Frank Bitterlich

Der Bau von Minaretten ist verboten.

— Swiss Federal Constitution, Article 72, Paragraph 3

4.

— Total number of existing minarets in Switzerland.

“The construction of minarets is forbidden.”

Rarely has such a short sentence of legislation caused such a stir worldwide. But as small Switzerland is, as powerful is its economic; and in parallel, as short as this addition to the swiss constitution is, as explosive its consequences may be.

An overall of 57% of swiss voters supported this addition, causing reactions from utter disbelief and shock to suggestions to follow this example by right-wing parties all across Europe.

Switzerland has long been known for restrictive immigration policy, reservedness against refugees and generally a good bit of xenophobia among parts of its people. But this decision has caught most of Europe and even Switzerland by surprise. But why? Read More »

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. But it”s hard to believe that the complete inability of the self-proclaimed child protectors to distinguish between the rightful opposition to internet censoring and promotion of child porn comes just from a lack of understanding.

This has nothing to do with technology; it has to do with basic human rights – such as free speech. Watching our politicians clapping themselves on the shoulder in celebration of the 60th birthday of our constitution while at the same time planning to limit the basic rights guaranteed by that same constitution is scary.

Thanks to pantoffelpunk for the image.

In every country, in every society, there are people to think that everything was better in the past. But I can’t avoid noticing that recently, such claims have increased in both frequency and stupidity. The responses after the Viginia Tech shooting is a good example.

More and more people claim that the incident could have been prevented if students would have carried weapons. Concealed weapons. Because, so the reasoning goes, the attacker would have been shot before killing many of the students, or he might have even hesitated to start on his rampage at all, for fear of being shot himself.

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