I don't understand what is significant about this.
Classic dictator who claims his country is the best of all somehow has most his family and kids living/getting education abroad in countries the regime classifies as “enemy nations”.
Does Russia classify Switzerland as an enemy nation despite its famous neutral stance?
Ever since we put sanctions yes. And just like Austria, although “neutral” we were far more aligned and integrated with the west since the end of ww2. (Or Austria, since reunification).
Well then I really don't understand the significance since the child was born long before sanctions.
Has your account been hacked?
No. Reports of my omniscience are greatly exaggerated.
I too have wondered about a recent disturbance in the Squid.
to be fair russia only released that list after the invasion of ukraine. So we don’t know if switzerland was in it before.
Anyways, I find this news interesting, and given a couple people have upvoted, I’m a couple others do too, that’s enough for me, I’m not going to force you to find it interesting.
Okay, you're welcome to find an insignificant thing interesting. My question was about its significance. The answer is that it has none.
Significance isn’t that straightforward. Something can have lots of significance to one person and none to another.
Or lots of significance in relation to an event or ideology, or movement, but none to another.
Isn't this the son that nobody even knew existed until a week ago?
Soon, Putin will claim Switzerland is now part of Russia. Get ready for another 3-day military operation.
Finally, Switzerland’s useless obsession with military spending and forced military service will pay off. 😄
If a war sparks off (and I really hope it doesn't), at least Sweeden will have their chance to get a Simo of their own.
spoiler
Bonus song.
As a neutral nation you need to have some way to ensure that neutrality as there is no NATO or other group of nations to have your back.
Hence the military spending.
Ah yes. I’m very scared of a French/German/Italian/Lichtensteinian Invasion.
It’s totally smart to have obligatory military service in these circumstances, and to force every man to have a gun in his home for defense, and to force every home to build an underground bunker. (Our government is paranoid asf). And the arms industry have strong lobby.
Russia would literally die. Switzerland is ready, and has been ready for centuries.
The Dossier Center, a website specialised in tracking the criminal activities of people connected to the Kremlin, has confirmed that one of the sons of Russian President Vladimir Putin was born in Switzerland in 2015. The report, published on Wednesday quoting an anonymous source working at Putin’s residence, said his long-term partner, Alina Kabaeva, delivered their first son at a clinic in Lugano, southern Switzerland.
The Dossier Center reportExternal link also provided rare insights into the living conditions of the couple’s two sons, now aged nine and five, at their residence on Lake Valdai, in central Russia.
Putin divorced his wife Lyudmila in 2013 but has never publicly acknowledged his relationship with Kabaeva, a former gymnast.
Their relationship has drawn a lot of media attention, including speculation on where their sons were born. In a report published in May 2022, Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitungconfirmedExternal link that the couple had two sons, with the first one born in Switzerland. This information was never officially confirmed.
In an interview with SWI swissinfo.ch, Sergei Pugachev, a former advisor to Putin, indirectly confirmed the information. “Everyone in Russia knows that Alina Kabaeva is, so to speak, his wife since Putin’s divorce. And it would be normal she gave birth in Switzerland. His eldest children study abroad.”
SWI - Swissinfo.ch - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for SWI - Swissinfo.ch:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - Switzerland
Wikipedia about this source
Media Bias Fact Check | bot supportSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/russian-investigation-confirms-putins-son-was-born-in-switzerland/87496838
Man swissinfo is swiss national service, government sponsored. How is it left center?
Because the bias rating methodology of MBFC is a a joke.
Switzerland has consistently had a center-right majority in govt since 20 years, so yeah this must be BS.
Though to be fair half of our center right majority would be equivalent to or even to the left of most democrats. Just so people in the US know how fucked their overton window is.
I think it's considered center left based on US politics. Our Overton window has shifted pretty far. The Swiss have universal healthcare and strict gun control. That can't be right by US standards.
It's true that it's based on US standards, but it's also worth pointing out that the rating itself is completely arbitrary.
They clearly list the methodology they use on their website.
I suggest reading the methodology carefully. Picking a number between 0 and 10 is hardly a robust methodology. Any two people could follow it and come to completely different answers.
There is a whole lot more to it than that. You can read it here.
The placement of the yellow dot is determined through a composite score derived from four distinct categories: Biased Wording/Headlines, Factual/ Sourcing, Story Choices, and Political Affiliation. Each category is rated on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0. indicating a lack of bias and 10 representing extreme bias. The average of these four scores is then plotted on the scale to indicate the source's overall Left-Right bias.
I wouldn't call picking four numbers 'a whole lot more ' personally. If you actually read some of the bias analysis it becomes more obvious how arbitrary it is.
The rubric is literally right below what you quoted
The categories are as follows:
Biased Wording/Headlines- Does the source use loaded words to convey emotion to sway the reader. Do headlines match the story?
Factual/Sourcing- Does the source report factually and back up claims with well-sourced evidence.
Story Choices: Does the source report news from both sides, or do they only publish one side.
Political Affiliation: How strongly does the source endorse a particular political ideology? Who do the owners support or donate to?
Just because it is a qualitative and not a quantitative assessment doesn't mean it's arbitrary.
Yes I agree, and just because there is a methodology doesn't make the result not arbitrary. Can you explain what number four means? How do I assess it, what's a 0, what's a 5 and what's a 10? How does number 2 relate to bias, isn't that a factuality rating thing , why is it in the bias rubric? It's a joke, each rating is totally arbitrary as there is no definition of what each one means beyond some vague description of the category. It's essentially pick a number, feels based.
I have worked with qualitive rubrics before and this one is barely worthy of the name honestly. Two people could take this rubric away and come to completely opposite conclusions based on their own biases.
We may have “universal healthcare” in that ~~everyone~~ every legal resident following the law, the law saying you must purchase health insurance, is technically insured.
But we don’t have public insurance, it’s run by private companies at exorbitant prices with crazy premiums. And since we have such a large insurance /phara industry here, they are in the pockets of the government. Hell, the big insurance and big pharma companies even own shares in our national bank!
As much as it sounds like you don't like what you have, it's still better than the US.
It’s like the US but if it was illegal to not have health insurance, so literally being poor is illegal.
When someone says “universal healthcare” it sounds a lot better than that.
Gross Geneva monthly minimum wage is CHF 4426 or $4,940 according to a quick Google. In the US it's $1,330.
Edit. Even the highest US local minimum wage of $17 an hour is $2,992 a month.
Geneva is basically the only canton of 26 to have minimum wage. I’m on 8k per year for example.
Anyways, this isn’t an “I have it worst olympics”. But Switzerland is far inferior to countries who genuinely have “universal healthcare” meaning everyone can have healthcare even if they have 0 money. Instead of having “universal healthcare” through a weird legal loophole that excludes poor people by criminalising them.
In Switzerland, patients pay up to 8% of their personal income towards the cost of a basic insurance plan. If their premiums work out to more than 8% of their income, the government provides a cash subsidy to cover the difference.
https://www.internationalinsurance.com/health/systems/switzerland.php
My point in this whole thing is that everyone in Switzerland has healthcare and that healthcare is subsidized to be more affordable than in the US. That would be a left wing program here.
No. Not everyone have it. And this is not true. Health insurance can cost over 20%.
I am not insured because I cannot afford it. Which means I am technically breaking the law.
Only left wing states like geneva, which also has that minimum wage, offer those generous subsidies.
I would not trust a website made for rich expats.
All of that is irrelevant to my point that your right wing government has policies that would be far left in the US
They aren't controlled by the government though are they? Seems like they are funded by taxes but are an independent org.
And they publish how they come to their conclusions: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/swi-swissinfo-ch/
Yes, that’s how national media in democratic countries work. UK’s BBC, France’s FranceInfo, Germany’s ZDF work similarly.
The problem is that it doesn't matter if they publish how they came to their conclusions if how they come to their conclusions is nonsense. Your link is a perfect example. In the bias section there is a paragraph consisting mostly of cruft followed by two sentences attempting to justify a left rating:
Editorially, opinion pieces tend to slightly favor the left, such as this Adopt green hydrogen strategy now, Swiss cantons tell Bern. In general, SWI is fact-based and hold slight left-leaning editorial biases.
One opinion piece on green hydrogen is apparently enough justification for MBFC. I actually can't even tell if it's an opinion piece because it doesn't seem to have the author's opinion in it anywhere, it's quoting reporting from elsewhere and a letter.
Doesn't that seem pretty paper thin? I don't think they even bother referencing any of the categories from their own methodology in this one.
I feel like I'm the only one that has actually read any of their bias justifications because after you read one I don't see how can take them seriously at all. Maybe I'm missing something though, or I'm just going mad because lots of folks keep referring to MBFC as a serious organisation.
The issue is that "left / right / center" are entirely subjective. You're always going to have somebody bitching about "how can they say that's left-leaning!" no matter what standard you set. What's important is to make the standard you're following transparent and to justify how you came to a result. Then people can adjust for what their personal offset may be.
Or mostly likely people will just continue to bitch and call it an arbitrary ranking.
Having a methodology or a standard and writing about how you came to your conclusion doesn't absolve you of being completely subjective. It also doesn't mean that it's not arbitrary. My methodology could be that I roll a dice, a one is left leaning and a six is right leaning. I can be totally transparent and have a clear methodology, but it's arbitrary.
MBFC's methodology is totally subjective and arbitrary. It'd be almost a miracle if two people independently followed their methodology and came to the same conclusion. I think I showed how flawed it is with my previous comment, but if you think otherwise I'd be really interested to understand your reasoning.
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