April 21, 2010

There is nothing better than spring in Zürich! Why would I ever want to move somewhere else? This was a beautiful day for a picnic in the Irchel-park, kreis 6.

We had a very quiet week end in Zürich, and in most parts of Europe for that matter. There were no planes in the sky, no noise and no white stripes! The Icelandic volcano Eyafjallajökull is having an eruption and sending out an ash cloud that has spread across Europe and that is paralyzing the air traffic. Since last Thursday 75% of the European planes where grounded. Everyone is talking about a disaster, especially for the airlines of course, and for travelers. I do feel sorry about all these people that are stuck in transit or that can't get home to their families and of course it is hard for the economy if the airlines go bankrupt but still I wouldn't call the a disaster. The earthquake in Haiti was a disaster, this is rather a very interesting and fascinating thing that is happening right now. We are being reminded that we are only small ants on this powerful globe and even though we have the impression that we are in control, we are still dependent on the grace of mother earth and she is doing to us whatever she pleases. It is also such a crazy lifestyle we are having at the moment, we are traveling to the four corners of the world for holidays and go for quick weekends to London, Paris and New York. It was chocking to see how many of my own friends were directly touched by the grounding. Maybe it is good for us to take a step back and think about what we are actually doing to our planet, it would be interesting to see how much CO2 we saved during these 5 days.

I just heard about an interesting study showing that very conservative and religious people have lower IQ than liberal, atheistic people. I can't help but to think of my own favorite christian Taliban, Sarah Palin. Now she wants to turn the U.S. into an official christian nation.

April 14, 2010

A gray day in a gray part of town, Neu-Oerlikon, kreis 11.

They've been talking about it for weeks now but there seems to be a never ending stream of new cases coming up every day all over the world. I'm of course talking about the child abuses within the catholic church. The Vatican must now have lost the very last inch of credibility that was left after the election of the last pope. I don't now what is worse, all these years where these cases were covered up or the ridiculous attempt of the pope's "right hand" to blame it on homosexuality. I fear that this institution has now lost it's last chance to keep up with the evolving society and that now even the most devoted believers must realize that their faith cannot be represented by a bunch of pathetic left-overs from the Spanish inquisition hiding behind the thick walls of the Vatican.

Today in Switzerland, the stock-owners of UBS voted against the discharge of the management of year 2007. This means that it would be possible to press charges against Marcel Ospel and the other management guys responsible for the many lost billions and the tax troubles with the US and that then paid themselves other billions of bonuses for their "good work". I think that we are many here is Switzerland that agrees that these guys belong in prison and not on the golf courts, however, it might be hard to accuse them for more than extreme incompetence which is not yet a crime.

April 7, 2010

Taking the highway along the lake of Zürich in direction of Chur destination Pfäffikon, Schwyz. This is really the most beautiful time of the year when it is green in the valleys but the mountains are still white.

War, war, war, it is so far away but with the media coverage still so close. During the week a video from 2007 was released showing American soldiers firing at unarmed Iraqi civilians from a helicopter as if they were part of a video game. It is so awful to watch and so easy to judge these soldiers from our sofas, but what do we know? What kind of person was the guy sitting in the helicopter urging for permission to shoot? Was he evil and thirsty of blood or was he scared and stressed believing that he did the right thing? Would he have acted the same way when he just arrived in Iraq or has he been destroyed by spending time in such an environment? There is a song I really like by Rise Against called Hero of War that paints an interesting picture of the soldiers going to war. In the song a guy goes away as a patriot believing that he will be a hero but when he meets the reality of war he does things he never thought he was capable of and the glory he strive for never comes.

In wars there are rules, or are there? Obama just tried to add a few rules to war saying that the US is allowed to use nuclear weapons on a country that possess the same arms. The rule makes total sense and one can only hope that will encourage nations not to develop more weapons of mass destruction but honetstly, who really believes in this promise? War swipes away all sense of morality and no country follows any rules once they're confronted with a hostile situation. Torture was also prohibited, wasn't it?

March 31, 2010

Today's excursion was to the stadthaus with the mission to become Swiss. After a long session in the waiting room, see picture above, the mission has temporary failed as a paper was missing to prove that I lived elsewhere in Switzerland before moving to Zürich. It is quite amazing how little big-brother society Switzerland is compared to Sweden where every citizen has a personal number that will tell you everything about what you have ever done in your life, where you have lived, what you have studied, how big is your debt, what DVD's you have rented and so on.

It is still going well for Berlusconi in Italy, in the regional elections a few days ago his alliance were doing well. It is such a mystery why people keep voting for this man that is accused of bribery, connections to the mafia and is the center of scandal after scandal. Is it due to lack of decent alternatives or is it really because people are so manipulated by the media that are mainly owned and controlled by Berlusconi. An Italian, immigrated to Sweden, Erik Gandini, has done a documentary about the Italian "TV revolution" that Berlusconi has created. The film is called Videocracy and was shown on Swedish national TV last night. Unfortunately I couldn't see it as I live in Switzerland but hopefully it will come to the Swiss cinemas soon. People have different opinions on the quality of the film but apparently not about its message. The film was presented at the film festival in Venice but the trailer was censured and its content was not allowed to be displayed in the festival program. What follows is long series of incidents indicating the total lack of freedom of press in Italy. Even though you don't risk prison in Italy for what you write you risk your to loose your job and reputation if you criticize "the king". However, outside of former Soviet Union Italy now has the largest movement for press freedom so I guess there is still some hope.

If you want to watch the trailer of Videocracy that was banned you can find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9AXQGGkgK8

Anyway, the question remains, is the reason for Berlusconis success indeed an intense media manipulation or is it as simply as Churchill says (and frequently quoted in my favorite series West Wing): The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

March 24, 2010

Time changes quickly and now spring is finally here! Zürich had a superb day with sun and 20°C. What could be better than a picnic at my favorite place by the Limmat, I will not tell you exactly where it is those because one of its charms is that there are not so many people there.

Barack Obama finally managed to get his health care reform through the congress. From a European perspective it is difficult to understand why it was so hard to get the proposition accepted. For us the access to health care is a fundamental right that could never be questioned and this new reform still doesn't include all Americans, just 95% of them. Why are all the republicans against this solidarity towards the weaker? They want people to have the freedom to chose for themselves but to chose whether to have a health insurance or to feed your family is not a real freedom. Another crazy issue that is now being resolved is that chronically ill people now cannot be denied a health insurance. All that I can say about this is: Congratulations Americans, you have won more than you might realize! Just a shame that Obama had to negotiate with the pro-life people to get it through but sometimes you have to make compromises for the common good.

In Switzerland the new vision for the railway system, Bahn 2030, was presented. More and longer trains are planned to cope with the increasing number of passengers. The Swiss railway system is really magnificent and must be one of the best in the world and they are continuously working on improving it. However, the cost of the improvements will of course be taken from the passengers so let's hope that the increased cost is not big enough to discourage people from taking the train. For a family taking the train is already a real luxury and if the goal is to reduce the car traffic and pollution rising the prices will go in exactly the opposite direction.

Sweden has a lot of things to learn from Switzerland on this matter. During the winter months the railways have been a disaster, I think I heard somewhere that about 30% of all the trains were canceled. It is incredibly embarrassing for a country where the snow and cold doesn't exactly come as a surprise.

March 17, 2010

View over Central with the university and ETHZ in the background taken from the bus 46 bus stop in front of the station. I totally forgot everything about photos today so a quick photo with my mobile (Nexus One) had to do the trick. The winter seems to finally start giving in to spring in Zürich and even though the morning was freezing the afternoon was really nice and warm.

It has now been a court decision in the US that the government will not pay money to parents who claim that a preservative in vaccines have triggered autism in their children. The court ruled against the parents since there are no scientific proofs what so ever that autism can be triggered by vaccines. This is just a myth that was created as a scientific had manipulated data that created an apparent link between vaccine and autism. It is quite chocking to see how this myth has gained influence and many parents refuse to vaccinate their children against the diseases that was nearly extinguished but now are coming back in regular outbreaks. As a parent in Switzerland you often hear about this myth and it is no longer considered obvious to vaccinate your children. The vaccination rate in Switzerland against the measles is as low as 87%.

One example of this phenomenon are the measles epidemics that as late as in 2009 killed an unvaccinated child in Switzerland. These epidemics mainly hits the Rudolf-Steiner (Waldorf education) schools where parents are discouraged to vaccinate their children against a number of potentially deadly diseases and encouraging the parents not to worry about whether the children will dies because if they do, it was probably their destiny.

Another example of huge skepticism against vaccinations could be seen during the swine flu hype. Whereas the Swedes were queuing for hours and fighting to get the vaccines, the Swiss only used a tiny portion of the vaccines bought by the government and finished by passing them all on to poorer countries. Now, the swine flu never really got the serious outbreak that we all feared so the consequences of the vaccination refusal didn't get so serious but who knows what will happen next time.

March 10, 2010

By the Limmat at Unter-Letten. We all got some spring feelings last week but this week they are all gone, the snow is back together with an icy cold wind.

Monday 8'th of March was the international women's day. It didn't get so much coverage in Swiss media but more in the Swedish, wonder if that is somehow significant of the women's roles in the different societies? Anyway, one of this years themes was maternal mortality. This is luckily no longer a problem in our part of the world where we over the last 100 years managed to get the mortality rate down to quasi zero. Today 99% of the deaths related to childbirth is in the developing countries where out of 100'000 pregnancies over 1000 finish in death for the woman compared to 7 in Switzerland. One of the worst countries is Niger where every 7'th woman dies due to pregnancy related complications. Apart from not having access to proper health-care a part of these deaths are related to illegal abortions and female genital mutilation. Another part is also related to the low age of the mothers forced into marriage as adolescents, in many countries in Africa maternal mortality is the primary cause of death for women between 15 and 19 years old.

When I consider the childbirth experiences of my own friends, I would estimate that two of them would definetely have died 100 years ago or if they were living in Afghanistan. One or two would have had life-threatening conditions. Living in the "right place at the right time" they could all go home from the hospitals with healthy babies four days later.