Hypocrisy is common. But Switzerland is a special case

[fpb]

I never did like the land of banks and... banks; tell me whether I have no reason. Everyone knows that Roman Polanski's conviction for child sex in 1978 was a scandal, arranged by a publicity-hungry, corrupt judge who connived with the prosecution in defiance of all law. Not that Polanski was an angel, but even prosecution lawyers have since admitted that the trial was what Bob Dylan would have called a "pig-circus", and that a much more lenient sentence would have been just. So when Polanski fled to France, the US authorities did not make any real effort to have him extradited. Everyone concerned with the trial was ashamed. Now, thirty-one years after the show-trial, the Swiss authorities, for reasons best known to themselves, have entrapped Polanski into visiting Switzerland for a cinema festival and arrested him on the 31-year-old warrant. I am no fan of men who have sex with minors, but this stinks. The Swiss would do better to arrest their own villains, like the filth who murders for hire in the so-called Dignity clinic. And let's not even get on their banking business.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Hypocrisy with respect to murder for gain, as well as on growing fat on the proceeds of international crime, tyranny, mafia and tax evasion, certainly does. That is what holds Switzerland up, and this sudden discovery of virtue with respect to one individual who, as compared with their usual business partners, is practically snow white, is about as convincing as an Ahmedinajad speech. If you insist that any stick is good enough to beat Polanski with, you will find that some sticks wound the hand that weld them. And if you believe the tale from the US Marshall service, I've got a couple of nice bridges to sell you.