Switzerland About To Vote On Minaret Ban

[caravel]

[Andres]

[Louis VI the Fat]

I call a referendum on Andres.

I vote we ban him.

I don't have a problem with him personally, I just think his avatar does not comply with our traditional game-only avatars.

[Andres]

I call a referendum on Andres.

I vote we ban him.

I don't have a problem with him personally, I just think his avatar does not comply with our traditional game-only avatars.

*** deploys instagib rocket stockpile ***

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Similar story to the initial article:

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/ne...201/309031/P0/

Medal of Honor winner, 90, ordered to remove flagpole

Col. Van T. Barfoot, a local Medal of Honor winner, is under the gun from his Henrico County community's homeowner association.

In a five-paragraph letter to Barfoot that he received yesterday, Barfoot is being ordered to remove a flagpole from his yard. The decorated veteran of three wars, now 90 years old, raises the American flag every morning on the pole, then lowers and folds the flag at dusk each day in a three-corner military fashion.

In a priority mail letter, the Coates & Davenport law firm in Richmond is ordering Barfoot to remove the pole by 5 p.m. Friday or face "legal action being brought to enforce the Covenants and Restrictions against you." The letter states that Barfoot will be subject to paying all legal fees and costs in any successful legal proceeding pursued by the homeowner association's board.

Barfoot's daughter said this evening that news reports about the association order have prompted an outpouring of sympathy and offers of help from people following her father's ordeal.

Tonight, the Sussex Square Homeowners Association issued a statement reiterating its position that Barfoot directly violated the association board's denial of his request to erect a flagpole.

"This is not about the American flag. This about a flagpole," the statement reads.

Barfoot lives in the Sussex Square community in far western Henrico; its board of directors rejected a plea from Barfoot in July to approve the pole, disallowing the fixture on aesthetic grounds.

There is no provision in the community's rules expressly forbidding flagpoles, Barfoot's daughter said. But she said the board ruled against her father's fixture and ordered it removed in July, deciding that free-standing flag poles are not aesthetically appropriate. Short flag stands attached to porches dot the community.

"Dad sort of feels like this is the end," said Margaret Nicholls, Barfoot's daughter, who lives a few doors away. But she said this morning that she and her husband are attempting to generate support for her father's cause, a flag-raising rite that he has undertaken for most of his life.

Barfoot received the Medal of Honor on the battlefield during World War II in Italy and fought as well in the Korean and Vietnam wars. A portion of a highway in rural Mississippi, his native state, was named in his honor this fall. A building at McGuire Veterans Hospital in Richmond also carries his name.

Barfoot began regularly flying the flag on Veteran's Day this year despite the Sussex Square board's decision.

He said in November that not flying the flag would be a sacrilege to him.

"There's never been a day in my life or a place I've lived in my life that you couldn't fly the American flag," he said.

The homeowners association is clearly in the wrong here

But what rule can you go by to determine that

[drone]

Similar story to the initial article:

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/ne...201/309031/P0/



The homeowners association is clearly in the wrong here

But what rule can you go by to determine that

HOAs? Way to Godwin the thread, Sasaki.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

HOAs? Way to Godwin the thread, Sasaki.

Would it be ok if he was an iron cross winner

[Strike For The South]

Clearly those posters imply the want to kleep Switzerland archeticture intact.

After seeing those and the minaret itself I'm now convinced that this is just about teh browns.

Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. If the GOP came out with those posters it would be a death kneel.

How can they get away with such blatant racism and still have the referendum pass? I realize they are a fringe party but they were cleary strong enough to get this passed.

Switzerland has prided itself as being a European metling pot but I guess that only counts if you're a little bit pink

[rory_20_uk]

This muslim disagrees with you

[Louis VI the Fat]

I realize they are a fringe party but they were cleary strong enough to get this passed.

The UDC/SVP is the largest political party in Switzerland.

Far right is the second or third largest political current in most European countries. Things are now said openly in European politics that were solid taboos, only thought in private, a mere decade ago.



The far right seldom poses an outright threat to democracy. But there is a more insidous mechanism, one that many clever far right politicians are very well aware off: the trickling down of far right ideas into mainstream discourse. Call it the 'Panzerjager strategy'. You take an extremity and shout it so loudly and intermittently, that what people perceive to be the moderate centre is shifted firmly to the right.

It is a dastardly clever strategy. Return the shouting, and you have just turned mainstream politics into a populist shouting contest. Repose with reason, and nobody will hear you over the shouting. Do not engage in the 'debate' at all, and you will be accused of being elitist. Very clever, and very difficult to overcome.


Peculiarly, there exists a rock-solid means of destroying far right parties: give them governmental responsibility. This has killed off many a populist party, because 1) the electorate soon is forever put off by their usual display of sheer ineptitude, in-fighting and stupidity, 2) their own voters discover that there didn't exist after all a magical wand that will solve all problems if only the out-of-touch elites would listen to the people.

Far right populism in Western Europe is anti-immigrantion, anti-minorities. The brew further consists of more 'mainstream' policies like anti-establishment/elites, lowering taxes - paid for by abolishing wasteful government, 'neo-liberalism', anti-EU, etc.

Eastern European far right is different. The Economist has a good article:

The far right in central Europe differs from its western equivalents in its choice of enemies. In the west it thrives on immigrant-bashing. In the east it dwells on more atavistic grievances: ethnic minorities, old territorial disputes, homosexuals, international financiers and, naturally, Jews. Hatred of the Roma has become a defining issue. Everywhere economic anxiety is exploited. Even a decade of growth has left plenty of poor and disaffected people. Many hark back to an era when the state protected them from crude market forces. This produces a far right that likes nationalisation and dislikes the market.
http://www.economist.com/world/europ...ry_id=14859369

Both kinds of far right have been known to confuse Americans, who might at first glance mistake it for being related to American mainstream conservatism (East European variant, see: Rumsfeldt's 'New Europe') or libertarianism / Republicanism (West European variant).
(Then again, American politics sometimes really does share elements of the European far right, where similiarities are not merely perceived to exist, but are real. See: 'Family Values' in Poland and the US. Etc.)

[CrossLOPER]

*** deploys instagib rocket stockpile ***

***OUR SHIELD GENERATOR HAS DEFEATED THEIR IR BARRAGE***