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Pirate Bay Co-founder Peter Sunde Running For European Parliament
An anonymous reader writes "Peter Sunde aka brokep of TPB fame is going to run for European Parliament in 2014, as a Finnish Pirate Party candidate. As he still has a prison sentence to serve in Sweden, he might have to campaign from behind bars. 'Amusingly, the Pirate ticket in Finland could have been even bigger than it is now. Sunde informs TorrentFreak that he also reached out to Finnish-born Kim Dotcom to join the race, but the Megaupload founder currently has other priorities.'"
I don't understand, we in America have a functioning democracy and consequently all of the elected officials play on the same team.
How could anyone exhibiting defiance run for office? I am confused.
Kim Dotcom is not finnish born, he's born in Germany.
to a finnish mother. wikipedia lists him having finnish nationality due to the biggest newspaper in Finland reporting it. doesn't matter that much if he was born on finnish soil or not.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Obviously you're willfully ignorant of the pirate party, as well as about the other issues you mentioned. Take a few minutes to research topics before spewing nonsensical stuff.
Do you understand how most parliamentary governments work? Parties dedicated to individual themes come together and form larger coalitions. Unlike in countries with a two-party system, parties aren't under pressure to be all things to all people.
The Greens are usually seen as a natural partner for The Pirate Party in any coalition.
Everyone wants a one trick pony, because they steal votes from the major parties, forcing them to pay attention to the issues the one trick pony campaigns for.
It might come as news to this guy , who knows, but anyone over the age of 18 - ie people who can vote - have more pressing concerns in europe right now that whether they can download pirated media. You know, minor things like over 50% youth unemployement in spain, the collapse of the greek economy and its knock on effects, mass immigration, enviromental degradation...
But hey, I'm sure compaigning for being able to download crap for free is the golden ticket.
Not.
I'd gladly vote for a one trick pony that did that one trick. Also, due to there not being so much money being able to use the world as your library is more important than ever(because it's technically doable for extremely low amount of money). If I could vote for someone who would clear all copyrights - and had NO other agenda, I would. Now I would vote for all the other agendas some of which I don't agree with. I make money writing software but I would still vote for the abolition.
I'm pretty sure Finnish voters don't give a shit about Spanish situation though - of the Greek situation we care slightly because our government backed their bailout. Which is ridiculous if you think about it - Greece has double the population, I would have let their banks fall, Greek depositors would have been the major losers and ultimately it is their fault. Greece used to be a cheap place to go for holidays.. and it would be again when they actually start working for the money instead of harassing people who bring in cash to the country while they have time from their womans football league rioting.
I would still probably now vote for Pirate Party. As a protest. The usual Party I vote for has such a fuckface at the helm - at least on paper, dunno who he takes hints from, possibly from nobody since he's so clueless - that I can't possibly voice support for him - the only consolidation there is that the alternative would have been even worse. It's like the even bigger fuckfaces of the older politician generation bred just wimps on purpose so they wouldn't be ousted before being literally too senile to talk.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I think these stories of pirate parties, or communists, or greens, running and being elected to various governmental office are so titillating to Americans because we find it hard to imagine the vast tolerance of divergent opinions in non-american politics. In the USA we have two center right parties with almost no divergence over core political issues who fight to endlessly promote minor political issues or social wedge issues so as to disguise their complete lock on political power.
In the US you could no more elect a pirate, a communist, or an atheist, than you could elect bear. So in the end for us these stories are dancing bear type stories. No one asks if a dancing bear dances well. We aren't interested all that much in the policies or the questions themselves; we're just kind of amazed that you guys would conceive of electing someone whose opinion diverges so far from your rulers.
I know, we should vote for the zero issue parties that pay lip service to the issues adults actually care about very loudly.
You're damned welcome to the U.S. system instead. I'd trade with you in a heartbeat. We have political parties who are "One issue parties" for 3 or 4 issues, we like to call wedge issues. Tons of 1 issue voters who will repeatedly vote for the party that cares about their one issue regardless of the other terrible positions the party has. We don't get coalitions that are fragile based on the completion of issues. We get deadlock, intentional destruction of working government features, and "taking a stand" on a no-go issue constantly.
"I'm pretty sure Finnish voters don't give a shit about Spanish situation though"
They should. If they think Finland lives in a protected bubble then I've got news for them. If an economy the size of spain's goes down the toilet it'll take the rest of europe with it in a domino effect.
Finland doesn't live in a bubble. living in the soviet border bubble didn't work out.
Spain is full of Spaniards, we can't get them to listen to anything we say, since they're Spaniards and they have almost 10x the population so _we_ can't be bailing them out. We can't do shit about them so there's not that much to give a shit about. Well, we can buy spanish produce of course and we do, but it's not like that helps their unemployment numbers - which is right at the root of the problem... and there's not a single Finnish politician we could vote for who could make all of the southern europe suddenly to stop whining and play by the rules which would have avoided the whole problem(I mean, there would still be a recession - like there is in Finland - but they wouldn't be running around the world begging for money so that their citizens could keep their money...).
That's already enough dominoes we can't do shit about. So all we can do is hope that the Spanish, the Italians and the Greeks all have their markets crash through the floor SO WE CAN BUY THEIR HOUSES AND MOVE THE FUCK OUT OF FINLAND. That's the real Finnish dream ;).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.