Hello Mr. Moore
My name is Marie Axelsson, I’m 24 years old and I love in Sweden.
I’m not sure in which end to being, so I’ll just take it from the top. I hadn’t much heard of you until I was 16, turning 17, 7.5 years ago now. I went to a children/youth film festival in the south of Sweden and saw your documentary Bowling for Columbine in one of the many cinemas in Malmö, which I can’t recall at this moment. Parts of the movie I could hardly see without feeling squeamish, but it was a really good docu and I re watched it many times after that in the coming years.
For some reason back then I never got around to reading any of your books, even tho they were on my lists of books to read. But I had so many books, and so many lists that it just fell apart and I concentrated on the ones more important for school at that particular time. Yesterday I started reading Stupid White Men, while reading the first part of it where you call on normal citizens to take action and stand up for what they believe in and run in an election it just fit so perfectly, and I was really really glad that I hadn’t read any of that before.

I’m a member of the Pirate Party here in Sweden, who just struck a deal to host Wikileaks (saw that you contributed to defense fund of accused WikiLeaker Pfc. Bradley Manning) here in Sweden. I’m also a candidate for the Parliament in this year’s election, and we got less than a month left, 19th of September is the day.
We ourselves are all concerned citizens when it comes to all the “Big Brother Laws”, and some of the copy right issues. I’m convinced that a man like you would have read up on this, and do not hate us just because we believe in sharing, remixing and free culture and knowledge. Most people don’t even understand the Copy Rights Laws, which is kinda of sad. I’m not writing this mail to ask for your support or anything, I just wanted to tell you that even tho Stupid White Men has a few years on its neck, and even tho I’ve just read the first 115 or so pages of the hardcover, Swedish translation, it still feels very accurate in many ways. I would have read it in English, which was my original plan for many years, but got to borrow it from a friend now.
Here is usually where I would make this letter commercialised by telling you about a Swedish founded Social Micro Donation System (that Wikileaks also uses now) and how I would love to be able to Flattr each of your Chapters. But I will skip that part.

I will just stick to telling you that even tho you are very blunt, and somewhat hilarious in what you write, it’s easy to get lost and thinking that it’s all a big joke, it’s scary to see the facts involved around it. I just finished reading the part about school, and that you wanted to skip a grade when you were young. I think it’s a problem in today’s system, in a lot of countries I assume, but especially here in Sweden, that you usually don’t get to skip grades. Or when you have you move and get put back one grade and go a full year “redoing” everything you did last year, just because you moved.

Part of our politics is to move on to the Information and Knowledge Society.
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est
Knowledge is Power, you know it, I know it, and they who want to keep it to themselves know it very well.

I could continue writing you a whole essay, but I think I will stop here, for this time at least. I thank you for your time, and all the great effort you’ve put into making your amazing documentaries, series and books, yes I probably missed something and I apologize for that. I’m well aware that my letter does not contain much of questions only lots of praise, but I hope I will hear from you!

I write and blog some, but mostly in Swedish. http://maloki.redhog.org and http://mlokit.wordpress.com, will also publish this e-mail on my blog.

http://piratepad.net/piratskutan-ombord

Välkommen ombord!

Emma, Anna och Klara skrev nyligen ett inlägg om problemet med att beslut tas i slutna Skype-kanaler, och bad styrelsen att besluta att alla beslut skall tas i öppna forum. De kritiserade den rådande situationen från ett demokrati- och öppenhetsperspektiv.

För att vara ett parti som propagerar för praktisk tillämpning av offentlighetsprincipen är vi väldigt dåliga på det själva!

Delvis är problemet ett tekniskt problem – våra tekniska verktyg är helt enkelt inte bra nog på informationskategorisering och -sökning. Delvis är det ett socialt problem – det finns människor som ser bitar av partiets arbete som om det vore privatliv. Det är ett fatalt felslut. Partiarbete är offentligt arbete. Partiarbete är just ryggraden i offentlighet.

Den sociala biten kan vi inte lösa själva – den måste ni alla hjälpa oss med.

Den tekniska biten har däremot Egil arbetat frenetiskt med den sista tiden i form av diverse utökningar till Piratepad. Roadmap finns här och beta version finns här. Det är mycket att göra, och det finns säkert massor av coola features som Egil inte tänkt på. Därför behölver han hjälp. Av dig! Läs roadmapen, testa betaversionen, kom med kommentarer och idéer, hjälp till att koda features! All hjälp är välkommen!

Ropen skalla, information åt alla!

P.S. Koden är skriven i Java, Scala och server side JavaScript, samt client side JavaScript med jQuery och Comet. Men låt dig inte skrämmas av antalet språk, Egil hjälper dig gärna att komma in i koden! För att få tillgång till koden kontaktar du Egil på egil.moller@piratpartiet.se