#495 | Revealed: video footage of Greek army training to supress demonstrations

The video below is a filming of a military exercise of the Greek army in barracks of Northern Greece. The exercise, called “Kallimahos” [lit. 'fighting well'] included training on… suppressing civilian demonstrations. At approximately 2’50” into the video (the embedded video below links directly at that time), “demonstrators” chanting “we want peace” (in English) and holding peace banners are confronted riot police, vehicles and even with dogs (never used in demonstrations in the country so far).

From The Guardian Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of "promiscuity" with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years. The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups.

Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists.
The one stipulation, according to the officer from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secret unit formed to prevent violent disorder on the streets of London, was that falling in love was considered highly unprofessional because it might compromise an investigation. He said undercover officers, particularly those infiltrating environmental and leftwing groups, viewed having sex with a large number of partners "as part of the job".
"Everybody knew it was a very promiscuous lifestyle," said the former officer, who first revealed his life as an undercover agent to the Observer last year. "You cannot not be promiscuous in those groups. Otherwise you'll stand out straightaway."
The claims follow the unmasking of undercover PC Mark Kennedy, who had sexual relationships with several women during the seven years he spent infiltrating a ring of environmental activists. Another two covert officers have been named in the past fortnight who also had sex with the protesters they were sent to spy on, fuelling allegations that senior officers had authorised sleeping around as a legitimate means of gathering intelligence.
However Jon Murphy, Acpo's spokesman on serious and organised crime, said last week that undercover officers were not permitted "under any circumstances" to sleep with protesters.
He added: "It is grossly unprofessional. It is a diversion from what they are there to do."
Mounting anger among women protesters will see female activists converge on Scotland Yard tomorrow to demand that the Met disclose the true extent of undercover policing. The demonstration is also, according to organisers, designed to express "solidarity with all the women who have been exploited by men they thought they could trust".
Climate campaigner Sophie Stephens, 27, who knew Kennedy, said there was fury among women who felt violated by the state: "We know women have been abused by men posing as policemen and it's becoming clear this was state-sanctioned. These women did not know they were forming a relationship with policemen. It's appalling – and now we want the full details of the undercover officers to be made public."
The protest will be followed on Tuesday by the appearance before the Commons home affairs select committee of the acting Met commissioner, Tim Godwin, and Commander Bob Broadhurst, who is responsible for public order in the capital. Both will be asked to explain why Scotland Yard gave false information over the use of covert operatives during the London G20 protests in 2009. The issue of sexual activity by operatives is also likely to be brought up.
The former SDS officer claims a lack of guidelines meant sex was an ideal way to maintain cover. He admitted sleeping with at least two of his female targets as a way of obtaining intelligence.
"When you are on an undercover unit you were not given a set of instructions saying you could or couldn't do the following. They didn't say to you that you couldn't go out and drink because technically you're a police officer, that you shouldn't go out and get involved in violent confrontations, you shouldn't take recreational drugs.
"As regards being with women in very, very, very promiscuous groups such as the eco-wing, environmental movement, leftwing, or the Animal Liberation Front – it's an extremely promiscuous lifestyle and you cannot not be promiscuous in there.
"Among fellow undercover officers, there is not really any kudos in the fact that you are shagging other people while deployed. Basically it's just regarded as part of the job. It'd be highly unlikely that you were not [having sex].
"When you are using the tool of sex to maintain your cover or maybe to glean more intelligence – because they certainly talk a lot more, pillow talk – you would be ready to move on if you felt an attachment growing.
"The best way of stopping any liaison getting too heavy was to shag somebody else. It's amazing how women don't like you going to bed with someone else," said the officer, whose undercover deployment infiltrating anti-racist groups lasted from 1993 to 1997. Two years later the SDS became the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, the secretive organisation that employed Kennedy and whose activities are the subject of three investigations.
The officer added that undercover police were strictly encouraged not to form a bond with women they were sleeping with and said that he knew Jim Boyling, the undercover officer who married an activist he was supposed to be spying upon.
Boyling, a specialist operations detective constable with the Met, was suspended on Friday pending an investigation into his professional conduct.
The former SDS officer, who has now left the Met, said one stipulation by senior commanders was that undercover officers should be married, so that they had something to return to. He said the move was introduced when a spy never returned after five years undercover.

[POSTSCRIPT] Body-scan Alert - Not Suffering Indignities at Airports

If you have to travel but don't wish to be part of the new nude morality of the United States that is trying hard to keep America safe from the ubiquitous Islamofascist terrorist, you still have some liberating choices in personal freedoms left:

1) 'To opt out for a pat down, say “I opt out.”

2) 'Warning: Pat downs are no longer the simple search like those in the past. In some instances, as part of an “enhanced patdown,” the TSA screener may use the front of their hands to touch your genitals.

Should you feel that you or your child were inappropriately touched, call for a law enforcement officer.

If presented with the option to leave the checkpoint for a private screening, consider politely declining with a “No, thank you,” as you will likely be asked to remove your clothing. Pat downs can be performed in public view.'

3) Warning2: Should you sensibly choose to exercise that right, then you have to deal with the possible trauma of being groped and molested: 'TSA agents stand accused today of fondling the genitals of women and little children as part of their "enhanced pat-down" procedures being rolled out at airport security checkpoints.'

4) Warning3: Should you sensibly choose to quote your inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution to protect yourself and your loved ones from these vile indignities, you may have to deal with being labeled a "domestic terrorist"!

5) Based on this escalation path of making the price of discontent progressively costlier and costlier, the vast majority will simply choose the body-scan. That appears to be the strategic thinking behind these enhanced pat down procedures and the occasional case of vile molestation which will be widely reported!

Image Photo taken with backscatter X-ray courtesy dontscan.us John_Wild_1

Image from an AIT device used in airports - two-women-refuse-full-body-airport

Know Your Rights Brochure What the TSA isn't telling you dontscan.us page1

Know Your Rights Brochure What the TSA isn't telling you dontscan.us page2

A Project Humanbeingsfirst Document

Body-scan Alert - Not Suffering Indignities at Airports (Postscripts November 08, 2010)

By Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org


Image Photo taken with backscatter X-ray dontscan-us-john_wild_1


Dear traveler friends to America,


Please pay URGENT attention to this:

“TSA agents gone wild: fondling little children, planting cocaine in passenger bags and more”

 http://www.naturalnews.com/030302_TSA_naked_body_scanners.html

“Get the facts about Advanced Imaging Technology”

 http://www.dontscan.us/scans.html

Please click on the images below to download the Know Your Rights at Airports Brochure from dontscan.us. If you don't like these images, you should be aware that according to the brochure, you have been generously afforded the right to say NO to body-scan with the supposed “I Opt-out” utterance.

Should you sensibly choose to exercise that right, then you have to deal with the possible trauma described in the first link above which states: 'TSA agents stand accused today of fondling the genitals of women and little children as part of their "enhanced pat-down" procedures being rolled out at airport security checkpoints.'

The brochure imaged below further carries the following warning:

'Pat downs are no longer the simple search like those in the past. In some instances, as part of an “enhanced patdown,” the TSA screener may use the front of their hands to touch your genitals. Should you feel that you or your child were inappropriately touched, call for a law enforcement officer.

If presented with the option to leave the checkpoint for a private screening, consider politely declining with a “No, thank you,” as you will likely be asked to remove your clothing. Pat downs can be performed in public view.'

Please study this carefully. This is unbelievable!

If you are like me, then my attitude is that before submitting to pat-down and after having uttered the formulaic “I opt-out”, coldly warn that nice-looking TSA agent getting ready to frisk you that he better not touch your and your family members' private parts and if he intends to, that you want to immediately see the manager/supervisor in-charge before subjecting yourself to pat-down physical search.

And, if you are still more like me, you will likely boldly add within earshot of others waiting in line to experience the same traumas, that you will NOT subject yourself to humiliation by either undergoing strip-search which is what the body-scan reduces to, or gross physical pat-down of your anatomy and the violation of your personal rights guaranteed you by the Constitution. And that while you know the TSA is merely doing its job to earn its paycheck just like the 'Good Germans' once did in the Third Reich, you are concerned for your own rights and privacy and you wish to take preventive action now rather than lament later!

I would personally make a calculated, un-emotional, carefully chosen, perhaps pre-rehearsed, loud statement of rights and dignity before I am humiliated, rather than doing it afterwards emotionally, when crying and talking to CAIR/ACLU/clergy and filing meaningless complaints serves little to mitigate the traumas – for indeed, it is only the un-courageous silent acquiescence to tyranny which creates all this erosion of rights and liberties in the first place. I did that once before, entirely un-rehearsed, and this is what I have advised my own family to remember – teaching by example rather than academic punditry – their old man's stance at the front door on those two occasions in April 2003 when the nice boys from the FBI had come calling looking for “terrorists” in our home in California: They dared to Knock on my door! [  http://prisonersofthecave.blogspot.com/2007/04/part-1-they-dared-to-knock-on-my-door.html ]

And I am still here. And so long as I have the choice, I refuse to suffer indignities, either in Pakistan my home country where it is far more common to be feeled up at every damn checkpoint and roadblock, or in the United States where I live. When I won't have the choice, I don't know what I will do – perhaps nothing different form the vast 'untermenschen' now bearing the brunt of “imperial mobilization” from Pakistan to Palestine. Every day I and my loved ones escape that fate, I offer a prayer of thanks!

If you are really like me, then you too will be boldly civic minded before you lose that choice. You too will daringly protect your own inalienable rights and your own dignity – no one else will do it for you.

Before the day comes when everyone is asked at gun-point every few hundred yards, “your papers, your papers please, show me your papers”, and one's refusal then is rewarded with a bullet lodged into one's brain, it is surely a tad easier to stand-up now with the little show of courage that it takes, before the indignities of these government mandated TSA searches.

Remember, TSA is authorized by the Homeland Security, which in turn is authorized by the US Government, to subject its denizens to this – TSA is not doing it on their own. It draws its rights from the Government, which at least in the lofty American Republican theory, draws its rights from the people. It isn't clear to me whether deliberately hiring sexual perverts into TSA and calculatingly seeding the traumas noted in the first link above, is part of the unwritten coercion policy of the Government to get objecting peoples to accept the body-scan! It just seems extraordinary to me that without some tacit support from higher-ups, that anyone in their right mind would do such molestation in such a public place with everyone watching.

This is a commonsense public service message from Zahir Ebrahim, Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

Please circulate it, specially to your young family members and womenfolk who travel. It does not matter that they might be travelling in the company of their adult male family members – perverts and absurdities do not discriminate between sexes and ages, nor does tyranny.

Just imagine the entire body-scan scam failing before it gets off the ground due to every civic-minded law-abiding courageous American declining all indignities in the name of enhanced security – their own, from big brother!

The UK and EU Airports shall not escape such draconian procedures either unless good peoples silently complying with state-tyrannies in Europe also stop doing so in significantly large numbers.

Despite the real fear of being labeled as suffering from an “oppositional defiant disorder” as per the newly revised DSM IV psychiatric manual, and the concomitant threat of being legally confined to 'state-hospitality' centers for rehabilitation, or worse, being labeled “domestic terrorist” as per big-brother's newly enacted police-state laws to maintain domestic tranquility in the face of rising public discontent, the price to be paid now to challenge the grotesquely Orwellian Western society while it is still in its infancy, is minuscule compared to what our progeny will face! A new generation born into a mature system of big brother in the West won't know the difference – unless their parents' generation takes a cross-Atlantic stand now while the Orwellian world is still only being birth-panged into existence under the pretext of fighting the War on Terror: What is War on Terror? [  http://humanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/hot/ ]

While it may be only a small step to defeat body-scan intrusion into what used to be universally held sacred as intimate physical privacy both legally and morally only as recently as in yesteryear, its import in firing up the imagination of the public if the draconian measure is successfully thwarted, can be immense. The Western states being ubiquitously governed by brilliantly psychopathic minds, also realizing that such small defeats can quickly snowball into larger defeats with the possibility of widespread domestic revolts, will surely try to make an example of those resisting the body-scan! In the United States it is already frowned upon in some places to quote its Constitution chapter and verse: Postscript ‘War on Terror’ is not about ‘Islamofascism’ – Please get with the real agenda you people! [  http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/postscript-war-on-terror-is-not-about-islamofascism-please-get-with-the-real-agenda-you-people/ ]

Therefore, also be forewarned that if you sensibly choose to act in your and your progeny's own best interests, it may not be a free ride.


Summary

If you have to travel but don't wish to be part of the new nude morality of the United States that is trying hard to keep America safe from the ubiquitous Islamofascist terrorist, you still have some liberating choices in personal freedoms left:

1) 'To opt out for a pat down, say “I opt out.”

2) 'Warning: Pat downs are no longer the simple search like those in the past. In some instances, as part of an “enhanced patdown,” the TSA screener may use the front of their hands to touch your genitals.

Should you feel that you or your child were inappropriately touched, call for a law enforcement officer.

If presented with the option to leave the checkpoint for a private screening, consider politely declining with a “No, thank you,” as you will likely be asked to remove your clothing. Pat downs can be performed in public view.'

3) Warning2: Should you sensibly choose to exercise that right, then you have to deal with the possible trauma of being groped and molested: 'TSA agents stand accused today of fondling the genitals of women and little children as part of their "enhanced pat-down" procedures being rolled out at airport security checkpoints.'

4) Warning3: Should you sensibly choose to quote your inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution to protect yourself and your loved ones from these vile indignities, you may have to deal with being labeled a "domestic terrorist"!

5) Based on this escalation path of making the price of discontent progressively costlier and costlier, the vast majority will simply choose the body-scan. That appears to be the strategic thinking behind these enhanced pat down procedures and the occasional case of vile molestation which will be widely reported!


Postscript: Jeffrey Goldberg confirms the aforementioned summary conclusions in the Atlantic, October 29, 2010, 'For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance'
Image from an AIT device used in airports - two-women-refuse-full-body-airport-scan1 - Marvelous Girls blog

“I asked him if the new guidelines included a cavity search. "No way. You think Congress would allow that?"

I answered, "If you're a terrorist, you're going to hide your weapons in your anus or your vagina." He blushed when I said "vagina."

"Yes, but starting tomorrow, we're going to start searching your crotchal area" -- this is the word he used, "crotchal" -- and you're not going to like it."

"What am I not going to like?" I asked.

"We have to search up your thighs and between your legs until we meet resistance," he explained.

"Resistance?" I asked.

"Your testicles," he explained.

'That's funny," I said, "because 'The Resistance' is the actual name I've given to my testicles."

He answered, "Like 'The Situation,' that guy from 'Jersey Shore?'"

Yes, exactly, I said. (I used to call my testicles "The Insurgency," but those assholes in Iraq ruined the term.)

I pointed out to the security officer that 50 percent of the American population has no balls (90 percent in Washington, D.C., where I live), so what is going to happen when the pat-down officer meets no resistance in the crotchal area of women? "If there's no resistance, then there's nothing there."

"But what about people who hide weapons in their cavities? I asked. I actually said "vagina" again, just to see him blush. "We're just not going there," he reiterated.

I asked him if he was looking forward to conducting the full-on pat-downs. "Nobody's going to do it," he said, "once they find out that we're going to do."

In other words, people, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the Dick-Measuring Device over molestation? "That's what we're hoping for. We're trying to get everyone into the machine." He called over a colleague. "Tell him what you call the back-scatter," he said. "The Dick-Measuring Device," I said. "That's the truth," the other officer responded.

The pat-down at BWI was fairly vigorous, by the usual tame standards of the TSA, but it was nothing like the one I received the next day at T.F. Green in Providence. Apparently, I was the very first passenger to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging. Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision. One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, "Get new gloves, man, you're going to need them where you're going."” ---  http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/


Postscript-2: Statement of Enhanced Pat-downs from TSA's own BLOG

'You may have read about TSA implementing enhanced pat downs as part of our layered approach to security. Using the latest intelligence, TSA constantly updates our screening procedures to stay ahead of those who wish to do us harm and keep the skies safe for the flying public. When developing our security procedures, we use input from across the agency, including our Offices of Intelligence, Privacy, and Civil Rights and Liberties.

To add some perspective, TSA has used pat downs since our agency started federalizing checkpoints in 2002. They’re an effective way of helping us keep dangerous items such as weapons or improvised explosive devices off of planes.

So, what might cause you to receive a pat-down? Passengers may receive a pat-down in a number of circumstances: to resolve an alarm at a walk-through metal detector; if an anomaly is detected during screening with advanced imaging technology; or during random screening. Passengers who opt out of enhanced screening such as advanced imaging technology will receive an equivalent level of screening to include a thorough pat-down. Remember, you can always request to be screened in a private area.

You shouldn’t expect to see the same security procedures at every airport. Our security measures are designed to be unpredictable and are constantly assessed and updated to address evolving threats.' ---  http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/08/enhanced-pat-downs.html


Thank you

Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org



URL:  http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/11/body-scan-alert-not-suffering-indignity.html

PDF:  http://humanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/files/2010/11/body-scan-alert-not-suffering-indignity-at-american-airports-postscript.pdf



Image Know Your Rights Brochure What the TSA isn't telling you dontscan.us page1

Image Know Your Rights Brochure What the TSA isn't telling you dontscan.us page2



Body-scan Alert - Not Suffering Indignities at Airports By Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

Seattle police officer apologises for racism and kick to innocent victim

10 May, 2010 | 12:08

A 15-year police detective of the Seattle police department was left in tears yesterday after the video of the officer kicking and using prejudice language on a man who they falsely detained.

Video of Police officer kicking innocent man in the face while on the floor.

The incident which occurred on 17 April, came to light thanks to an amateur camera man who filmed, officer Shandy Cobane, kicking an innocent man, while he was on the floor face down.

Officer Shandy Cobane who was seen on the video kicking and shouting racist threats as an innocent man.

The whole incident started after the police was called to an armed robbery in which the suspects were described as Hispanic.
While the police detained a number of suspects, one man who was not handcuffed but was lying on the concrete floor was especially picked on by the officers.
Cobane was heard shouting, “I’m going to beat the f……. Mexican piss out of you homey. You feel me?”
Moments later the victim who appeared to be scratching his face while on the floor was kicked in the face by Cobane and then another female officer stamped on the man’s leg.
The whole incident occurred while at least four other police officers were in the scene watching and not warning their colleagues.
After the victim of the assault was identified as doing nothing wrong the police attended to his injuries as the man had trouble walking straight after the blow he had received to his head and the stamping on his leg.
Two police officers were then seen attending to the injured man saying “I want you to relax your weight on the car, okay?” while another officer said “Put your hands back so you don’t fall down.”
The cameraman who realized the suspect was innocent decided to get closer to the victim and asked questions.
Cameraman – “So they kicked you in the head, man?”
Victim – “Yeah, they did.”
Cameraman – “Tell me why they kicked you in the head?”
Victim – “I don’t know … They just knocked me down and kicked me in the head.”
According to The Seattle Times, Cobane who was in tears on Sunday in front of many reporters said “I know my words cut deep and were very hurtful. I am truly, truly sorry, as a 15-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department, at no time did I envision that I would do anything to bring such notoriety to my department. Sadly, I did,”
The Seattle Police department has since said that an internal investigation is taken place.

High-tech security cameras coming to SVL: 24-7 video monitoring to include license plate and vehicle recognition



Aug 24,– SPRING VALLEY LAKE — Community leaders want to send a message: If you plan to commit a crime in Spring Valley Lake, don’t forget to smile for the camera.
S p r i n g Va l l ey L a ke A s s o c i at i o n’s b o a rd o f directors recently approved a $175,000 contract to install a high-tech wireless video surveillance system across the community, including in its equestrian estates.

The cameras will capture “evidence — quality” footage both day and night, SVLA General Manager Jon Sabo said. Both the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department and the California Highway Patrol can access the feeds and use the tapes to help prosecute criminals.

And while the cameras won’t be capable of capturing sound, Sabo said license plate and vehicle recognition abilities will be built into the system.

Sabo said they expect to have cameras at six locations by Christmas, with the potential for 22 sites at build-out.
“Some of the cameras will be visible and some will not,” he said, with footage streaming into SVLA’s public safety dispatch center.

The board last year approved $175,000 for a first phase of the project, Sabo said, to do engineering work and a technical analysis. The community now has “several” limited systems in operation at public spaces across the community.

Earlier this month, during a special meeting, the board approved another $175,000 for the project this fiscal year. Sabo said much of that second-phase funding will go toward building out the wireless network and to install receiving equipment.

It’s possible that they could go to a third phase next year, according to Sabo, but that hasn’t yet been determined.

“We just want to make sure that we keep people as safe as possible,” said Ernie Martell, vice president of SVLA’s board of directors. With the economy being what it is, Martell said the board fears incidents of theft and vandalism could otherwise get worse.

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Κορυφή της σελίδας

Death penalty initiative is withdrawn

Image Caption: The death penalty is in force in the United States (Keystone)

The committee behind a people’s initiative to restore capital punishment for murders involving sexual violence have decided to withdraw it.

On their website, the group said that the initiative, which caused intense debate in Switzerland over the past week, had been the only way for them to make the population aware of problems in the justice system.

The surprising turn in the story comes a day after the Federal Chancellery said the initiative met formal legal requirements. Its supporters would have had until February 24, 2012 to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to force a nationwide vote on the issue.

Switzerland outlawed the civil death penalty in the 1940s, and observers were sceptical whether the initiative would gain enough support. It also raised legal questions.

Parliament would have decided whether the content of the initiative was valid, had enough signatures been collected.

The text had called for the Swiss Constitution to be modified to reintroduce the death penalty for people who committed murder “in combination with an act of a sexual nature against a child, sexual violence or rape”. It had also, according to the Le Temps newspaper, called for the penalty to be applied retrospectively.

The seven-member committee was made up of private individuals related to a murder victim. Its spokesman Marcel Graf confirmed the withdrawal to the Swiss News Agency on Wednesday.

Grievances

In a statement on its website, the committee said that the initiative – which it had on Tuesday called “fair and logical” - had been a way of airing grievances.

“Our main aim was to make people aware of serious shortcomings,” it said. This particularly concerned what the group alleged was a bias towards perpetrators in the Swiss justice system.

“Politicians must finally move the legal system on the side of the victims,” it said.

Media reports have pointed to a particular case, the murder of a young woman of Asian origin in Switzerland in 2009, as being at the origin of the launch of the initiative, although this has not been confirmed by the committee. Graf, from near Zurich, had stressed that the group was non-political.

The news on Tuesday that the Chancellery had allowed the initiative – on the grounds that it fulfilled formalities – caused a storm of debate within the media, as well as in legal circles and among politicians.

The move was reported as far away as the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Political parties in Switzerland had roundly rejected the initiative. Only the rightwing Swiss People’s Party had said it was up to the people to decide. The parliamentary group for human rights was also “categorically” against the idea.

Experts also said it was open to question whether the death penalty would be constitutionally legal and in line with Switzerland's international obligations.

Even if it were accepted, they argued, it could have put Switzerland on another collision course on human rights issues – after the anti-minaret building initiative that was approved by the electorate last year.

Changing the system?

One aspect that came out during the controversy was legal and political dissatisfaction with the way that initiatives are examined.

Presently, the Chancellery only pronounces on the formalities of the document and parliament has the final say on whether the content is valid – after the signatures have been collected.

Some experts say it would be better for the content to be checked before the text goes out for signatures. Many legal specialists would like to see a court rule on the content. This debate has been ongoing for some time.

There is also some political support for change. Dick Marty, a Ticino politician and human rights specialist, was quoted in Le Temps as saying that initiatives merited “a preliminary, much deeper examination before signatures are collected”.

The centre-right Radical politician Isabelle Moret had already launched a parliamentary initiative, with 23 co-signatories, calling for a court decision before signatures are gathered.

This is due to be examined next month by the Political Institutions Committee of the House of Representatives, according to Le Temps.

In terms of what happens next with the initiative, a Chancellery spokesman said on Wednesday that the text’s backers did not have to do anything and should let the initiative “quietly go to sleep”.

This would mean that the 18-month deadline would run its course and it would be noted as not having gathered enough signatures in that time.

swissinfo.ch and agencies