News from Austria

And a bit dusty now, as well.

bb1 wrote:And a bit dusty now, as well.

Yep, which won't make it any nicer - this is a pic of their front window at sale time ....     LL

 I don't think that would be your style in a million years.

.....or mine.

Probably costs a fortune to buy droopy brown things.

Ah but.....whose?

The 'boutique' is in a side street off Mariahilferstrasse - the Viennese Oxford Street. It is opposite the Haus des Meeres, a WW2 flak tower converted to an aquarium, at the foot of which is an underground terror museum in what used to be a Nazi bunker and later used as a youth hostel. LL

That is quite a strange history, LL.

I just love the idea of an aquarium in an old flak tower....

It brings a new meaning to sleeping with the fishes?

Britain to allow ALL citizens living abroad the right to vote
Published: 07 Oct 2016
The British government said on Friday it will scrap the 15-year rule that had barred many British voters living abroad from casting a ballot in general elections back home.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161007/britain-to-give-all-citizens-living-abroad-right-to-vote
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Vienna's benefits system acts as a 'magnet for refugees'
Published: 07 Oct 2016
Refugees in Austria are increasingly moving to Vienna because other Austrian states have reduced the amount of social security benefits asylum seekers can receive, which is designed to cover their basic living costs.
People granted asylum in Austria are typically awarded up to €914 a month to cover their basic living costs (Mindestsicherung) but many areas - including the states of Lower and Upper Austria have reduced this to €520.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161007/viennas-benefits-system-like-magnet-for-refugees
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Koran street giveaway banned again
Published: 06 Oct 2016
A controversial Quran distribution campaign which intelligence services have warned is used as a recruitment tool for radical Islamists has been banned.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161006/koran-street-giveaway-banned-again-islamist-salafist
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Pensioner conned out of €2.3m in fake share scam
Published: 06 Oct 2016
A pensioner from Carinthia has been conned out of around €2.3m after “investing” in fake shares for years.
He bought what he thought were American shares, and paid exorbitant fees to bank accounts in the USA, the Philippines and the Czech Republic.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161006/pensioner-conned-out-of-millions-of-euros-in-fake-share-scam
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Taxi drivers who transported refugees ‘not people smugglers’
Published: 07 Oct 2016
Taxi drivers and members of the public who picked up refugees who had made it across the Austrian border last summer and drove them to their destination cannot be prosecuted as people smugglers, Austria’s high court (OGH) has ruled.
The OGH decided that "the mere transport of strangers who have already illegally crossed Austria’s border” is not a criminal offence punishable by law.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161007/taxi-drivers-who-transported-refugees-not-people-smugglers

More of the same? I really feel deeply sorry for that pensioner.

Austria charges two men accused of Paris attacks link
Austria's state prosecutor has charged a Moroccan and an Algerian with intent to take part in the November 13 Paris attacks which left 130 people dead.
https://www.thelocal.at/20160909/austria-charges-two-men-accused-of-paris-attacks-link

These crazies seem to get everywhere, unchecked.

Almost 8,000 refugees left Austria in 2016
Published: 13 Oct 2016
Almost 8,000 refugees have left Austria so far this year, according to a report released by the Interior Ministry.
Austria has set a limit of 37,500 on the number of refugees it is willing to accept this year - as part of new government measures to ensure a tougher stance in Europe's refugee crisis.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161013/almost-8000-refugees-left-austria-in-2016
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Pregnant woman had cocaine worth €100,000 in underwear
Published: 13 Oct 2016
A pregnant woman was arrested with 75 packs of cocaine stashed in her underwear in Vienna’s Meidling district on Sunday.
Police say the 25-year-old woman was carrying exactly 866.4 grams of cocaine, with a street value of more than €100,000.

Officers noticed the woman, originally from Nigeria, was behaving strangely at Meidling train station early on Sunday morning. They questioned her but she wouldn’t tell them who she was or what she was doing and they then took her to hospital. A search of her clothes revealed the drugs, concealed in her bra and knickers.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161013/pregnant-woman-had-75-packs-of-cocaine-in-underwear
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Vienna police exercise prepares response to terror attack
Published: 13 Oct 2016
Expect to see plenty of police and special forces officers in Vienna on Friday 14th, as a terror training exercise is planned.

Police teams from the WEGA paramilitary unit and Cobra counter-terrorism unit as well as bomb specialists will be deployed together with staff from four different medical and rescue organisations as part of a training exercise involving a bomb threat scenario.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161013/vienna-police-exercise-prepares-response-to-terror-attack

Hitler's birth house to be demolished
Published: 17 Oct 2016
The house where Adolf Hitler was born is to be torn down to stop it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine after years of bitter legal wrangling, Austria's interior minister said Monday.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161017/hitler-birth-house-to-be-torn-down
Finally, they have made a decision. LL
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Syrian asylum seeker in court on terror charges
Published: 17 Oct 2016
A Syrian man is on trial in Salzburg, accused of having fought with the so-called Islamic State group (Isis), before coming to Europe to claim asylum.
According to the prosecutor the 22-year-old Syrian man worked as a security guard for Isis and fought with them in several places in Syria until January 2015.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161017/syrian-asylum-seeker-in-court-on-terrorism-charges
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Young Muslims at risk of radicalisation in Vienna
Published: 17 Oct 2016
A study by the City of Vienna shows that a high proportion of Muslim teenagers in the Austrian capital are at risk of being radicalised.

The study found that 85 percent of young people who are in contact with a youth worker have an immigration background, and that 27 percent of those teenagers who are Muslim show strong sympathy for jihadism, and violent and anti-Western thinking.
https://www.thelocal.at/20161017/young-muslims-at-risk-of-radicalisation-in-vienna

Pity - it's a lovely building, but I do understand it is a nutter magnet.

bb1 wrote:
Pity - it's a lovely building, but I do understand it is a nutter magnet.

It has to go, same as the Reichs Chancellery and other buildings associated with the Nazis, Spandau prison, now a carpark and supermarket, the Bunker now under a carpark, his parents/grandparents' graves moved to a secret location.   All were places of pilgrimage for the neo-Nazis.   LL

There will always be those ultra sick ghouls.......Best it is gone.

I just find it a terrible shame that a lovely old building has to be destroyed because of those crazy scum, Lily.

Well we know that those people cannot see this from anything other than their perspective.  It's always the few.

That is what it looks like now, but it wasn't so nice when Hitler was born there in 1899.   I found photos of it circa 1890.   LL

I don't know, LL, this disturbs me - I can't help feeling that it is almost admitting that eighty years on, these crazies still have power. It's not like the Bunker - an ugly, dank monument to madness.

I watched a fascinating documentary about it a few weeks ago, where film taken inside it at various stages in more recent history was married with Hitler's valet's recollections of the last days, 3D models made, etc. It just looked plain and simply horrible, with the so-called master race cowering underground like rats. The pornographic graffiti done by the lower ranks didn't do much for their image, either.

Probably just me, but this makes me uneasy.

The house will vanish, but this outside it will remain.   It is made from stone quarried from the Mauthausen concentration camp - where my relatives died.  Not Jews, but intellectuals, who Hitler feared more than anyone, my grandpa said.    LL



"For peace, freedom and democracy, never again Fascism, millions of dead admonish"

As for the Bunker, it is no more. LL

That's good, that's a powerful statement, LL.

bb1 wrote:That's good, that's a powerful statement, LL.

Indeed it is. And if Hitler's ghost haunts Berlin, it must be livid with rage that the Memorial to the Jews who died in the Shoah, ie the Holocaust, is equidistant from the Bunker and the Brandenberg Gate where Hitler would parade his army! LL