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Icelandic Pirate Party Wins 3 seats In Parliament
First time accepted submitter Thorhs writes "According to preliminary results (all votes counted, no official word yet) the Icelandic Pirate Party was able to secure 3 members of the national Parliament, the first PP to reach a national Parliament. Things were hairy election night, the PP lost all their MPs when they dropped below the 5% barrier 'needed' in the somewhat complex election system. Thankfully they managed to slip back up above, with 5.1% of the total votes. The old 'crash parties', the ones in charge before our epic financial crash, (Independent and Progressive parties) are the prime candidates to form a new government with just over 51% of the votes, getting 40 of 63 seats. RUV (Icelandic) has good coverage."
rista punktur rassinn sjóræningjar
Google translate: slash dot butt pirates
rista punktur rassinn sjóræningjar
Google translate: slash dot butt pirates
Certainly! You just go straight until the grey brick house, turn left, 100 metres, and it's there on your right by the maple tree.
cheers,
How boring, maybe you could have said: ''fyrsta færslan'' :-)
Actually, not too many years ago, the Greens in Sweden (and, I strongly suspect, Germany) were the dumping grounds for nutjobs no other party wanted to do with. I strongly suspect that is a phase any new party has to go through on the way to become a long-term viable political force.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
What? Having two parties you can choose from doing exactly the same (except in equality questions) is sane????
In what world? That's not democracy.
America all the losers are on the right, and in Europe they're on the left
That's because if you get into deep water, it means that you've gone a bit too much to the right if you're American and a bit too much to the left if you're European.
Ezekiel 23:20
Haven't you heard? Vomiting into suicide booths is a part of a federal plan that the Bundesministerium für Gesundheit drafted and enacted to keep suicide rated down in Germany.
Ezekiel 23:20
The Pirate Times introduces the 3 elected representatives: Iceland Report #4 : History Made by a Hair’s Breadth
Rick Falkvinge, founder of the original (Swedish) Pirate Party, comments: celandic Pirate Party WINS, Enters Parliament
Another article on TorrentFreak: Pirate Party Enters Iceland’s National Parliament After Historic Election Win
they would steal them!
*sigh*
We've been over this before... making exact replicas of PM Seats is not "stealing".
Iceland has a 63 member parliament and a population of 319,000.
New York City has a population of 8.245 million and a city council of 51 members.
from wikipedia :
The ECSC was first proposed by French foreign minister Robert Schuman on 9 May 1950 as a way to prevent further war between France and Germany. He declared his aim was to "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.
ec, eec and eu are just the current iterations of ecsc.
NATO ? That's a tool of the americans to drag us into wars into the middle east. I would like to get out of it NOW.
I just read the comments in the FAZ (a major German newspaper) to the article about that election. Overwhelmingly BY FAR the comments were AGAINST the EU and they congratulated Iceland.
It is NOT just Britain! I am most certainly not "backwards", "anti-Europe" (in fact I prefer to see myself as "European", not German) or "right-wing", neither are those comments. Quite the opposite, actually! The point is, the EU is the LEAST democratic thing that Europe has come up with since WWII ended, and it gets worse and worse. Anyone who dares to raise any objection is immediately branded "right-wing" and "anti-Europe". It's like trying to criticize the role (and all the money for) of the military in the US - you just don't want to do that, unless you are a nobody in an Internet forum, because of the (sh..)storm.
The WWI Western front is the point of Europe? That's what you said just then.
Yes, WWI and the Sequel WWII are some of the prime motivators behind the European Union. It has grown far beyond that but the people who originated the EU were partially motivated by the idea of preventing future wars by increasing economic integration to the point where war had become a sport that was to expensive to indulge in. and for what little it seems to be worth to conservative anti EU tossers these days, hundreds of thousands of those reasons that are buried in Flanders, and whom the GP spoke of, are British.
Where's Iceland fit into this?
Iceland exports in excess of 70% of it's manufactured goods to the EU. Iceland has enacted about 75-80% of the laws needed to join the EU and Icelandic politicians have proven them selves to be a bunch of incompetent nepotistic tosspots who cant keep the inflation graphs from looking like a set of sharks teeth. If you want to have a laugh compare the inflation graph for Iceland to that of Germany:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/inflation-cpi
Notice how the German figure hovers between 0 and 5%, now compare it to the Icelandic graph. You would laugh even harder if you could see data from before 1989. Inflation in Iceland since 1944 fluctuated between ~3% to as high as 25-30% and occasionally topped 100%. In 1979, these wankers that make up the Icelandic political class, finally had to index-link loans to inflation to motivate capital owners to start loaning money. What that means is that if your loan carries 6% interest and there is 8% inflation you are effectively paying 14% interests. Now try to imagine what happens when inflation hits 20% and you will understand why Icelanders are so angry they are spitting acid. Joining the EU would force their brainless politicos to... well... behave. And additionally when you export 70% of your manufactured goods to the EU it's kind of dumb to want to have no say in how the EU's inner market evolves which makes me wonder why the British, who depend on the EU for 50% or so of their exports want to leave the EU. It's kind of like robbing yourself of the ability to influence how your country is begin governed by voluntarily relinquishing your right to vote.
Having your econony changed to fit into the German a model isn't going to be nice just ask the Greeks and Cypriots how that is turning out for them.
Single-issue parties are not unusual; they use the fact that they have no commitment to other policies to engage in political horse-trading in favour of their issue of choice. Everyone in Iceland now knows where to go to get three votes for their policy du jour, and what it's going to cost them.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Since you don't even have the slightest idea what you're talking about, do us both a favor and go back to play with your sand molds.
"Because you're giving up your freedom to manage your own country? Yes, you do get a small stake in where EU is going but it comes at the expense of jumping when Brussels says jump."
But you do that anyway. Because you want the trade.
"Just because 75% of Canada's exports go to the US doesn't mean that Canada wants to apply to become the 51st US state and answer to Washington DC."
Sure, but it has signed up to NAFTA etc. and fulfilled it's obligations under that which is a similar thing. Canada will still often follow the will of the US because there's far too much to lose in not doing so.
"if the EU don't want to offer us a fair deal we could always sell our oil and gas elsewhere."
Therein lies the problem with Euroscepticism, it's higher the more successful a country is, but when your oil and gas runs out? You'll be desperate to be a member of the EU. The UK has always been the same, when our economy tanked and we needed an IMF bailout most the country was behind EU membership, but now it's other EU members that are struggling the eurosceptics want out. It's horribly selfish and horribly pathetic. It's also stupidly short sighted - if we pull out of the EU in the UK and our economy goes down the pan again, do those real eurosceptics think the EU would help pull us out of the shit again? That's a rhetorical question, they've not even considered the possibility because they're too stupid and short sighted.
But on another know, who will you sell your oil and gas to exactly? China? Africa? The US? Why would any of these countries want to buy your oil and gas when you'd have to ship it via sea in limited amounts when they can just buy it from other countries that can get it to them much more cheaply via pipeline? Or do you expect EU nations to let you build a pipeline through their countries after you shunned them with selfishness?
"Another example of excessive fear is Schengen, yes it would be bad if we'd need passports to cross into Sweden but it would be horribly expensive for Sweden to build thousands of kilometers of exterior border control too, it's not like we need to beg the EU because it's in their best interest too."
As an interesting aside, your country has no border controls outside of the Shengen zone anyway in my experience.
When I flew into Narvik from the UK which isn't a Shengen country they let me just walk straight off the plane and out the airport without a passport check or anything anyway. Flying out was the same.
I figured this was possibly in part because they figure no one in their right mind would want to smuggle themselves somewhere so far north so just assume anyone that's going up there must be there legitimately. Maybe they're a bit more careful with that sort of thing in places like Oslo. That or maybe they just work on the principle that British airport security is so anal that anyone getting through there must be okay and anyone heading back there will get caught by them if there's a problem.
"So, according to your very specific situation all others are wrong. Hmm, great way to form an opinion, I guess, makes your life very simple."
AFAIK far more countries in the EU use a less democratic voting system than that used for electing the EP, so it's not exactly a vary specific situation - it's relevant to the majority of UK voters (well over 70% live in safe-seat areas) and I believe the majority of EU citizens in general.
The irony in your comment though is that Germany is one of the few countries that does have a decent, healthy democracy, so it's ironically your situation that is relatively unique. Countries like here in the UK our government isn't accountable to the electorate either for the most part, because they're usually only elected by circa 30% - 40% of the population and certainly not a majority.
"and VERY far removed from the population of the EU countries (how often do you even read anything about the parliament in your newspaper?)"
This is always going to be the case because it represents so many different countries. The chance of it hence just happening to align with any one country is pretty much nil.
"The EU is designed to achieve things that the people don't want, whether that happened on purpose or by accident I cannot tell (but it does not matter for the result)."
It was designed that way partly on purpose, because there was a will to avoid a situation whereby the population of a country like Germany ended up screwing the rest of Europe ever again. It was designed to create some kind of accountability to nations that go to far in some direction and bring them back in to line to keep Europe stable. That might suck when you have a country that's going too far in some direction, but it's actually better for everyone in general even if they don't realise it at the time. A stable Europe that protects human rights, keeps countries afloat, makes it easier to do business, makes it easier to travel, creates accountability for governments and so forth is way better than the alternative - the complete mishmash of train wrecks we had before.
You've got to realise that however painful it is for countries like Germany propping up Greece and so forth that that's still better than what we had before, where failed European states were what led to fascism and Nazism across the continent. Even with the bailouts in Greece we've seen a rise of the likes of the far right Golden Dawn party, how do you think it would look if Europe wasn't there to keep it in line and to prop it up such that it collapsed and veered even further towards far-right nationalism?
The EU keeps Europe stable, it keeps Europe strong, it keeps wars out of the continent, and is the reason why the EU economic zone is the biggest economy in the world. Perhaps when you look at the bigger picture like this you'll understand why it's far better to try and improve the EU, than to destroy it.
Countries like Greece could easily pull out of the euro but they want to stay in it because it benefits them - to say it benefits Germany/France doesn't make a lot of sense as it's mutually beneficial - it's devalued by the economically weak countries making German exports cheaper outside the EU, but increased in value by countries like France and Germany which increases their spending power. Also, the option of pulling out has always been on the ballot but pro-euro parties have always won out - the Greek people have consistently voted to keep the euro.
The problems are far deeper, an unsustainably low retirement age, high public spending, absurd levels of debt, falsified public accounts, and a tax system that is fiddled by the general public en-mass is never going to work. Blaming Germany for wanting to change that towards a more sustainable model like theirs if they stay in the euro is fucking nuts.
I can't really understand why people would bitch about the German model when it's clearly successful and when Germany has a fairly healthy, happy, populace. Most countries would absolutely love to have an economic model as healthy as Germany's, but yes, that does mean you'll have to retire after 60, you will have to pay taxes, and you will have to be able to balance your budget. How awful.