A new way to become a US citizen easily: join the US army 4076

writes...

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First, having a plethora of parties that will never win is no different in practice to having a single party that wins all the time.

Second, without the ability to end a preference flow at the point of your choice, every vote ends up for one or other of the duopoly. People are obligated to vote for one of the big two, they can decorate their vote however they like along the way.

Third, the Coalition sat with a majority in both houses of parliament today. They can do pretty well whatever they want. Just like Fidel.

You still don't get it, do you? One Nation presented the only real challenge in recent memory to the power duopoly. What the public perceived as political enemies diametrically opposed to each other actually swapped preferences to defeat the third party. And that tells you nothing of how contrived the current arrangement is?

What is truth? What you read in the paper? What you see on TV or hear on radio? How about what you read in this forum?

No, I suggested you try to form an organisation called the "Al-Quaeda Party". I chose this because it is the most provocative name I can think of at the moment. Your new party may have an agenda of peacefully providing land rights to gay whales, it wouldn't matter. Try registering an organisation with that name today and you will be off for a romp with the ASIO boys by tonight.

Not a credible threat. Pauline Hanson was a credible threat for a while and she went to prison.

Have you any idea how concentrated the ownership of the press in Australia is? And what happens to the career of a reporter who rocks the boat enough to disturb the first clbutt pbuttengers?

It seems you can now be prosecuted for being a member of an organisation the government doesn't like even if that organisation has committed no crimes. The Attorney General's Dept currently lists 18 banned organisations, all of them with links to Islam.

Yet we have many other violent organisations in Australia, some of which have actually committed plantings and killings here, but they are not listed.

"Note that you can commit offences under this law, and become liable to very serious punishment, whether or not you have ever been personally involved in person activity. In particular, you should be aware of the following points: =3F You commit the recruiting offence even if you are not recruiting persons;

=3F You commit the training offence even if you are not involved in person training;

=3F You commit the funding offence whatever the purpose of the transaction;

=3F Given the very broad definition of =3Fperson act', it is very easy to commit the offence of providing support to an organisation."

I recently read a list of 24 groups proscribed by other countries. The list included ETA, the Tamil Tigers, the Real IRA ... These are hard core politically violent organisations with a history of terrorism. But they are not proscribed in Australia.

So we have a political list of proscribed groups rather than a list of organisations banned for public safety reasons.

Tell me, precisely, how this differs from Cuba's treatment of dissidents?

-- DM personal opinion only