The Gaming Den

God damn! Now that's what I call a spanking.

Serves them right.

Generally, "left" parties got hit, conservative ones fared well in most countries. The conservative parties have now a sizable majority.

I was under the impression that the 'left' parties had their membership replaced by more liberal parties while the conservative ones made small gains (like that uber-racist BNP) while mostly just spinning their wheels in place.

Shows what I know, though.

Well, it depends (I reread the news). Generally, the parliament moved towards the conservatives, but all in all they official conservative faction hasn't got a real majority - they have a lot more seats than the left social democrat faction though (267 of 736 vs. 159). The liberals - European liberals, nothing like what the US calls liberals - lost 21 seats, now at 81. Green faction is at 54, won 11. "United European Left" have 34 (-7). Right-wiong "Nationalists" got 35 (-19). "Independence and Democracy" got 18 seats (-6). 88 seats are taken by parties in no faction, like the Tories.

Government parties lost in: United Kingdom, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Malta, Slowenia, Cyprus, Sweden, Hungary, Ireland, Estalnd and Greece. Governing parties won in: Italy, France, Poland, Slowakey, Chechien, Belgium, Litau, Finland, (Not sure how most of those are spelled in english, and too lazy to look them up).

The "Pirate Party", from the "Pirate Bay" network won around 8% in Sweden.

My girlfriend showed me a photo of a box full of voting pamphlets from each party (the kind that says "How to vote for us and why you should"). The Piratpartiet immediately caught the eye with large, bold text. A good move. It's important for them to gain more support.

What does the Pirate Party stand for?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What does the Pirate Party stand for?

A complete rewrite or even abolishment of patent and possibly copyright laws, protection of individual freedoms, protection of individual's data and government transparency.

Software piracy, and not allowing bullshit cases of Americunt corporations pressuring the Swedish courts into prosecuting its own people for commiting OH WAIT, NOT A CRIME IN SWEDEN on Swedish soil.

God I hate that "piracy" label. I don't see anyone being robbed at cannonpoint, killed or maimed. Except possibly the artists.

Yeah, in my city council the Labour party (currently in power) now have three out of 84 seats. The Green party have more than twice as many seats

Weirdly, it looks like the party with the second most seats in the country is the UKIP if I understand these documents correctly. Their main focus is leaving the European Union. If they get more power it could get very interesting over the next few years.

...

Oh, fuckity fuck fuck. I've been reading their manifesto. You may disagree but the fact that they include these scares me.

• Freeze permanent immigration for 5 years.
  Would this even help?
• Deport immigrants who commit crimes.
  Ummm... can't crimes include all kinds of relatively small stuff?
• Find and deport illegal immigrants.
• Work permits only for UK economic needs.
• Make sentences mean what they say
• Scrap the Human Rights Act

Most of it is debateable, but scrapping the Human Rights Act? In case you've forgotten, I'll highlight some of the stuff in it:

• Right to Life
• Prohibition from torture
• Prohibition of Slavery
• Right to a fair trial
• No punishments without having committed offences
• Right to a free election
• No death penalty

I could go on. They're hoping to get rid of that. This scares the fuck out of me. Am I overreacting? Please tell me I am. Please?

---

On a lighter note, can you imagine if anyone ever tried piracy in first world countries? It would be like setting up a road block late at night and doing a highwayman and taking stuff off the back of a lorry.

Wait, if you really want a cannon it would have to be a tank. That would be so cool: an armada of tanks driving around the country shooting down trucks and stealing everything they have.

Parthenon, that is really genuinely disturbing.

You'd think that those voters would learn something after what happened over here in the U.S., but no.

If you had the kind of cash to afford and maintain a bunch of tanks, why would you be using it to rob people? Seems like a bad trade.

I figure the Somalian pirates started up JUST to give software pirates a bad name. They were paid to do it, by corporate dickheads in America. This is my theory and I'm sticking to it!

Also, abolishing the Human Rights Act is crazy, and you should just hope that enough people notice this and it essentially turns against the party, becoming an automatic "You lose". I mean, the UK has a pretty bad human rights record as it is, no need to go about making it worse.

Murtak wrote:God I hate that "piracy" label. I don't see anyone being robbed at cannonpoint, killed or maimed. Except possibly the artists.

The artists lose nothing from piracy, and any that say otherwise is lying on behalf of their labels, and are not worthy of anyone's respect.

Artists make money from live performances.

You misunderstood me. I meant to say the artists are being robbed by corporations.

The European parliament is a god damned joke. They don't represent anyone or anything. You know those stupid "How a bill becomes a law" segments they show to children in the United States so that people have some ague inkling of what the fuck their government is and how it works? There appears to be nothing of the sort in European countries to explain to the common man what the European Parliament is all about. If you go ask twenty people in a bar how the European Parliament works or what it can do, you'll be lucky to get a single vague answer that could qualify as correct.

To put this in perspective, in the Czech Republic the turnout in these elections was 28%. My most proximal representative is Andrea &#268;ešková, who is the youngest member of the Czech delegation and is in fact the mistress of an already serving politician. Her political posters were put up all over my neighborhood and seriously just say "I <3 Andrea" - an understandable sentiment considering that they were paid for and designed by the married man she is sleeping with.

Does this sink in at all? The European Parliament is such a fucking joke and election turnout is so fucking low that a man can buy his mistress a seat on the European Parliament as a romantic gift. And this isn't hyperbole or something that might happen, that actually did happen. In my neighborhood. This week.

-Username17

Koumei wrote:Also, abolishing the Human Rights Act is crazy, and you should just hope that enough people notice this and it essentially turns against the party, becoming an automatic "You lose". I mean, the UK has a pretty bad human rights record as it is, no need to go about making it worse.

Britain is the final boss of the Real World. Look at our record.

• Pretty much invented concentration camps in their modern form
• Rearranged the political geography of other continents to fit our needs
• Rearranged the demographics of other continents to fit our needs
• Pissed off without sorting out our mess, leaving the Middle East and South East Asian archipeligoes in a political, religious, and military turmoil that would embroil them in 4 decades of continuous wars
• Even now completely refuse to accept any responsibility for the above and respond to all attempts to bring us to task with Awesomefaces
• Plays the "dragon" of the current superpower, pretending that we're following them on everything
• Have one of the most effective armies in the field, with real world experience in absolute hellholes
• Ignore whatever rules get in our way on a regular basis
• Turn other peoples into more of us

For an example of the character of the British nation you need only see the latest War Nerd article. We are the final boss of the real world, in a way that 4chan only wishes they could emulate on the internets.

HR wrote:Britain is the final boss of the Real World.

Yes.

-Username17

I have to ask--why is it so goddamn hard for countries to admit that they did atrocities and that they're sorry for it?

We're not even talking about recent events here; Japan is notorious for refusing to acknowledge the Rape of Nanking even though everyone knows they did it. What's the fucking deal here?

I would guess that Japan is still bitter over losing Manchuria, think they have a clean slate after the Americans came in and tore everything down before building it back up 'in their own image', and most importantly in our fucked-up world they would be thought of as bigger assholes if they admitted to it and didn't make huge reparations.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I have to ask--why is it so goddamn hard for countries to admit that they did atrocities and that they're sorry for it?

Well assholes like our (now very much hiding in shame) former Prime Minister John Howard and those who supported him (now largely pretending they never liked him or his crazy ideas) justify it with things like...

1) What we did to the Australian Aborigines (substitute any oppressed people here) really wasn't that bad, if it happened at all, which it really might not have, at least not like that, it's largely self hating propaganda.

Which is basically a big up yours Holocaust denial style thing. And the whole self hating propaganda thing? What the fuck? No really who's agenda is being pushed by "propaganda" about things like genocide against various native peoples? Is it the wealthy Australian Aboriginal Land Zars that openly rule us all who are behind it? Just to maintain their high living rich and famous life style of crushing poverty, petrol sniffing and early death?

2) It wasn't us who killed, forcibly migrated, kidnapped and oppressed the Aboriginals (or whoever), or even our direct predecessors, it was some OTHER guys, who are only sort of tangentially kind of us or our predecessors, and it was in the PAST, we have to forget the PAST and move forward!

Well this is largely insane because the past DID happen, it WAS our predecessors, sometimes it was within living memory and those "predecessors" are still largely hanging around. But more importantly the effects remain and we can actually fix them moving forward, IF we actually dare to admit that they are there.

Those that talk about moving forward without looking back however are largely ALSO not looking at the present or trying to fix the problems. They use and abuse ignorance of the past (and the present) to try and essentially defer justice and equality to a future date that never actually arrives.

And really if we can't even just do the really easy thing and admit that wrong was done and say we are sorry about it... How the hell can anyone trust us to actually do anything at all remotely difficult that actually fixes the resulting problems "in the future"?

3) We cannot apologize to the Aboriginals (or whoever) for killing them, taking their land, treating them like shit, enslaving them and kidnapping their children. Because if we did it would show weakness. In some kind of magical legal way. That would obligate us to COMPENSATE THEM. Which is far too costly, unfair and mean to demand of us.

This was a REALLY popular argument from the crowd who supported John Howard's infamous inability to say "sorry".

But it makes the rather remarkable assumption that there really ARE issues that justify massive compensation and reparation, but that for some actually entirely undeclared reason we dare not do ANYTHING that actually might in anyway open us up to doing the responsible and just thing.

I mean what the hell, these guys are seriously presenting the national equivalent of "If I say I'm sorry to the guy I just shot I might have to pay his medical bills, or go to jail, or have people not like me anymore, fuck that!"



But those are all just the flaccid and disgusting excuses used by racists and nationalists. The REAL reason is simple.

If we admit we did wrong we weaken the nationalist/racial image of purity and power.

John Howard for instance made appeals to the most base and disgusting nationalism/racism pretty much his core platform. But most politicians at least do not want to offend the "for flag and country" types. And ever daring to besmirch the sacred image of the national flag with ANY admission that "the nation" EVER did ANY wrong WILL insult those guys.

Because these "proud patriots" and "white and proud" and so forth crowds ARE thin skinned, and they are thin skinned because ultimately they have no real reason to be so damn proud of their nationalism and racism and any challenge to their beliefs hurts their feelings because they lack the actual ability to counter with any real justifications.

Remember these are people who seriously claim they would rise in violent revolt if China were to magically conquer Australia (insert whatever other country here) in a bloodless coupe tomorrow, then make no other changes to the way our nation ran other than to change the name to "Far South China" and mess with the national flag.

Because their nationalist identity is indeed nothing BUT a name, a flag and a whole lot of disgusting racism and tribalism. Mess with the name and the flag and you churn up all the disgusting shit they are full of.

I can understand wanting to revoke the humans rights act and replace it with an altentive legal framework from a legal theory perspective, but unfortunately most people who are thinking about that sort of thing are just jerks who hate immigrants.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:most importantly in our fucked-up world they would be thought of as bigger assholes if they admitted to it and didn't make huge reparations.

True. I mean, Kevin Rudd seems to have received more flak for apologising to the indigenous peoples of Australia without handing them pallets of cash than John Howard took for saying "LALALA NOT LISTENING"

And holy shit, Frank, that is hilarious. It makes me proud and/or ashamed to be half-British.

Fuchs wrote:The "Pirate Party", from the "Pirate Bay" network won around 8% in Sweden.

There isn't actually an association other than shared ideas.

Its good to see the anti-copyright parties get a leg up in Sweden. They scored massive votes with the under 30s, making them a force that can't be ignored.

FrankTrollman wrote:Does this sink in at all? The European Parliament is such a fucking joke and election turnout is so fucking low that a man can buy his mistress a seat on the European Parliament as a romantic gift. And this isn't hyperbole or something that might happen, that actually did happen. In my neighborhood. This week.

-Username17

However, I am not sure how does this differ from buying seats in local governments, parliaments and whatnot all over the world. It shouldn't really come as a surprise that a large scale election is nothing but a joke.