Whatcha think of the Swiss?Racist or not?

[onions!]

I like it the way it is.


From the BBC....

 
Swiss citizenship system 'racist'
By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Geneva 



An official report into the process of naturalisation in Switzerland says the current system is discriminatory and in many respects racist.
The report, from Switzerland's Federal Commission on Racial Discrimination, recommends far-reaching changes.

It criticises the practice of allowing members of a community to vote on an individual's citizenship application.

Muslims and people from the Balkans and Africa are the most likely to be rejected, the report points out.

Switzerland has Europe's toughest naturalisation laws. Foreigners must live for 12 years in a Swiss community before they can apply, and being born in Switzerland brings no right to citizenship.

Under the current system, foreigners apply through their local town or village.

They appear before a citizenship committee and answer questions about their desire to be Swiss. After that, they must often be approved by the entire voting community, in a secret ballot, or a show of hands. This practice, the report says, is particularly likely to be distorted by racial discrimination.

It cites the case of a disabled man originally from Kosovo. Although fulfilling all the legal criteria, his application for citizenship was rejected by his community on the grounds that his disability made him a burden on taxpayers, and that he was Muslim.

The report recommends that decisions on citizenship should be decided by an elected executive and not by the community as a whole. But such a move is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

Foreigners are a key issue in the run-up to Switzerland's general election next month.

The right-wing Swiss People's Party, currently leading in the opinion polls, claims Swiss communities have a democratic right to decide who can or cannot be Swiss.

[Mabs2]

I like their cheese.

[Paddy]

{shrug}

It's their country; they can run it anyway they want. 

[longeyes]

You didn't know that wanting to preserve your own culture is racist?

I'd love to know who's on that "Federal Commission."

*****

Here's what one foreign blogger had to say about it:

"Im an advocate of re-establishing the power of local political structures. Tyranny becomes more and more likely the further removed a government is from the people it ostensibly serves. The most notable contemporary examples of such structures are the United States and the European Union, but all modern nation-states share the same tendency towards swollen centralized bureaucratic oppression.

So the racism of the Swiss seems to me an eminently sensible plan for reawakening local sovereignty:

It criticises the practice of allowing members of a community to vote on an individuals citizenship application.

Yes, OK& and whats the problem with this? Is there something wrong with letting the people most intimately affected by immigrant foreigners decide whether to allow them in their midst? Or do the bureaucrats in Bern know better?

Muslims and people from the Balkans and Africa are the most likely to be rejected, the report points out.

Once again, common sense. These are the ones who or most likely to commit rape and other violent crimes, to beat their wives, to murder their daughters for causing the family dishonor, and  most importantly  they are the ones who are most likely to plan and execute acts of terrorism. An immigrant from Finland or Portugal is, statistically speaking, a much better risk for citizenship.

Foreigners must live for 12 years in a Swiss community before they can apply, and being born in Switzerland brings no right to citizenship.

Oh, if only we could adopt the same rules in the United States of America!

Under the current system, foreigners apply through their local town or village.

No wonder the Multiculturalists hate this system; it virtually guarantees the persistence of the monoculture.

They appear before a citizenship committee and answer questions about their desire to be Swiss. After that, they must often be approved by the entire voting community, in a secret ballot, or a show of hands.

And I say: Lets do it like the Swiss way!"

[Manedwolf]

Silly Swiss. To be properly European these days, you have to allow your country to be overrun by groups that absolutely will not assimilate and would rather try to change their new home to be like their old home that they fled from.

[The Viking]

Silly Swiss. To be properly European these days, you have to allow your country to be overrun by groups that absolutely will not assimilate and would rather try to change their new home to be like their old home that they fled from.

Sounds like the stuff you read about Californians on THR.

[Paddy]

Silly Swiss. To be properly European these days, you have to allow your country to be overrun by groups that absolutely will not assimilate and would rather try to change their new home to be like their old home that they fled from.

Sounds like the stuff you read about Californians on THR.

Mostly offered by smug rubes who've never been here (thankfully).  Wait til the next Dem Pres & Congress come along, about 2009 by my reckoning.  We'll see how well the so-called 'free states' escape that anti gun onslaught.

[De Selby]

Yeah, ever since apartheid, it seems like everyone's all sensitive to racism in government policy.  I mean really, who woke up and decided no country should discriminate against people because of their race? 

Errr....if the Swiss think they have a problem with racism, I'm inclined to support anti-racist policies.  That's a good thing.

[Paddy]

Yeah, ever since apartheid, it seems like everyone's all sensitive to racism in government policy.  I mean really, who woke up and decided no country should discriminate against people because of their race? 

Errr....if the Swiss think they have a problem with racism, I'm inclined to support anti-racist policies.  That's a good thing.

Really?  You intend to impose 'policies' on sovereign nations?

[De Selby]

Yeah, ever since apartheid, it seems like everyone's all sensitive to racism in government policy.  I mean really, who woke up and decided no country should discriminate against people because of their race? 

Errr....if the Swiss think they have a problem with racism, I'm inclined to support anti-racist policies.  That's a good thing.

Really?  You intend to impose 'policies' on sovereign nations?

Sometimes you do-witness the international movement against apartheid.  Sovereignty should not be a blanket defense for racism or similar fundamentally savage practices.

[Paddy]

Sometimes you do-witness the international movement against apartheid.  Sovereignty should not be a blanket defense for racism or similar fundamentally savage practices.

Really?  Where's the 'international movement' against flat out genocide in Darfur, Sudan, Ruwanda and a hundred other places where third world people are slaughtering other third world people?  Those are 'savage' practices, are they not?

Oh yeah, that doesn't count, because those are not predominantly white industrialized countries 

More hypocrisy.

[Euclidean]

The policy as written is not racist.  It may be arguable that some of the people who have the power to vote on the policy might be bigots, but this goes back to my tirade on you can't legislate people into being good.

[Werewolf]

It cites the case of a disabled man originally from Kosovo. Although fulfilling all the legal criteria, his application for citizenship was rejected by his community on the grounds that his disability made him a burden on taxpayers, and that he was Muslim.

Lets see if I have this right. Not supporting a disabled person that a community didn't ask to come live with them and has neither a legal nor moral obligation to support same is racist?

Hmmmph! Makes perfect sense to me.

Hell - now I understand why all the folks in the US that don't want illegal hispanics here are racist.

Who knew?

[longeyes]

Sometimes you do-witness the international movement against apartheid.  Sovereignty should not be a blanket defense for racism or similar fundamentally savage practices.

Yes, we shouldn't let something as archaic as national sovereignty stand in the way of "world progress," should we?  Since when is preserving the values of one's own culture "apartheid." 

Now the question to me is, how savage and how racist are the people the Europeans are being asked to accept?

[De Selby]

If you will all read the OP, this is switzerland deciding that switzerland has a problem with racism.  I'm in no real position to argue with the conclusions of fact that the Swiss made here, so I support anti-racist measures.

RileyMc,

That's a good point.  Where is the outcry?  It isn't just hypocritical, it's wrong to ignore it.  We agree there.  But your implication that somehow "white nations" are singled out for abuse is on its face absurd. 

I think there is an illness spreading that can be roughly called "White persecution/paranoia" complex, and it will probably earn itself a spot in the latest psychological manuals.  To imply that switzerland is being singled out for criticism on racial policy because it's white in this case defies belief-it's a Swiss report that identifies the problems in the first place.

[longeyes]

The Swiss people aren't accusing themselves of racism, it's the same breed of leftist Euro-bureaucrats who are intent on turning Europe into Eurabia.

White paranoia?  Hardly.  People of Color--or more accurately People of Choler--have said many times that white people are, in effect, the cancer of history.  This isn't a diseased figment of the white imagination, it's all too real.

No good can come of this.

[Paddy]

That's a good point.  Where is the outcry?  It isn't just hypocritical, it's wrong to ignore it.  We agree there.  But your implication that somehow "white nations" are singled out for abuse is on its face absurd.

I think there is an illness spreading that can be roughly called "White persecution/paranoia" complex, and it will probably earn itself a spot in the latest psychological manuals.  To imply that switzerland is being singled out for criticism on racial policy because it's white in this case defies belief-it's a Swiss report that identifies the problems in the first place.

Name a predominately "other than white" civilization or culture that has significantly contributed anything of value to the human race.

[Euclidean]

That's a good point.  Where is the outcry?  It isn't just hypocritical, it's wrong to ignore it.  We agree there.  But your implication that somehow "white nations" are singled out for abuse is on its face absurd.

I think there is an illness spreading that can be roughly called "White persecution/paranoia" complex, and it will probably earn itself a spot in the latest psychological manuals.  To imply that switzerland is being singled out for criticism on racial policy because it's white in this case defies belief-it's a Swiss report that identifies the problems in the first place.

Name a predominately "other than white" civilization or culture that has significantly contributed anything of value to the human race.

Well I can field that one from a mathematical perspective.

Arabs - too much to count, inventors of algebra and our modern numerals, Ancient Egyptians figured out the word was round and it was forgotten for basically a couple thousand years...

Indigenous peoples of South America - Had the concept of zero when the Romans didn't, excellent notation and amazing calculatory capability

Chinese - numerous breakthroughs and innovations

And from a philosophical/law/religion perspective... Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, etc. weren't white.

And if you want to get nit picky, you could consider American blacks their own culture.  And they invented open heart surgery, street sweepers, and too many other things to count.  Then there's Carver and his damned peanut...

Carry on.

[Paddy]

How kind of you to throw a bone into the distant past, Euclidean.  What have all those folks done for us lately?

[Euclidean]

How kind of you to throw a bone into the distant past, Euclidean.  What have all those folks done for us lately?

How distant is distant?  If you look at black Americans as their own non white subculture, the good Dr. Drew was doing his breakthrough medical work as late as the 1940s.  I have some jim dandy gizmos and whatnot that were made in the last two years by Japanese people.  I'm sure there's some technology or science sector person who can give better contemporary examples, I'm just throwing out random things I know.

If nothing else it's pretty easy to surmise that accomplishments in the liberal/fine arts are universal to all cultures and constantly ongoing.

I don't really have a dog in this fight and don't think the accomplishments of all groups of people are equal, but I also believe in credit where credit is due, and that historical circumstances have a lot more to do with what one group accomplishes over another than innate capability of that culture.

[Paddy]

I have some jim dandy gizmos and whatnot that were made in the last two years by Japanese people.

Thank you Marshall Plan. 

Anecdotal miscellanea, Euclidean, but thanks for the effort.

[Euclidean]

I have some jim dandy gizmos and whatnot that were made in the last two years by Japanese people.

Thank you Marshall Plan. 

Anecdotal miscellanea, Euclidean, but thanks for the effort.

Well when we're detailing the complex tapestry of human achievement, what piece of it isn't anecdotal miscellanea?

[De Selby]

RileyMc,

It seems like everything Euclidean gives you will be written off as irrelevant. 

[LadySmith]

What have all those folks done for us lately?

I can only speak for myself, but...
No Whites were harmed in my reading of this thread. I haven't robbed, beaten, raped, killed, rioted nor looted in a long time either. I'm still working on a "can't we all just get along" ray gun, though.

[roo_ster]

Sometimes you do-witness the international movement against apartheid.  Sovereignty should not be a blanket defense for racism or similar fundamentally savage practices.

SS:

I am sure this was not your intent, but you have pretty much provided a "blanket defense" for colonialism by the civilized nations of all the not-so-civilized.