people (and languages). The Hobbit came straight out of Old English.
And outside his fiction, he cited his sources in detail.
One of the Elven languages (Sindarin) is somewhat based on Welsh.
I read a fascinating book by Tom Shippey, who was a philologist like Tolkien, called The Road To Middle Earth that examines in detail all the linguistic creations in the series as well as the wealth of ancient sources and texts from Icelandic to Finnish to Anglo-Saxon to Old Norse that were worked into Middle Earth lore. I was pretty lukewarm on Tolkien until I read Shippey. He gave me a whole new insight into what Tolkien was trying to do with his Middle Earth saga.
Tolkien posited a “proto-Elvish” language from which the high Elvish (Quenya) he derived according to the principles of Finnish phonology and grammar while the low Elvish (Sindarin) used Welsh phonology and grammar. Most of the Shire terminology was lifted from Anglo-Saxon/Old English – for example, the names of the months in the Shire calendar were right out of Anglo-Saxon. Other than personal names, I’ve never seen any sources for Dwarvish, Entish or the Black Speech, and assume he created them de novo. Almost nothing is mentioned of human languages other than personal and place names, either in the books or in the notes and appendices. Ruth Noel wrote a book called The Languages of Middle-Earth but she had little linguistic knowledge (I had some correspondence with her in the ’80s).
Tolkien was a gifted polyglot, with the usual traditional training in Latin and Greek, and was a skilled translator of Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and Gothic, and I presume he had a more than passing familiarity with Old Frisian and Finnish. Latin and Greek had dropped out of the curriculum by the time I got to higher education, and, despite a degree in Linguistics and a desire to learn, I could never master the fifteen cases of Finnish nouns, even though they’re not really as hard as they seem at first. It was all I could do to keep up with German, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. And although I only mastered a few bits of Latin, my academic motto was, “Soli linguæ bonæ sung linguæ mortuæ.”
Hmmm. Something like, “the only good language is a dead language?”
Yes, you got it despite my typo: it should have been “sunt” not “sung”.
Like I’d know. 😉
Back in the days of the PINE mailer and UNIX systems, I used to have a .sig file that said that in Latin. I also made it come up if you used “finger” on my account. 🙂
I went through a few of Tolkein’s essays on the development of Middle Earth (not the waste-of-trees-and-ink put out by his son) when I was a lad, but the details have faded over the time. I don’t recall much mention of Welsh, but given Tolkein’s OE working zone, I’m not surprised to hear that he’d lifted material from Welsh too.
The best thing about this Party is their Facebook avatar. http://www.facebook.com/Piratar.Island
Professor Ceiling Cat will especially like it!
That is so cute! 🙂
As Diana would appreciate, “touch not, bot a glove”.
Indeed–a pirate cat!
I would hardly call the Pirates “extreme left wing” by European standards. The Rote Armee Fraktion, Cellules Communistes Combattants and Brigate Rosse; now those were extreme left wing. Could teach the American Left a lesson or two!
(some sarcasm intended)
Also in some places Pirate Parties attract some segments of the libertarian right, because of their stance on software patents, etc.
> [T]he law, which made “ridiculing or insulting the dogmas or worship of a lawfully existing religious community” an offense punishable by a fine or up to three months in jail
Actually, it was “officially ridiculing” – whatever that means.
well, I suppose it could mean that on the first Tuesday after the first monday in November, people go down to their local church and point and laugh at the man in the funny hat, or making fart noises each time a muslim kneels down and bends over during the salat prayer.
No doubt.
Does this mean that in order to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19) properly, I’m going to have to learn Icelandic?
It’s not that hard. It’s got four cases, three numbers and three genders and it’s enough like Old Norse that once you learn it, you can read the sagas and eddas in the original without a problem. You will have to remember, though, that things like personal names are declined according to case just like other nouns, that the numbers one through four are declined like adjectives, and that articles are both declined and postfixed onto the noun. Since Tolkien was mentioned above, here is the opening paragraph of The Hobbit in Icelandic:
Thanks, I have just learned Icelandic.
Next time someone hands me a Saga I’ll know what to do with all that declining.
No. Swedish. The Icelanders are fellow travellers.
We need a Pirate party in the US…oh wait, that would be the G.O.P.
There is one, and it is nothing like the G.O.P.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party
Excerpts:
The Pirate Party defends their oft-criticized name[10] in the preamble of the PNC’s constitution:[2]
For our values, we have been derided as “pirates”. For our hope that every person may be free to access all of human knowledge, we have been called “pirates”. For our belief that one need not ask permission to participate in governance, industry, culture, and other aspects of society, we have been called “pirates”. For our insistence that citizens should not be surveilled and distrusted as if they are criminals, we have been called “pirates”. For our rejection of authority and profit-seeking when it does not serve the common good of all people, we have been called “pirates”.
We reclaim this label of “pirate” and abjure its derogatory, incendiary implication. We are Pirates. We stand for the liberty, equality, and solidarity of all human beings, and against all threats they may face.
Ideology
Factions within the Pirate Party include left-libertarians, classical liberals, anarchists, progressives, and radical centrists. Many Pirates explicitly decline to identify with any particular political ideology or philosophy.
The Pirate Party’s platform originally centered on issues of copyright. “Like its international counterparts, the USPP’s main practical concerns are digital intellectual property [sic!] and privacy laws—specifically, the abolition of a 1998 digital U.S. copyright law, the reduction of copyrights to 14 years (from 95 years after publication, or 70 years after the author’s death), and the expiration of patents that don’t result in significant progress within four years (as opposed to 20 years).”[7]
In 2012, the party began an expansion of its platform, inspired by the Pirate Wheel.[9] The party emphasizes the cultural values of the hacker ethic, open source and free culture, strong protection of individual civil liberties, government transparency and participatory governance, and evidence-based policy.
As of 2013, the national Pirate Party has not adopted an agenda beyond a set of 8 core values. Individual state parties are given free rein to interpret these values and experiment with more concrete platforms. Pirate candidates from New York have interpreted these values to espouse co-operative economics, workplace democracy, and self-employment.[11]
Thanks for the interesting info. My facetiousness paid off!
Indeed
Those with a detailed knowledge of Pastafarianism aka the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster will know that it is part of their creed that pirates have been an unfairly maligned and slandered group in history (like gays, witches, Jews, gays etc.) and that pirate symbols are in a lot of Pastafarian iconography.
A delicious coincidence.
The Pirate Party’s political agenda is anything but extreme left. It basically is neither left nor right but can contain a few elements of both left and right.
It exists in many countries and consists largely of highly intelligent computer geeks and tech-savvy computer experts.
I am a founding member of the Geneva chapter of the Swiss Pirate Party.
Brava! Highly intelligent computer geeks are wise to add to their efforts a political platform from which to directly fight politians and their political battles. It takes many approaches to be successful. This should very well be a good one.
[Why do I write like that? I sure don’t talk like that!]
There was a Pirate Party candidate running for alderman here in Milwaukee this past year. He didn’t make it, but there is a small but organized group here.
I was unaware that there were blasphemy laws when I spent a summer there after I graduated from college (I had three years of Old Norse studies under my belt and went there for further study). In Reykjavik, there are streets named after members of the Norse pantheon: Freyagata, Lokastigur, Baldursgata, Þorsgata and Odinstorg to name a few. “gata” is “street”, “stigur” is “way” or “path” and “torg” is “square”. I find it interesting that the Icelanders remembered their pagan roots even after allowing Christianity in their midst 1,015 years ago.
By Direct Democracy I assume they mean everything has to be voted on by vote of all the people? This would not be practical in any large community of people. Also, if pure democracy is what they want…good luck with that.
The size of a community of people has no impact on direct democracy. Direct democracy IS pure democracy.
“Direct Democracy can be defined as a form or system of democracy giving citizens an extraodinary amount of participation in the legislation process and granting them a maximum of political self-determination.”
Source: http://direct-democracy.geschichte-schweiz.ch/
More about direct democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
If any country could pull it off, it would be Iceland. The people there are fiercely individualistic; there’s one phone book for the entire country and everyone is listed by what we would think of as their first names* (there are three pages of Jón Jónssons). In a country where everyone is on a first name basis, people get along with a level of cooperation that could make direct democracy work.
*Most Icelanders still use the old Scandinavian patronymic or martonymic naming. Family names as used in the US and the rest of Europe are relatively rare. People wishing to immigrate to Iceland must, if their name is not compatible with the language, adopt an Icelandic name with patronymic which supercedes their foreign surname.
Hmm. So what would be my Icelandic name? I don’t recall any “Aodann ” like names from reading Njall’s Saga and the Orkneyingasaga, so would I have to go for a kenning on “the red hired one” or “the fire one”. “Son of the old man” (Seamus) shouldn’t pose too many problems.
Or could I work on “gravel inspector” ? “Gritloker” doesn’t sound bad. But not as good as “Shield-biter.”
What’s your father’s given name? If it were Seamus (James), you would be Aiden Seamusson.
I was thinking about the Icelandic equivalent for “old man” – which is what I’ve always been told was the meaning of Dad’s name. But since I’ve got a whole dozen words more of both Gaelics put together than he has, it’s not surprising that we’ve got it wrong.
I didn’t know that Seamus had a “name” derivation. Since it’s a saint’s name, that may be the reason that Granddad chose it, but obviously such a derivation would have been disowned. Literally, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Actually, Aidan is easily rendered in Icelandic. It becomes “Aiðann” in the nominative case and “Aiðans” in the genitive, so your children would be “Aiðansson” or “Aiðansdottir”.
“Möl” is Icelandic for “gravel” while inspector can be either “skoðunarmaður” or “eftirlitsmaður”, where “maður” means “man” and “skoðunar” carries the sense of “supervising” while “eftirlits” is more like English “surveillance”. Of course in Old Norse, it was “maðr”.
“Rauðr” was a nickname given to men either with red hair or who were fierce warriors (and, thus, always spattered with blood). Eírikr Rauðr is the viking name we know as “Erik the Red”.
Irish names were not unknown among the Icelanders, partly because of intermarriage with the Irish and because some of their thralls were Irish. Some of those Irish semi-slaves became free men and landholders. “Kórmakr” is a name of Irish origin that shows up in a number of stories and histories.
The Landnámabók, which is the history of the first settlers of Iceland, is full of colorful nicknames, like Helgi the Lean, and Ketil Trout. Egil’s Saga gives us Kveldúlfr (which was just Úlfr, which means “wolf” but got changed to Kveldúlfr, which means “evening wolf” because he was thought to actually turn into his namesake at night; I had a cat named Kveldúlf). However, my favorite nickname in the Landnámabók is Eystein Fret, which means “Eystein the Foul-farted”. I can just imagine what his poor wife and other members of his household had to put up with. I also had a cat named “Freti”, which means “Little Foul-fart”.
Oops! Eysteinn should have two n’s at the end.
Thinking of names for my nominal children is a WOMBAT, as celebrated on 14 October annually (there should be street parties, but rarely are).
I think I’ve seen people using the Ai… that’s not a “thorn”, is it? OK, “eth”. Where was I?
I think I’ve seen people using the Aiðan construction, or something approximating to it for a Gaelic pronunciation. (Gaelic orthography rule #1 : if in doubt, throw in a few vowels ; nobody will be able to really say you’re wrong, and anyone who tries is probably a cousin who you can sort out later.)
If I hadn’t recently packed up the library in preparation for moving, I’d be tempted to dig out the sagas. There are times when a bit of good honest blood and gore is good for the heart.
I spent several months bobbing around in the North Atlantic on the sister-rig to the “Eirik Raude” back in about 2009. Lots of Noggins on board, but I don’t think any Icelanders. Quite close to the Faroes-UK median line, if I recall correctly. “Eirik Raude” and “Leif Ericsson” seem appropriate names for rigs expected to spend their working lives around Greenland and the North Atlantic. A bit more appropriate than sending the “IceMax on a Caribbean cruise. But that cruise is coming to an end now, and fog and a voyage to Niflheim looms for them. Poor bunnies.
Like the cat names!
“Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy and participation in government, reform of copyright and patent law, free sharing of knowledge (open content), information privacy, transparency, freedom of information, anti-corruption and network neutrality”
That makes me a pirate except for the participation in government; too lazy for that.
When I think about it; a lazy person should probably also support corruption.
“Pirate Party is a label adopted by political parties in different countries. Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy and participation in government, reform of copyright and patent law, free sharing of knowledge (open content), information privacy, transparency, freedom of information, anti-corruption and network neutrality.”
And that’s “an extreme left-wing political agenda.”? Sheesh. Just shows, I think, how far the US is to the right of the rest of the world.
cr
Exactly my thought. Seems quite logical and rational to me. Nothing “left-wing” about it, except maybe by reference to some American political parties whose name I will not mention, as this is not a political blog.
Embarrassing that the Icelandic far-left have departed so thoroughly from Anglophone left’s script. They seem to have looked at the Charlie Hebdo killings and drawn the naive, gauche conclusion that this was an explicitly religious attack on a bastion of liberalism and free speech rather than an expression of political frustration at western colonialist oppression and conditions in the banlieu.
They’re so passe that they don’t even smear the dead cartoonists as racists. Didn’t they see that hate-filled cartoon I looked at for four seconds? Or the other racist cartoons all those people told me about? I’d never spread unfounded allegations just to fit my agenda, although I would point out that none of these ‘left-wingers’ have come out and criticised Israel in the last 72 hours. Are they all neo-cons? I’m not saying they are, I’m not saying they aren’t, although I think they are.
Also, noted blogger mossad_killed_jfk84 has pointed out that they have many secret links with some of Europe’s most powerful Zionist supervillains. It makes me very uneasy to see such Free-Speech Fundamentalists bullying Europe’s muslims in this way.
First of all, the Pirate Party is not far-left, neither is it far-right. It does not come under the left-right paradigm. Neither does any Pirate Party have any secret links with any Zionist super-villain, powerful or not. Finally, nobody in any Pirate Party bully Europe’s Muslims in any way – you obviously know nothing about the Pirate Party in all 40 countries where it is established, including a few Muslim countries.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pirate_Parties
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party (in particular “Common Policies”)-
I believe you may have misread some satire.