Geneva Human Rights Film Festival
by Jared Bloch
GenevaLunch (Geneva) – In a perverse twist of humanitarian imperative, modern conflicts are specifically targeting the most vulnerable community members as a war strategy. This disturbing trend was highlighted in three films screened at the Human Rights Film Festival, which closed its 8th edition on Sunday 14 March.
”Weapon of War”, as the name implies, provides a graphic illustration of how sexual violence has been used by armed factions in the Congolese conflict to destabilize and demoralize communities.
The 60-minute film by Dutch sisters Femke and Ilse van Velzen consists of a series of graphic interviews with confessed rapists and, oddly, with a single rape survivor.
Confessed rapist, army chaplain and community educator on sexual violence (Photo, reproduced with permission from Weapon of War website)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Spanish Civil War ended 60 years ago, and yet it is only today that this European nation is reclaiming the 60,000 dead and approximately 100,000 citizens forced into slave labour resulting from the conflict. “Los Caminos de la Memoria“, screened at the Film Festival and International Forum on Human Rights this week, looks at Spain’s reconciliation process and the nature of historical memory.
In the shadow of extreme violence that marked 20th century Europe, the horrors surrounding the war in Spain are just now being exhumed. With the passage of its “historical memory law” in 2007, the Spanish Government has attempted to initiate a national dialogue regarding a history that was closed to discussion.
”The collective memory of Spain is terrible,” notes one historian interviewed by filmmaker José-Luis Peñafuerte. But he is referring to the troubled and gruesome memories that the country is weighted with, not a poor memory.
Zurich, home to banking thrillers
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Call them whistleblowers if you believe their consciences have overcome them, or thieves if you think they’ve broken the law. Whatever the label, people who take client data from Swiss banks that employ them, then offer the information to another government, are suddenly back in the headlines.
French officials told Swiss news agency ATS Thursday evening 21 January that France has handed back to Switzerland data stolen by a French citizen. It made the announcement a day after the Swiss Finance Department said it would not provide administrative assistance to countries in cases where stolen information was used. France told ATS it has kept copies of some of the information, for its own investigations.
The data was stolen from British bank HSBC in Geneva, by Frenchman Hervé Falciani. The case came into the public spotlight late in 2009.
Switzerland is reviewing its legislation with an eye to setting clearer limits for handing over data to a treaty partner when it demands assistance in suspected tax fraud cases.
US newspaper says whistleblowers “chipping away” at bank secrecy
Falciani was not the first bank employee to pocket data. American Bradley Birkenfeld stole UBS client data in 2008 and gave it to the US tax authority, the IRS in a case that has had a major impact on the bank’s reputation and which badly strained US-Swiss relations.
To believe the New York Times 19 January, Swiss Rudolf M Elmer has just become the first whistleblower of 2010, a man who “is chipping away at the centuries-old traditions of Swiss banking secrecy,” in line with Falciani and Birkenfeld.
Geneva Writers' Group at BooksBooksBooks in Lausanne, for Offshoots readings
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Geneva Writers’ Group is celebrating two major events in the run-up to its annual international writers conference. The 20th anniversary of the group’s Offshoots magazine is out. And Petina Gappah, one of the group’s members, has just won the Guardian First Book Award 2009.
Gappah is a trade lawyer in Geneva who has written a collection of stories about her native Zimbabwe. Her book, An Elegy for Easterly, is only the second collection of short stories to win the award.
Gappah’s story from the collection, “The cracked Pink Lips of Rosie’s…”, was published in the October 2007 edition of Offshoots, the magazine of collected writing published every two years by the group.
[includes video] Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two Boston University student interns, one at the World Health Organization, the other at the World Trade Organization, were interviewed by their university’s BU Today, on video, about their experience working in international organizations in Geneva.
The accompanying article and video are reproduced with permission from BU.
By Devin Hahn. Text by Benjamin Hall.
”I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like I had a bit of an edge, having studied under the bright minds at the World Health Organization,” says Tara Vaughn.
Vaughn spent last fall in the Geneva Internship Program, taking courses and working at the WHO in the strategic information unit, focusing on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Her courses featured daily speakers from different realms of public health, and topics included abortion rights, public health issues that arise from natural disasters, and climate change.
See also: part 2 – Taxes overboard! Americans reconsider the IRS at the Geneva T party
part 3 – What has changed for US taxpayers living abroad
[Update 3, 21 September: note that the IRS has announced it will delay the deadline to 15 October 2009, from 23 September - details here]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government announced Friday 11 September that it is authorizing its finance and foreign affairs ministries to sign a new double taxation agreement with the US to replace the current one, which dates back to 1996. The step may ease nervousness among some Americans in Switzerland and elsewhere outside the US – as long as it means that details of the new treaty are published soon.
A Swiss government spokesperson told GenevaLunch 11 September that it’s impossible to know when the two Swiss departments will actually sign the treaty. Parliament retains the right to vote on it, as well, once the departments sign, and as yet there is no clear indication if parliament will or will not exercise this right.
Some US citizens and greencard holders who live overseas know that they are considered non-compliant under IRS (US tax authority) rules which are being more stringently enforced in 2009, and they are debating coming in from the cold. Others are only becoming aware they may not be fulfilling their US tax obligations, even though they assumed they were.
Crowd at the Piazza Grande - Photo ©Locarno Film Festival
Locarno, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Leopard is alive and well, thank you very much. The 62nd edition of the Locarno Film Festival got off to a great start this week in southeastern Switzerland. Almost 400 films (180 feature and 210 shorts) are on the agenda for the 10-day extravaganza in Locarno, canton Ticino, from 5-15 August.
According to its director, Marco Solari, this is the “edgiest” film festival in the world and it is keeping its cool by shying away from more “mainstream, commercial films.” Thus the movies competing for the Golden Leopard promise to keep the jury and the expected 180,000 spectators busy.
This year, a special Japanese animation retrospective has been scheduled as well as a Swiss films day. The festival’s Open Door Factory event is dedicated to Chinese films from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Santigold brings Brooklyn to Paleo
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Not Fancy but Funky, Funny, and Fun. This was a summary of the Santigold show Saturday night at Paleo.
Santigold, a Brooklyn, New York native, has discovered what those other kings of kitsch from the borough, the Beastie Boys, found out 20 years ago; chutzpah is cooler than gangsta’.
Private banker by day, Hip Hop fan by night arriving at Paleo
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Amidst Paleo’s 35,000 concert goers on Friday, I met a private banker who had come straight to the festival from the Geneva airport, hoping to catch some of the Hip Hop acts.
”In fact, I was hoping to see NTM [the French rap group Nic Ta Mere] but the lead singer is still under arrest, so they are cancelled,” the Swiss banker, Damian told me.
Damian, who lived and worked in India, was upbeat when I shared with him the lineup for the evening including a Bhangra performance and South African Hip Hop.
Achanak welcomed concert-goers on Friday night with their dance-friendly mix of Bhangra and electro music.
Achanak's irresistable dance rhythms - photo, Jared Bloch
Paleo cup washing operation. © Paleo Festival Nyon 2009
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Last year, festival-goers to the Paleo Festival Nyon discarded 1.2 million plastic cups in six days. Drinks, hot and cold were sold in cups that ended up in the garbage, or more likely on the ground. The festival’s organizers decided that things had to change.
Enter Ecocup, a French company. For the 2009 edition of Paleo, Ecocup is supplying the festival’s 52 bars with 100,000 clean, reusable, plastic cups a day with the Paleo logo on them. When you buy a drink at Paleo this year, you pay a CHF2 deposit on the cup, returnable at any of the bars. Observant visitors will see some of the 80 workers, most of them part of the Paleo volunteer workforce, processing the cups on the way in on the left, about 100 metres before the main entrance.
GenevaLunch spoke to Ecocup’s David Arnaud Friday 24 July.
Paleo crowd arriving on Thursday evening - Photo, Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Fans enjoyed unexpectedly sunny weather Thursday evening at Paleo, in spite of intermittent showers earlier in the day. Apart from a few soggy patches at the concert sites, shows went on without a hitch, and the extra plastic sacs and rain gear packed in, went unused.
Mexican virtuosos Rodrigo and Gabriela set the tone for the evening, with a near hour-long guitar duel featuring their own material as well as covers of “Stairway to Heaven,” and “Oye Como Va.” See GL’s Paleo Photo Album
A passageway to India via Nyon - Photo Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - If your vacation itinerary doesn’t include a trip to India this year, consider a visit to the Paleo Festival. As part of its offerings, the Nyon based festival is highlighting Indian culture, music, crafts and food this year.
For your passage to India, take the train to Nyon and then the local train. Direction: St Cergue (see GL tips in ”Practical guide to Nyon’s Paleo Festival,” and see GL’s Paleo Photo Album).
The crowd arriving in Nyon on the 17:00 train on Wednesday left no doubt about the tremendous following Paleo has accrued during the past 30 years. In addition to the range of Indian musicians performing on Wednesday 23 July, an array of musical talent from pop/rock dance favorites Franz Ferdinand, to Bonaparte, billed as an “international cabaret burlesque rock show,” and Quebecois Chanteuse Pascale Picard, was on display.
- Melody Gardot, cool incarnate – Photo courtesy of Montreux Jazz Festival
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Melody Gardot is either an old soul hiding out in a young woman’s body, or an incredibly aloof, and self-assured performer, or both.
The party's over for this year - Photo ©Jared and Gabriela Bloch
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Seventeen July, the final day for GenevaLunch at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and I think I finally figured it out.
Having driven to Montreux from Geneva three days, and taken the train a fourth day, I would opt for public transportation next year. Festival parking was well organized (as previously noted) but really by the time you negotiate Lausanne traffic, find parking, walk or bus it to the Convention Center, and then do the same in reverse, a good nap on the train looks mighty appealing.
Funky business at MJF - Photo ©Montreux Jazz Festival
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – There was a time warp in Montreux last night that took me back to the days when I used to sing in front of the mirror waiting for the moment when I could go dancing with the big girls, on a “Ladies Night” because even then I knew, “A Woman Needs Love” and it is easy to get lost in “Boogie Wonderland.”
These are some of the dance and R&B anthems of the late 70s and 80s performed to a packed auditorium at the Montreux Jazz festival last night, 16 July.
King Solomon holds forth - photo courtesy of Montreux Jazz Festival
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Solomon Burke or King Solomon as he would have it, cut a large figure at first glance both literally and figuratively last night at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Unfortunately for the audience, neither the oversized crown at centre stage, nor the red sequin dress-clad performers in his lineup were able to translate a string of doo wops and medleys into a royal fest.
Blind Boys of Alabama at Stravinsky Hall- Photo courtesy of Montreux Jazz Festival
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “We don’t have much time, so we’re not going to do a lot of talkin’, we’re gonna do a lot of singin’,” Jimmy Carter proclaimed Tuesday night (14 July) in Montreux.
This call to spirituality came not from the Nobel Peace Laureate, though it well could have, but from five-time Grammy award winners the Blind Boys of Alabama, as they warmed up the audience last night at the Jazz Festival. Carter quickly allayed any doubts as to the abilities of the mostly blind and mature-aged entourage, telling the crowd, “The Blind Boys of Alabama don’t like conservative audiences.”
Mise en Scene for the Montreux Jazz Festival - photo by Jared Bloch
Watching the lake vista unfold in front of us, I think, the festival setting truly is spectacular.
After getting stranded in Montreux early Tuesday morning – beware of the early morning public transport gap between 01:08 and 05:14 – I decided to try driving. The verdict?
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mathematicians at EPFL, the Swiss federal polytechnic institute, used a cluster of more than 200 PlayStation 3 game consoles to spend six months solving an encryption problem, breaking a previous record set in 2002. The laboratory for cryptologic algorithms cracked a 112-bit encryption based on elliptical curves. The significance of the work is that it “may serve to boost our confidence in the strength of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC),” say the authors, led Joppe Bos and Marcelo Kaihara. Encryption is widely used in banking and other industries for security. The encryption industry struggles to stay ahead of code-cracking hackers, who are using increasingly sophisticated methods and calculators.
A 160-bit elliptical curve standard is scheduled to be phased out by the industry in 2010, but the EPFL calculation shows that “for the next decade no regular user needs to be overly concerned about the security of 160-bit ECC.”
Montreux, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Leonard Cohen, one of the biggest names in songwriting for nearly 40 years, whose lyrics have been sung by innumerable major artists, left no doubts about his stature when he played in Montreux 8 July, Tuesday night.
This is a leg on his first concert tour in 15 years, and the crowds loved the quiet Canadian poet with the familiar voice, dressed in black.
Tonight’s big calling card in Montreux is another legend, Paul Simon.
Cohen, meanwhile, moves on to London for a 17 July concert.
(click on images to view larger)
Geneva grape harvest, 2007 (photo, J Schindall)
Satigny,
Switzerland (GenevaLunch, by Julie Schindall) – “Winemakers must now be not only artisans and farmers, but also salesmen and experts in marketing,” says Roger
Burgdorfer, owner of the Domaine du Paradis winery in Satigny. Burgdorfer speaks
animatedly about the need for innovation and development in the Swiss wine
community as he stands surrounded by his vines overlooking the Salève and the city of Geneva. He argues that the two most pressing issues are the battle against environmental damage and global warming, and the need for training vintners to manage not only their vines but also their balance sheets.
Burgdorfer is clearly passionate about the romance and tradition of making wine, but he is by no means stuck in the past. The son of a Swiss German father who came to Satigny to pick grapes, Burgdorfer established his own winery in 1983, planting grapes and constructing most of the buildings on the farm.
Now a well-known Geneva vintner, Burgdorfer grows 25 varieties of grapes and bottles 20 types of wine at his own cellar. During the
weeks of September and October, Domaine du Paradis is at the height of the grape-picking season, the vendange. Burgdorfer’s work day begins at around 7 o’clock in the morning, and ends, sometimes, at midnight.
This is clearly a labour of love for Burgdorfer. His cellar walls are adorned with prizes from international wine competitions. His friends and colleagues in the wine business, it would seem, are equally passionate. Nicolas Bonnet, Burgdorfer’s longtime friend and owner of Domaine de la Comtesse Eldegarde, is even rumoured to play the piano for his wines. His favourites, he
likes to say, are jazz classics.
Roger Burgdorfer, Domaine du Paradis, Satigny, Geneva (Photo, J Schindall)
During the vendange season, however, a vintner’s days are filled with more tasks than
playing tunes for his wines. Last Wednesday at Domaine du Paradis, Burgdorfer spent much of the morning driving around his 40-hectare spread collecting filled containers of grapes and transporting them to the cellar, where four employees process the grapes to produce wine. Burgdorfer shares the work of the winery with his wife, son, and a few
permanent staff. His primary job is tending to the grapes.
During the harvest, he relies on large machines rather than traditional hand-picking to cut the grapes. Machines do the work of 20 men, Burgdorfer explains, and while they require an initial investment of over six figures, they save money and hassle. Burgdorfer admits with a rueful smile that he’s glad to end his role as mediator for disputes between groups of seasonal labourers.
The Swiss wine industry has made huge advances over the past two decades, and
the quality of Swiss wines, Burgdorfer and Bonnet say, has increased dramatically. However, Burgdorfer still worries for the future of agriculture in Switzerland. General farming of wheat and corn, he says, is no longer profitable, and farmers are saved only by government subsidies. Swiss wines can compete to some extent because wine is an upmarket product for which
people will pay a premium. Nevertheless, Burgdorfer thinks that agricultural protection in the European Union may eventually threaten the profitability of Swiss wines.
The tradition of making wine in Switzerland dates back to the Roman period, although the Guides des Vins Suisse notes that there is evidence of grapes as far back as 3000BC. Workers from abroad have long helped harvest Swiss grapes, but the pace picked up in the 1970s, when migrant workers from Italy came to Switzerland in large numbers to pick grapes. Waves of immigration brought different groups: Spaniards in the 1980s, and Portuguese in the 1990s.
The 2002 Free Movement of Persons Agreement with the European Union is affecting the type of employees at Swiss vineyards. Workers from Poland in particular are beginning to seek temporary agricultural labour in Switzerland.
Domaine du Paradis: Large equipment has replaced many of the grape pickers in Geneva (photo J Schindall)
The most talked-about labour development in Switzerland today, however, is the rising use of grape harvesting machines. They cannot be widely used in some areas, notably in Vaud and Valais where the steep slopes pose limitations. They suit Geneva’s vineyards, however. According to Alexandre de Montmollin, director of OPAGE (Geneva Cantonal Office for Viticulture and Oenology), there has been a significant decrease in manual labor for the grape harvest. He estimates that 60% of grapes are harvested by machine and 40% by hand.
At the Domaine du Paradis, Burgdorfer keeps a small year-round staff and tends to use the same seasonal workers for the harvest. He pays them SFr135 per day and
provides lodging at a large building on his property. Burgdorfer speaks French to his foreman, who translates instructions into Portuguese for the workers.
According to Burgdorfer and Bonnet, the overarching concern for Swiss winemaking today is how to remain profitable. Most winemakers believe high quality is the way to success. Bonnet states firmly that winemakers cannot rely on government subsidies. “Switzerland does not support agriculture very well,” he says. Bonnet would rather have liberal markets for all of Europe and be able to
compete openly with other European vintners. “Building barriers – I’m against that,” he says.
Geneva’s vineyards, harvest time, late September 2007
Burgdorfer and Bonnet remain committed to producing the finest product possible. They point to Geneva-area restaurants and hotels as some of their best customers. They reason that if they can convince Swiss wine drinkers, whose standards are high, perhaps then they can make an impact at the international level.
