yogiparish

Sorry about my sloppy use of terminology.

I agree that my comparison is not very accurate. I didn't mean "far-right" in terms of neo-nazi and other extremist ideology, but parliamentary far-right - strictly geographically speaking. (And although they like to create a martial vocabulary, I tend to disagree that the SVP/New Right is anything close to neo-nazis... at this point in time - after all the SVP-styled conservatism does represent at least a quarter of Swiss votes)

It strikes me as the biggest parallel between US- and CH-far right (as described above) that their voters seem to be less critical of the political suggestions their political leaders make. Harsh punishments and swift deportations of foreigners that are pictured as potentially criminal/dangerous/job-threatening are just an example of this kind of rhetoric.

So, when journalists condemn a certain "deportation/punishment" ideas of such a politician, IMO all they are doing is giving him a platform to communicate those ideas. Which was the point I was trying to make in terms of the original post about punishment.

Guess, I got lost :)

Also living in Switzerland, I've noticed a scary involuntary alliance of journalism with what you might call the US-style conservatives (which is right-wing to far right-wing here):

Critical journalists who tend - by a variety of factors like age and education - to be on the more 'left' side of the political spectrum write a large amount of critical articles about those various conservative initiatives, like the one mentioned above. The attacked parties gain an incredible amount of publicity and they've taken the tabloids as their "publicity hostage".

Combine this with the diffuse resentment of those readers/people not feeling represented by government, those conservatives easily win at elections and votes - even when some of those initiatives are in clear disarray of everything the country stood and stands for.

I always think of Woody Allen's "Bananas": By tomorrow the official language will be Swedish (same as Switzerland ;) ) and people have to wear their underwear on their heads. But at least its against the establishment.

The death of those sometimes outrageously stupid political ideas could be easily achieved by simply ignoring them and their pundits. This might force the political players to get back to actual problem-solving concepts and lead to healthier debates in the media.

But then again, maybe that's the wrong approach.

it's been a while, but, yes :) (parts of the paper - the texture generation part - were prototyped in python, but machines were sloooow)

it did look familiar :)

nice one!