<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/europe/08swiss.html?_r=3&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin>Here is the first post, endlich...
I've been reading all morning about the recent developments in Swiss politics. The center of attention is the Swiss Justice Minister, Christoph Blocher, and the SPP (Swiss People’s Party) / SVP (Schweizerische Volkspartei) / UDC (L'Union Démocratique du Centre).
The party, like many other right-wing parties in Europe, is riding on a wave anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic sentiment.
The most notable fact is the extremely racist campaign poster, showing three white and one black sheep on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking, with its hind legs, the black sheep off the flag.
The second thing I always thought unimaginable and now find unprecedented is this:
The UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, warned earlier this year that a "racist and xenophobic dynamic" which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland.
Dr Schlüer, shrugged. "He's from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don't know why he comes here instead of getting on with that."
Dr Schlüer, shrugged. "He's from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don't know why he comes here instead of getting on with that."
This is the most irresponsible, outrageous and politically incorrect statement I have ever come across by such a high-ranking official. To make matters worse, it is directed against a UN officer.
I admit I was very relieved to read the reaction of some normal people:
“The poster is disgusting, unacceptable,” Micheline Calmy-Rey, the current president of Switzerland under a one-year rotation system, said in an interview. “It stigmatizes others and plays on the fear factor, and in that sense it’s dangerous. The campaign does not correspond to Switzerland’s multicultural openness to the world. And I am asking all Swiss who do not agree with its message to have the courage to speak out.”
Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin, of the Liberal Democratic Party, has even suggested that the SVP’s worship of Christoph Blocher, the billionaire who is the party’s driving force and the current justice minister, is reminiscent of that of Italian fascists for Mussolini.
Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin, of the Liberal Democratic Party, has even suggested that the SVP’s worship of Christoph Blocher, the billionaire who is the party’s driving force and the current justice minister, is reminiscent of that of Italian fascists for Mussolini.
Adolf Ogi, a popular former Swiss president who now serves as U.N. envoy for sports and peace, said the riot underscored the growing polarization in Switzerland over immigration. A member of the moderate wing of the People's Party, Ogi said the personality cult being built around Blocher was «completely un-Swiss.«You don't solve the problems of the future with polarization and naysayers,» he said in an interview with the Baden-based weekly Sonntag.
The Social Democrats, the second-largest party with a forecast of 21.7 percent of the vote, have responded with their own poster showing the three white sheep kicking out a goat with Blocher's face. «Butt out, SPP,» the poster says.
"These campaigns remind me of the worst times in Europe between 1930 and 1938," said Yves Patrick Delachaux, a Geneva police officer and author who has made a career of combating racism in his police department. "The same types of posters were used to encourage people to kick the Jews out. We have to be very careful with such propaganda."
Here's an incident that shows how bad things are:
At 1:30 a.m., Antonio da Costa heard a knock at the back entrance of the McDonald's restaurant where he worked as a janitor after-hours.
He opened the door, he recalled in an interview. There stood two men, each gripping a chain saw. One yanked the cord on his saw, stepped toward da Costa and shouted above the roaring machine: "We don't need Africans in our country. We're here to kill you!"
He opened the door, he recalled in an interview. There stood two men, each gripping a chain saw. One yanked the cord on his saw, stepped toward da Costa and shouted above the roaring machine: "We don't need Africans in our country. We're here to kill you!"
The two masked assailants cornered da Costa and began raking him with the whirring chain-saw blades. They slashed one arm to the bone, nearly sliced off his left thumb and hacked his face, neck and chest, the 37-year-old Angolan said, his voice quavering as he recounted the May 1 attack.
The gruesome assault in a suburb of Zurich — consistently ranked in international surveys as one of the world's most livable cities — dramatized the surge in racism and xenophobia as Switzerland confronts its most difficult social transformation in modern times.
The gruesome assault in a suburb of Zurich — consistently ranked in international surveys as one of the world's most livable cities — dramatized the surge in racism and xenophobia as Switzerland confronts its most difficult social transformation in modern times.
I would state an apparently unrelated fact: after reading extensively about German politics, the pre-war years and the World War II, and the aftermath of those events, I have never come across a single allegation that Adolf Hitler's party did not win in free and fair elections.
Finally, why does the West have to focus on Ahmedinejad all the time and brand him the Hitler in the making? I bet something much worse is cooking in the heart of Europe as I write this...
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