"This is the open question. When people are doing something risky or dangerous together, how much is one person responsible for the other?"

Said a University of Innsbruck law professor, quoted in "A Woman Froze to Death on an Alpine Trek. Is Her Boyfriend to Blame? A man in Austria was charged in the death of his girlfriend after leaving her behind, in a case testing ideas of freedom and responsibility in the mountains" (NYT).

The case has brought to the fore a legal doctrine known as Garantenstellung, a broad concept in Germanic law that establishes a responsibility to intervene for people who have a “duty of care” in a range of situations, including parents caring for children or a driver who hits a pedestrian — and can put liability on those people. It is often invoked on trips with hired guides, but has rarely been applied to a private hike like the couple’s excursion, experts said. Prosecutors argue that the man was liable for his girlfriend’s death because he planned the trip and was much more experienced than her....

"I hope that the sisters will accept the path I have outlined and that a regulated religious life will once again be a reality in Goldenstein."

Wrote Abbot Markus Grasl, quoted in "3 Rebel Nuns Can Stay in Abbey, if They Give Up Social Media/After the octogenarian nuns refused to return to their senior center, the abbot has finally folded. But he has some conditions" (NYT).

When three octogenarian nuns escaped their senior center in September, their unlikely quest for freedom set off a bitter standoff with the abbot who leads their Roman Catholic order. The three rebel nuns forced their way back into the Austrian abbey where they had lived for decades, before the senior center. ...

The abbot had cited "a church rule that orders must have at least six living members." What happened to that rule? There were 3 nuns living in an abbey within a medieval castle.

Now that they've gotten so much attention and support, the abbot says they can stay, but they "must stop letting laypeople into their cloisters, and — most likely much more important — they must end their social media feed." And yet that's how they won their heart's desire, though public attention and support, acquired through social media. Without social media, perhaps they'll lose what they've gained. But what prevents them from restarting their social media, if promises are broken? A vow of obedience? That didn't stop their first rebellion. 

Here's that social media feed (at Instagram). 

"You live as if without history, as if you throw no shadow behind you."

Saw a play.

From the New Yorker review:

The first scene is a welter of references to Viennese thought and art—Freud, Mahler, Klimt—and the coming destruction of that golden culture is one of the tragedies of the play. Over whiskey, Hermann and his mathematician brother-in-law, Ludwig Jakobovicz... argue about Hermann’s blithe disregard of Austrian anti-Semitism. Hermann is joining the Jockey Club and—a mathematician, you say? Your inner Stoppard gong should ring at that; this is the playwright who taught us chaos theory and probability. When Ludwig later tries to demonstrate coördinate geometry using a cat’s cradle, we can see that one of Stoppard’s famous Knowledge Metaphors is twisting itself into view. And, indeed, like the knots on Ludwig’s cat’s-cradle string, family members change positions yet maintain their connection.

Not just connection but — in the cat's cradle configuration — distance.

"The Vienna Tourist Board has joined the adults-only site [Only Fans] to display artworks that other social platforms have censored."

The NYT reports. 

The offending artworks include the Venus of Willendorf, a 25,000-year-old limestone figurine of a woman. Facebook removed a photo of it from the Vienna Museum of Natural History’s page several years ago for being “pornographic.” ....

"The man admitted he had found the wine amusing upon purchasing it. But he said he had lost interest and described himself now as 'rather left-wing orientated.'"

"An Austrian man has been locked up for glorifying Nazism after cops found multiple bottles of Hitler-branded wine at his home," The Mirror reports. He bought the wine in Italy:

On the Italian side of the Brenner Pass linking the country to Austria, where Hitler and Mussolini met three times in the 1940s, fascist 'souvenirs' are still widely sold. But they are forbidden across the border in Austria. One souvenir shop owner claimed "it was mainly youngsters" buying such items, saying "there is a huge demand" for wines with the labels of Mussolini, Hitler and other fascists and Nazis.

In Austria, the right-wing wants to bring back the "freedom to smoke."

The NYT reports.

As soon as [the far-right Freedom Party] entered a coalition government last year, [its leader, Heinz-Christian] Strache, vice chancellor and sports minister, promised to step back from a total [smoking] ban, saying he was acting “in the spirit of entrepreneurial freedom.”...

[It] fits neatly with the Freedom Party’s anti-establishment and quasi-libertarian tilt. “Freedom of choice” is the flip side of a far-right agenda that otherwise seems inclined to dictate to citizens, especially those from minorities, everything from whether they can wear head coverings to whom they should marry.

The "flip side" of something "fits neatly" with it? Something odd about that, but I'm assuming the NYT meant to say that. Here's an Austrian right-wing "freedom of choice" tweet:

Kannst nicht erfinden. pic.twitter.com/RQw6mfcdXU

— Florian Klenk (@florianklenk) February 21, 2018

Maybe anyone who wants to strongarm other people about some things has a flip side that's big on freedom about something else. It's the immoderate personality. Most of us go along with some, but not too much government regulation, and some but not too much individual freedom. But maybe it's the case that the extremist types don't want total freedom everywhere or pervasive government control of everything, but a combination of the two. What makes these extremists right or left is which things they choose for government and what they choose for the individual. Just a hypothesis.

The owner [of Café Fürth], Helmut Haller, 30... said he followed trends in the United States, Australia and Britain and never allowed smoking. “Global coffee culture is a nonsmoking culture,” he said. Still, he said he placed his business in the Viennese cafe tradition, which provided a meeting point for great figures of fine arts, literature and philosophy.

“In Austria we’re slower with change,” he said of his country’s position between Germany and the Balkans. He said that both some residents and visitors had their minds set on a certain idea of Vienna, described with the German word “Gemütlichkeit,” which translates as a broad feeling of comfort or cosiness.

But even many smokers who enjoy a chance to light up see in the ban an opportunity to set themselves free. One was Philippe Mayer, a 41-year-old musician... “It’s like a reward for waking up early,” Mr. Mayer said. But even as he enjoyed his cigarette, he, like his country, had mixed feelings about it. “Smoking gives me a kind of feeling like slavery,” he said. “It would be helpful if it were banned.”

Freedom is slavery!

ADDED: "It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: 'Freedom is Slavery.' Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone— free— the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body— but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter— external reality, as you would call it— is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.... We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull." — George Orwell, "1984."

"In the first hours of her life, this sweet girl was already the target of an unbelievable wave of violent, hateful online commentary."

"It is a completely new dimension of online hate, targeting an innocent newborn."

From "Vienna ‘New Year’s Baby’ Greeted First With Hate, Then Hearts" (NYT).

Many of the comments that filled the social media pages of Austrian media outlets that carried the picture of Asel’s family, released by the Vienna Hospital Association, also targeted the baby’s mother, whose smiling face was encircled by a bright pink head scarf.

“I’m hoping for a crib death,” wrote one user. “Deport the scum immediately,” read another posting to Heute’s Facebook page, it reported on Thursday.

"Though of course bread and butter are eaten all over, the buttered roll (or roll with butter, as it is known in parts of New Jersey) is a distinctly local phenomenon."

"Mention its name outside the New York metropolitan area and you would very likely be met with blank incomprehension."

From "Ode to the Buttered Roll, That New York Lifeline," by Sadie Stein (in the NYT).

I know this article is getting mocked — as if it's typical New York cluelessness about the people who don't live in New York, but I think the mockers are not really getting the way New Yorkers experience the buttered roll. My understanding is premised mostly on my experience working in midtown Manhattan offices in the 1970s, where a bell from the coffee wagon broke up the morning's work. Something about the small array of items got me tracked into eating the completely nondescript buttered Kaiser roll that came in a waxed paper sandwich bag. (Stein calls it "wax paper." I'm not that much of New Yorker. I say "waxed paper," since it's real paper with wax on it, not paper somehow composed of wax, but I'm not going to fight about it, because I'm not a native New Yorker. I don't like to fight for the sake of fighting. I'm just saying it's not "wax paper." I also don't say "piece fruit," for "piece of fruit," but I've lived around New Yorkers who did.) Anyway, in my experience, the buttered roll in New York is a specific thing and a weird thing, precisely because it is too ordinary to be considered a specific rather than a generic thing, but it really is. I think elsewhere people would look at this as an empty sandwich, a failure to add baloney or cheese or something. What is this?

And why is a Kaiser roll called a Kaiser roll?

"Donald Trump is to appoint a Sound of Music-obsessed concert pianist as the new ambassador to Austria."

"Really, I've seen it like 75 times," said Patrick Park. "I know every single word and song by heart. I've always wanted to live in the Von Trapp house."

'I'm flying to Vienna to check out the embassy, and then I'm going to Salzburg to see if the Von Trapp house is for rent,' he said. 'And then I'm going to learn to like schnitzel and sachertorte.'

"Here I can really be free. I can practise my religion. I couldn’t do that in Vienna."

"I like to eat. The food here is very similar to Austria even if it’s mainly halal food. You can get ketchup here, Nutella and cornflakes."

From "Teen Islamic State pin-up girl changes her mind, is 'beaten to death.'"

"Some of y'all don't understand that this kind of clapping is killing black folk."

"Do you understand what I'm saying? Killing us."



"It's killing some white folks, too."

At a Carnegie Hall concert recently, Neil Young stopped in the middle of a song because some people in the audience were clapping off-beat. Mike Love of The Beach Boys says that sometimes, it's a cultural thing.

"For instance, the preponderance of American pop music is based on the beat of two and four," he says. "You'll have a lot of cultural influences that cause people to do one and three. I remember being in the Vienna Stadthalle — the town hall in Vienna, with about 12,000 people in it — and it was, like, Teutonic."

ADDED: Remember how the crowd clapping screwed up the beat in "Give Peace a Chance"?

And there was like Tommy Smothers and Tim Leary and Dick [Gregory], and all people sort of clapping along and singing on the chorus. And if you hear the record, it's funny actually, because my rhythm sense has always been a bit wild, and halfway through it, I got on the on-beat instead of the back-beat and it was hard because all the...there were non-musicians playing along with us. And so I had to put a lot of tape echo to double up the beat to keep a steady beat right through the whole record, so it goes Bo-boom, bo-boom, instead of Ba, Ba.

"The problem, apparently, is that the Jabba the Hut Lego palace looks like a mosque."

"And not just any mosque, but Istanbul’s great Hagia Sophia, and another mosque in Beirut, Jami al-Kabir."

Dr. Melissa Günes, General Secretary of the Turkish Cultural Community, confirmed that Lego had been contacted with an official complaint and that an Austrian toy store had removed the offending Lego sets, according to the Austrian Times.

"The ordinary people were not happy. They loathed the Emperor's interference in every detail of their daily lives."

"Why should they be forbidden to bake ginger-bread just because Joseph thought it bad for the stomach? Why the Imperial edict demanding the breast-feeding of infants? Why the banning of corsets? From these and a thousand other petty regulations, enforced by a secret police, it looked to the Austrians as though Joseph were trying to reform their characters as well as their institutions. Only a few weeks before Joseph's death, the director of the Imperial Police reported to him: 'All classes, and even those who have the greatest respect for the sovereign, are discontented and indignant.'"

From the History of Austria. Joseph II, who ruled from 1780 to 1790.



Austria is our "History of" country today, as we proceed through the 206 countries of the world using the Wikipedia summaries. So much has happened in Austria over the ages. The "History of" project cannot begin to summarize the summary. I merely offer up a snippet, one thing that struck me as something that might have particular resonance. But it is only one of many things. For example, from 25,000 BC:

"I do not understand you Austrians. If every woman wore a dirndl, there would not be any more ugliness."

Said the British designer Vivienne Westwood back in 2001, and the remark has had a big effect.

"Austrian Politician Photographed Having Sex In Forest By Hidden Wildlife Camera."

Oh, no!

Have you ever considered this possibility when you were having sex in the forest?

IN THE COMMENTS: AprilApple points to the part of the linked article that says the politician "will get up to $25,000 in compensation if the court rules his privacy was invaded." That does shed a different light on it — a less gentle, dappled light.

"Kim Jong Il, the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, deeply concerned over the soldiers’ diet."

The title of a painting from an exhibit called "“Flowers for Kim Il Sung: Art and Architecture from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.... in Vienna.

By presenting it uncritically, the Vienna museum is subtly legitimizing the world’s cruelest regime....

Like most socialist realism, this “art” is devoid of complexity. Whatever talents the North Korean painters may possess are tragically subordinated to Stalinist politics and stultifying adulation of the Dear Leader. The descriptions of the artwork underline its utterly bland, primitive, and unenlightening character: “The leaders’ closeness to the people is repeatedly emphasized,” reads the press release. “Red, internationally recognized as being symbolic of socialism, is employed most frequently.” My tour guide’s attempt to distinguish the works from those produced in other Communist societies by labeling it “Idealistic Realism” only underscored the lengths to which the MAK has had to go in order to justify the exhibition....


Could one imagine, in the 1930s, an English gallery featuring Nazi art in such undiscerning fashion?...

What about a Viennese gallery? You'd think Austria would be more sensitive.... about its own reputation.

The article, by James Kirchick, ends with this great George Orwell quote: "All art is propaganda. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art." (By the way, Orwell is calling himself a propagandist there, is he not?)

"Sounds to me like the classic what-if about killing Hitler has been put into practice."

Richard emails this.

ADDED: Obit:

Austrian far-right politician Jörg Haider, who was killed in a car crash in his home province of Carinthia very early on Saturday morning, was his native country's best-known person, his sharp and perpetually tanned features ubiquitous on television and magazines. He was also Austria's most polarizing figure, with an impact far beyond that country's borders. During a long and checkered career, Haider stood out from the crowd of post-war Austrian politicians with his good looks, athletic lifestyle and devilish talent for provocation. But he was also a populist and demagogue who played on and amplified his homeland's native anti-immigrant and anti-European Union sentiment, courted Western pariahs like Libya's Muammar Ghadafi and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and even at one point praised Adolf Hitler's "orderly" employment policies.

AND: "The last time I saw Joerg Haider, just under two weeks ago, he was being serenaded to Queen's hit 'We are the Champions'."

"The rooms are described as being neat and tidy. There are no windows."

"The three children who lived in the cellar, 19-year-old Kerstin and her two brothers aged 18 and five, had never seen daylight, and grew up with artificial light."

This is such a horrible story. I hate even to mention it. But this link goes to a story that depicts the underground living quarters Josef Fritzl somehow constructed and maintained and kept hidden for 24 years... as he went about his life as perhaps the most evil father ever.

AND: Could it be that it wasn't so dreadful for the youngest children?

Professor Jay Belsky, an expert in the field of child development and family studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, says the fact that the children were with their mother - a source of security - and with each other, could have mitigated the amount of trauma they suffered.

"Potentially, the children could have led tolerably rich social lives - there were four people there, at least three of them for a long period of time. This isn't a story about a child being locked in a closet all by himself," he told the BBC News website.

He said that in terms of the five-year-old, he would have been unlikely to have known what he was missing.

"As a youngster, your immediate environment is your whole world," he says.

"If there were books, games and a TV, there were things for all the children to make a psychological life around. It need not be as atrocious as it might first appear," he says.

That reminds me of Dr. Strangelove's description of life underground. But at this point, one hopes the professor is right.

"History is like a constantly changing tree."

Said British historian David Irving, as he faced sentencing in Austria for Holocaust denial. He also said, "I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz." That's not the same as saying my statements were incorrect. And these were the remarks of a man coerced by the threat of 10 years in prison. He got 3.

Irving's trial comes amid new -- and fierce -- debate over freedom of expression in Europe, where the printing and reprinting of unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has triggered violent protests worldwide.

The hypocrisy about free speech is overwhelming. Even if you decide to go the repressive way of punishing some speech because it wounds some and stimulates others to violence, you should at least have a neutral rule defining the proscribed speech.

So "History is like a constantly changing tree"? What does that mean? It sounds like the coded statement of a man who is standing by his version of the truth and acknowledging that other truth, that the victors write the history books.

I wonder how the history books would read on the cartoons story if, by some crazy chance, fascistic Islamists win World War IV.

"I'm voting to dare these militants, to have a strong parliament and government that would restrain these outlaws."

Says one expatriate Iraqi voting today in Jordan. They are also voting in Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Austria, Iran, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.

Here's a voter in Michigan: