"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:

"Persepolis 2."

I went over to Borders today to have some coffee and read a manuscript but took some time first to browse. That picture on the cover of Premiere magazine of Colin Farrell pretending to be Alexander the Great made me laugh, but--ah!--what is this? The second volume of Marjane Satrapi's beautifully drawn memoir has come out! I take it with me to my table along with my manuscript and my mug of Borders blend coffee. I read the first chapter slowly, savoring the crisply drawn, Bushmilleresque pictures of the feisty Iranian girl starting her new life in Austria, where she soon enough ends up in a boarding school run by nuns. Oh, this is too good! I could read the whole thing right now! I close it up, read half of the manuscript, finish the coffee, and go buy the book, which I will carefully consume in small, picture-gazing doses.