They Love Us Now, They Really Love Us!

Obama's surrender to Europe has already begun paying dividends.

Austria rejects US Guantanamo detainee request
Austria said Monday it would not take detainees from the Guantanamo Bay center despite a request by President Barack Obama for help from European nations during his first major international trip as leader.

Austria was worried about the security threat to the European Union posed by the detainees, Interior Minister Maria Fekter told a meeting of her European counterparts.

Obama repeated his request Sunday for European countries to take some of the 60 inmates who will have to go to another country as they could face abuse, imprisonment or death if returned to their homelands. He has ordered the center to close within a year of his taking office.

Several EU countries, including the Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU presidency, have already declined to take inmates.

"If the detainees are no longer dangerous, why don't they stay in the U.S.," Fekter told the meeting. "For Austria, I cannot accept Guantanamo inmates."

Taking inmates poses a security headache for the EU because 23 of its members share a common passport-free zone. If one of its members takes in a prisoner with a criminal record, all others in the zone will have to be alerted.

Jacques Barrot, the EU's justice and interior affairs commissioner told reporters that U.S. officials told him they intend to take in a share of the 60 prisoners.

"We European countries are now dealing with an American government which is showing good will and this good will is expressed now in the fact that they are willing to resettle some ex-detainees on their own territory," Barrot said.

Barrot said U.S. justice officials aimed to finalize new countries for the detainees by the end of June. He said the EU was receiving "detailed answers" about why the inmates are being detained and the potential security risk they could pose.

Any final decision on taking in detainees remains one for each of the EU nations.

France said Friday that it would be willing to take one of the suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo, while Spain and Portugal have said they too could accept detainees.

About 250 detainees are still held, some without charge, at the Guantanamo Bay center, which was set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

You should've talked to 'em in Austrian, nitwit.

Via Yahoo News

Josef Fritzl, The Comedy: 'It Will Be Dangerous For All Involved'

Who knew comedy could pose such danger? Well, considering this is nothing to laugh about...

Police are to guard tonight's Vienna premiere of a controversial stage comedy inspired by the saga of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned and abused his daughter, after protests and appeals for it to be banned.

Hubsi Kramar, the production's director and star, has been forced to change its title from Pension Fritzl – a Cellar Soap to Pension F because of the outcry. Tickets for tonight's opening have sold out.

The play centres on the story of the 74-year-old Fritzl, who goes on trial next month for imprisoning and sexually abusing his daughter Elisabeth, by whom he fathered seven children, over a period of 24 years.

Kramar, 60, has received death threats during weeks of protests in the run-up to the premiere. The 3raum-anatomietheater, which is staging the play, has been vandalised, with promotional posters ripped from walls and the stage door sealed with superglue.

"The media hunt is beginning to have an effect," Kramar said. "It will be dangerous for all involved."

Kramar might want to put this one on hold for a bit.

A Chimp is Just a Chimp

I am not an animal!

Animal rights stupidity taken to the ultimate extreme.

VIENNA, Austria - Austria's Supreme Court has dashed hopes by animal rights activists to have a chimpanzee declared a person, a statement suggested Tuesday.

The court recently rejected a petition to appoint a trustee for the chimp, named Matthew Hiasl Pan, the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories said, and subsequently vowed to contact the European Court of Human Rights over the matter.

The court's decision follows in the footsteps of a similar ruling last fall. In September, a provincial judge in the city of Wiener Neustadt dismissed the case, ruling the Association Against Animal Factories has no legal standing to argue on the chimp's behalf.

The legal back and forth began in February, when the animal shelter where Pan and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years filed for bankruptcy protection.

Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless. Both were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter.

Previously.

Firestorm in Austria as Politician Calls Mohammed a Child Molester

She'll be lucky to stay out of jail due to incitement laws, never mind getting herself elected.

Needless to say, there could be more delicate ways of getting your point across.

Seems the seething isn't just limited to the Muslim population in Austria.

A candidate campaigning for the Graz city council in Austria says it is time that Islam was "thrown back ... behind the Mediterranean," and alleges Muhammad wrote the Koran in "epileptic fits."

Election campaigns, it would seem, are uncomfortable times for immigrants to be in Europe. First, it was Ronald Koch, the conservative politician in the German state of Hesse who turned up the rhetoric and began railing against "criminal young foreigners" in his country. Now, an Austrian politician has followed suit.

Susanne Winter, a right-wing politician with the FPÖ party running for a city council seat in the city of Graz, blasted Muslims on Sunday, saying that "in today's system" the Prophet Muhammad would be considered a "child molester," apparently referring to his marriage to a six-year-old child. She also said that it is time for Islam to be "thrown back where it came from, behind the Mediterranean." Not yet finished, she also claimed that Muhammad wrote the Koran in "epileptic fits."

In an interview with the daily Österreich published on Monday, Winter continued the onslaught saying that child abuse is "widespread" among Muslim men and that Graz is facing a "tsunami of Muslim immigration." In 20 or 30 years, she warned, half of Austria's population would be Muslim.

Her comments have resulted in a storm of protest in Austria, with politicians and commentators of all stripes taking Winter and her party to task. Austrian prosecutors are also looking into the possibility of filing charges against the 50-year-old politician for incitement.

Her comments, said Omar Al-Rawi, head of integration for an Austrian association of Muslims, showed "a lack of respect" and they "had no basis in fact." He told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that such Islam bashing has reached a point in Austria that "one wants to puke."

But despite the strong reaction generated by Winter, such rhetoric is hardly foreign to political campaigns in Austria. Her party was created by Jörg Haider, the notoriously right-leaning politician who found success in the 1990s and earlier this decade with a mixture of xenophobia and nationalism. He has since moved on, but his rhetoric has remained the same. Campaigning recently for his new group, the Association for Austria's Future (BZÖ), he said, "We are still allowed to say Gruss Gott," -- the traditional Austrian greeting -- "and don't have to praise Allah."

Euro-Socialists: We'd Rather Die Than Accept American Help

Proving once again socialism is a mental disorder.

Central Europe Socialists reject U.S. missile shield

Central European Social Democrat parties rejected on Thursday a U.S. plan to build part of its missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying it threatened to bring about a new arms race.

Top Socialists from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia said after talks in Prague that any such system must not be built unilaterally or bilaterally.

"We are concerned about the decision to deploy the system and are at one with the large majority of our populations in rejecting it," the parties said in a joint statement, which was signed among others by Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, Germany's SPD chief Kurt Beck, and Polish Socialist leader Wojciech Olejniczak.

They called on the European Union, the NATO alliance and the NATO-Russia council to consult on missile defense.

Beck said the statement was also a message to conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom the Socialists jointly rule.

"We agreed we are against any new arms build-up in Europe," Beck said.

The ruling Hungarian Socialists attended the meeting but refused to join in.

"The Hungarian Socialist Party believes that if Europe is exposed to a terrorist threat we have to defend ourselves," said Imre Szekeres, deputy party chief and the country's defense minister.

I'm sure the terrorists are quaking in fear of the Hungarian Socialists.

This odd mindset of leaving yourself vulnerable because you fear an arms race is something I can't quite grasp.

If you protect yourself, that should lessen the fear of an attack, since your enemies will build arms regardless of what you do.

No wonder Socialism has crept toward the dustbin of history. The shame is there are still enough idiots practicing it.

Austria Nabs Three with al Qaeda Links

Rolling them up all over the continent now.

Austria says arrests three with al Qaeda links

Austria has arrested three people with links to al Qaeda who posted a video message on the Internet to make threats against the country, Austrian Interior Minister Guenther Platter said on Wednesday.

The arrests had to do with a group calling itself Voice of the Caliphate that posted a video message in March on an Islamist Web site used by militants, although Platter said there was no concrete indication attacks were planned in Austria.

"Austria was not under threat of an attack at any time," Platter told a news conference, declining to elaborate.

The arrests came a week after Germany said it foiled an Islamist militant plan to carry out "massive bomb attacks" on U.S. installations in the country. Germany arrested three men.

Platter said the suspects detained in Austria were a 20-year-old man and his 21-year-old wife and another man of 26. He said they were second generation immigrants from Arab countries and held Austrian passports.

In the March video message against Germany and Austria, the group had called on Germany and Austria to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan to prevent attacks on the two countries.

A speaker in the video said Austria, relying on tourism for an important part of its revenue, would be damaged if it were targeted by militants and asked why Germany would risk its economic interest for the sake of U.S. President George W. Bush.

UPDATE: More from The Jawa Report, via LGF.

Haider: Ban Mosque-Building

Expect plenty of seething to follow.

By the way, why is it always "rightwingers" who are considered "firebrands"?

Arent't there any leftwing firebrands?

Austria's Haider says to ban mosque-building

Austrian right-wing firebrand Joerg Haider said on Monday he plans to change building laws to prevent mosques and minarets being erected in his home province of Carinthia.

Haider, Carinthia's governor, said he would ask its parliament to amend the building code to would require towns and villages to consider "religious and cultural tradition" when dealing with construction requests.

"We don't want a clash of cultures and we don't want institutions which are alien to our culture being erected in Western Europe," Haider said in a statement.

Oooh, those are fighting words. How insensitive of him, wanting to actually preserve his own culture.

"Muslims have of course the right to practice their religion, but I oppose erecting mosques and minarets as centers to advertise the power of Islam," he said.

His spokesman, Stefan Petzner, said that there were no plans to restrict Muslim prayer rooms, as this would violate Muslims' human rights, and the planned change applied only to dedicated mosques and minarets.

Muslims in Europe are meeting increasing resistance to plans for mosques that befit Islam's status as the continent's second religion after Christianity, with petitions in London, protests in Cologne, a court case in Marseille and violence in Berlin.

However, while all those places have significant Muslim minorities, Haider's Carinthia has the second lowest share of Muslim citizens of all Austrian provinces -- 11,000 out of a population of around 400,000, a Muslim spokesman said.

"It's a ridiculous statement to say he fears a clash of civilizations (in Carinthia)," said Omar al-Rawi, a centre-left lawmaker who is spokesman for the Austrian Muslims' Initiative.

I guess if you're "centre-left," you don't qualify for firebrand status.

"We don't know of any mosque plans there. His move is meaningless, populist, racist and anti-Islamic," he added.

You forgot "Islamophobic," Omar.

Whatever the case, Haider isn't exactly the best spokesman to come out with this, considering his history. Especially this part:

Despite his rhetoric against Islam at home, Haider also praises himself for his close ties to Muslim leaders including Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, whom he calls a personal friend.

Al Qaeda Threatens Germany and Austria

On the third anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, Al Qaeda issues threats to some other Europeans nations, who I doubt will capitulate like the feckless socialist government of Spain did.

Islamic militants threatened to attack Germany and Austria unless the two European nations break ranks with the U.S. and withdraw their personnel from Afghanistan, according to a Web statement.

"Germany will face more threats and dangers if it doesn't withdraw its troops from Afghanistan," an unidentified speaker said in a video statement posted Saturday on an Islamic Web site used by Al Qaeda -linked militants.

The authenticity of the video could not be verified, but it was released by the Voice of the Caliphate, which is said to be run by Usama bin Laden 's Al Qaeda group.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

UPDATE: LGF has German Shari'a Watch.