Office of Zanas46 - Get out to vote !

[LastVoter]

Endorsed!

[Velasco]

You'll have my wholeheartedly support.

I think this region needs a change, because it has reached to an unacceptable level of stagnation. The main reason is pointed in your speech: The South has been too long being governed by the same people.

At a personal level I think that PiT or SJoyce are good and well intentioned persons, but it's my belief that at this point, the heirs of the old conservative regionalism, later called the Imperial Bloc, are unable to contribute new ideas and this region needs them urgently in this delicate conjuncture that we are crossing.

You'll have to face an uphill battle. Feds are powerful in this region and have increased their registration in a kind of silent 'operation cottonfield'. And they have powerful supports from the outside. The promoter of the lawsuit that has unleashed the present crisis endorses openly your rival.

In my opinion you are a good candidate for various reasons. Firstly, you have acquired experience in the last months working as Legislator and Speaker. Secondly, you have been elected Speaker so much for having obtained a considerable popular support in the races that you competed like for your qualities at the moment of arbitrating discussions. Your deep beliefs have not prevented you from collaborating with members of the other parties to take forward
laws in the benefit of this region.

I believe that being members of a party that is not majority -- and doesn't aspire to have an absolute power--, make us estimate the value of cooperation. I encourage you to build a broad coalition, from the centre to the left, of citizens committed with the change that this region needs urgently.

I may be member of the Labor Party, and certainly I share its main values, but you can believe me, fellow citizens, when I tell you that my spirit is fiercely independent. It's from my own conscience where I ask the citizens of the South to support keenly this candidacy, for the good of this region and because we deserve a brighter future.

¡Adelante compañero y buena suerte!

[Adam Griffin]

Endorsed!



Puissiez-vous reussir là où j'ai echoué une fois.

[Zanas]

Hey y'all !

After spending the Easter holidays with family and friends, and experiencing a few new connection problems (-___-"), I will be back now to discuss issues. I was very glad to see that Velasco acted as my Campaign Director in SJoyce's thread, answering every argument Sjoyce threw at us as well, and sometimes better than I would have done. Here is the future of the South, people like Velasco who combine an interest for fighting injustice and prejudice with an ability to think and work on the issues.

As for the election thing, I had decided to put the legislative work in the Southern House to a halt during this holiday, awaiting for the rulings of both Dibble and the S.C.O.T.R.O.A, and now I don't really know where we are.

Dibble opened an extended booth, so be it, but he gave a limited amount of time to use it, and someone (a Jack Enderman), voted two days after that time. Will his vote be counted ? Will we at last see clear in these troubled waters ? In the mean time, the case is being debated in front of the Scotroa.

This incident had at least one upside : we saw that candidates turned towards the needs of the 99% rather than the 1% can sit on a good 15 or 16 votes in the South, and if the Feds don't improve their GOTV system, anything can happen down here ! That's refreshing, isn't it ?

[Zanas]

Let's get back from Empire to Republic !

I figured we could move backwards in time and get back from Imperial designations to Republican ones. We could be doing that in France moving from 1852 towards 1848, but I would be accused of force-feeding my personal history onto the whole people of the South, so I figured we could do that by moving from 25 BC towards the 3rd century BC in the Roman sphere.

I propose a few things for you :
- the Emperor shall be replaced by a Prefect.
- the Judicial Overlord shall be replaced by a Praetor.
- the Imperial Legislature shall be replaced either by a Comitia or Assembly.
- the Imperial SPeaker shall be replaced by a Tribune.
- the region itself shall be known as "the South", plain and simple, and not Southeast as a number of Atlasians still retain calling it.
- if anybody still wants to use some kind of Imperial House, it shall be known as a "Tribe".

These designations are notwithstanding any changes in their functions and attributions that may occur while revamping our Constitution.

On that subject, Sjoyce said that :

What a Constitution is is a set of rules written down into a legal document by which an organization is governed - these rules constitute what the organization is. The principle point of a Constitution is to establish how and who makes the laws and what limits are set on those who make the laws. You can feel free to try to write laws establishing various social programs, but that's quite simply not what the Constitution is for.

and I do not really agree. While the basis of the Constitution is the organization of the branches of power in a limited domain, and the separation of competences between those branches, the document can and must also include the principles on which this government system is based, and the goals towards which the system is aiming. You do not establish a government just "because you have to", you have to have a point, a goal to achieve, and for me and my potential electors, this goal is freedom through equality, justice and solidarity. This ought to be addressed in the Constitution, with the rights attached to this goal.

However, I do understand that presently there is no possibility of opening a constitutional convention under current law, and even if there was such a possibility, that the process could be painstaking (but that should not prevent us from doing it in the future though). So I guess we'll have to rewrite whole parts of the Constitution via amendments and pass them before the Comitia, and thence before the people for ratification. I'll try and take the necessary time to gather all the provisions that cause trouble in the current redaction, but any Southern fellow, or any Atlasian at all, are welcome to help in the process.

On the other matters, Velasco addressed them quite right, and you can count his opinions expressed in Sjoyce's thread as mine. Funny was Sjoyce's putting forward his high-speed rail project as if I had not participated at all, but the voters know better. Also funny was the kind of fear that oppressed him when I said we will ensure that the rich don't get richer and richer and that the laws don't get written for their sole benefit. Seems to me he isn't quite confident about being part of the 99%...

[Donerail]

Let's get back from Empire to Republic !

I figured we could move backwards in time and get back from Imperial designations to Republican ones. We could be doing that in France moving from 1852 towards 1848, but I would be accused of force-feeding my personal history onto the whole people of the South, so I figured we could do that by moving from 25 BC towards the 3rd century BC in the Roman sphere.

I propose a few things for you :
- the Emperor shall be replaced by a Prefect.
- the Judicial Overlord shall be replaced by a Praetor.
- the Imperial Legislature shall be replaced either by a Comitia or Assembly.
- the Imperial SPeaker shall be replaced by a Tribune.
- the region itself shall be known as "the South", plain and simple, and not Southeast as a number of Atlasians still retain calling it.
- if anybody still wants to use some kind of Imperial House, it shall be known as a "Tribe".

I'm not sure whether I like this or not specifically, but I do like that it's unique from the rest of the regions. I was also kicking around the idea of redoing the decor in an Ottoman style, with Sultans and Viziers and such, or perhaps a glorious Mongol-type thing (Emperor=Great Khan, Legislature=Kurultai, etc). Lots of different models we can look at without having to take the same Governor-Assembly route.

[Velasco]

The Ottoman or the Mongol styles would be another way of reproducing the same imperial decor. In addition, as for resounding titles the Byzantine Empire is unbeatable. Nothing against to proper and original names for offices, but I would prefer having a republican model.

[Donerail]

The Ottoman or the Mongol styles would be another way of reproducing the same imperial decor. In addition, as for resounding titles the Byzantine Empire is unbeatable. Nothing against to proper and original names for offices, but I would prefer having a republican model.

While certainly a republican model is nice, and of course we should have a republican system of government, republican states tend to have disappointingly bland names (and, for what it's worth, the Byzantines were led by an Emperor. At least with the Ottomans/Mongols there's different titles).

[Velasco]

The Ottoman or the Mongol styles would be another way of reproducing the same imperial decor. In addition, as for resounding titles the Byzantine Empire is unbeatable. Nothing against to proper and original names for offices, but I would prefer having a republican model.

While certainly a republican model is nice, and of course we should have a republican system of government, republican states tend to have disappointingly bland names (and, for what it's worth, the Byzantines were led by an Emperor. At least with the Ottomans/Mongols there's different titles).

There's no difference in essence between a Byzantine Basileios (Emperor) and an Ottoman Sultan. Both were autocrats. In any case, I was kidding with the Byzantines. If we were adopting titles from this Empire, I'd have a hard choice between vestarches (first a high rank for eunuchs and later awarded to senior military officers) and hyperprōtopansebastohypertatos, one of so many ceremonial and empty titles created to take pleasure to some outstanding member of the imperial family. Bland names can be cool.

You can find more Byzantine titles in the Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_aristocracy_and_bureaucracy

[Zanas]

Here I answer most of Sjoyce’s arguments uttered by cheer atom bigotry. In a nutshell : nuclear power can be as safe as we want, we can never be 100% sure it won’t fail, and if it fails, unlike almost any other technology we use, it can blow a whole chunk of our planet in the process.

The solution is not a pleasant one, we have to collectively, globally, change our mode of living and reduce our energy consumption to a minimum, while not giving up on any progress we made, in order to not consume Earth in the next two centuries.

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Stating the issue in terms of economical win or loss, typical.

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Nobody denies that. What we need is a diversified energetical bouquet which contains as much renewable energy as possible and a bit of thermal one for stability, and without an energy capable of blowing a whole country off the face of the planet rending it uninhabitable for millennia.

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Hint : pollution is not only measured in amount of CO2 rejected. Pollution is also measured in duration of the waste. And defending the “environment at-large”, that is to say Earth’s whole ecosystem, isn’t only about reducing CO2 emissions, it is much broader and complex concept. For example wind turbines are often shown to upset migratory paths of bird species, so sometimes not building a wind turbine is “defending the environment.

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They attack one of the solutions if that solution is in itself madness. Not being able to set foot on a large-radius part of the planet because of a man generated disaster is madness. Plus, working for the good of our climate and fighting climate change are not enough. We have to collectively defend the whole ecosystem from potential harm, destruction or extinction, and in that prospect nuclear power has at least as many drawbacks as advantages.

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Regardless of the technology used, one of the main causes of Chernobyl catastrophy was that i twas managed by a crumbling bureaucratic empire. While Atlasia is not that by any means, it could end up to be in 40 years. In that case, the human errors that piled up to facilitate the Chernobyl disaster could pile up at home too and facilitate a disaster of our own.

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Yes ! Of course ! We can make almost anything to be 99.99999999 % safe !

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Except when a coal plant explodes, you have a few hundreds killed, when an oil platform spills you just have a few thousand birds killed (and they’re just birds right ? we eat them after all…), when Bhopal explodes you have many killed and cancers for one generation, when a dam crumbles you have hundreds killed, 9/11 is not relevant here cause it’s not inherent to air transport, it’s a deliberate act. But when one nuclear plant explodes (two thus far), you basically erase a whole zone of the surface of the Earth from any ecosystemical use for decades, centuries or millennia depending on the radius ! And potentially the core fusion would blow a hole in the Earth as large as Chixculub. The problem is not the safety, it’s the potential destructive power. Everything eventually fails. Murphy’s Law states “If there are several ways to do something, and one of these way lead to disaster, someone will eventually do it that way.” This is supposed to be pleasant, but it’s also a useful statistical tool, and a quite correct one. But whether the disaster kills 100 or 20,000 now plus 100,000 sq km uninhabitable for centuries has to be addressed quite thoroughly.

[Zanas]

(continued)

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Well that’s just great ! They’re insured ! So nothing wrong will happen to them, surely ! That is maybe the worst argument in your whole argumentation, but it’s also great because it opens the door for one of my bolder and lefter ones. Add to all I just said about everything coming to a fail eventually one element : capitalism. Capitalism is the constant, official or unofficial, dismissal of rules in order to ensure a never-ending maximization of profit above any other principle or belief. So it is bound to reduce safety rules at one point to maximize profit. And it already does ! There was a bit of a shock when workers were found in highly secured sectors of a French nuclear plant where they should not have been working in, at all. The direction of the plant was just too lazy and stingy to make things the right way. These things happen under capitalism, but other troubles happen under soviet collectivism obviously…

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You know statistics right ? You know that if you multiply plants all over the world, that 10-million year disaster interval will drop ? Plus that’s not taking into account man intervention.

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And waste disposal and cautious management for the next 10,000 years ? Except if you don’t care about people that will live in that era, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t…

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You mean in comparison. Otherwise it just doesn’t make any sense. Building a nuclear plant does not get cheaper because oil gets more expensive.

Oh and the main trouble here is that you assume we have to replace every single kWh produced by fossil fuel by a nuclear produced one. That is not how we will save this ecosystem though. Currently our energetic mode of consumption in Western countries consumes the equivalent of about 7 or 8 Earths. Even the least developed countries consume around one Earth. We need to globally, drastically and radically lower that consumption in all realms of our lives in order to obtain sustainability as a liveable planet for future generations of humans, birds and polar bears. So not only should we not be building dozens of nuclear plants, but we should be closing dozens of carbon fuelled ones, and start to think about walking one mile instead of driving, and orgnazing our whole lives less dependent on energy. But I can understand that this is quite a too broad prospect for you to embrace, and that it might frighten you.

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Yeah, and if you double them, that’s 150 years, and so on… And maybe Canada and Australia will be wanting to use it for themselves at some point, no ? Anyway, uranium is also a finished resource that doesn’t tackle the problem of how we will create energy in a thousand years.

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If you read all my posts, I’m sure you will be able to find the one where I stated the exact opposite : I’m all in favor of doing as much research and development on nuclear power as possible, as well as in any other scientific branch. Just not want these researchs to be tested on the public before they are safe. Like the GMOs.

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And what do you mean by reprocessed extensively ? We still end up with a lot of waste.

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Another typical one : you leave very little high-level waste, so that’s super-duper safe, right ? Low-level waste can’t be that bad, after all it has “low” in it. Low radioactivity level waste is not safe at all, it can cause a cancer plain and simple. Everything that’s used to process nuclear fuel and waste becomes waste of its own. We actually have 10 times more of this waste than of fuel. But they aren’t safe by any standards.

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See above, those figures are (voluntarily) misleading.

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Yeah we should close a few of these too.

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Again, research on everything is thoroughly important on my agenda, cause research is knowledge. But you said it, we have to find a real solution.

[Zanas]

And don't anyone even think about serving me "back to candle-lighting" bullsh**t cause you will just be embarrassing and discrediting yourselves.

Oh and another thing to the people of the South :

When you'll vote for a so-called "Emperor", ask yourself "Do I know where Sjoyce stands at all on anything apart from nuclear power ?"

This guy has, in the last six months, been :
-Imperial Bloc
-Federalist
-Independent
-Liberal
-Light (whatever that ends up to be...)

Zanas46 :
-Labor.

And proud.

[Velasco]

Honestly, I didn't have time to read SJoyce's passionate allegation of the nuclear fission power stations nor your counter argumentation in its entirety. Nevertheless, anyone could say that there's a lobby behind your opponent. I'd like to hear your opinion in the Legislature about the current draft of the nuclear bill, especially regarding costs, because I suppose you well informed about our budgetary availability.

I believe that the best response against certain groundless accusations is to expose with clarity our alternatives. For example, I believe that the regional government should grant a credit line for the installation of solar panels in particular homes. It's a good idea making bills concerning the governmental buildings, but we should go further in this line. Another issue that buildings should follow standards of energy efficiency, in order to diminish the consumption.

[Donerail]

Interested in a debate? We've got about 2 weeks till the election.

[Zanas]

Yes, of course. The election is on the weekend of April 19th-20th-21st ?

We ought to have a neutral authority opening a specific thread and conduct debates. Not necessarily from the South. Who would be interested ?

[Donerail]

Yes, of course. The election is on the weekend of April 19th-20th-21st ?

We ought to have a neutral authority opening a specific thread and conduct debates. Not necessarily from the South. Who would be interested ?

Yep, at least if Griffin's calendar is correct, and yeah, we should find a neutral moderator.

[Zanas]

Well, it has been a heated debate on nuclear power, and we love votes, right ?

So, under the provision of the South's Constitution,  Article III, 4. that reads :

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I will sign the petition to send the so-called "Clean Power Act" signed on 06 April 2013, 00:07:28, into law by Emperor PiT, to a referendum.

X Zanas

The Constitution is not very clear, unsurprisingly, on whether it's a 1/2 or 2/3 referendum, but it seems that the spirit is 2/3 for constitutional amendments and 1/2 for the others. Feel free to state otherwise if you please. Anyway, we have to give this Constitution a thorough sweeping !

So could two other Southern citizens please sign the above petition for a referendum ? I will not have a potential threat such as the building of 5 nuclear reactors go without the explicit assent of the People of this region.

[Donerail]

If this'll put an end to it, so be it. I believe we can win a referendum, and do not fear one. xSJoyce

[Dereich]

I'm extremely disappointed that we can't wash our hands of this nuclear issue and be done with it, but if its what it takes to achieve closure on this bill I guess I'll sign your petition as well.

X Dereich

But I WILL be supporting the legislation I helped create and fought for. Don't expect it to be an easy referendum.

[JerryArkansas]

I will fight this and my side will win.  This was my bill, and our area needs this.

[Zanas]

So, now the Nuclear thing has passed the referendum with a vote of 17-8, to my account, and even if the booth hasn't been formally closed it has been more than 72 hours so the vote is formally closed.

Therefore, I am hereby challenging it in yet another way : ... just kidding, that'll be all. I'll work in the Legislature to enhance safety measures that weren't much detailed in the bill we passed, and maybe on waste management, because since it has passed, it is in my duty to ensure that all citizens are protected from anything going wrong.

On another note, maybe you've seen my proposals for changes of the names of offices in the South, that I've stated in this thread, on this same page. I just had an idea for the office replacing the Imperial Speaker.

I want to make it the Plebeian Tribune. It will have roughly the same attributions as today's Speaker, including therefore replacing the "Emperor", now Prefect, in case of vacancy or absence.

But the originality is that, to ensure it is a representative of the people, the plebeia of this region, unpartisan and distanced from partisan interests and permanent office-holders, it will be elected by the plebeia, i.e : by every one that isn't holding an office, regional or federal.

It ensures that if any political party or ideology holds a great amount of power in the region by holding a number of offices, this office will lean a little less towards it. It's just plain old checks and balances really. Even if, like nowadays, two factions hold the offices, it allows the "simple" people, that have at least as much wisdom as office-holders, to have someone really close to them, intimate, and reporting to them directly, and that needs to campaign towards them only and not towards the usual Gotha.

This method of election would be a guarantee that the man, or woman, would be there by the will of the people and not by relations with a few well placed friends. And this would in turn ensure that he, or she, is an unpartisan voice while conducting debates in the Legislature.

I'm not yet decided on whether it should be able to cast a vote in the Comitia, or Legislature, which would mean a 6th vote in this body, which would not be harmful per se. But maybe he should just be conducting debates, accepting or rejecting amendments based on the discussions, and presenting them for signature or veto to the Prefect. It should be in charge of maintaining the Legislative docket, maybe by implementing a new thread better named.

I'm aware of the fact that this would not be possible under the current constitution, federal or regional. As for the regional one, I intend to make the necessary adjustments, but I don't really have a solution for the federal one, just maybe ask our Senator to introduce an amendment, but that would be in order to deprive him of his vote on this office, so...

I don't know, maybe y'all will find it silly, but I thought it was a great idea when it came to me.

[Donerail]

We used to have a position that did much of what you described, that of the Viceroy. I wasn't around when we had a Viceroy, but I believe we abolished the position because nobody really wanted to do it.

[Zanas]

So let's make it a Legislator, with four others elected via the present system in two classes of two. Or even add it to the present 5 Legislators, elected every two months. That way it should be more attractive.

I expected to see horror and flamethrowing at the proposed voting requirements. One could think that it's only a way of disenfranchising Feds from their vote, but today it would for example also prevent myself, Velasco, Griffin, Hash or Duke from voting for this particular office. I frankly would have proposed the exact same thing in any region, even the more Labor ones.

[Donerail]

So let's make it a Legislator, with four others elected via the present system in two classes of two. Or even add it to the present 5 Legislators, elected every two months. That way it should be more attractive.

I expected to see horror and flamethrowing at the proposed voting requirements. One could think that it's only a way of disenfranchising Feds from their vote, but today it would for example also prevent myself, Velasco, Griffin, Hash or Duke from voting for this particular office. I frankly would have proposed the exact same thing in any region, even the more Labor ones.

The issue I see with that is that so many of the folks who aren't presently in office tend to be inactive or otherwise disengaged from Atlasian affairs - zombie voters. It could just become a 'who can mobilize the most zombies' contest instead of 'who is best qualified'.

[Zanas]

Yeah, I had that concern too. But based on my account, we have roughly ten people holding offices now in the South, so it would still be 30-something voters, though a lot of which would be zombie-like.