If the above image makes no sense to you in this context, don’t worry. It will after you read this latest bit of lunacy from Switzerland:
It took two hours and eighteen minutes before Donald Trump’s name dropped on Wednesday night. Significantly, the Zürich city council was at this moment debating a motion on the topic of prostitution. Christine Seidler, of the SP, came up with the somewhat unusual demand that the city of Zürich set aside a property for a municipally-run bordello — in order to give women better protection from violence, human trafficking, and exploitation.
The Social Democrat made the connection to the new US president-elect as follows: “Trump’s victory is a victory for discrimination”, so it was a question of solidarity, on this “blackest of days”, to create a counterweight. Seidler’s proposal, nicknamed a “state whorehouse”, created an uproar all the way to Germany; within the party it was not exactly uncontroversial, as many would have liked to ban prostitution altogether. A ban, so Seidler argued, was not the solution; if anything, johns should be targeted, or else measures for better workplace conditions must be taken. With the utterance of “every third man here goes to prostitutes”, Seidler unleashed a small tumult, in which certain men of the SVP loudly complained of prejudices and “man-hating”.
City councillor Raphael Golta (SP) declared himself ready to accept the motion at least as a postulate, since it met the goals of the city council. But the motion itself went too far for the council, since the creation of a city-run brothel, “depending on organization form and size”, was tantamount to a “significant interference” in the trade. Nobody argued against the fact that the situation was currently not easy for prostitutes. However, there was no clear majority of the opinion that a state-run brothel would change anything about that.
“We have plenty of whoring in this city already with the financial institutions,” cracked Derek Richter of the SVP. And Markus Knauss of the Greens also spoke out against “privileging a few hookers”. There was much more demand for a “comprehensive improvement”, maybe through a more generous set of official prescriptions. In fact, new trade regulations had led to displacement in the milieu. Even the smallest businesses must apply for a building permit, which can be refused if the establishment is located in a district with more than 50% residential zoning. That leads, in the long run, to absurd situations, in which johns can be legally solicited in many “contact bars”, but in many cases can be serviced only illegally or in overpriced rooms. So the city council heard from Guido Trevisan (GLP) that it would do better to dissolve the 50% rule, instead of accepting proposals for state-run brothels. In the end, it didn’t go that far; with a vote of 66 to 54, the council clearly decided against the proposal.
Translation mine.
I can’t argue against the crack about the biggest whorehouses in Zürich being those of the financial institutions. In terms of how much money they rake in, they are indisputably the richest houses of ill repute in the world. It certainly takes a special kind of…morality…to keep Nazi loot safe for decades under a tradition of secrecy in Swiss bank accounts.
But as immoral as Swiss bankers colluding with Nazis and other war criminals may be, they don’t traffic directly in the bodies of women and girls. They stop short of monetizing bodies down to the last orifice, or so one would hope. Swiss city councils? Well, in Zürich…not so much.
Switzerland is already pretty gross when it comes to prostitution. They’ve literally got drive-in boxes where you can go to get serviced (if you’re a dude, that is; ladies, you’re shit out of luck, as usual). Basically, all they are is parking garages with cow stalls where johns can cruise in, lady in tow, pull the garage door down and have at it. Oh, and the ladies get dinged for the use of the boxes, too. Such a sexy environment, no?
It is ironic that anyone would think drive-in boxes OR a state-run brothel would somehow stem the tide of human trafficking and exploitation. Actually, it would only shift some of the job of pimping from the brutal Eastern European trafficking mafias who run the trade in all major European cities that allow it, to the bland, blinkered city councils. It wouldn’t do a thing to lessen the suffering of women in prostitution, since the johns still demand the same dangerous and degrading things no matter who’s pimping whom, or where. They consider it their right to do so; menzers, in fact, consider it their “right” everywhere to abuse and exploit women as they please, and that the state shouldn’t interfere in their doing so. Menzers, you may recall, are also prominent among Der Drumpf’s supporters.
Which leads us, in turn, to Der Drumpf. He is, as everyone should know by now, a regular abuser of women. Not all of them in prostitution, mind you, but he’s also embroiled in a child-sex-slavery scandal with one Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile and pimp. That makes him a very likely john. There are even witnesses willing to testify to it in court. Can anyone honestly say they’d put it past him to make an unannounced visit to a pricey bordello when he’s swanning about the globe in his private jet?
And of course, Zürich is a global finance mecca. Campaign bluster about the evils of globalization aside, Drumpf is as much a globalist as any of the banksters he rails against (more on the grounds of their Jewish ancestry, be it noted, than how they make their living). It’s not implausible that he has a Swiss bank account or two himself. And that he might check in on it regularly, say a couple of times a year. And if he should choose to treat himself to a little paid “company” on the side while Melania is sulking at home with their young son in their penthouse (or, Bog help us all, the White House), well…are we really so sure that he wouldn’t drop in to a city-run brothel while he’s in town? And that he might then kvetch about inferior “service”, and demand his money back — or just refuse to pay up, like he did with so many of his contractors?
But yeah. A brothel against trafficking and exploitation of women. GREAT idea!
