The Editrix' Roncesvalles

Must Watch

2025-01-17T20:24:00.003+01:00

Retirement Update

2018-01-09T09:53:00.000+01:00

Update 07.06.2018:
Due to the new EU data security laws, I've disabled comments for this blog.

After having been banned by Facebook four times (last time for 30 days), I've decided to blog again. This is for now limited to my German blog.

The bilingual Editrix' Facebook "Fanpage", however, may be interesting for my Anglophone readers.

Update of the update 12.03.2018:
I've changed focus and design of my style blog "The Evil Style Queen" and there is a new one "Die böse Stilmutter" (something like "The Evil Stylemother").

Enjoy!

The Editrix Retires

2015-09-08T13:46:00.004+02:00

Dear friends and readers,

I'm done with blogging. Too old, too tired, too depressed. Those who want to follow my latest more spur-of-the-moment brain waves, please go to my personal Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/editrix.roncesvalles
or to "The Editrix" Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/die.editrix
where I've uploaded the best and still topical entries from all my blogs.

Thanks to all my faithful readers of many years. Some of you have become real friends.

Nora -- The Editrix

Freedom of Opinion is Dead in Germany

2014-12-09T12:35:00.000+01:00

There is a remarkably fair and balanced article about the German PEGIDA movement in today's Telegraph.

PEGIDA stands for Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, Patriot Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident. It is unanimously smeared as "right wing", "right wing populist", "right wing extremist" or "Nazi" in the German mainstream media. I wrote the following message to the author Justin Huggler at his website:

Dear Mr. Huggler,
Thank you very much for the fair report of the German PEGIDA-movement in "The Telegraph".

One wouldn't find anything like that in the German media where any criticism of Islam and Muslim immigration and the plight of ordinary citizens will be ostracized and smeared as "right wing". Your article is proof of the fact that in the UK quality journalist standards still apply.

Please allow me to correct one detail: Hooligans (with a capital "H") are not "self-proclaimed" but a considerable part of German soccer-fan culture. If they are violent, they are only violent among themselves. Away from the soccer stadiums they are ordinary citizens with families about whom they care, just like everybody else. There are professionals and academicians among them.

The demonstrations against Muslim immigration in Cologne did not turn more violent as any mass demonstration tends to be. What little violence there was was due to the countermarch of the extreme left and to police provocation. The 1000 police officers wouldn't have been able to control 6000 Hooligans had they been really set on violence. The few far-right demonstrators present had been free-riders. I will gladly provide you with proof of all those facts should you so desire.

Again, thank you very much for your article!

Sincerely yours,
Nora Brinker

The Tsunami of lies about the Cologne rally left me shit-scared. And no, not because of the Hooligans. Freedom of opinion is dead in Germany, that's why.

Geert Wilders during His Interrogation by the Dutch State Police

2014-12-09T11:39:00.001+01:00

From the Gatestone Institute:

As a democratically elected politician I name the problems that I see.... That is my duty. That is why I have been elected. I rely on objective facts and figures.... Because they are the truth.
I do not intend to hurt or offend people either... Already for over 10 years, I have lost my personal freedom.
In my fight for freedom and against the Islamization of the Netherlands, I will never let anyone silence me. No matter the cost, no matter by whom, whatever the consequences may be.
To speak with the words of Martin Luther King: "I close by saying there is nothing greater in all the world than freedom. It's worth going to jail for. It's worth losing a job for. It's worth dying for."

The Hague, December 8, 2014.

Today, Dutch parliamentarian and PVV leader Geert Wilders made a statement during his interrogation by the Dutch State Police. The State Police interrogated Mr Wilders on behalf of the Dutch Public Prosecutor, who is considering to prosecute Mr Wilders because the politician had asked his voters during the election campaign whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.

Our freedom is being threatened. Threatened by a violent totalitarian ideology – Islam – that brings with it death and devastation. Threatened by a politically correct elite that does not tolerate criticism of Islam and mass immigration, and that nurtures cultural relativism.

I rise up against this.

As a democratically elected politician I name the problems that I see. I name the dangers and disadvantages that we experience in the Netherlands as a result of cultural relativism, mass immigration and the ongoing Islamization. That is my task. That is my duty. That is why I have been elected. That is the reason why I am in politics and why I founded the Party for Freedom (PVV).
I am fighting for a better Netherlands.

To preserve our own culture.
Our own identity.
Our safety.
Our freedom.

I do not discriminate. I do not spread hatred, nor do I incite to it. I do not intend to hurt or offend people either. However, I do not mince my words when I defend our established freedoms and name the dangers to our society.

I dedicate my life to the fight against this evil ideology and the defense of our liberties. Every day, I pay the price for this fight. Already for over ten years, I have lost my personal freedom.

During the past 10 years, I have drawn attention to the Moroccan problem which we have here in the Netherlands. These include serious problems with integration, crime and welfare dependency. The majority of the jihadis travelling from the Netherlands to Syria is Moroccan. In order to see the whole context, the contents of the attachments that I deposit with you here today must be taken into consideration.

I rely on objective facts and figures. Facts that I must name. Because they are the truth. If we had had the same problem in the Netherlands with Canadians, I would have named them.

Those who do not understand that we have an enormous problem with Islam and with Moroccans in the Netherlands, though seeing, they do not see, and though hearing, they do not hear.

For the reasons above, while on campaign in The Hague, I argued that there need to be fewer Moroccans. And, at an election meeting in The Hague, I asked those present a number of questions, one of which was "Do you want more or fewer Moroccans?"

Geert Wilders during his March 2014 speech, where he asked "Do you want more or fewer Moroccans?" (Image source: nos.nl video screenshot)

Indeed, I want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands for the reasons and context that I have previously expressed in this statement as well as in Parliament and for which I refer you to the documents that I now deposit.

I have yet to meet the Dutchman who wants more Moroccans in the Netherlands. Asking for fewer Moroccans is something totally different than if I were to want all Moroccans to leave the Netherlands or than if I were to object to every Moroccan.

Like me, 43% of all the Dutch and 95% of my supporters want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. I have said what millions of Dutchmen think.

I also want less Islam in the Netherlands.

And like me, 65% of all the Dutch and 100% of my supporters think that the Islamic culture does not belong to the Netherlands.
Since the establishment of the PVV, I have advocated fewer immigrants from Islamic countries.
Since the establishment of the PVV, I have identified the Moroccan problem and presented (democratic) solutions for it, such as:

limiting the immigration of people from Islamic countries, hence also Morocco
promoting the voluntary remigration of non-Western foreigners, hence also Moroccans
expelling criminals with dual nationality after denaturalization, hence also Moroccans. Since Moroccans living in the Netherlands are significantly overrepresented in crime statistics and often have dual citizenship, this would also lead to fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.

I do not retract anything of what I have said.

Because I have said nothing wrong.

In my fight for freedom and against the Islamization of the Netherlands, I will never let anyone silence me. No matter the cost, no matter by whom, whatever the consequences may be.

To speak with the words of Martin Luther King: "I close by saying there is nothing greater in all the world than freedom. It's worth going to jail for. It's worth losing a job for. It's worth dying for."

For these above reasons, I assume that the Public Prosecutor will decide not to prosecute me.
Any other decision cannot be interpreted otherwise than politically motivated.

Geert Wilders

Islam Misunderstood. Bassam Tibi and Clifford May

2012-12-08T15:40:00.002+01:00

This is from the blog of my friend Dr. Gudrun Eussner. She usually writes in German (sadly), so I take this rare opportunity to put one of her entries up here.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

An answer to Islamology 101 and to a hallucinating Emeritus from Germany

A 1001 Document

There is no such science as Islamology. This is a phantastic creation by Bassam Tibi, coffee cup reading.

There is no such ideology called Islamism. Islam is Islam is Islam..

No Islamism has unfolded from Islam, it does not differ from Islam, only there are different ways and means to reach the goals of Islam: worldwide Islamisation.

Bassam Tibi is not at all an analyst but a Muslim magnifying Islam. Worldwide developments, p.e. the so-called Arab Spring, the situation in Syria, in Europe are disproving his myths.

An "Arab-Muslim pro-democracy theorist and practitioner" is a contradictio in adiecto, as Muslims are disregarding democracy. This is what Muslims are telling us frequently.

Muslims are living and operating without caring for democracy - and are proud of it.

Islam is a totalitarian ideology. And just as there cannot be "democratic totalitarianism," so there cannot be democratic Islam.

Fighting Islam is tantamount to having grasped finally that all of Islam is leading to Muslims becoming violent enemies if their leaders will require it from them.

As for the Obama administration's insistence that "the enemy is specifically, and only, al-Qaeda," that, Bassam Tibi writes, "is far too reductive." Right!

Noah Feldman, the Harvard Law School Professor, who advised the Bush administration, and who insisted that sharia, Islamic law, can be viewed as "Islamic constitutionalism" is correct.

Watch the significance of the claim of Islam to supremacy (siyadat al-Islam), the conviction that Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists are inferior and that their inferiority should be reflected under the law and by government institutions.

There is an important distinction: All jihadists are Muslims, but not all Muslims are jihadists.

In other words, not all Muslims are committed to violence, including terrorism, as the preferred means to achieve their goals.

Can we trust Muslims who forgo violence to participate in good faith within a pluralistic, democratic system? My answer: We cannot, never.

Chief among Muslim goals is al-hall al Islami, the Islamic solution, "a kind of magic answer for all of the problems - global and local, socio-economic or value-related - in the crisis-ridden world of Islam."

Muslims know the fact that such radical governance has been implemented, for example, in Iran for over more than 30 years, in Afghanistan under the Taliban, in Gaza under Hamas, and in Sudan. Muslims agree to it.

Islam never has delivered development, freedom, human rights, or democracy.

Turkey is not yet a sharia based state but heading in that direction.

Saudi religious/political doctrines are a "variety of Salafism, i.e.orthodox, traditional Islam".

Salafism is a variant of Islam, albeit one based not on the writings of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, but on Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703 - 1792), glorifying the days of the seventh century and the Sahaba.

During the Cold War there was a field of study named Sovietology, a nonscientific metaphor leading to mere ideology. It was taught in most US elite universities with strong government support.
May Islamology not become a discipline like Sovietology.

To protect themselves against criticism, Muslim officials have invented the formula of Islamophobia to defame their critics.

And of course if such slander fails to intimidate, there are other ways to shut people up: Attempts by jihadists on critics' lifes.

The main reason for not rejecting Islam as a totaltarian ideology: The U.S. government cannot back the study and the critic of an ideology that has infiltrated parts of it already through its representatives, Muslim Sisters like Dalia Mogahed and Huma Abedin, to name only two.

"Those who do fund anything to do with Islam on campus - for example, the Gulf petro-princes who have given tens of millions of dollars to Georgetown and Harvard - have a different agenda, one that does not include free and serious inquiry."

This the US government is knowing very well and endorsing what their enemies are doing - at great peril.

You [Jews] are all greedy, why can’t you just let it go?

2012-09-03T15:12:00.001+02:00

Read this!

50 Years Ago Today

2012-08-17T18:33:00.001+02:00

I am reposting this:

Many of my non-German readers will have never heard of Peter Fechter.

Who was Peter Fechter?

Peter Fechter was a young bricklayer from East Berlin. He had tried to flee from the GDR (German Democratic Republic) to the free West together with his friend Helmut Kulbeik by climbing over the Berlin Wall near Checkpoint Charlie.

When both had crossed the death strip and reached the six-foot-high barrier with barbed wire on top, border guards fired at them. Kulbeik managed to cross the Wall, Fechter was shot in the pelvis in full view of hundreds of witnesses. He fell back into the death strip where he remained in view of Western onlookers, journalists and the American military. Despite his screams for help, he received no medical assistance either from the East or the West side. The only bystander who made any effort to help Fechter was a West German policeman who dropped two first aid packages over the Wall.

According to a TIME Magazine report:

One conscience-stricken U.S. second lieutenant could stand it no longer, picked up the "hot line" telephone to Major General Albert Watson II. the U.S. commandant in West Berlin. Back came the order: "Lieutenant, you have your orders. Stand fast. Do nothing." Not knowing the reason for the Americans' inaction, an agonized crowd swirled around the command post crying: "For God's sake, go get him." When a German reporter asked why the American troops did not rescue Fechter one G.I. replied, "This is not our problem."

World War III was thus safely avoided and Peter Fechter bled to death within the hour. Today, 50 years ago. He was 18 years old.

Was justice done after the fall of the Berlin Wall?

In March 1997, two former East German border guards, Rolf Friedrich and Erich Schreiber, faced manslaughter charges for Fechter's death. They were both convicted, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment on probation. The official count of the Berlin public prosecutor knows of 270 deaths at the German-German border and the Berlin Wall. In 2005, the Senat, the Berlin city council, refused to elevate Peter Fechter's grave to the status of an Ehrengrab because such a status is confined to the circle of those "who deserve credit for services for Berlin and performed beyond Berlin's borders".

My older blog entry A Collective Psychogram may be interesting in this context as well.

Arab Spring

2012-03-10T14:54:00.002+01:00

Here!

The Neverending Voyage of the Landshut

2011-10-13T00:26:00.004+02:00

I have posted this twice before and I will go on posting it on every suitable occasion until somebody finally pays notice.

On October 13, 1977, flight LH 181, the Lufthansa Boeing 737-200 "Landshut" with 91 people on board, several children and five crew members among them, was hijacked by Palestinian Arab terrorists on a trip from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt/Main, an event that marked a new level of terrorist brutality and government response.

The hijacking was the means to the end of freeing eleven Baader-Meinhof/Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) terrorists from prison. Crew and passengers had to fly several sectors to various airports in the Mediterranean and the Middle East under threat of death by guns or explosives. Because Yemeni authorities had blocked Aden airport, captain and first officer, facing the fact of being almost out of fuel, managed to land, in a maneuvre of unique aeronautical mastership, the 30 meter long jet safely on a sand strip nearby. At Aden it was, that Captain Jürgen Schumann was forced to kneel down in the aisle, in front of his passengers and the crew, and executed. After the cold-blooded murder of his captain, Jürgen Vietor, the first officer, had to fly the 737, which had just undergone a gruelling emergency landing, solo to touch down safely at Mogadishu, Somalia, an airport, that had before, literally and metaphorically, not been on his, a Boeing 737 pilot's, map. Both men had a military background, Captain Schumann had been a Starfighter-, Vietor a navy pilot. At Mogadishu airport, passengers and crew were forced to undergo an ordeal of almost twenty more hours before an elite unit of German federal police, the GSG 9, finally and successfully raided the plane, killing three of the four terrorists and only hurting one of the hostages. The heads of the Baader-Meinhof gang at Stammheim prison commited suicide only hours later, Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the German employers' association who had been held hostage by the RAF for the same purpose, was found the next day. He, too, had been mudered -- execution style.

The Landshut in Rome. Italy refused to comply with German wishes and let the aircraft take off.

The odyssey of the Landshut

On October 12, 2007, the Frankfurter Rundschau published a remarkable interview performed by Mark Obert with Jürgen Vietor, which I luckily happened to save, as it is now offline. I translate a few excerpts here.

[...]

Are you frequently asked whether you never made the attempt to overpower Mahmud [the leader of the terrorists]

Sometimes.

Do you consider it a reproach?

No, I always tell precisely what happend aboard. One has to understand: We couldn't risk to antagonize Mahmud. There were 86 passengers we had to bring home safely. Our four hijackers defined themselves as freedom fighters, they weren't suicide assassinators like those on September 11. Our hijackers had two goals: The freeing of eleven prisoned terrorists, including those in Stammheim [i.e. the Baader-Meinhof gang members]. And they wanted to survive -- like we did. Based on this common ground we had to cooperate.

And to cope with the fear of the hijackers?

That too. Mahmud's fear played a decisive role at one point. Before we touched down at Aden ... something happened, which explains Mahmuds later atrocious behaviour. He wasn't able to fasten his seatbelt. He sat there like paralyzed because he was obviously scared to death. Therefore Jürgen [Captain Schumann] and I had to fasten his seatbelt. [Vietor explains earlier in the interview that they had to do that because a dead Mahmud bulleting through the cockpit in case of an emergency would have endangered the entire aircraft.] After touchdown, Yemeni military came to the aircraft straight away and talked to Mahmud, who was still upset. Mahmud then told us: "They are adamant to force us to depart. They have issued an ultimatum." Imagine the humiliation for Mahmud: First the thing about the seatbelt and now the rejection by those he had considered his friends. South Yemen was at that time a training center for the PLO. [Notabene that the Baader-Meinhof terrorists received training at PLO camps, thus reviving a long-standing tradition of cooperation between Arabs and Germans.]

Did you consider Mahmud's defeat as dangerous for yourself right from the start?

Mahmud had suffered a loss of face. I understood that he was bound to compensate for it sooner or later...

[...]

At that point you have been for two days in the hands of the hijackers already. Did you have a clear picture of Mahmud and the others?

Something like a profile? No. But that they, too, were highly under stress was obvious from the first moment: all the darting around, the shouting and the gun-waving. The first thing Mahmud did was to sport Jürgen Schumann's captain's cap. That's what he wanted to be, Captain Mahmud. After that, one had to assume that he was a psychopath.

Did you anticipate that Mahmud would kill Schumann?

I had to, because Mahmud had in the meantime informed the passengers as well that he was going to hold a revolution tribunal... In Dubai he had selected passengers for execution. Stupefying. Luckily, he didn't go through with it. But then he became more mistrustful and irritated by the minute because he didn't know what Schumann [who had left the aircraft under the pretense of inspecting the undercarriage which might have suffered through the landing on the sand strip, but, so it became known later, had gone to the airport building to plead for the people in the "Landshut"] was up to. That was an additional loss of authority on top of the other humiliation. I had a very bad feeling, but what could I do?

Does the question haunt you?

It is a non-starter, really. I don't know for sure what Jürgen Schumann would have done in my place, but I think he'd done the same. It was the sensible thing to do.

Feelings of guilt can exist in spite of rational decisions.

His death makes me sad.

The hijackers had thrown his dead body out of the aircraft the next day at Mogadishu.

That wasn't quite so. In fact, they've let him down the rear emergency chute.

Is this difference important for you?

It is a little bit less undignified.

Did you know Schumann well?

He was a young pilot, I was young. [Schumann was 37, Vietor 35.] We had first met before takeoff at Mallorca. And during the hijacking there was no opportunity to talk about private matters.

Do you sometimes think of what Jürgen Schumann might have thought on his way back to the plane?

I thought of it a lot, but without result. Now, after the statement of that General [Sheikh Ahmed Mansur, head of the unit that had surrounded the "Landshut" at Aden airport] I see that he must have known what was waiting for him. And so it happened. Exactly between Economy and First Class before everybody's eyes he had to kneel and Mahmud asked him: "Are you guilty or not guilty?" And Schumann said: "I tried to…" Then Mahmud again: "Are you guilty or not guilty". And again Schumann tried to explain what happened, but Mahmud didn't want to know it at all. He murdered the captain to appear as the resolute leader.

Herr Vietor, is it permissable to think that your chance of survival increased because of Schumann's death because now you'd become indispensable for Mahmud?

One can think that. One can ask as well the basic question why Mahmud murdered the captain and not the first officer.

He almost murdered you as well.

Before Schumann died, I was going to be shot dead twice. First, because I wore a Junghans watch with a "J" on the face and a company logo that looks a bit like the Star of David. Therefore Mahmud thought I was a Jew. The second time, because I was caught calling the Baader-Meinhof group, whom Mahmud intended to free, terrorists instead of freedom fighters. Then there were all the denied clearences to land, the emergency landing in Aden. Five days long it was about nothing but to survive the next hour, not to make any mistake, to keep an eye on the technology... Captain Schumann had just been shot dead when the ancillary unit went out. If one doesn't pinch off the battery pronto, one needs a new one. I didn't want to risk that. Therefore I went to the cockpit as fast as possible and had to step over Schumann's dead body, very carefully, over his legs, his arms, and over his head. Gosh, I couldn't even mourn -- the more as it was me who had to fly the aircraft now. Because I had no idea of the condition of the plane, I had at least to try and to delay the takeoff until daylight to have a better chance for an emergency landing in case of technical problems. I thought feverish how to play for time. First I asked ... for manual refuelling... then for weather charts, which won me ten more minutes. In the end, I had to take off in the middle of the night. Believe me, to fly an aircraft that had just gone through such an emergency landing was risky enough and then Mahmud topped it all by telling me that we were flying to Mogadishu. Mogadishu? I had no idea, where that was, I didn't even know where Somalia was. As a first officer on a 737, the farest I had ever gotten was Cairo. Lucky for us, on our maps, which only showed the 737-routes, the southernmost spot was just Mogadischu, two millimeter away from the bottom margin.

How was Mahmud after his act of violence?

Very focused. I needed a first officer. And finally he was where he wanted to be all the time, in the pilot's seat, with Jürgen Schumann's cap on his head.

How did you react to him?

We all behaved just right without thinking much about a strategy. We were cooperative without sucking up to the hijackers just as every instructional film recommends.

[...]

Did it help that you had to concentrate on the technology?

Very. Being ruthlessly exposed to those people was the most difficult thing I had to suffer because I like to be in control. But at least I had something to do whereas the passengers were confined to their seats, belts fastened, without information. They weren't even allowed to speak. And because the sunshades had to be down all the time they didn't even know where we were. Sometimes they were allowed to use the lavatory, that was all. That was much worse than what I experienced -- I believe.

[...]

What do you think [of the fact that the 20th- and 25th anniversaries of the "Landshut" hijacking went almost unnoticed, different from the 30th]?

Maybe the media are so eager because most of the witnesses will be dead in a couple of years. To think of how old the then chancellor [Helmut Schmidt] is now. Not to forget the discussion about the petitions for clemency of Mohnhaupt und Klar [Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar were among the masterminds of the "second generation" of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) and the crimes commited during the "German Autumn". They were detained, trialled and sentenced in the Eighties, Mohnhaupt to five terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. After the minimum term of 24 years, she was set free in March 2007 on parole. Klar was sentenced to six terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. 1992 he got an additional life sentence in a different trial.] ... This discussion irritated me very much.

Why?

... When the consequences of terrorism are discussed, it's mostly about the consequences for the state. And now the state is supposed to show mercy because state and society are past terrorism. That may be, but are the bereaved past it? If somebody is able to show mercy it's them. I think that Klar and Mohnhaupt deserve more than just those 26 years. They ought to leave prison only in a coffin.

The discussion about pardon [for the Baader-Meinhof terrorists] has offended you.

Very much so. In spite of the fact that my suffering was limited. But I don't even want to begin to imagine how Jürgen Schumann's widow feels, or the widows of Schleyer und Buback [Siegfried Buback, German chief federal prosecutor from 1974-1977, his driver and a security officer, can be considered the first victims of the "German Autumn". They were murdered in a drive-by shooting on April 7, 1977.], or the children of the security officers. I don't intend to mention all the names here, there are so many who were murdered in cold blood. Okay, there may be good reasons to ask for mercy, but then the perpetrator ought to be deserving of it. Does Mohnhaupt? I don't know. But Klar, who is still adamant that the fight insn't over yet? How can he ask a state he is fighting for mercy? That is cowardice. Alright, the president has denied Klar that [in 2007, Christian Klar's mercy petition was rejected], but I fear that Klar will be released sooner or later.

What does a life sentence for Klar mean to you?

Satisfaction? It would go together with my sence of justice. That in any case. I will tell you something: Three of our four hijackers were killed by the GSG 9, and the only survivor, Andrawes, is suffering for life. I am glad for that.

She was shot during the raid and can't walk properly anymore…

… and is in pain. Yes.

Do you wish she were suffering from a bad conscience as well?

How can one determine anything like that? It's not measurable anyway.

[Notabene that Jürgen Vietor's witness account at Souhaila Andrawe's court trial exonerated her in many details because he chose to tell the facts instead of taking revenge.]

[...]

Did you ever have nightmares?

No.

[...]

Never been scared again?

Never.

Did you assess passengers henceforth? Who looks suspicious? Who is acting oddly?

No.

But you surely forewent the "Landshut", didn't you?

I'll tell you something now that is hardly believable. When a colleague asked me years later whether I've ever flown the "Landshut" again, I said that I didn't know.

What? Tourists have nicked pukebags from the "Landshut" and you didn't care whether you had to enter that plane or not?

Wait, it gets even more remarkable: I looked up my old flight schedules. My first scheduled flight after the hijacking was with the "Landshut". Of 80 possible 737-jets the "Landshut". I have proof of that.

[...]

The last hours on October 17 and 18.

Yes, things were coming to a head now. Day five, Mahmud was at the end of his tether. He submitted his last ultimatum. At 15:00 at the latest, the Baader-Meinhof group and the other terrorists were to arrive at Mogadishu or he'd blow us all up. Our last information was that the federal government wasn't going to give in. So they tied our hands behind our backs with the women's nylons, shoved us into seats and fastened the seatbelts. Even the children's seatbelts were fastened. Then they uncorked the duty-free spirit... and emptied the bottles on top of us. "So that you will burn better." Ah well... In the end, they applied plastic explosives everywhere. I had been in the military and saw at once that it looked like the real thing. And the detonators were definitely genuine: brass sheathing. When I looked at the clock it was ten to three.

May I ask a fallacious question?

Whether we didn't fight even then, right?

Is that the question you are asking yourself?

It has been asked before many times. I have always admitted that we let ourselves drive like lambs to the slaughter. But who has never felt a gun at his neck ought to judge very carefully.

What I really wanted to ask is whether it is true that in the face of death one seas a fast-motion playback of one's life.

That is a myth. I saw nothing at all anymore, only the hands of the clock. Now you have ten minutes more to live, now nine, when suddenly, five minutes before time, excited radio voices could be heard from the cockpit. Mahmud came running and asked me how long it would take a Boeing 707 from Frankfurt to Mogadishu. I started to do the numbers. Adrenaline works miracles. Imagine, I hadn't slept even a minute for several days. So I figured out: we are close to the equator, Frankfurt lies 50 degrees north of us, roughly 3000 miles, a bit of slope distance as well: roughly seven or eight hours. That was good because it was exactly the time they had told Mahmud via the radio. Then he cried joyfully: "They'll exchange! They'll exchange!" What a relief.

[...]

Then, when it was dark, the plane was raided. Your second birth.

One can put it like that.

The mission of the antiterror unit GSG 9 was triumphal.

Yes, brilliant.

Was it worth the risk? Just to not having to release eleven imprisoned terrorists?

I never gave it a thought.

You never gave it a thought? The state could have given in and set you free without such a risk.

That is a touchy point. Let me put it like that: Should somebody ask me whether I thought while we were in that situation that the state ought not to budge and I'd reply with yes, I'd lie. We have beseeched the chancellor to exchange, we begged over the radio. Life is important. Who wants to victimize himself. But had I been in front of a TV set I, too, would have said that the state must not budge.

[...]

So you understand [Chancellor Helmut Schmidt]?

His moral dilemma, yes. Guilt and liability are hard to escape. At that time I have simply begged for my life, as Mr. Schleyer did.

The chancellor considered himself to be in a sort of war against terrorism and put himself, together with his crisis squad, almost all of them former Wehrmacht members, in a sort of combat situation.

But it was a war the terrorists waged against the state. That a politician taps into his experience as a soldier I can, as a soldier, understand.

What do you think if hostages are taken in Iraq or Afghanistan. To pay or not to pay?

What is the state supposed to do? To budge? How big is the danger to produce copycat crimes and thus even more victims in the long run? Exactly that is the question to which nobody has an answer. I am not presumptious enough to consider my opinion important just because of my experience as a victim.

[...]

I could have died through a [GSG 9] officer's bullet. Did this thought occur to you?

The government had even taken into account that some of us hostages would die ... It is bordering on a miracle that no hostage and no GSG 9-officer died.

It must have been an incredible ruckus.

The banging away seemed endless and if the GSG 9-boys hadn't hollered all the time we hadn't even known that there were Germans attacking. "Where are you pigs?" "Here, you pigs!"

They hollered that?

Believe it or not. And it felt good to hear it.

[...]

Did you ever talk about that to the GSG-9-commander, Ulrich Wegener, the hero of Mogadishu?

I met him recently for the first time since 30 years. It was very helpful because he was able to explain some details previously unknown to me. For example that at the ladders they got at Mogadishu rungs were missing.

Not a personal word?

Only technical stuff. Nothing deep.

What do you consider deep?

Something like questions of innocence and guilt, like those we just discussed. That is deep. In the sense of profound.

You close yourself off, in a psychological sense?

I don't have any secrets.

[...]

And still, many think you are a hero.

I don't. Heroes look out for danger. I was exposed to it. And even that by mere chance. On October 13, the day we took off from Mallorca, I was on standby when the first officer fell sick and I stood in for him.

Good God, how does one ever say "thank you" for anything like that?

He never said "thank you". I am still waiting for my bottle of bubbly. But seriously, I don't even know the colleague's name. I have never tried to find it out.

Are you sometimes amazed at yourself?

A little bit. And at this point I remember a peculiar thing. When I was with Mahmud in the cockpit, I heard scratching noises and suddenly turned around and saw an empty seat in front of the emergency exit. I thought I go and sit down there. Later I learned that the GSG 9 was watching us with night sights and hoped that I would move away from Mahmud. I don't believe in telepathy but that is truly amazing, isn't it?

Do you believe in luck? In fate? Or is everything mere chance.

We were damned lucky.

There had been children on board.

Yes, it could all have been much more sad than it was anyway.

Have you ever met Jürgen Schumann's widow?

No, never. There isn't anything about her in the media. She must be very bitter.

Mr. Vietor, you are retired. What are you doing now?

My partner and I do a lot of travelling with the camper.

You are divorced?

Yes, and believe me, that really hurt me. I was vitually depressive. It had nothing to do with the hijacking.

Sure.

Sure. I am fine now. I just regret that I can not live in Canada.

Nice and far away.

In Vancouver, wonderful city. But the Canadians don't want an old age pensioner.

So far Jürgen Vietor's account. What happened to the other participants in the drama?

Jürgen Vietor and flight attendant Gabriele Dillmann 1977

Jürgen Vietor and Gabriele von Lutzau 2007

The "Landshut" served the Deutsche Lufthansa until 1985 and then went on an odyssey serving many owners around the globe. Until January 2008 she flew for TAF Linhas Aereas under the registration number PT-MTB in Brasil. Since January 2008, after 38 years and about 30.000 trips, she is now placed as a memorial to itself in a remote spot of Fortaleza airport. The name "Landshut" is still in use by the Lufthansa. Currently, an Airbus A330 is thus named.

The Bavarian town of Landshut named a street after Jürgen Schumann and the Lufthansa the building of their flight training school in Bremen. Different from his colleague Vietor, Schumann can not hand back the Bundesverdienstkreuz that had been awarded to him posthumously.

Monika Schumann is still, so it can be safely assumed, serving her life sentence. Waltrude Schleyer's ended when she died on March 21, 2008 at the age of 92, 31 years after the RAF had murdered her husband.

From October 1964 until June 1965, Leutnant Jürgen Schumann received training at Luke AFB under Colonel James Jabarra. Memorial page here (in German).

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the man whose strength, authority and brains saw Germany safely through the most difficult time since WWII, was, two years ago, at the age of 89, publicly reproved because his smoking habit was setting a bad example for society. This, to show that we have got our priorities right.

Chancellor Helmut Schmidt offers his condolences to Waltrude Schleyer.

The Federal Republic of Germany, who was adamant in 1977 never to talk to terrorists again, pledged at a donor conference on December 19, 2007 twenty million Euro for the Palestinians.

God Help Us

2011-07-25T17:22:00.001+02:00

Two or three things about the Norwegian horror:

There is a German Facebook group "I am conservative and I denounce the terror assault in Norway" ("Ich bin konservativ und verurteile den Terroranschlag in Norwegen"). Why does a "conservative" need to distance himself from such a monstrous crime? Are conservatives known for planting bombs in government buildings? Of butchering the children of their political opponents? What will they do next? Distance themselves from breathing because that mass murdering scum breathes -- sad to say -- as well? Those who excuse themselves accuse themselves.

Which leads us to the term "terrorist", which is as falsely as liberally (ha ha) applied here. That man is a mass murderer. Terror is something to establish fear and soften opposition to achieve a political goal within a defined framework. The IRA comes to mind, as does the Basque ETA or -- dare I say it -- Islam, and while multiculturalists and Gutmenschen stumble over their own legs in the attempt to euphemise the countless heinous deeds committed by Muslims in the spirit of Islam as as "isolated cases", conservatives jump the gun in anticipating obedience to declare that they have nothing to do with this mass murderer. Who would have thought so.

There is another aspect, maybe the most irritating one. 800 young people plus attendants, coaches and other carers -- there must have been a three-figure number of able-bodied men in their late teens or twenties on that island. The murderer had to load and re-load that gun again and again during those hellish 90 minutes. However, as far as we know, no attempt was made to overpower him. Different from the people of Hero Flight 93, the young people would even have had a decent chance to survive. Is that the outcome of more than 40 years of misandry, of denouncing and criminalising the best qualities of the male sex? Have they heard once to often the debased creed that "violence has never taken anybody anywhere"? God help us!

The Words Speak for Themselves:

2011-05-19T08:34:00.000+02:00

This is from an email circular. Thanks to R.M.!

George W. Bush speech after the capture of Saddam Hussein:

The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq. The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.

Barack Obama speech after the killing of bin Laden:

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network. Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan . And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad , Pakistan ..

Obama used the words I, me, or my over a dozen times in his entire speech. George Bush used them twice to say "I thank" and "I congratulate".

So what else is ...

2011-05-14T13:49:00.000+02:00

... new?

Important New Blog

2011-05-11T13:05:00.000+02:00

For those who come here because they are interested in Germany and German matters, I can't recommend strong enough Manfred Kleine-Hartlage's new blog German Views, an offshoot of his essay blog Korrektheiten.

Shit they make up as they go along

2011-05-03T12:42:00.000+02:00

Pope John Paul II, who is as specifically as miraculously hailed for fostering Catholic-Jewish relations and remembering the Holocaust, has been beatified yesterday. For this, the remains of Pope Innocent XI had been removed from their place and moved to a less conspicious place.

Now the Holy Sea is trying to deal with its first and so far only pop star, the Internet is a-twitter with speculation about the reason why precisely THIS pope had to make way for for the many pilgrims who are likely to come to visit John Paul II's remains.

One theory quotes a book from 2002, saying that Innocent might have been fallen from grace because the Odescalchi family had financed the campaigns of William of Orange who, at the Battle of the Boyne, defeated his father-in-law James II and forever removed Catholicism from the British throne.

What a clever supposition! So Innocent XI, né Benedetto Odescalchi, the saviour of the Occident, who was beatified himself in 1956, was removed in 2011 from his burial site because a book from 2002 had revealed that his family had been involved in some political shenanigans with an outcome that proved to be unfortunate for the Catholic world.

Give me a break!

And of course Innocent had a "frosty relationship" with France. What an astute observation. That was because the valiant Sun King, when Pope Innocent XI had called for a European Alliance alliance preceding the Battle of Vienna 1683, had to not only declined to join, but used the opportunity to raid cities in Alsace and other parts of South Germany.

At this point, I'd like to recall my entries Starhemberg, Lorraine, Sobieski, A City and A Battle and John Paul II -- Hailed and Reviled for the Wrong Reasons and How does one improve one's relationships with the Jews? Let me count the ways....

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T12:01:00.001+01:00

Winter 2010/2011 in the Ore Mountains.

England Is Doing away with Herself

2010-12-23T22:05:00.001+01:00

More.

Understanding the Delicacies of Islam

2010-12-16T10:31:00.007+01:00

Sharia can be fun:

A video published at YouTube gone viral has triggered some outrage in Sudan and scant attention in the West.

Outcry in Sudan
The Guardian - ‎9 hours ago‎

In fact, the outcry denouncing police brutality shows the vitality of Sudanese media and civil society. In a statement, our embassy in London wrote: "The ...

Flogging Video Sparks Protest in Sudan New York Times (blog)

Police arrest women protesting Sudanese flogging video Catholic Online

Woman Flogged For Wearing Pants In Sudan [Disturbing Video] RantRave | Published Opinion.

UPI.com - CNN International
all 219 news articles »

It shows Sudanese police officers laughing as they are publicly lashing a crying, pleading woman trying to flee. Tuesday, dozens of protesters gathered outside the Justice Ministry in Khartoum, authorities said. The demonstrators belong to the Women Initiative Against Violence, and 52 of them -- 46 women and six men -- were arrested for unlawful assembly and released under bail, according to a statement by the Khartoum State Police Force.

Sudan's deputy police chief Adel Al-Agib, speaking to the Dubai based Al-Arabiya TV, said on Monday that the release of the video at this time was ill-intentioned to coincide with the Human Rights day of December 10 and to give the country a bad name. Yes, it seems he really said that.

Columnists in Sudanese pro-government newspapers have called for an immediate investigation. This was (are we amazed?) not because the flogging happened at all, but about how it was performed. The woman was at first flogged to her back, but when she turned to ask for mercy, the whipping continued to her face, hands and legs. This does not comply with Islamic law.

One can say now, of course, that Sudan is a backward hellhole in Africa, full of primitive people and that would be, indeed, true. But how do we then explain people like, say, Katajun Amirpur, half German, German educated, one of the pet-Iranians of the German media, who tried to sell us in 2004 in a leading German newspaper that, her father's country, with which she identifies, is undergoing "progress" because a 16-year-old girl wasn't stoned to death, but rather hanged for the crime of pre-marital sex. "(T)he official age of marriage [which is coupled with the age of hangability]... after delicate negotiations between reformers and conservatives, was raised from 9 to 10 years". That is the same Amirpur who lectured us that the unwashed monstrosity in Tehran didn't really say that Israel ought to be "wiped off the map" (that was a plot to deprive innocent-as-driven-snow Iran from getting the atomic bomb) when he said Israel ought to be wiped off the map.

Yeah right! Understanding the delicacies of Islam is what really matters.

And while I'm at it, here is the link to another still topical older entry.

All this has, of course, nothing to do with Islam, I mean REAL Islam, which is mercy.

The Rotting Fish That Is Sweden

2010-12-12T18:27:00.006+01:00

In the past several years Sweden has welcomed thousands of new citizens from Arab lands who have repaid their hosts by making their quarters "no go areas" for Swedish police, recreating their culture of hatred and violence at the expense of their hosts. The city of Malmö is specifically plagued. About 7 percent of Malmö's 285,000 inhabitants are of "Middle Eastern origin" (a Western society can bear as much as a 3 percent Muslim population without suffering damage) and, according to the Malmö police, of 115 hate crimes reported in 2009, 52 were antisemitic. And that in spite of the fact that the number of Jews in Malmö is about 700 and shrinking.

Different from Denmark, where police, state and authorities take the issue of Muslim violence seriously, Jews get little support from their Swedish counterparts. Malmö's left-wing Mayor Ilmar Reepalu, for one, thinks that antisemitism comes from the extreme right. He also thinks, that the Jews have brought it unto themselves because they didn't distance themselves from the Israeli campaign in Gaza.

So what else is new.

Now yesterday's bomb blasts that shattered the Swedish capital have triggered really strong and principled responses from Sweden's top politicians, after they had assessed that there was really terrorist intent behind it and not just a wardrobe malfunction of a guy who wears bombs strapped to his body and a Palestinian headrag just for fun. PM Fredrik Reinfeldt called them 'unacceptable' and foreign minister Carl Bildt said in a Twitter message (no less) that it was the "most worrying attempt at terrorist attack in crowded part of central Stockholm". That'll teach them!

Yes, he really said "attempt"! And here am I, thinking that a terrorist attack was something that terrorizes people. But who knows, maybe all Swedes are as sanguine about the Evil of Islam as the mayor of Malmö and it takes much more than a piddling bomb blast with a dead terrorist -- alright, make that "bomb carrier" -- and two injured to terrorize them.

A fish rots from the head down.

Whodunit

2010-12-12T17:17:00.006+01:00

This is interesting in the context of my last entry:

Born in ..., X came from a poor family, his father being a railway clerk. An exceptional intelligence enabled him to rise quickly in the officer ranks of the ... army. He joined the counter-espionage service and rose to become its chief. During his tenure in office he greatly improved the methods used by the ... counter-espionage service. But at the same time he himself was a spy for ..., ...'s enemy, and his exposure was largely due to the improvements he had developed himself.

X's motives for treason are still unclear. He may have been caught in a compromising position by ... agents, since he was homosexual and being exposed as such would have been fatal to his career prospects. Actually, ... military intelligence had discovered X's homosexuality as early as 19XX, information that was used to blackmail him into revealing classified information.

He was paid well for his services, and had a lifestyle far above what his official salary could cover. It would appear that there was also a strong element of vanity involved, as well as a taste for the dangers. A ... report of 19XX describes X as "more sly and false than intelligent and talented", a cynic "who enjoys dissipation."

ANSWER

About Sexual Orientation and Moral Fibre

2010-12-04T22:37:00.009+01:00

A top aide to German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle (who is homosexual) has been identified as the person responsible for passing on information about government coalition talks to the US Embassy in the latest WikiLeaks disclosures. Westerwelle was reportedly (and aptly) described as "arrogant, vain and critical of America" by Ambassador Philip Murphy in the leaked material.

Guido Westerwelle with his partner Michael Mronz, whom he "married" in a civil law ceremony (domestic parnership registry) in September 2010.

It soon transpired that it was Westerwelle's office manager, no less, who had passed on confidential information, yes, that very informer who had been described in dispatches by U.S. Ambassador Philip Murphy, as a "young up-and-coming" FDP member. Metzner was relieved from his job as Westerwelle's office manager, but no legal action will be taken against him and he will go on working for the FDP organisation.

Metzner, too, is homosexual.

At this point, I'd like to look back on Hamburg's ex-mayor Ole von Beust, who is -- you've guessed it -- homosexual. He entered the twilight zone when he appointed Roger Kusch, who is homosexual, senator for justice. That Beust politically survived the ensueing scandal is due to the fact that he was always known, in any other respect, as a man of utter integrity. So maybe he just made an honest mistake, but oughtn't he have avoided to appoint another homosexual without any especially remarkable qualification to such a high office? Beust always considered his sexual orientation a private matter, however, a shadow remains, the more as Kusch is, to all intents and purposes, a repulsive and spooky creep and still in the headlines from time to time.

Beust is living together now, after he retired from politics, with a man 36 years his junior, whom he had met -- will wonders ever cease -- when the boy had just turned 18.

But I digress. Now what about the leak at the other end, the man who let WikiLeaks have the documents which are causing such a brouhaha right now. It is Private Bradley E. Manning and he is homosexual.

An interesting NYT article informs us:

Then he joined the Army, where, friends said, his social life was defined by the need to conceal his sexuality under “don’t ask, don’t tell” and he wasted brainpower fetching coffee for officers.

But it was around two years ago, when Pfc. Bradley Manning came here [Cambridge, Mass.] to visit a man he had fallen in love with, that he finally seemed to have found a place where he fit in, part of a social circle that included politically motivated computer hackers and his boyfriend, a self-described drag queen. So when his military career seemed headed nowhere good, Private Manning, 22, turned increasingly to those friends for moral support.

[...]

And as he faces the possibility of a lifetime in prison, some of Private Manning’s remarks now seem somewhat prophetic.

“I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much,” he wrote, “if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press.”

The rest is history.

And while it isn't quite so that being homosexual makes one more likely to commit acts of mass data transferring, it ought to be worth a thought whether an openly "gay" lifestyle doesn't undermine the moral fibre of those who pursue it. In May 2009 I wrote:

Homosexuals in political positions tend to form "rope teams" and they are EXTREMELY power conscious. Also, theirs is not just an alternative sexual orientation between two consenting adults, it is a way of life. The world rotates around their dick and the world has duly to pay tribute to that. They are, like Islam, creeping in every nook and cranny of our life, dispossessing what is there. With those disgusting "gay pride"- and "love" parades, with all their strident demands and whining about "discrimination" and with incidents like the ousting of Carrie Prejean, with intimidation and discrimination towards those who dare not to consent 100%, they are yanking our chains.

Being homosexual is one thing, being "gay" quite a different matter.

Hat tip: Red County!

The Depth of German Hatred for America and Modernity

2010-12-03T20:38:00.007+01:00

How many times have I stressed that the "Christian" Union parties ARE NOT conservative and that it's beyond ridiculous to label former agitprop secretary Angela Merkel such? Well, read this article, German 'Conservatives' Find Common Ground with Sharia-Compliant Economics, by John Rosenthal. Excerpt:

In a series of seminars held recently in Berlin, Ankara, and Abu Dhabi, Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation examined the “commonalities” between the social market economy and “Islamic economics.” As reported in the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the participants:

came to the conclusion that [the commonalities] were great and that, for example, the recent financial crisis would not have broken out if today’s economic order had been oriented to the common values shared by both. The politicians present, including those from the [German] Bundestag, did not disagree.

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation is a publicly funded “political foundation” affiliated with the Christian Democratic Union, the party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Chancellor Merkel sits on the executive board of the foundation.

What I find even more creepy is that the Abu Dhabi-based (sic!) correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung -- that's a "conservative" newspaper for you, Americans --, Rainer Hermann, goes so far as to state that a real estate bubble, such as formed on the U.S. housing market, would have been "impossible" in a system of "Islamic banking", which, in my opinion, shows in a nutshell the entire depth of German hatred for America and modernity.

I'm not a terrific fan of Pajamas Media, but John Rosenthal's entries are always worth reading, at least for those who want to get some genuine information about Germany. He speaks fluent German, thus knows what he is talking about, and doesn't dream the American pipe dream about a conservative-at-heart Germany that is hijacked by an evil clique of leftists, as it was once hijacked by an evil clique of Nazis who were leftists anyway (don't get me started on THAT).

Here is his blog.

Ringtone

2010-12-02T10:14:00.001+01:00

This should be understandable even without any knowledge of German. The reader of my German blog who sent me this commented: "I think that's great. The entire controversy about 'values' in 22 seconds!

The Muezzin's Call

2010-11-30T20:53:00.010+01:00

This is the popular Bavarian folk singer Maria Hellwig performing the Erzherzog Johann Jodler (Archduke John Yodeler) at the age of 69. Kudos! She was a trained soubrette and a much greater artist than her somewhat-too-folksy public image conveyed. This video gives a whiff of her talent. Last Friday she died at the age of 90. She brought pleasure to countless people. May she rest in peace.

The Erzherzog Johann Jodler is very probably THE most famous one of its kind, sometimes called the inofficial Styrian national anthem, written to honour the "Styrian Prince", Erzherzog Johann von Österreich -- Archduke John of Austria (1782 – 1859).

Johann was born in Florence as the thirteenth child of Archduke Leopold, later to become Emperor of Austria. In Styria, he is remembered as a great modernizer and an important figure of identification. In 1829, he married Anna Plochl, the daughter of the Posthalter of Aussee (a Posthalter used to be a well-to-do innkeeper at whose place the horses of the diligence were changed). The marriage was morganatic, its descendants were styled "Counts of Meran" and "Barons of Brandhofen". His one son from this marriage was Franz, Count of Meran. Among his 900 descendants is Johannes Nicolaus Graf de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt, better known as Nicolaus Harnoncourt, conductor.

The Archduke was a passionate mountaineer and attempted to be the first to climb the Großvenediger. The Erzherzog-Johann-Hütte (Adlersruhe) at the Großglockner, and the Archduke John's Vanilla Orchid (Nigritella rubra subsp. archiducis-joannis), an orchid growing on mountain meadows, are named after him.

By acquiring a tin factory in Krems bei Voitsberg and coal mines near Köflach he also became an industrialist. In 1840, he bought the Stainz dominion, where he was freely elected as mayor in 1850. His routing of the Austrian Southern Railway from Vienna to Triest over the Semmering and through the Mura and Mürz valleys to Graz is particularly notable.

Even though Johann did not consider himself, and wasn't, a liberal, he promoted some liberal ideas. He was often in conflict with the Habsburg court, especially but not exclusively, because of his morganatic marriage.

In 1848, the Frankfurt National Assembly appointed him Reichverweser, regent of the realm. After the failure of the March Revolution of 1848, he resigned from this office in 1849.

Archduke John died 1859 in Graz, where a fountain dominating the central square was erected in his honour.

Today, Manfred Kleine-Hartlage reports at his blog "Korrektheiten" that Muslims had enforced a yodelling ban. No, it's not a joke and it even has something to do with the above information. It recently happened in the city of Graz, that a man was fined 800 Euros because his yodelling offended Muslim neighbours. They accused the 63-year-old pensioner of mocking them by imitating the muezzin's call. The daily paper writes the Austrian was fined 800 Euros after judges ruled he might have tried to offend and ridicule them because they were in the middle of a praying session when he started yodelling.

In-effing-credible!

While acts of dhimmitude are nothing new, this is, I think, specifically disgusting. A good yodeller will cut an audio-swath through canon roar and certainly through a muezzin's call, however, it is, to me, unfathomable how somebody can even BEGIN to compare this delightful bit of folk music to the caterwaul of a Muslim service. Maybe it was his intention to disturb and irritate them and it would have been bad enough had he been fined for that. But MOCKING? I'm not quite sure yet why this irritates me so much.

Language Help Needed

2010-11-27T06:45:00.003+01:00

The Google search polls US President Barack Obama’s grandmother has admitted praying for him to convert to Islam results in 972,000,000 hits. It is this, which confuses me:

Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, has always maintained he is a ‘committed Christian’. But the news of his grandmother Sarah Omar’s wish to convert to Islam follows a poll, which found one in five believes he is a Muslim.

To me, "to follow a poll" seems to mean "to confirm the results of a poll". That would make sense had the news snippet said: "...the news of his grandmother Sarah Omar’s wish to convert to Islam follows a poll, which found THAT ONLY one in five believes he is a Muslim." In that case, Grandma (Gosh, another disgusting Americanism!) Sarah asking him "to convert to Islam", and specifically the media hype about it, could be seen as one of the smokescreens put up to conceal that he is, in fact, a Muslim. As it is, I'm just befuddled.

Notabene that Grandma Sarah is not his biological grandmother, but one of several wives of his Muslim grandfather and yet how everybody seems to accept her role, fully aware of that fact and in spite of the implications.

Hat tip: Gudrun Eussner!