Sounds entirely resasonable to me.

Since when is there no second person singular (i.e. 'you')in English?

It's really come to something when the police are not enough, and the ARMY are needed to protect our leaders from their own people. I thought that sort of control was only needed in countries with military dictatorships.

in german or french, there's a difference between plural and singular in the 2nd person. german, it's "du," french it's "tu," and using them can be seen as insulting -- it's better to use the plural forms, which are more formal, with people you don't know.

definitely a nit-picky point.

No Mark, the Swiss Army are defending alien politicians, against the wrath of those politicians' people.

The Swiss Army are Swiss people who lose their votes if they are not armed and skilled in their use. Because of that they have the purest most uncorrupted form of Democracy in the World. It still is not perfect, there are some criticisms of their way of doing things.

The Swiss Govt were not very clever hosting a potential Genoa. These orders have been released to try to prevent a confrontation like happened there. Possibly it is the idea of the Americans, or the Europeans, the EU is proof of European political stupidity, with the evidence of a superior Democracy clear in Switzerlad, insted of applying to join the Swiss Confederation, they have chosen to adopt the Fascist methods of the politicians who contrived the EU.
One of the long term objectives of those Fascists is to undermine the foundations of Democracy in Switzerland. Try not to do anything that will further that aim.

I apologise for my pedantry.

These orders seem pretty standard, and along the lines of how all police officers operate all the time.

""but why troops?
by Mark 10:39pm Thu May 29 '03

It's really come to something when the police are not enough, and the ARMY are needed to protect our leaders from their own people. I thought that sort of control was only needed in countries with military dictatorships."

I think having overwhelming force is better for everyone. For example, if they insisted on using police only, and there weren't enough police, the protesters (who seem to come very prepared for violence these days, tsk tsk) might get it into their heads that the could actually overpower the police, which might escalate in a lethal conflict. It's safer if there is no question about the chance of the protesters overpowering the police/military, because then the situation remains predictable and relatively stable.

These orders seem pretty common sense. They're even ordered to give aid to the person they just shot, and avoid killing someone who must be shot - even when taking the trouble to do so may put the troops in danger.

Are y'all crazy??

Where is the common sense? Sounds like bueracratic rationalism for a cultic-hysterical sense of protecting property--- at the expense of human life.

It seems like there is this implicit evocation here that goes unquestioned>>> namely, that the protestors are Ready-&-Fierce or something.. That is, that the protestors want to Take Over and Do-Some-Damage or something..

Hmmm.. this seems like mainstream reactionary trolling stuff to me...

Truth is a few -- in this scene -- relatively speaking, want confrontation of a violent nature.. others don't...

so, let's not forget that the cops have the guns.. Let's not start talking about how great and reasonable the cops bueracratic memorandums are. Geeze..

What is going on with y'all...? (did you see how cool the cops outfits are too??!! -- really got some hot stylin going on which is top notch and in the best of western european taste -- an immpecably balanced show of both noble strength and dignified yet efficient mastery...)


-- Caps Lock
in NYC

basically boils down to "try not to shoot anyone, but you can if you need to", which seems like the usual really.it shouldn't be a big suprise that the state will use lethal force to protect these kind of events...

The swiss army is going to do their best to keep the peace I am sure. But no matter what the government does short of throwing out the G8 meeting, there will be violence so the G8 meeting by its self is dangerous and the swiss government has every responcability to safe guard the protests from the protests - sounds weird but more people will die from what the guy next to them does than what the police will do. This is not going to be like an incursion into the west bank where there are shot on sight orders, but rather a shot to save your own life or another persons life. The swiss army will use normal police tactics like water cannons and clubs with sheilds for crowd control when it gets out of hand and will use tear gas long long before using anything that resembles a bullet made out of metal. Dont look to America for police tactics, we are horible peace keepers with out the slightest clue. Where I am living now would be a great example though. Denmark. If you care to go into any details about normal tactics, look in denmarks police THEN comment about how great or cruel the swiss will be.

I'm rabidly anticorporate and antiauthoritarian (and I like using words that start with anti.) However, the way folks on this side of the political spectrum sensationalize things like this seems to reduce their effectiveness.

It would be more helpful and to the point to have a little background laid out as an explanation of why these things are so terrible, and also to use less sensational titles for the articles. Without some kind of context, these orders do seem reasonable, and it seems like that would turn off some moderate people who are embarrassed by this childlike fascination with having the "worst thing ever" on every single web page.

I think the concerns about the Army being called in to "defend" the G8 talks come across quite credibly when the simple facts are given. The reason no one in the US is upset about these things is just because we are never told the facts in the media. If you could correct that problem, without oversensationalizing every single thing you write about, I think it would go a long way to making the left more credible.

Regardless of this small criticism, you all are doing a great job of getting the word out, so thanks a lot for that.

JP

Sorry, you are wrong saying about Swiss Army in Evian. As a Swiss citizen, I cannot believe that the maintenance of order in the Evian area, which is on the french side of the Leman Lake, could be made by the Swiss Army!
French forces are sufficient to do their job!
Another thing: in another sentence, someone says that if we don't go to the Army, we lose our right of vote. It is not the reality.
For the reader, it is maybe details, but it could decrease the credibility of the informations (generally true) given by you.

Othe information :
On June 1st, 2003 in Geneva (Switzerland) (35 kms from Evian), it was a great demonstration with some 100'000 peaceful demonstrators. Afer that, somme windows-brokers made some damage downtown. That made the german police was on the spot, to help swiss authorities. Switzerland is not in the European Union, but ask for hel if necessary.
What paradox?!
Doms

The reason the army has been called in is because the Swiss police force is neither large enough nor equipped enough to handle the job of protecting private bystanders and property. Unlike some states Swiss police force is relatively small. In no city do you see the concentration of police that New York for example has. The police force is also organized by canton, if the Vaudois (Lausanne’s cantonal force) did not feel equipped to handle a perceived threat they would call in however would be willing to help. In this case the army was called in for Lausanne and the German police force was called in for Geneva. States with larger standing police forces wouldn’t need an army in such a case, but in Switzerland where crimes are low a huge fulltime police force is not needed.

Also all Swiss do not need to serve in the army. I am Swiss and no one in my family has been in the army. In general if you choose not to serve you have to pay a tax for benefiting from the service.

Finally the Swiss did not choose to have a Genoa situation. The conference is being held in Evian, France. The is a conference currently in Lausanne which invited many third world heads of state (e.g. Mbeki of South Africa). It was an attempt by the Swiss to start making an attempt to have more leaders involved in the hopes that one day the G8 will become a more representative conference and not just a meeting of rich states. I sincerely hope the those protesting in no way harm the African head of state because this would just prolong the possibility of them joining.

I will conclude by agreeing with a previous poster that Switzerland is the purest form of direct democracy in the world and only wish I lived there than in the NYC police state.

Hi,

I personally don't really care which bloody nation is better at this or that. I am not a nationalist. I think that being a citizen fighting for changes, etc. etc. and then taking on a kind of pride in purities takes one away from what is important and into essentialist beliefs, rather then actual history and dealing with the world as it is.

I like many aspects of where I am from (the USA), and can't stand many other aspects, for instance much if not all of the present government.

I believe we -- everyone who can -- should be fighting for changes that will bring greater freedom and social justice, both in the particular and the universal.

POLICE REPRESSION AT G8's, WTO Meetings, etc.

Globalizatiion and Neo-Liberalism is, as y'all know an ideology of international corporate elites. Therefore, when ANY summit or meeting occurs aimed at furthering this agenda and ignoring dissenting views from any real part in the process of crafting our reality, the police of each respective place that a meeting is held are expected to assure that, on the ground, there will be a minimal degree of disruption. To what degree the local police authorities maintain this and what strategies are employed, will obviously vary depending on histories and elements in power within any local police agency (i.e. in Italy there is a strong fascist element in the police force to this day ), as well as other elements. These particular histories are more significant then mystifications about how good or bad a country is, as a whole. After all, Italy for instance, is a wonderful place in many, many ways.


Furthermore, pretending that the local police will have some kind of absolute and pure transcendent autonomy, or rather will act in pure independence from the kind of pressures they are under, is just day-dreaming. You are blinding yourself to how things are really working and what kind of pressures the police are under in any given place that a meeting and a counter demonstration is occuring.

One would think in reading this dialogue about how fair and civil the Swiss police are that it just couldn't be that the Swiss police actually cut some demonstrators rope (he was hanging on a rope from a bridge), which then lead to he being hospitalized -- and for which he is LUCKY TO BE ALIVE. Nor would it be possible to believe that the Swiss police went into the camp, masquerading as protestors, then illegally started to arrest people etc. etc. (not calling putting cuffs on people and dragging them away against their will "arrests", but rather something like 'removals to other locations' -- and here we are treated to more of this rationalist bureaucratic langauge> do folks think that that is reasonable too??!) And yet, these ILLEGAL and HORRENDOUS things did occur. The Swiss police are more like police in all nations then you might like to think. Much more. In the most important ways.

Everywhere from NYC to Evian to (you name it) becomes a police state when the police are not only given license to do such things but are under pressure to perform as "peace-keepers" at these Neo-Liberal soirees.

Again, I don't care about essentialist mystifications.

SO, I hope that y'all will struggle to see that the Swiss police in this particular instance, at this time, will stop doing illegal, HORRENDOUS things, and that you will cross the bridge past the mystifications and deal with reality, even if it contradicts your beliefs.

Essentialisms and belief-systems over looking at reality, are just ways of being egotistic....

No justice, no peace.



caps lock
In NYC

The last time the swiss army was shoting peopple

That was the 9 november 1939 and 13 peopples was shoting dead by the swiss army. After that, a new law have done at the army can not be used against peopple in Switzerland.
The decision to use the army against the peopple and to give the swiss army license to shot peopple is a very alarming precedent. That show clearly at Switzerland is no more a democraty as Israël that is shoting to dead palestinian peopple almost every day or Saddam's Irak.

And wath is a democraty. The first one, Athenes, in 500 b.c. was just an slavery oligarchi with 20'000 citizens and 110'000 slaves. After that we have in French first democraty for the land's owners, more later democraty for the man and finaleny now, democraty fro the rich.
The cement of that democraty are the rights, almong other the human's rights. What means those rights for someone that don't have enough money to buy his food? It's 40 millions peopple they are staving till dead every years. What means democraty and humans rights for those peopples, victims of the greatest genocid of historian?

I agree that nationalism is an archaic 19C-20C notion that is outdated. But I don’t think that means we shouldn’t look at which nation do things better. No nation has all the answers or is the ‘best’ therefore a compelling reason to look at how does things better is to improve the lot in your own country. This does not mean a competition ranking nations in silly categories rather it means looking what others do well, looking at other theories in practice and seeing what can be implemented to better life locally.

As for the Swiss police force in this G8. They are not at the G8 but across a very large lake from the G8. I was in no way suggesting they are perfect. In fact several times they have been cited for irregular behavior. This is all to be expected if we read and take into account sociological and psychological studies of crowd behavior, and crowd control. Furthermore, experiments like the Stanford prison experiment (conducted by Zimbardo) show just how hard it is to create a police force that act correctly all the time. It is perhaps just as difficult to find a crowd, where the whole crowd acts appropriately. So I was not trying to hold up the Swiss police force as paragons of virtue. I was attempting to suggest that the Swiss police/army are more accountable than many others in the world. In Switzerland if the police gets out of control and tries to turn the country into a police state and the government supports this, the representative don’t represent the popular notion the Swiss people can vote to stop these measures. In many countries like the US if the police gets out of control and tries to turn the country into a police state and the government supports this then it is too bad for the people since Americans just vote on people and future promises not on contemporary issues. If the US wants to lunch a war on a Middle Eastern nation whether the people want it or not the US will be involved in the war. In Switzerland the people could vote to avert a war if they disagreed.


Finally, regarding globalization; I agree that in its current form globalization has been high jacked by the interests of the powerful. In its self though globalization should not be a bad thing as it increases employment around the world. The reason it doesn’t work is the few at the top are leveraging their position to profit much higher rate than the value of their labor that they put in. This happens domestically as well, where CEO buy $6,000 shower curtain and are paid $10 million plus regardless of the results they produce, while the janitor, who in many ways is important to the clean and efficient running of a company is paid maybe $10 thousand. The issue is corporate governance and having leaders run a corporation that is economically, socially and environmentally responsible. Change this and globalization will decrease as an issue. Fail to change it and you will have problems with globalization, consumerism, capitalism, stock fraud, accounting regularities etc.

In Switzerland the people could vote to avert a war if they disagreed.

I am a swiss citizen and i don't think so. It's no possible at the swiss army will not attaq another country, but in a situation where another country is menacing Switzerland, it will be a general mobilisation against it, and no vote or, if vote it is, it vill come efter the war. Things are taking time in Switzerland.

Economy will be maybe a godd thing, if folk would be at the center. The goal of a good society is hapiness for every body. So leave the peopples at the centrum.
Economy is not a gaol, only a mean.

If politicians will put peopples att the center, they will understand at unemploiment in the rich countries, poverty (the wapen) and starvation (the effect) in the poor countries, and immigration everywhere, are the same problem.

When 20 % of the peopples of the world are using 84% of the world's richeness, and at the same time the poorest 20 % are using only 1.4 % of the same richeness, that mean att the world is broken.

When 20 % of the peopple of the world are depending of the other 80 % to buy all the manufactured products of they industries, that mean at the world is dependant.

The problem is at, amoung the 80% that must buy ours manufactured shit, the most have no enough money to do that, because they have no income in a capitalistik mening.

The only way to solve all that big problem is to change radicaly the system by the introduction of duty in our society.

Today is someone a good personn if he, she is rich, strong, big, sometime even coward. Duties can change this particular aspect of our society. With duties att the ground of our society and with the happiness for all some goal, the only place to be someone, to be a citizen, will be to do some good things in the interrest of the society.

The first duty must be at all of us and each of us are responsable for the happiness of all the others.

It strikes me that these orders are unreasonable by any standard that takes into account basic internationally recognized measures of accountability. The orders state that the supervising officer is responsible for the individual officer's actions except in the case of gun fire. It is a basic tenant of human rights that an individual holds responsibility for abuses which that person carries out, and many of the potential procedure violations police or the army could undertake here are human rights violations that are held to this international standard of accountability. Therefore, it is entirely inappropriate for the standing orders of the police and army units here to diffuse responsibility in this way.
In fact, it not only violates basic international standards of accountability for human rights, it also very tangibly endangers those people attending the events in the area. A diffusion of responsibility has been shown to increase counter-productive (or by other language
anti-social') behavior, both in controlled experiments and consistently over prior demonstrations. What does this mean tangibly? It means the type of things that happened at the G-8: Unneccesary tear gas, indiscriminate and excessive beatings with batons, weaponry used at inappropriately and dangerously close range, and in a particularly inexplicable case the cutting of a rope by which a demonstrator was suspended without attempt to ensure a safe landing. I can not help but wonder: how much of this politically-directed violence and human rights abuse would be prevented if individual officers were held accountable for their actions?

The orders are unreasonable in at minimum this huge violation of international human rights standards. As important as it is to remember all this occurred and may -- very likely will -- be repeated elsewhere, I hope this can also remind me to act toward a more accountable police agency and a structure in which individual officers are accountable in a meaningful way.


[P.S. I will check back here only infrequently, so if you have a reply please also email it to me so I can keep up with your insights.  scorfman@antioch-college.edu ]


Steve C.

if you've served in the Swiss Army troops, you should know
that this kind of orders (surveillance + possibility to
shoot in case of danger) are normal routine, when the
troop "works" directly on the land, outside the borders of
a military-area.

the problem is not this.. but the fact that in this kind
of situations the soldiers feel superior and powerful
towards the "normal" and the "demo" people.
they can decide if you'll have a nice or a fucking awful
day or you can receive help in case of injury or not (see at
what happened in Aubonne! soldiers were there and didn't
call firemen and ambulance. they simply did NOTHING AT ALL!)

this is the first step towards the end of all freedoms.

NO FREEDOM, NO LIFE!

Neuch

if you've served in the Swiss Army troops, you should know
that this kind of orders (surveillance + possibility to
shoot in case of danger) are normal routine, when the
troop "works" directly on the land, outside the borders of
a military-area.

the problem is not this.. but the fact that in this kind
of situations the soldiers feel superior and powerful
towards the "normal" and the "demo" people.
they can decide if you'll have a nice or a fucking awful
day or you can receive help in case of injury or not (see at
what happened in Aubonne! soldiers were there and didn't
call firemen and ambulance. they simply did NOTHING AT ALL!)

this is the first step towards the end of all freedoms.

NO FREEDOM, NO LIFE!

Neuch