Switzerland Passes Violent Games Ban 294
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the they're-just-mad-they-suck-at-olympic-hockey dept.
from the they're-just-mad-they-suck-at-olympic-hockey dept.
BanjoTed writes with a followup to news from February that the Swiss government was pursuing a ban on violent video games. He writes
"Sadly, Switzerland has now passed the law that paves the way for an outright ban on violent video games in the country. The full implications of the ruling will not be known until the government reveals the exact requirements that will be laid down by the new legislation – a decision that has not yet been made. What is certain though is that the Swiss authorities have now obtained the power to introduce any measures they see fit. The likeliest outcome seems to be an outright ban on the production, distribution and sale of any games deemed to be unsuitable – most likely anything with either a PEGI 16+ or PEGI 18+ certificate."
Re:But how does this reflect poorly on America? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But how does this reflect poorly on America? (Score:3, Informative)
there won't be ban (Score:5, Informative)
don't worry, there was no law passed. what passed was a mandate to the gov to create a law. that law needs to be voted on if it comes (and nobody knows what form it will have anyway).
even in the unlikely event that that law then will be passed by the parlament, we just need 50k signatures to get a public vote on it (in a world with facebook, that will be very easy).
So no panic, this just just the healthy way a democracy works, everybody has his ideas, and in the end we can vote on them.
Re:Yay! A violence-free country! (Score:4, Informative)
Having lived 2 years in Switzerland, their security is assured very proactively. Every male 18 to 40ish is required to serve in their military. It's not unusual to see tanks rolling down the street midday, on the way to training. Soldiers are often seen on the trains in full uniform, with weapon, off to their weekend on-duty. At a colleague's home, his service rifle was propped up in the corner next to his Swatch collection. Police with automatic weapons are obvious on their patrols at the airport in Zurich.
The Swiss may be conservative, but afraid of violence, they are not.
Re:But how does this reflect poorly on America? (Score:5, Informative)
In contrast to the freedom to commit assisted suicide, the country is not, in general, very socially permissive. It's a very right-wing country both economically and socially. Take, for instance, the ban on minarets [wikipedia.org] in Switzerland. That degree of censorship (and xenophobia) is much more restrictive than most other western countries.
Help! (Score:2, Informative)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/03/04/2136257/Venezuela-Bans-Hostile-Videogames-and-Toys?from=rss [slashdot.org]
I'm confused now..
Re:But how does this reflect poorly on America? (Score:3, Informative)
The minarets were not banned out of a desire to make the country homogeneous for naive tourists.
Re:What's going on? (Score:3, Informative)
Disclaimer: Yeah I am biased.
Re:A is not A anymore (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. Switzerland is still a much more direct democracy than most countries. In Switzerland, the population is the last one having a saying, and can just block a law between coming from parliament and becoming an actual law.
I really doubt this gets trough. Switzerland is usually not that retarded. Its population is pretty active in politics. It’s not that rare that something is blocked.
Re:Yay! A violence-free country! (Score:3, Informative)
No ...
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms [nationmaster.com]
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-crime-murders-firearms-per-capita [nationmaster.com]
Re:A is not A anymore (Score:2, Informative)
Also I would like to point out that if other european countries would allow a popular vote on minarets I would not bet much money that the outcome would have been different there. Europe (altough not switzerland in particular) does absorb the bulk of migrating muslims. This sometimes leads to problems when the different cultures do clash and a growing sense of uneasieness in the genaral population. Especialy if real problems (lack of jobs for immigrants, tolerance on forced marriage) are not aknwledged by the politicians.
It is worth noting that the ban was only on minarets (as you pointed out correctly) I don't think that a ban of mosques would have passed. Still the ban as it stands now weakens the foundation of our democracy and I hope it will be nullified as soon as possible.
Re:But how does this reflect poorly on America? (Score:1, Informative)
I live in Switzerland (but I am a foreigner) and from chatting with several swiss people at work, all of them were shocked when this law passed. The problem was that the majority of the swiss people believed the proposed law was too stupid to pass and assumed they didn't need to go vote to prevent it from passing. The result was that all the crazy right-wing people went and voted for this law, a small minority that fell strongly against went to vote and that's why it passed with a very small margin (IIRC something like 51% favorable to the law, 49% against).
That's the sad part of being too democratic.. If you don't force people to vote, you end up with a result that depends solely on how strongly people feel about it and a few moderates who care enough about democracy to go and vote.
Re:A is not A anymore (Score:2, Informative)
So was I. No one really expected that result (not even the initiators of the initiative).
Oh and you are of course right that we have expirienced similar tendencies before. After the second world war the largest group of immigrants to switzerland were the italians. Today they are pretty well respected and integrated. At the time however the xenophobia peaked in an initative from James Schwarzenbach [wikipedia.org] which wanted to limit foreign workers in Switzerland to 10%. In the year 2000 there was again such an initiative to limit it to 18%. Both of these initiatives were turned down in a public vote.
When comenting on the problems of integration Max Frisch said (freely translated) "We wanted workers, but human beings were arriving".