Tag: Switzerland

The Answer is “No”

It’s mildly amusing how the global media keeps trying to push the “conference on peace” that will be missing the only party whose opinion matters if peace is going to be obtained. But China isn’t having any of it, if you understand Chinese diplomacy-speak:

AFP: Yesterday German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Xi Jinping discussed the high-level conference on peace to be hosted by Switzerland in June, which will not be attended by Russia. Chancellor Scholz noted that China’s word carries weight in Russia. Can you elaborate on China’s expectation for the high-level conference in Switzerland? Is China urging Russia to attend the conference?

Lin Jian: During his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday, President Xi Jinping said China encourages and supports all efforts that are conducive to the peaceful resolution of the crisis, and supports the holding in due course of an international peace conference that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine and ensures the equal participation of all parties and fair discussions on all peace plans. China will maintain close communication with all parties concerned, including Germany, on this matter. China believes that ultimately, any conflict will have to be resolved through diplomatic channels and political negotiation. On Ukraine, the only way out is to go back to the negotiation table. We’ve learned that the relevant conference is still under preparation and a lot of work remains to be done. China is ready to maintain communication with relevant parties. 

In other words, China will not support a one-sided conference being hosted by a non-neutral party, but it will support one that is genuinely neutral and acceptable to the two primary belligerents. If Switzerland still wants to play a role in peacemaking in the future, it has no choice but to stop taking sides and refrain from sanctioning anyone for anything.

This really isn’t that hard. Because it’s perfectly clear that none of the major powers are going to accept self-serving word games and contorted rationalizations as a substitute for genuine neutrality.

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The Swiss Demand Neutrality

Clown World is going to face an uphill battle trying to convince the Swiss to abandon their historic neutrality now that they’re already seeing how abandoning some of their other historical traditions has worked out for them. Given that giving into US demands has already cost them both Credit Suisse and their postal savings system, one shudders to think what the price of choosing the wrong side in WWIII will be for nations such as Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland.

Switzerland is heading for a popular vote on its long-standing neutrality amid a debate ignited by the the country’s decision to sanction Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Activists and the country’s right-wing People’s Party, the largest in parliament, want to enshrine the position of permanent, armed neutrality in the constitution. In addition to preventing Switzerland taking part in any military alliance, the initiative also wants to block participation in non-military coercive measures, which would include sanctions.

The group behind the proposal submitted its petition, backed by more than 130,000 signatures, this week, though the actual vote won’t take place for some time.

Switzerland has traditionally refused to take sides in European conflicts, but decided to adopt European Union sanctions against Russia in 2022. According to critics, that was a departure from neutrality and jeopardized the country’s role as an international mediator.

On the other hand, corporate leaders have been increasingly warning that neutrality is harming the country’s business prospects. Switzerland has been blocking weapon shipments from Germany and elsewhere to Ukraine, drawing international ire.

The People’s Party said this week that there have been “targeted attempts to undermine neutrality,” citing the country’s adoption of EU sanctions against Russia. It said this has undermined the international view of Switzerland as neutral.

The government says sanctions are compatible with neutrality and is trying to revive Switzerland’s relevance by hosting on a conference on peace in Ukraine in June. Russia has already said it won’t attend the meeting.

Both Spain and Switzerland did very well to stay out of WWII. No doubt it will be even more beneficial to stay out of the unrestricted warfare of WWIII.

Considering that Clown World will almost certainly be comprehensively defeated and in full retreat by the time the referendum takes place, the usual arguments about the economic benefits and inevitability of neo-liberal progress toward eine Rasse, eine Welt, ein Reich should appear almost comically outdated by then. The fact that Switzerland has already lost its ability to play host to major international peace talks, to say nothing have having been named a hostile state by the foremost military power in Europe is also going to provide rocket fuel for the referendum.

I expect the government to do its best to pretend to fiddle with the laws, declare the problem solved, and argue that the people putting constitutional limits on its ability to take sides are now unnecessary, but given the way they’ve already played that card with regards to other issues, no one buys it anymore.

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Is Switzerland Still Democratic?

It appears we’re going to find out. Because you know both Clown World and its pet politicians are going to be pulling out all the stops to prevent this referendum on immigration from passing:

The Swiss People’s Party submitted 114,600 signatures to the federal chancellery in Bern on Wednesday. It demands that a new article on “sustainable population development” be added to the constitution.

According to the initiative, the population of permanent residents must not exceed ten million people before 2050. The government should then set a limit based on the birth rate. If 9.5 million people live in the country before 2050, the Federal Council and Parliament would have to act.

For example, temporarily admitted persons would then no longer be able to obtain a permanent residence permit. Family reunification is also to be restricted. International agreements with exemption or protection clauses would have to be renegotiated. If all this is not enough, the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons with the European Union would have to be cancelled.

According to a party statement today, the high level of support for this initiative, “shows that the population urgently demands sustainable and independently controlled immigration for Switzerland.”

This sort of measure is absolutely necessary, and indeed, long overdue, for every European nation as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA. It’s not only Clown World that can weaponize migration, after all; many have forgotten the global outcry that greeted China’s plan to settle 100 million Chinese in Africa. Already, in Namibia, Chinese immigrants account for more than 5 percent of the 2.8 million population there and have accounted for most of its post-2000 population growth; they could become the voting majority there in the blink of an eye if Beijing was ever inclined to wage unrestricted warfare against the Namibian people and thereby harvest its natural resources.

And the same, obviously, is true of the smaller European nations.

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The Price of Belligerence

The Swiss politicians are belatedly beginning to discover that the benefits of strict neutrality were considerably greater than they’d believed possible when they were being wined and dined by the diplomats of Clown World:

We don’t expect Switzerland to be directly attacked in the next six months. But we must prepare ourselves for a new range of threats, while the old, conventional threats have not diminished. The likelihood of Switzerland being attacked has increased over the last two years.
– Viola Amherd, President of Switzerland

This is precisely why General Henri Guisan, the hero of Switzerland in World War II, made it very, very clear to all the politicians of his day that surrendering to Nazi Germany would be an effective death sentence for themselves, and that their actions would be irrelevant anyhow. When the then-President of Switzerland was cozying up to the Nazis, in much the same way that the current Swiss administration is now cozying up to the European Union and NATO, he “punished” two young officers who were caught planning to assassinate the president by promoting them, then announced that no government authority, including the Head of State, had the power to surrender to any foreign power on behalf of the Swiss nation.

The current Swiss government is the party solely responsible for increasing the likelihood of Switzerland being attacked over the last two years. It very foolishly, unnecessarily, and very, very stupidly, chose to violate the nation’s historic neutrality in order to take sides against Russia on behalf of NATO, the EU, and the United States. Now Russia, China, and the BRICSIA nations now regard it as “a hostile entity” and, quite reasonably, no longer recognize Switzerland as an impartial party capable of hosting the sort of peace talks it has traditionally hosted for generations.

Now the government is at an important nexus. Having taken the first step into belligerence, it is now being forced to choose whether to join the EU, the UK, and the USA in their sanctions on China or not, which would be a much more serious step in economic terms than the sanctions on Russia were. One sincerely hopes that the politicians will learn from their previous mistake of violating the nation’s precious neutrality, and have the wisdom to step back from the brink and staunchly refuse to join the denizens of Clown World in leaping into the inevitable abyss of the military and economic ruin that is already in process.

If you choose to enter the ring, you cannot be surprised when you get punched in the face. And if you choose to enter the ring against a massive opponent who is four times larger than you and all your supposed friends combined, you are absolutely, 100 percent, going to lose, and you are going to lose badly.

The winning strategy, as generations of Swiss leaders have known, is to stay the hell out of the ring.

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The Revival of Swiss Neutrality

Switzerland’s futile attempt to host Ukrainian peace talks this summer is already dead prior to arrival thanks to the government’s foolish decision to try to take sides in the Russian-NATO war without being willing to admit that it is no longer a neutral party to the conflict.

Russia is unlikely to take part at the outset of a high-level Ukraine peace conference which neutral Switzerland plans to host in the coming months, Swiss President Viola Amherd was quoted as saying by a newspaper on Saturday. Amherd’s interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung daily was published a few hours after Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told the United Nations that Bern aimed to hold the conference “by this summer” after the idea was floated in January.

When asked whether Switzerland had since received any more positive signals from Russia, Amherd told the newspaper: “Right now, it looks as though Russia will not take part in a first round of the conference.
“We’re in the process of starting off with a very broad alliance consisting of the BRICS countries, countries from the Arab world, as well as from the global south.”

China has already made it clear that it will not be participating either. And, if Switzerland is foolish enough to give into Clown World pressure and go along with the latest EU, UK, and US sanctions on China, it will soon find itself being regarded as a hostile nation by the two most important military powers on Earth, which would be an incredible achievement of total diplomatic incompetence given 500 years of successful neutrality that survived everything except living next door to Napoleon.

Fortunately, 91 percent of the Swiss citizenry favors a return to true and comprehensive neutrality, and signatures are being gathered for a constitutional referendum that would prevent the satanic globalists and corrupt would-be eurocrats in the government from further involving the nation in Clown World’s self-destructive schemes.

The current world situation dramatically demonstrates the need for a country like Switzerland to mediate between war and conflict parties and to provide a platform for negotiations. Nevertheless, certain domestic circles and also foreign diplomats are trying to put pressure on Switzerland to fully participate in sanctions against Russia and to allow arms deliveries, if not directly then at least indirectly. The narrative of these neutrality diluters is always the same: Switzerland’s neutrality is an outdated model and must be reconsidered or adapted or even ditched. In light of the emerging amalgamation of security policy and foreign policy of the EU and the European arm of NATO, the calls for a “relativization of neutrality“ in favor of a misconceived solidarity are getting louder and louder. These gravediggers of neutrality must be countered with the following:

  1. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality is absolute and geared towards emergencies. It cannot be modified easily and at will on the basis of a current event. Thus, there is no such thing as “Putin neutrality” or the like. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality guaranteed to us at the Congress of Vienna, also with Russia’s explicit approval, sends an unmistakable signal to other countries and our partners that we will reliably and fully adhere to our neutrality in the long – term and will – if necessary – defend it with our armed forces.
  2. The concept of neutrality is fundamentally directed towards wars. In a war, there are always attackers and defenders. It is therefore intellectually dishonest to relativize neutrality in relation to the Russia-Ukraine conflict or even to ditch it in order to position ourselves unilaterally against an aggressor. For a neutral state, the “good-evil” scheme is suspended, which enables it to offer its good offices. The fact that Putin claims Art. 51 of the UN Charter for himself in order to rush to help an ally is possibly covered by international law but certainly problematic, but nevertheless not unusual: China and the USA have also frequently drawn on this problematic article, the latter without there ever having been an outcry. In this context, especially in a neutral state like Switzerland, there should be careful consideration in order to avoid double standards.
  3. Our elites know well that neutrality is deeply rooted in the Swiss people. Therefore, they believe they have to operate in a hypocritical manner, propagating neutrality internally while acting in a partisan manner externally. For example, the Federal Council has recklessly offered hand to sanctions against Russia, such as the blocking of Russian bank accounts in Switzerland. This has done massive damage to both, our credibility and our business location: a large number of foreigners have withdrawn their capital from Switzerland and transferred it to other countries. It is certainly legitimate to discuss the value of neutrality. However, this should be done with the involvement of the sovereign, the Swiss people, namely at the ballot box.
  4. Our armed neutrality has effectively protected us from external aggressors, especially during World War II. It is not an outdated model, as some try to make us believe, but on the contrary an inspiring model for the future: based on credibility, continuity, predictability and reliability, we secure our prosperity and security, especially for our young generation. The Swiss People does not expect the Federal Council and our politicians to engage in power politics, but rather to protect our people and safeguard our prosperity. This is the very duty of the Federal Council: to integrate our neutrality policy into our foreign policy and to explain our neutrality in a comprehensible way in the foreign policy arena. In the area of good offices, in receiving a large number of refugees – as is currently the case from Ukraine – as well as comprehensive offers for negotiations, Switzerland is and will be able to make major contributions to global peacebuilding and peacekeeping. We must not easily give up this trump card!
Homage to Swiss Neutrality, PRO-SCHWEIZ

Pro-Schweiz has until May 8, 2024 to obtain the 100,000 signatures required to put the initiative on the ballot. (Note to the Bears: if you’re not a Swiss citizen, you can’t sign the petition, so don’t even think about it. Note to everyone else: yes, it is absolutely necessary to spell that out.) And although the media has been ludicrously describing the concept of constitutional neutrality as a “right-wing” objective, it has substantial support among the Left and Green parties as well.

The Federal Constitution is amended as follows:

Article 54a Swiss Neutrality

1. Switzerland is neutral. Its neutrality is perpetual and armed.

2. Switzerland does not join any military or defense alliance. An exception is made for cooperation with such alliances in the event of a direct military attack on Switzerland or in the case of actions preparing for such an attack.

3. Switzerland does not participate in military conflicts between third states and does not take non-military coercive measures against belligerent states. Exceptions are Switzerland’s obligations to the United Nations (UN) and measures to prevent the circumvention of non-military coercive measures by other states.

4. Switzerland uses its perpetual neutrality for the prevention and resolution of conflicts and is available as a mediator.

Call from Left and Green Supporters: Yes to the Neutrality Initiative!, SWISS STANDPOINT, 24 January 2024

Anyhow, people all around the world should hope that the failure of the 2024 peace summit will serve to remind the Swiss people of the way in which their historic commitment to neutrality will much better serve the world than their becoming a small and voiceless cog in the Clown World machine.

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