Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern!
The biggest Swiss sporting event officially starts today and feeding hungry Swiss wrestling fans is no amateur undertaking. According to reports today, the 400,000 visitors are expected to drink 250,000 litres of beer and eat 55,000 bratwursts over the three-day event.
Here’s what else is on your plate as we head into the weekend.
In the News: Polling voters for next year’s election, the police prepare for the Zionist Congress in Basel, and finding soft landing spots on the Moon.
- A new poll shows a slight shift to the right ahead of the 2023 federal elections. Centre-right political parties are making slight gains, while the Greens are losing a bit of ground. If the election were held today, the centre-right Radical Liberal Party would receive 16.4% of the vote (up 1.3 percentage points) and the centrist Liberal Greens would receive 9.2% (up 1.4 percentage points).
- The police in Basel are preparing for the 125th anniversary of the first Zionist Congress, which starts on Sunday. Along with the cantonal police force, some 700 members of the army and police forces from other cantons are also being deployed. So far, there are no concrete threats but they are on alert especially as the Israeli President is expected to attend.
- Research at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich is helping to identify potential landing sites on the south polar region of the Moon for NASA’s Artemis programme. The first Artemis spaceflight is primed to launch this month on a test mission before future rockets put astronauts on the Moon for the first time since 1972. Researchers have provided NASA with data on more than six potential landing spots that will help reduce risks to astronauts on their missions.
- Some people would love to get paid to play. But for some people, they get paid pretty well when they don’t play. That’s at least the case of Roger Federer who is the highest-paid tennis player according to a Forbes ranking out today. He raked in $90.7 million (CHF86 million) in endorsements, appearances and other business endeavours over the last year and he hasn’t even entered a major tournament in the last 14 months.
The stormy times for cartoonists in the age of Twitter
Cartoonist Patrick Chappatte is no stranger to sensitive subjects. He’s taken on gay marriage, the burka ban, and vaccine inequity, and received plenty of flak from the left, right and centre. But it’s his latest cartoon on the abortion ruling by the US Supreme Court that made him the target of a “digital shitstorm”.
The cartoonExternal link, which was published by the French-language site Le Temps in June, features the US Supreme Court with a sign reading the “end of abortion rights”. But Chappatte replaced the justices with the Taliban, which he explains is a metaphor for “two retrograde attitudes”. The cartoon didn’t’ get much attention until he posted it on Twitter on his English profile. That’s when the Twitter mob began their attacks.
What ensued after this was what he described as “trying to argue with a train that’s racing at you”. He was called racist, islamaphobic and many slurs that I’ll leave to your imagination.
The situation got so out of hand that Chappatte broke his own golden rule of not commenting on his cartoons. Le Temps translated and published his analysis of the whole Twitter storm, which was originally available on his website in EnglishExternal link.
What he found is that only 27% of the reactions on Twitter were actually negative. It was just that these negative reactions were so toxic and extreme that many people didn’t even want to engage in the discussion. “Very few people will come to your rescue or try to bring nuances to the conversation. By engaging in the debate one runs the risk of enflaming the ire of the pack. Being in the crosshairs is a lonely place,” writes Chappatte.
The 5G fight comes to the health minister’s home
It’s hard to remember now but there was a time before the pandemic when nearly every weekend you’d see people in the streets of Bern demonstrating against 5G antennas. The topic didn’t go away though just because of the pandemic.
Now it seems that the Swiss health minister Alain Berset has found himself squarely in the middle of it. According to Swiss media reports, opponents of 5G have been unsuccessful in getting telecoms provider Swisscom to abandon 5G antennas despite making plenty of noise. There’s one exception though – Belfaux in canton Fribourg. This happens to be where the health minister and his family lives.
News daily Blick says it has evidence that Berset is one of four signatoriesExternal link of a letter opposing the Swisscom installation. While it doesn’t specify a 5G antenna, the letter talks about electromagnetic waves, particularly those emanating from mobile phone technology, that have deleterious effects on humans and animals.
Swisscom told the paper that Berset in no way influenced the decision to abandon the project at the Belfaux site. The site was simply an unsuitable location for an antenna, in particular because of its proximity to a cultural site. But 5G opponents aren’t giving up. If 5G isn’t good enough for the health minister’s family, why would it be ok for everyone else?
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