Word: swiss
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...laws to get his savings out of the country; a multinational corporation that seeks to "minimize" its tax burden by dumping its profits in tax-free havens; a South African investor who wants to avoid economic sanctions; an East German Communist leader who stashed a personal nest egg in Swiss bank accounts; or even the CIA and KGB when they need to finance espionage or covert activities overseas...
...referendum, 35.6% of voters backed a proposal to abolish the military. The results shocked the country's political and military establishment. Few expected the measure to garner more than 25% of the tally. President Jean- Pascal Delamuraz once called the initiative "an idiocy as big as the Matterhorn." Swiss voters, though, viewed the issue with great seriousness: 68.6% of them turned out, more than have shown up for any other of the < country's incessant referendums in the past 15 years. The army will remain, but it has been sharply shaken and irrevocably affected...
...mythic status the army enjoys. For a country that has so many fault lines involving competing religions and languages and a federal government that is weak by design, the army is that rare thing, a truly national institution. The experience of military service is the most common denominator among Swiss men (women are not conscripted), and creates a strong sense of citizenship...
...week training course when they are 20 years old and annual refresher courses and deployments of three weeks or more, depending on their rank, until they are 32, when the demands lessen a bit. For those who refuse to join up, the options are grim. Each year several hundred Swiss are convicted of refusing to serve, and many of them spend three to twelve months in jail...
...Many voters just thought of the opening of the Berlin Wall. They thought, 'O.K., we can get rid of arms because there's no danger,' " suggests Kurt Spillmann, a professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. But the willingness of so many Swiss to vote, in effect, against the army indicates a disaffection that would once have been unimaginable...