May 27, 2010

Yesterday, (yes, I'm one day late with the blog) I didn't really leave home so all you will get is the view from our balcony over the Uetliberg and our little gardener watering the tomatoes that I tried to plant.

What happened in the world? Good question, actually quite much even though most thing seems to be about the saving of the euro and the oil leak. The oil has now reached the beaches of Louisiana but some good news that came today is that BP has now managed to at least temporary stop the leak. However, even if they will completely stop the oil flow unimaginable damage has already been done.

I'm not much into important subjects this week so let's talk about the Eurovision Song contest. Living in Switzerland and reading the Swedish papers can really make you laugh sometimes. In Sweden this competition gains so much attention and everyone is involved in which contribution we should send to compete. There are actually a large number of competitions all over the country and people call in to vote for which song should represent Sweden. This year we were even flying in Dolph Lundgren from Hollywood to present the show. In Switzerland I have no idea how the best song is selected as I haven't heard about it at all. When I googled it I found out that it is a song in french this time, 'Il pleut de l'or' which is probably a better choice than Swiss German if you want to go to the finals. Of course I had to check out what the song was like and I found a video from the live performance in the second half final. Please note that all you see is Swedish flags in the audience. When googling I also found that Switzerland hasn't won the competition since 1956 so this might be a reason why they find it so uninteresting here but you would still need to do a profound ethnological study to understand why the swedes care so much.

May 19, 2010

Ober-Letten. We are impatiently waiting for the summer to come so that Letten will be full of happy people again.

Feminism and standing up for women rights is very unfashionable nowadays and often give people bad associations and classifying women who strive for equality as man-haters. However, this doesn't mean that we are anywhere close to a reasonable level of equality. The biggest lawsuit ever against the discrimination of women in the U.S. was won this week against the huge Swiss pharma company Novartis. Twelve female ex-employees will receive 3.3 million dollars in compensation damages for having been denied promotions, having lower pay and unjust treatment during pregnancy. In addition to that Novartis also received a 250 million dollar fine, this high amount is computed on the basis of the revenue of the company so that it will be a sufficient discouragement. This will hopefully send out a clear message to all large companies to impose strict policies on fair treatment of their employees.

As Novartis is Swiss this will hopefully also have an impact in this country. The laws in Switzerland are good in protecting women but it is really important to make sure that they are followed and to take legal action when they are not. Personally, I have been very fortunate in my own situation but I would like to transmit my strong encouragement to the wife of a friend who is now in a legal battle here in Switzerland after having been mobbed by her boss (female boss!) from the first day of her announced pregnancy and then being fired one day before giving birth. Even though it is always difficult to prove mobbing it is clearly against Swiss law to fire women during their pregnancy and maternity leave so she will definitely win this. However, it is not difficult to imagine the mental pain and distress she must have gone through in the process. We should all be grateful that there are women standing up and taking these difficult battles, the benefits of their struggle will come back to all of us.

May 5, 2010

A rainy day in Zürich but in this period of the year even the rainy days are nice and the trees are so green that you almost feel as if you were in a tropical forest. These pictures however are taken at Bellevue on my way for my second attempt to become Swiss. At least this time I could leave with a long list of papers to fill in so I'm slowly approaching the goal.

Since about two weeks a huge ecological disaster is taking place in the gulf of Mexico. An oil platform belonging to BP caught fire, sunk and oil is now being pumped out in masses into the gulf. BP is alone responsible for the disaster and is now spending $6 million a day for the attempts to repair the leakage and clean up the water and the beaches. They estimate that this could continue for about 3 months before it is over. This has an enormous impact on the environment and the fauna of the region and it is really sad to see it all destroyed even though one might see some justice in that it actually happens in the region with the hugest oil consumption in the world. Apparently this is not even the worst occasion of oil spill in history, when googling oil spill you will find innumerably really bad cases and many of them in the US. One could imagine that the Americans would learn from the consequences of these accidents and put more effort into developing alternative energy but they are so amazingly stubborn in refusing to face the reality that it doesn't seem to influence them at all.

Here in Switzerland we seem however to get more and more inspired by the wild west. Last week a police officer shot a french car thief during a chase in the canton of Vaud. I am not at all defending stealing cars but to go so far as to shot anyone unless it is self-defense is a very dangerous direction to go. Violence is only feeding violence. A strong example of this was when Swiss TV went to the french suburb from which the car thief came and interviewed some local kids. Apparently it is a quite common phenomenon to go to Switzerland for the weekend to steal cars as there are more expensive cars here than in France. When the reporters asked whether the kids thought that people would be discouraged to go now the kids answered that no, the only difference was that now they had to make sure that they would go armed.

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.