Nancy Holten, 42, was born in the Netherlands. At the age of 8, however, she moved with her family to Switzerland, which Holten has called home for the past 34 years. Holten currently resides, with her three daughters, in the small village of Gipf-Oberfrick, in the far north of the country, within the canton of Aargau. She speaks fluent Swiss-German. Her daughters are Swiss 5 citizens. She has been a member of the parents’ committee of their school. And yet Holten was recently rejected for a Swiss passport, for the second time.
In Switzerland, applications for naturalization are decided not at the federal level, but rather by the country’s cantons and municipalities and the applicants’ peers have a say in whether naturalization gets granted. And, unfortunately for Nancy Holten, her peers are not inclining to give her a 10 passport. Because, despite all the ways she is Swiss, Holten ,a vegan who is extremely vocal about that life choice, has also stridently opposed one of the most beloved cultural traditions of GipfOberfrick and of Switzerland itself – the practice of putting large bells around the necks of cows, for reasons both practical and ceremonial.
In 2015, Holten’s application for naturalization was approved by local authorities but then 15 rejected, in a vote, by 144 of 206 residents of Gipf-Oberfrick. In November of 2016, a similarly sized group gathered at a communal assembly to hear Holten’s case. Some of the attendees booed her as the debates took place. For them, it seems, the matter wasn’t so much that Holten was outspoken in her criticism of the bells.
The problem was rather that Holten’s activism, they have said, displays a lack of respect for the village’s and the country’s cultural traditions. The problem 20 was also, more to the point, that Holten had demonstrated that disrespect so publicly. Holten also rejects the idea that her advocacy of animal rights doubles as an attack on Swiss culture. “Many people think that I am attacking their traditions,” she told The Local. “But that was not what it was about, it was never about that. What solely motivated me about the cowbells was the animals’ welfare.” But that community, it turns out, will not have the final word in deciding 25 Holten’s fate. Her case has moved on, as some of Switzerland’s more complicated naturalization applications will do, to the cantonal government, which is empowered to override the rejections administered by the locals of Gipf-Oberfrick. Holten may still be granted naturalization; she may be rejected once again.
In Hornsdlae, Australia, Tesla Corporation switched on the world’s biggest lithium ion battery on Friday, December first, in time to feed Australia’s shaky power grid for the first day of summer, meeting a promise by Elon Musk to build it in 100 days or give it free. Tesla won a bid in July to build the 129-megawatt hour battery for South Australia, which 5 expanded in wind power far quicker than the rest of the country, but has suffered a string of blackouts over the past 18 months. In a politically charged debate, opponents of the state’s renewables push have argued that the battery is a “Hollywood solution” in a country that still relies on fossil fuels, mainly coal, for two-thirds of its electricity. Supporters, however, say it will help stabilize the grid in a state that now gets more than 40 10 percent of its electricity from wind energy, but needs help when the wind dies down.
