Showing posts with label Zurich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zurich. Show all posts
Saturday, August 27, 2022
Face To Face | Carl Gustav Jung (1959) HQ
Saturday, September 22, 2018
Churchill - United States of Europe
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Trump Reacts to Terror Attacks in Berlin, Turkey
Sunday, March 03, 2013
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: Des bagarres ont fait pour plusieurs centaines de milliers de francs de dégâts à Zurich dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche.
Des magasins ont été pillés et des bâtiments maculés de peinture sans compter de nombreuses vitrines cassées. La police municipale zurichoise est intervenue avec des balles en caoutchouc, gaz lacrymogène et lances à eau.
Un rassemblement de plusieurs centaines de personnes s'est formé vers 23 heures dans le «Kreis» 3 de la ville, sur une zone occupée depuis 2006 et utilisée pour un centre alternatif. Peu après, plus de 1000 personnes ont rejoint la foule dont des autonomistes de gauche et des membres du squat, a indiqué la police dans un communiqué. » | ats/Newsnet | dimanche 03 mars 2013
Friday, September 16, 2011
Organisers say the 78-year-old will attend the gala to receive his award which he was set to pick up in 2009.
Swiss police arrested Polanski on his arrival in the country over his 1977 US conviction for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
He was held for 10 months before Swiss courts decided not to extradite him.
The tribute ceremony to present Polanski with his lifetime achievement award is due to be held on 27 September.
Directors of the Zurich Film Festival, Karl Spoerri and Nadja Schildknecht, said: "We are especially proud to welcome Roman Polanski this year to receive his award.
"We have always been tremendous admirers of his work and we are delighted that we will soon be able to express this to him in person," they added.
The Zurich Film Festival is taking place from 22 September to 2 October. » | Friday, September 16, 2011
Thursday, July 01, 2010
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: PROCHE-ORIENT | Une source officielle turque a confirmé jeudi que le ministre turc des Affaires étrangères Ahmet Davutoglu et le ministre israélien du Commerce Benjamin Ben Eliezer se sont rencontrés en secret tenter de surmonter la crise entre les deux pays.
La rencontre "a eu lieu hier (mercredi) à Bruxelles à la demande d'Israël", a déclaré un responsable turc, parlant sous le couvert de l'anonymat. "Nous avons déjà transmis une note à Israël expliquant nos attentes à leur égards (...) Ces attentes ont été réitérées lors de la rencontre", a-t-il ajouté.
Les médias israéliens avaient annoncé mercredi cette entrevue, mais elle n'avait été que partiellement confirmée par le bureau du Premier ministre israélien Benjamin Netanyahu, qui avait déclaré avoir autorisé une telle rencontre. Selon la deuxième chaîne de télévision israélienne et l'agence italienne Adnkronos, la rencontre a eu lieu à Zurich.
Selon la chaîne d'information turque NTV, les entretiens, qui visaient à apaiser les tensions suscitées par l'assaut de la flottille d'aide à Gaza, doivent se poursuivre. On ignore toutefois où et quand, ajoute NTV. >>> ATS | Jeudi 01 Juillet 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
LE TEMPS: A l’invitation du Tages Anzeiger, six femmes ont débattu mardi soir à Zurich de l’interdiction de la burqa. Même parmi celles qui s’opposent à une interdiction, le scepticisme, voire l’agressivité envers la seule femme à porter le voile intégral lors de la discussion était palpable
Faut-il interdire la burqa, ou plutôt le niqab, pour employer le terme correct? Le Tages Anzeiger avait invité six femmes pour en débattre, mardi soir à Zurich. Parmi elles, Nora Illi, déléguée aux questions féminines du Conseil central islamique suisse, qui, drapée dans son voile intégral noir, a cristallisé l’irritation, voire l’agressivité de toutes les participantes, mêmes de celles qui s’engageaient à ses côtés pour une interdiction de la burqa. Le public, des femmes à une large majorité, était acquis à une interdiction. Extraits des échanges parfois vifs qui ont animé la soirée.
Opposée à une interdiction, la conseillère nationale Jacqueline Fehr, a commencé par attaquer violemment Nora Illi: «La question de l’interdiction de la burqa est un faux débat qui nous coûte de l’énergie que nous ferions mieux d’investir pour améliorer l’intégration. Cela ne concerne pas Mme Illi qui peut faire ce qu’elle veut. Avec le zèle de convertie qu’elle démontre, et sa manière de se couper des autres, je la considère plutôt comme membre d’une secte.» >>> Catherine Cossy | Mercredi 26 Mai 2010
Eine blöde Schweizerin, die sich zum Islam bekehrt hat. Dümmer geht’s doch nicht! (Mit Video in Schweizerdeutsch*) >>>
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: The controversial Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas is likely to come under fresh scrutiny after divers discovered dozens of cremation urns on the bed of Lake Zurich.
“After 50, we stopped counting,” Roman Ruetz, a police diver, said. “They lay there in a big heap.” On being brought to the surface the urns were found to contain ashes.
There is little that directly connects Dignitas, which operates near by, with the urns, apart from the fact that they carried the logo of the Nordheim crematorium used by the suicide clinic.
One former employee and long-standing Dignitas critic, Soraya Wernli, told The Times 18 months ago that the clinic had dropped at least 300 urns in the lake.
Ludwig Minelli, the founder of Dignitas, refused to comment yesterday. >>> Roger Boyes in Berlin | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
YNET NEWS: On eve of Holocaust Day, Institute for Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism report shows that in wake of Operation Cast Lead, 2009 was worst since monitoring of anti-Semitic acts began 20 years ago. Number of violent incidents totaled 1,129 last year compared to 559 in 2008
The year of 2009 saw an increase of more than 100% in the number of violent acts of anti-Semitic nature against Jews worldwide, according to a report released Sunday by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University.
The Institute recorded 1,129 violent incidents in 2009, compared to 559 in 2008 – the highest number of incidents in the past 20 years.
The Institute's head, Prof. Dina Porat, noted in a press briefing that number of incidents, both violent and verbal, might actually be far higher than the figures presented in the report, as they do not include hundreds of instances of targeting of Jewish individuals or property (or public property), where there was no clear evidence of anti-Semitic motive. In addition, she said, Jews sometimes prefer not to file complaints, fearing reprisal or doubting the outcome[.] >>> Aviel Magnezi | Sunday, April 11, 2010
YNET NEWS: Berlin Jews alarmed by spate of anti-Semitic attacks: Jewish Community in Berlin warns of 'alarming' rise in anti-Semitic violence by Arab, Turkish immigrants following reports of two attacks against Jews over the weekend >>> Reuters | Monday, March 29, 2010
YNET NEWS: Muslim-Jewish tensions roil Swedish city: Malmo's Jewish community worried about rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes, which has prompted several families to leave >>> Associated Press | Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, December 04, 2009
COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Mr President, ladies and gentlemen,
I am honoured today by being received in your ancient university and by the address which has been given to me and which I greatly value. I wish to speak to you to-day about the tragedy of Europe, this noble Continent, comprising on the whole the fairest and the most cultivated regions of the earth enjoying a temperate and equable climate, the home of all the great parent races of the western world, the foundation of Christian faith and Christian ethics.
It is the origin of most of the culture, arts, philosophy, and science both of ancient and modern times. If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, the prosperity, and the glory which its 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 people would enjoy.
Yet it is from Europe that have sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by the Teutonic nations in their rise to power, which we have seen in this twentieth century and even in our own lifetime wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.
And what is this plight to which Europe has been reduced? Some of the smaller States have indeed made a good recovery, but over wide areas are a vast quivering mass of tormented, hungry, careworn, and bewildered human beings, who wait at the ruins of their cities and their homes and scan the dark horizons for the approach of some new form of tyranny or terror.
Among the victors there is a ballet of voices, among the vanquished the sullen silence of despair. That is all that Europeans, grouped in so many ancient states and nations, and that is all that the Germanic races have got by tearing each other to pieces and spreading havoc far and wide. Indeed, but for the fact that the great republic across the Atlantic Ocean at length realised that the ruin or enslavement of Europe would involve her own fate as well, and stretched out hands of succour and guidance; but for that, the Dark Ages would have returned in their cruelty and -squalor. They may still return.
Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland is to-day.
What is this sovereign remedy? It is to recreate the European fabric, or as much of it at we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety, and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living. The process is simple. All that is needed is the resolve of hundreds of millions of men and women to do right instead of wrong and to gain as their reward blessing instead of cursing.
Much work has been done upon this task by the exertions of the pan-European union which owes so much to and which commanded the services of the famous French patriot and statesman Aristide Briand. There is also that immense body which brought into being amidst high hopes after the first world war - the League of Nations. The league did not fail because of its principles or conceptions. It faded because those principles were deserted by those States which had brought it into being, because the Governments of those States feared to face the facts and act while time remained. This disaster must not be repeated. There is therefore much knowledge and material with which to build, and also bitter, dearly bought experience to spur.
I was very glad to read in the newspapers a few days ago that my friend President Truman had expressed his interest and sympathy with this great design.
There is no reason why a regional organisation of Europe Should [sic] in any way conflict with the world organisation of the United Nations. On the contrary, I believe that the larger synthesis can only survive if it is founded upon broad natural groupings. There is already a natural grouping in the western hemisphere. We British have our own commonwealth of nations. These do not weaken, on the contrary they strengthen, the world organisation. They are in fact its main support.
And why should there not be a European group, which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this mighty continent? And why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings and help to shape the honourable destiny of man?
In order that this may be accomplished there must be an act of faith in which the millions of families, speaking many languages, must consciously take part.
We all know that the two world wars through which we have passed arose out of the vain passion of the newly united Germany to play a dominating part in the world. In this last struggle crimes and massacres have been committed for which there is no parallel since the invasion of the Mongols during the thirteenth century, no equal at any in human history. The guilty must be punished. Germany must be deprived of the power to rearm and make another aggressive war.
But when all this has been done, as it will be done. as it is being done then there must be an end to retribution. There must be what Mr Gladstone many years ago, called the ' blessed act of oblivion.' We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past and we must look to the future. We cannot afford to must look forward across the years that are to come, hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past. If Europe is to be saved from infinite misery and indeed from final doom, there must be this act of faith in the European family this 'act of oblivion against all crimes and follies of the past. Can these peoples of Europe rise to the heights of the soul and of the instinct and spirit of man? If they could, the wrongs and injuries which have been indicted would have been washed away on all sides by the miseries which have been endured. Is there any need for further floods of agony? Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? Let there be justice, mercy, and freedom. The peoples have only to will it and all will achieve their hearts' desire.
I am now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step in the recreation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this way only can France recover the moral and cultural leadership of Europe. There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany.
The structure of the United States of Europe will be such as to make the material strength of a single State less important. Small nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by a contribution to the common cause. The ancient states and principalities of Germany, freely joined for mutual convenience in a federal system, might take their individual places among the United States of Europe.
I shall not try to make a detailed programme. There are hundreds of millions of people who want to be happy and free, prosperous and safe, who wish to enjoy the four freedoms of which the great President Roosevelt spoke, and live in accordance with the principles embodied in the Atlantic Charter.
If this is their wish, if it is the wish of Europeans from many lands, they have only to say so and means can certainly be found and the machinery erected to carry that wish to full fruition.
But I must give you warning. Time may be short. At present there is a breathing space. The cannons have ceased firing. The fighting has stopped, but the dangers have not stopped. If we are to form a United States of Europe, or whatever name it may take, we must begin now.
In these present days we dwell strangely and precariously under the shield, and I will even say protection, of the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb is still only in the hands of a State and nation which we know, will never use it except in the cause of right and freedom, but it may well be that in a few years this awful agency of destruction will be widespread and that the catastrophe following from its use by several warring nations will not only bring to an end all that we call civilisation but may possibly disintegrate the globe itself.
I must now sum-up the propositions which are before you.
Our constant aim must be to build and fortify the strength of the United Nations organisation. Under and within that world concept we must recreate the European family in a regional structure called - it may be - the United States of Europe and the first practical step will be to form a Council of Europe.
If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join a union we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can.
The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war and servitude must be established on solid foundations, and must be created by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than to submit to tyranny.
In all this urgent work France and Germany must take the lead together. Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America, and, I trust. Soviet Russia- - for then, indeed, all would be well - must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live.
Therefore I say to you: ' Let Europe arise.'
Winston Churchill,
September 19, 1946,
Zürich, Switzerland [Source: Council of Europe]
Die Rede in der deutschen Sprache… >>>
Le discours en français... >>>
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The film director Roman Polanski has lost his bid to be bailed from prison in Switzerland ahead of his possible extradition to the US over his 1977 conviction for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old-girl, Samantha Geimer.
"We continue to be of the opinion that there is a high risk of flight," said Folco Galli, a Swiss justice ministry spokesman.
He said the risk was too great for the government to accept bail or other security measures in exchange for the release of the filmmaker.
Polanski, 76, the director of Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and The Pianist, was arrested on Sept 26 as he arrived in Zurich to receive an award from a film festival. Authorities in Los Angeles consider him a convicted felon and a fugitive, and Switzerland says there has been an international warrant for his arrest since 2005.
His legal representatives are also asking Switzerland's highest criminal court to free Polanski. Mr Galli said the justice ministry has submitted a letter to the tribunal explaining why it opposes release even on bail.
Two former Zurich prosecutors have said Polanski stands a minimal chance of an immediate release.
Dieter Jann said extradition would be hard to fight, and he thought Switzerland had followed procedures correctly. Peter Cosandey added that Polanski was unlikely to be released because he is not a permanent resident and had already jumped bail years ago in the US. >>> | Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SECURITY NETWORK, ETH, ZÜRICH: The gradual emergence of an Islamic counterculture in Europe risks widening the already huge gap between East and West.
"History" crops up a lot in our conflicts with violent jihadists. A war on terror was proclaimed, and then rejected, because the term was belatedly deemed as descriptively meaningless as a "war on Blitzkrieg" and as futile as a "war on drugs." Among alternatives that have been put forward are "the long war," "the first global terrorist war," the counter campaign against the "global jihadist insurgency," and an "anti-Islamic extremism" battle.
Commentators and politicians seek to give our opponents a historically familiar face by substituting steel helmets for the checkered keffiyahs and turbans. We have heard about "Islamofascism" and "Islamobolshevism," both of which terms risk boxing our thinking into the past even as they give needless offense to Muslims by claiming that they are latter-day Nazis.
Since we are also engaged in a "war of hearts and minds," there has been much talk of a Cold War, running parallel to three wars - in Afghanistan, Iraq and against the "global jihadist insurgency." As an American commentator recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, if we take 9/11 as the equivalent of 1947, we are only six years into a struggle that may abate in 2043 if our descendants are fortunate.
Jonathan Evans, the director of MI5, claims that "culture" will play a significant role in this generation's conflicts with jihadists without spelling out what that means. These claims would be more credible if there was more money for public diplomacy, which in the US receives a significant percent of the vast defense budget. But the West need not be concerned how it represents itself, if that merely means dispatching the Boston Symphony Orchestra once more, to prove that there is more to us than MTV or Baywatch. If the problems are primarily in the Muslim world, then we need to be doing things like supporting an Arabic Booker Prize and gradually expanding a liberal artistic and media culture in the Arab world. A large cosmopolitan bourgeoisie constituency exists in Cairo; our task is to discreetly help organize them, perhaps along the lines of Freedom House's role in the "color revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine. For they will be one of the building blocks from which a more pluralistic greater Middle East will emerge.
During the Cold War, great enterprises like the Congress for Cultural Freedom confronted state propagandists in the eastern bloc. Now we have international media like al-Manar, as-Sahab, and al-Jazeera, plus 6,000 or so jihadist websites, along with chat rooms and social networks, often the real sites of auto-radicalization among young Muslims. Given the confusions in our own culture, how do we project a single view of Western society's values? What do we do about the growing number of people who inhabit a virtual world where, as in The X-Files, everything is a hidden conspiracy?
No significant section of Western elite opinion is sympathetic to the jihadists, as many were to Marxist-Leninism in the 1930s, but throughout Europe and even in the US there are left-liberals whose hatred of the US is so ingrained that they have become apologists for the most reactionary elements within Islam. Think of the activist human rights lawyers who are prepared to believe every crime ascribed to the US or UK governments and their collusive involvements with terrorists. British lawyer Madassur Arani has an entire West London practice dedicated to frustrating attempts by UK security services to recruit agents from within the British Muslim community. Her website gives step-by-step advice on how to resist recruitment.
There is also a larger penumbra of people who have migrated from the extreme Left to supporting parties that are halfway houses to the Islamists, e.g. George Galloway's Respect Party. In 2006 we had the spectacle of middle-class demonstrators bearing placards reading "We are all Hizbollah now," and more recently of the Archbishop of Canterbury seeking to make common cause with Muslim clerics by contemplating the licensing of enclaves of "soft" sharia law, a concession that would wholly undermine the Common Law of England while paving the way to "hard" sharia law in future.
Islam in Europe is a proselytizing religion which asserts its presence - most recently with demands for amplified muezzin in a predominantly non-Muslim suburb of Oxford or a 12,000 capacity mega-mosque to be situated next to London's 2012 Olympic complex. There are also quotidian acts of minority-within-a-minority self-assertion, ranging from schoolgirls insisting on wearing the hijab and jilbab to imams petitioning National Health Service hospitals insisting that patients' beds be turned to Mecca five times a day, to female Muslim NHS surgeons refusing to scrub their bare arms.
Throughout Europe, we are witnessing the gradual emergence of Muslim no-go areas, of enclaves based around nodal mosques and community centers, and public housing projects or rows of private terraced housing from which the indigenous population is decamping. Lax immigration policies, cheap flights and phone calls, and satellite TV mean that many immigrants do not make the mental break with "home." They simply transplant their home village to British cities.
So far, governments, notably in Britain and the Netherlands, have responded with state programs to inculcate local values through such things as formal citizenship tests. In these countries in particular, there has been a rapid abandonment of multiculturalism, but no commensurate attempt to uproot its massive bureaucratic expression in education, the media, and local government. Cultures of terrorism >>> By Michael Burleigh for FPRI | June 2, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)