"a home for dozens of animatronic dinosaurs."
As long as it's only dinosaurs, and not dinosaurs mixed with biblical figures, I'm OK with it. ;^)
Wikileaker-in-Chief Julian Assange's campaign to win a seat in Australia's Senate has almost certainly failed, with the Wikileaks party securing just 0.62 per cent of the nine million votes counted in the nation's election. Assange has done a little better in the State of Victoria, with his party picking up a little over 25, …
This post has been deleted by its author
Julian Assange was hoping for a small miracle in both getting a seat, and being able to return to Australia without being arrested. Conventional wisdom states that Assange can not legally sit in the senate with his legal problems. Also, that such legal problems end political careers.
Yeah right. from their policies; "We will not support legislation or public debate that is divisive or disrespectful." So we are going to suppress discussion on issues we don't agree with. The entire point of democracy is that you don't suppress discussion. And also who decides if it is divisive or disprespectful?
And; "Hurts the Australian way of life or penalises the law abiding for the sake of the irresponsible minority, thus making life harder for average Australian families or takes away the right to a “fair go” That's going to be a hard one, who decides what the average australian family is, and if they aren't average does that mean it's fine to pick on them for the benefit of the priveleged "average"? They do realise that almost nothing is at that point don't they, that average's are simply the midpoints of a possibly vast range of possibilities.
Should I also point out that some preferences from said party are directed to One Nation and Pauline Hanson, and as a result these minor party preferneces Pauline Hanson is now a senator, dog save australia, the queen certainly can't.
I'm not sure that's a valid statement; based only on observation of other Western policy makers. All my evidence is anecdotal though, so I could be wrong.
I'm going to go with my gut though and say that delusional people making and changing government policy is more the standard than the exception for the last 40 years or so anyway.
Have you *looked* at the people who are being elected to office in the US or the UK or several other countries too?!
They're not just deluded, some of them are bat-shit crazy!
And you don't get a choice of candidate, you just get whoever the other nutcases tell you you're getting because they think the same way...
Is that Assange didn't get a seat. He is a self serving egotistical moron who believes that everyone's private information (except his) is fair game. He wants the whole world to be run as he would like it. We just got rid of one egotistical moron in government. We don't need to replace him with another.
"Once a candidate gains that “quota” of votes, any other votes for that candidate pass to a voter's second preference"
I interpret this to mean that it must be important/significant in which order ballot papers are counted.
You could have one area within the state where a minor candidate has very strong support and the majority of the second votes are for this person.
If the papers from this area is counted first, then the voters first preferences are used up electing the major parties candidates.
If however they are counted later, once the major party candidates have gained sufficient votes, then all these second preferences would be effective for this minor candidate.
I presume the relatively low requirement of a 1/6th of votes, a wide spread of voter opinions and compulsory voting make a scenario unlikely but would it be possible to game the system?
I think (not an aussie here, so going by articles I've read in recent weeks) the second preference is determined by the candidate/party, hence why the Wikileaks party doesn't have much chance of a seat, as they don't appear to have any deals with other parties to gain their second preference votes.
""Once a candidate gains that “quota” of votes, any other votes for that candidate pass to a voter's second preference"
I interpret this to mean that it must be important/significant in which order ballot papers are counted."
This isn't how it works. How STV works is that, for example, say you have five seats and a million votes, so you need 200000 to win a seat. If no candidate has more than 200k then the person with fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are transferred, either by candidate's choice or why voter preference (ordering the candidates 1 to n). This continues until someone gets 200000 votes. Then, if they have (say) 250k votes, 200k of those are used to win, and the "excess" 50000 are distributed to other parties. How this is done is either candidate's choice or by taking the preferences of all voters and dividing by 5, i.e., 50000/250000. Play continues.
This post has been deleted by its author
I think Assange would need a damn sight more luck/help than a political position in Oz to get himself out of his own self-inflicted predicament. One way or another he's going to face some time inside another institution the second he steps foot out of that embassy. And this time round I don't think there will be many people lifting a finger to help him.
Maybe if we just treat his current stay like the recent Channel 5 series of Big Brother; ignored by most people (and the media), to which the usual refrain is "Is that still going?". Might give him a bit of a clue if it didn't make the news every time he farted or something.
If Anonymous had anything remotely resembling a hierarchical leadership structure (or any organizational structure whatsoever) they might be something significant. But they don't, so they're not.
The very thing that gives Anonymous any kind of 'power' (loosely defined) is the very thing that prevents them from ever being more than a minor thorn in the backside of their enemy of the hour.
If you put 100 Anonymous members in a room with unlocked doors and a mission to leave the room, 75 of them would pull out their cocks and/or shit on the floor and forget to leave. Twenty of them would try to block the exits, three of them would be trying to figure out who just shit on their shoes and the other two would leave during the confusion, but only because they got bored, not because they were supposed to be leaving.
I think that's the way they like it too. They can play or not play as their wishes dictate. That's fine, but it limits the extent of their reach and power.
Oh Eff Off.
The Anonymous of old, the one you talk about, the one which spent its days IRL harassing tween girls and people who were mean to cats, "for teh lulz", doesn't exist any more. What exists today is Assange's Private Army, consisting of equal parts libertarian conspiracy nuts and undercover law enforcement agents pretending to be libertarian conspiracy nuts.
Call me naive, but I thought the "brick with eyes" was going to be an actual brick with some googly eyes stuck to it. Stupider things have been elected, after all. And it makes so much sense: after a long and scandal-free career (hard to get up to the usual politician shenanigans if you're a brick); the brick could retire by way of being used to build cells for the other politicians. Brick is a national hero and Australia would be that much better off...not least because bricks don't have much in the way of expenses.
I read the story, but still prefer my version. Maybe next election...
wikileaks lost the game the moment their preferences were announced, and the nazi party ranked high, and above the quality greens senator scott ludlam who has been doing a very good job pushing the issues wikileaks supposedly stand for. They were trying to play the preferences game but preferences were put in which were not approved by the wikileaks national council, and in doing so they became part of the problem they are trying to solve (and lost most of their supporter base). It turns out you cant say one thing and then do another when running on a platform of transparency and proper process.
More info here: http://danielmathews.info/blog/2013/08/statement-of-resignation-from-wikileaks-party-national-council/
Well, guess around January we will get the British and Swedes do a deal like "If Sweden does not imprison him he'll go back to GB for skipping bail" and soon after that Equador claims that "this is good enough to ensure the safety of Commonwealth-citizen Assagne" and decide the need for Asylum no longer exists.
Three month to 10 years later (depending on wether he had a nice STD while not using a condom or not(1)) Assange will land on Sydney airport (if he didn't behave on the flight face first after Lars and Inga throw him out of the plane) and get a final press conference. A VERY big one courtesy of the USA...
(1) Having unprotected sex while suffering from an Sexually Transmitted Disease is considered "Körperverletzung" (battery) in quite a few countries. And Assange refusing a blood test more than once speaks volumes to me