http://alan.com/2011/02/05/george-w-bush-cancels-trip-to-switzerland-amid-concerns-about-legal-action-for-torture/ George Bush has officially cancelled a trip to Switzerland giving the excuse he did not want to cause problems by confronting protestors.

Prosecutors in Switzerland want Bush charged with breaking Geneva conventions on torture.Human rights groups say they have a 2500 page case against Bush.Some say he would have diplomatic immunity but George Bush it seems,is taking no chances.

Have look at our popular media and see if they have reported this important event.What conclusions would you then make?

Would you like to know what the funniest moral to this story is Arjay?

When you are a nation that acts more independently and shows more promise on acting out its law than the usual bunch, even powerful people like former President Bush take it seriously- enough to stay away.

As a result, Swiss taxpayers will not be burdened with road closures and security for his pointless visit.

Otherwise, I will enjoy sitting back and watching the reactions at this story, as this should be a difficult story for some to chew on:

A popular conservative figurehead (member of the USA Republican party no less) fears legal action on torture if he visits a conservative country (which has banned Islamic Minarets and has strict immigration requirements);

Whose side will people (whether self-proclaiming liberals OR conservatives) take I wonder?

MUCH more importantly, WHY would any one invite Bush to such an event.
America can answer just why the Wikileaks founder is fighting extradition.
Give us an answer what crime has he been charged with.
Is it true substantial members of government and opposition want him charged with espionage?
Are some truly calling for his death.
America should answer those questions first.

Who is more guilty of doing wrong ? Those who vote in deplorable Government or those who go & confront trouble causing morons head on ?

agreed Belly- I'd like to see more of it happen across the world; I imagine it would be the best way to tell more national leaders that they may well be held responsible for any criminal political conduct they commit.

(a lot better than imposing sanctions too).

Individual- hopefully that should be an obvious answer to everyone in this thread.

(and for the record, I myself actually agree with the Swiss Minaret and Immigration policies- but thought it would be a good thing to mention so some of less-cognitive viewers are forced to think about the situation instead of trying to portray it as "big mean conservative USA being stopped by Liberal European country"- though there isn't so much of that here, there definitely would be a few of these types).

Ummmm....

>>Prosecutors in Switzerland want Bush charged with breaking Geneva conventions on torture<<

We are talking about the country that shamelessly enriched itself on the misery visited upon most of Europe in WWII, aren't we?

The country that prides itself on its "neutrality", while happily accepting entire hoards of stolen money and goods in its rapacious bank vaults? And, of course, guaranteeing the depositors anonymity, so that if they happened to "disappear". no-one could come a-knocking for the loot?

Just checking.

Pericles you could go all kinds of directions with what a major bank in a country does.
And that aside, being a neutral country I assumed it was free to trade with whoever it liked as if nothing were wrong (particularly considering most of the German-speaking countries were on the Axis side), as opposed to remain equally isolated from every country participating in the conflict until the war was declared finished?

To top it off, all of us who drive or catch public transport are equally (if not more, as we ourselves are actually doing it) as guilty if our vehicles are using oil imported from the Middle East (as most of the revenue goes into the very most brutal dictatorships in the world).

Or even blaming Australia overall for selling wheat to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as an evil nation for centuries to come?

You beat me to it Pericles.

When any accolades are being handed out for morality, I'd put old George way ahead of the entire Swiss country & it's people. In fact the Swiss would have to be last in line.

Any people who can happily benefit from hiding & protecting the wealth of the worst dictators, & criminals, on earth are the last who have any right to point the finger.

Come King Hazza, while I congratulate you on understanding what Individual said I can not defend the Swiss.
They still prosper on the Gold from dead Jewish teeth, and hide Trillions of dollars stolen from the worlds poor.
In this matter, breaking a law of that country ,having sex without a condom?
The Swiss are as contemptible as the Americans, freedom of speech is under attack, reporters too.
Sadly that ex Aussie media owner, the one who had reporters listening in to the Royal family's phones, has now resorted to asking the White house can we publish this?
We MUST never convict whistle blowers for telling us the truth.

Pericles you are judging all Swiss people by the past actions of their leaders.It is like saying all Jews are Zionists or all Germans are Nazis.The facts are Bush illegally permitted torture and also invaded Iraq on a lie.He brought in the Patriot Act nullifing habeas corpus.

The USA is not far from being a facist state and we are not far behind.

The USA is not far from being a facist state and we are not far behind.
Arjay,
I assume you meant fascist, as in those who claim to be antifascist but once in power become so dictatorial & incompetent as to make a genuine fascist feel inadequate & blush..

Individual:Nit picking on the spelling of facist or fascist does not change the reality.Nor your itellectual snobbery define the truth.

We in Australia have sedition laws which are much like Bush's Patriot Act.You can be defined as a terrorist and incarcerated infinetly without trial.Has the penny dropped yet?

Hasbeen- I had no idea the entire Swiss nation works for the bank!
That's news.
And for the record, the Swiss Bank is indeed quite evil for the reasons given.
I just find it rather peculiar that Switzerland is the only country that is being judged by what a corporation within itself does- a standard, I point out, we do NOT hold ourselves to or any other country.
And George being more moral?
Let's see, bombing two countries and raking in a death-toll in the six-digit numbers, buying oil and selling WEAPONS to Islamist dictatorships that chop heads off people, and creating an illegal torture-camp- and then trying to secretly negotiate to smuggle Islamic extremists into western countries in an attempt to close the prison, is most definitely less evil than allowing one of your corporations to do banking for some of the most evil people in the world.

Belly- for the records it was the SWEDISH (from Scandinavia), not the Swiss who are persecuting Julian Assange on a fabricated rubbish charge (surprise sex) and trying to avoid adhering to proper legal procedures in order to get him:
The Swiss have been one of the few countries to have offered to protect him and Wikileaks.

Your rose-tinted glasses do you great credit, King Hazza.

>>Pericles you could go all kinds of directions with what a major bank in a country does. And that aside, being a neutral country I assumed it was free to trade with whoever it liked as if nothing were wrong<<

You are right, of course. But only in a technical sense. Any government that knows that its Banks are operating a safe haven for stolen goods, but chooses to turn a blind eye is, in my view, equally culpable.

Or perhaps you are suggesting they did not know?

How do you suppose the Nazis knew that the Swiss Banks were eager to receive vast amounts of gold and valuables from them, "no questions asked"?

Intuition? ESP?

It is also instructive to put this in the context of the Swiss government's general appeasement of the Nazi war objectives. They did this because otherwise they would be invaded, and annexed. This they justified to their citizenry on the basis that they were protecting their best interests - much as Pétain justified Vichy France.

Switzerland collaborated with the Nazis. There really isn't any other way to describe their actions.

http://www.adl.org/braun/dim_14_1_neutrality_europe.asp

I make these points only in the context of the current activity of their "Human Rights" movement.

As with many of their decisions, this is "government by abdication of responsibility", and is thoroughly typical of the country and its narrow-focussed, self-obsessed people.

Pericles,some of the narrowly focused self obsessed people have the right idea.Bush Rumsfeld,Cheney etc should be held accountable,but I fear it won't happen.It is rather funny now all these criminals have to watch which country has extradition treaties with Switzerland.

The puppets like Bush could be being set up to take the whole wrap since now the truth is coming out.Google Geraldo Rivera 911.He is on Fox News saying Truthers are not the nut jobs he thought.The evidence of WTC 7 is on there.

Arjay, just a suggestion

>>Google Geraldo Rivera 911.He is on Fox News saying Truthers are not the nut jobs he thought.<<

Presenting Geraldo Rivera and Fox News in support of your nutjob views does absolutely nothing positive for your argument whatsoever.

It's like claiming that an unaudited online poll of Herald Sun readers indicates that two thirds of Australians believe that 9/11 was an inside job. It raises doubts over your credibility.

http://911blogger.com/news/2010-10-20/australian-union-president-questions-911-pm-responds

The question that was posed to readers of the article read "Do you think Kevin Bracken's comments were reasonable?"

From this, your propagandists derived the headline:

"Two thirds of Australians Believe 9/11 Was an Inside Job"

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october222010/aussies-911-gd.php

Do you see what I mean? There is not an honest statistician alive who would support that process as being remotely representative of... well, anything at all, really.

The reality of the situation is that if there were any factual substance behind your allegations, the press of the world would be on it like a rat up a drainpipe - they absolutely love this stuff. Regrettably, they are unable to present one single verifiable and supportable fact.

Everything about the "inside job" story depends upon the linkage of so much speculative "what if" circumstances, that it wouldn't clear the bar of even the most lenient rules of evidence.

have a great day.

Actually Pericles I have no rose-colored tint at all:
It's a matter that people have a rose-colored tint for themselves, but merely NOT for the Swiss, instead seeing blood on, really, the basis that they were NOT helping us stop OUR enemy- for all the blood, sweat and tears we shed to fight the Nazis, the Swiss continued relations- It's nothing but distaste.

And to reply:

-Refusing Jewish refugees based on racism, sometimes returning them to the Nazis: "We will decide who comes into this country and the conditions which we come"- We do the exact same thing- including those fleeing ethnic cleansing and war-zones.
The problem is, as I feel I benefit from our discriminatory refugee policy, I realize even though I would be against turning away Jewish refugees, and standing against saving the victims of the Nazi genocide, I still have no basis to point fingers when I am just as guilty.

-Trading in property stolen from genocide and war-crime victims. Another thing we are all guilty of. Every colonial Western country has committed that same offense (and stopped not too long before WW2- largely due to these countries siding with the Nazis- the enemy of their enemies). Today, any country allowing the trade of African diamonds, Middle East oil, or underworld Central-American Cocaine, and any other commodity stained with blood, are just as guilty as the bank itself.

-Trading with Nazi Germany in general- again, there seems to be some confusion that a neutral country is somehow not supposed to trade with countries that are the enemies of OTHER countries. Keep in mind we were quite happy to cooperate with the Soviet Union to overthrow the Nazis- even letting them have Eastern Europe to oppress. As for appeasement we were more than happy to abandon the Czechs and Serbians to the Nazis ourselves in exchange for their mercy before they attacked Poland too

Why do the Swiss refuse to acknowledge they allowed trade with monsters? Same reason we ignore everything we've done to the Aborigines- it's simply too awful for ourselves to own up to

*guaranteeing the depositors anonymity, so that if they happened to "disappear". no-one could come a-knocking for the loot?*

So Pericles, are you condeming the Swiss, for taking the loot from
those who gained it illegally? Sounds quite moral to me :)

Numbered accounts are simply that. If you stash your loot in a
bank and tell nobody that you have it there and nobody the number,
well that is hardly a smart thing to do.

Most money tucked away in Swiss banks is actually from tax evasion
and in Switzerland, tax evasion is not considered a crime, unlike
tax fraud. The Swiss consider tax evasion as a natural human
predicament. How many on this thread, have always been 100% honest
with their tax payments? Honestly now.

Ah, King Hazza, the "we are all guilty" defence.

>>I still have no basis to point fingers when I am just as guilty<<

Haven't heard that one in a while.

Does the name Michael Wharton ring any bells?

a.k.a. Peter Simple?

"A mainstay of his column was the fantasy world of Stretchford, a town populated by such grotesques as the excruciatingly trendy Bishop Spacely-Trellis, who eternally exhorted his flock to jettison “outdated concepts such as God, the Saints and the Incarnation”; Jack Moron, the boorish Fleet Street drunk whose bellicose refrain was “Wake up Britain!”; an appalling tribe of Hampstead liberals, the Dutt-Paukers; and not least the ridiculous social scientist, Dr Heinz Kiosk, who would conclude his monologues by protesting: “We are all guilty!”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article719197.ece

In summary, you accept that the government of Switzerland assisted the Nazi genocide of the Jews, but think that it was entirely OK because "we all do it".

Thanks for making that clear.

There is of course, much jealousy of the Swiss. Such a little
country, with so few resources, yet they have done so well.

Everywhere I look, there are Swiss companies thriving. From
Shindler lifts to Nescafe, from Roche and Novartis in pharma
to Swatch, UBS to Lindt chocolate, the Swiss are at the
forefront. This despite high wages, no resources, but a great
use of brain power and an extensive training system to make sure
that a skilled workforce exists. Britain and Australia could learn
heaps from that system.

The Swiss have hollowed out mountains to set up a clever defense
system. Hitler would have been well aware of the cost of trying
to take over the place. It would not have been a pushover like
France.

The Swiss public get to vote on all sorts of things, so their
form of democracy is much envied. The Swiss killed no jews and
did not commit the crimes which apparently some of their bank
customers are lumbered with.

They have alot to be proud of, even if people like Pericles think
that the place is boring.

Actually Pericles,that reference from the Herald Sun on 911blogger tells a very interesting story.Note that the pile driver according to NIST is tilting at 22 deg.It is impossible for the upper stories of the South Tower to crush the lower floors at freefall speeds at this angle much less at the vertical aspect.

It was the Sun Herald who conducted the survey on 911 brought to their attention by Kevin Bracken.Of 10,000 respondants, 77% said they did not believe in the official Govt version of Muslim terrorists doing 911.The 911 truth movement in Aust,has 300 active members of which I am one.77% of Australians do not believe their own Govt version on 911.

Where does that leave you Pericles?

Pericles you conveniently avoided addressing any of my points.

The 'we all do it' is a perfectly good defense to point out to those who don't want to see, that all the usual evil actions 'all the Swiss' committed that some of us keep using as an excuse to muddy the dichtomy of the situation, are things we did much worse in.

My question is why single the country out?
Name one outright bad thing that Switzerland alone has done- or at least, another country can claim superiority over.

I'd definitely say it has the moral high ground against the likes of George W Bush.

Needing to recollect what a country did 70 years ago to try to defend the reputation of a country today being caught out doing the wrong thing is a poor argument.

I would have thought that was obvious, King Hazza.

>>My question is why single the country out?<<

I didn't "single them out". They did that themselves, with their farcical "indict Bush" campaign.

I simply drew attention to their government's historic moral and ethical standing for taking that step.

>>I'd definitely say it has the moral high ground against the likes of George W Bush.<<

Which is precisely where you and I disagree. "Moral high ground" and "Switzerland" simply don't go together in my opinion.

>>Needing to recollect what a country did 70 years ago to try to defend the reputation of a country today being caught out doing the wrong thing is a poor argument.<<

Nowhere did I defend any country's reputation. As I tried to make clear, "I make these points only in the context of the current activity of their 'Human Rights' movement."

A simple case of people in a glass house, flinging rocks.

Arjay, you didn't actually read what I wrote, did you?

>>Of 10,000 respondants, 77% said they did not believe in the official Govt version of Muslim terrorists doing 911<<

As I pointed out, the survey did not ask the question "do you believe in the official Govt version of Muslim terrorists doing 911"

The question that was posed to readers of the article read "Do you think Kevin Bracken's comments were reasonable?"

From this, your propagandists derived the headline:

"Two thirds of Australians Believe 9/11 Was an Inside Job"

Phoooey. It shows no such thing, and you (should) know it.

As for:

>>The 911 truth movement in Aust,has 300 active members<<

There is a primary school just around the corner with the same number of "active members". None of whom belongs to the 911 truth movement. I somehow doubt that either statistic proves anything at all.

>>Where does that leave you Pericles?<<

Very much in the majority, I would have thought.

"I didn't "single them out". They did that themselves, with their farcical "indict Bush" campaign."
So a country is forbidden, forever, for trying to do the right thing or at least set a good example against people (who normally assume they cannot be held responsible for their policies), because it did not do the right thing several decades in the past?
Here is another question- would you actually have preferred NO country proved it was willing to hound an ex-president responsible for war-crimes, than the Swiss being the only bunch willing to step up and doing it?
What if instead of Switzerland, it was actually Germany, Austria, Italy, or Japan that were pressing charges?

""Moral high ground" and "Switzerland" simply don't go together in my opinion."
Note to self- permitting your companies to trade with the dictatorship most countries abroad are enemies with in the 30s and 40s, is much worse than actually allying with the Soviet Union, Taliban, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, participating, inflating or instigating in the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars, installing Shahs and dictators?

"Nowhere did I defend any country's reputation."
You most certainly give the impression that you feel the Swiss have less moral fiber than the Americans (esp Bush) in your statements insinuating their negative grounds for making this stance.

So, assuming we were not going to ignore history, but establishing there is no outstanding basis to single the Swiss out based on such, the only thing that stands out about the Swiss is that today, (aside from being the only actual democracy in the world) is that they are THE ONLY country in the world, that is actually doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, we wage wars and toady up to and trade with the worst dictators of today, and persecute people for actually taking the First Amendment seriously (and similar clauses in other countries)- and remind ourselves how terrible this other country setting the better example now, USED to be so we can feel better about ourselves and continue with our heads held high.

Not quite, King Hazza.

>>So a country is forbidden, forever, for trying to do the right thing or at least set a good example... because it did not do the right thing several decades in the past?<<

We are at least - finally - in agreement that collaborating with the Nazis, at a time when most of the rest of Europe was putting its young men in the line of fire to fight them, was not "the right thing" to do.

However it appears that your view is that the deeds of George Bush in his capacity as president of the United States were on the same level of criminality.

That's your view, fair enough.

But it is worth reminding you, I think, that the country that you now agree did not "do the right thing" has never had to answer to a Human Rights court, as you believe that Bush should.

So even if you believe that the two acts are equivalent in terms of culpability - which, by the way, I do not - you are still in the position of arguing to ignore the one crime (because it was so long ago?) but prosecute the other.

With those double standards, you should be a Swiss prosecutor.

The problem is I still don't actually see where the specific crimes are, as trading with a dictatorship during wartime, permitting persons from said dictatorship to do banking with their corporations and establishing a ruthless and racist border control policies are all, arguably, legal, and each within a country's right to do it seems.

Invading a country on false evidence, extraordinary rendition, and committing torture, are each, arguably, NOT- as the Swiss have done none of these things, they thus hold perfect grounds to make their stance.

That certainly is a problem, King Hazza, I can wholeheartedly agree.

>>The problem is I still don't actually see where the specific crimes are, as trading with a dictatorship during wartime, permitting persons from said dictatorship to do banking with their corporations and establishing a ruthless and racist border control policies are all, arguably, legal, and each within a country's right to do it seems.<<

Perhaps you should share your view with a Jewish refugee who was sent back to Germany by the Swiss government during the war.

Oh, wait...

I stand by that rejecting refugees or even sending them back to a place they will likely face death is still not as bad as waging wars (killing, maiming thousands and creating an environment for criminal gangs to cause further damage) and authorizing torture- they simply ARE more evil.
Do explain to me how they are each less so?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_during_the_World_Wars

This article is perhaps a little more objective, then Pericle's
"evil Swiss" scenario.

It seems like the Swiss took in more Jewish refugees then any
other nation and interned a total of over 300'000 refugees during
the war.

But Switzerland is a very small mountainous country and was already
under stress from shortages of food and fuel for its own 4 million
people.

The point came where their view was that "the boat is full".

A bit like Australia really, saying that we can take 13'000
refugees a year, although Australia would not have the case to
make, as the Swiss did during the war.

Switzerland could not be expected to save the world, nor can
Australia.

Self preservation in times of extreme threat makes perfect sense.