We basically need to keep the brand pirate party to maintain our international movement contacts @williamasiata if we were not a global political movement, then we would have that option though.

@williamasiata It's great to have you here. You don't need to be a formal PPNZ member to be part of our community unless you want voting rights in all corners of the party. Mind you: it's cheap to become one and we have no problems with memberships in multiple parties.

I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of us is very much agreeing with most policies the Internet Party came up with, but we have problems with the top-down architecture of the organisation. PPNZ is all about experimenting with a radical bottom-up approach.

We are seeking alliances and collaboration of all kinds as well, so please feel free to inspire and challenge us and our discussions.

@andrewmcpherson Please spawn new discussions for new upcoming issues. To repeat myself:

All these things should be discussed separately in their own thread, though. So, with all those good ideas, you should start discussions more frequently, please.

@andrewmcpherson has presented a lot of important potential policy areas, but I agree with @hubatmcjuhes that they need their own discussions. Let's stay on topic.

Let me clarify what I mean by "bottom lines". They are the minimum, non-negiotable core values, practices, and policies that define the party's identity as a collective. For example, in any proposed merger between the PP and IP, our bottom lines might be:
* the Pirate Party name, linking us to the international PP movement
* our core values as defined by the Pirate Wheel, although nuts and bots policy details may be negotiable, particularly timeframes and implementation
* bottom-up, deep democracy decision-making structure (so no special Board positions for anyone, including KDC)

Party building is about building relationships, and building consensus. Obviously, each of us currently in PPNZ could come up with our own shopping list of every policy we personally support ( know I could), and those lists would all be overlapping but different. No doubt the same would be true for IP members. No alliance is possible, or even a party, if we demand that every member support every one of a long list of our own preferred policies.

An update on the international situation. PPI looks to be very much in the control of a faction of PPDE and will be of little use to the Party outside of Northern Europe. The only faint hope is that PPDE will change its international coordinators.

New Pirate International (pirateint.org) suddenly changed from a community based platform to an administrated one with no warning. That was not liked and it is now practically dead in the water. It might revive later on but the initial burst of enthusiasm has been lost.

The Pirate Times is going well although under attack from the PPI Board.

The Think Tank project is going into the marketing phase so it will not be in the news very much just now.

I have written up a draft for a proposal to present to the membership of the Internet Party. It firstly asks for a relationship of cooperation between the two parties, and secondly proposes formal negotiations to consider a merger:
http://piratepad.net/NXlQLZ514J

Please feel free to modify the proposal draft as appropriate. If no objections to the idea, or the text, are expressed before the proposal closes on Friday, I will present the text to the IP membership early next week. I'm in touch with IP membership secretary to discuss the best way to do this.