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posted by janrinok on Wednesday October 05 2016, @11:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the shiver-me-voters dept.

A party that hangs a skull-and-crossbones flag at its HQ, and promises to clean up corruption, grant asylum to Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin virtual currency, could be on course to form the next Icelandic government.

The Pirate Party has found a formula that has eluded many anti-establishment groups across Europe. It has tempered polarising policies like looser copyright enforcement rules and drug decriminalisation with pledges of economic stability that have won confidence among voters.

This has allowed it to ride a wave of public anger at perceived corruption among the political elite - the biggest election issue in a country where a 2008 banking collapse hit thousands of savers and government figures have been mired in an offshore tax furore following the Panama Papers leaks.

The left-leaning party is part of a global anti-establishment typified by Britain's vote to leave the European Union. But their platform is far removed from the anti-immigration policies of the UK Independence Party, France's National Front and Germany's AfD, or the anti-austerity of Greece's Syriza.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iceland-election-idUKKCN11Z1RV


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 05 2016, @07:25PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @07:25PM (#410776)

    Electing Trump is basically just removing the middlemen between a tiny number of very rich people and the politicians that work for them.

    That sounds exactly like Hillary too.

    You seem to be operating in ignorance of a couple of vitally important facts:
    1. Donald Trump has helped to bankroll past Clinton campaigns. If the Clintons are establishment, and they are, so is Trump.
    2. Real estate developers like Trump get all sorts of political favors in order to do what they do. Trump has, throughout his career, relied on political connections for smoothing over little details like zoning laws, bankruptcy proceedings, and criminal investigations. He even bragged about it.

    I see your point but I think there's different ideas of exactly what "the establishment" is. The people who are involved in the military-industrial complex, for instance, are not at all involved in commercial real estate development, and vice versa. Hillary's establishment, which is the establishment that's in power these days, seems to involve Wall Street, much of the mainstream media (like WaPo), the M-I-C, and the copyright cartels and telecoms, and all the politicians who are in bed with those industries. I don't see Trump as being a central figure in that establishment at all, not like Hillary is, as she's right in the nexus of it. Sure, he's tried to buy some favors, but lots of ultra-rich people do that; that doesn't make them significant parts of the establishment. Maybe you could say Trump's a wannabe, but I just don't see that he's actually done anything of substance on behalf of "the establishment".

    Now his running mate Pence, OTOH, is a different story, and Trump seemed to really give the finger to all the anti-establishment voters who were rooting for him for that reason, similar to how Hillary really gave the finger to all the Bernie voters by selecting Kaine as her running mate.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 05 2016, @08:19PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @08:19PM (#410805)

    Electing Trump is basically just removing the middlemen between a tiny number of very rich people and the politicians that work for them.

    That sounds exactly like Hillary too.

    No, Hillary Clinton is merely a higher-class employee, one of those middlemen (Ok, middlewomen). After all, she's only worth about 9 figures, the real players are worth 10-11 figures in US dollars.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.