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There's a reason they wait politely and dont jaywalk in Austria (and I'm guessing Germany as well). It's because cars have the right of way and its up to them to let you cross. If you walk out willy-nilly and are hit, it's on you.

Fake to the max, but I did find it funny on my recent trip through Europe that in some countries, people would wait politely at crosswalks and refuse to jaywalk (like Austria and Germany), and in other countries they'd just cross whenever they wanted, lights be damned (like Portugal and especially Italy).

SPD (Germany): 23%
PSOE (Spain) : 22.6%
SPÖ (Austria): 26%
PS (France): 10%
PvdA (Netherlnds): 5.7%

Those are just some of the latest election/polling results of social-democratic parties in continental Europe. Corbyn's Labour came in at 40.1%. Yet somehow, Corbyn (and Sanders) is painted as the destroyer of his party's electability.

Watch all the trolls come out of the woodworks again, after claiming for months and months that Corbyn would be the ruin of Labour. And keep track of all the hacks who will still maintain that neoliberal party apparatchiks are the only option to win elections. The mental gymnastics will be hilarious, and the smear campaigns against Corbyn will be even more ferocious. They cannot let anyone challenge the neoliberal consensus and get away with it.

Edit: https://twitter.com/TKMarx/status/873157244967432192

*ban
Escort in Austria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2rk-xINjpo

Why would getting on and off a paternoster be different from stepping onto a normal moving staircase (escalator)? Its just one step.

As for "I can easily imagine severed limbs" or "slow moving guillotine" web articles - I have never seen severed limbs or heads anywhere near a paternoster. Difficult to compare but I would expect accidents to be similar to escalator accidents (which can be pretty bad, Ive had one myself).

In any case paternosters are just as popular (though rare) all over central (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria) northern (Sweden, Finland), part of western Europe (Germany, England, Denmark, Netherlands), and even as far as the Austrian Empire extended southward into the Balkans (Beograd).

Except you cant compare this to (car) accidents. You could compare this to occurrences of ambulance drivers driving through packed pedestrian crossings or firemen setting fire to buildings, soldiers driving tanks over cars on the highway etc. If that kind of thing happened once a week someone would notice. Someone would be responsible. Something would be done.

I only get involved with cops when speeding or parking and over here in central Europe it is a friendly affair of getting a fine or a reprimand. If I go to visit Germany or Austria I fear the police for the fines are heftier and a stern talking to in german is nothing to look forward to, in the east or south of Europe a small bribe and more extensive language difficulties are the norm. Visiting the US somehow always involves warnings about how to behave so as not to get killed by cops. Go figure.

Oh and one last thing before Christmas - the economic and ghetto building motivation is so obvious. This enormous wave of people practically runs through Slovenia and Austria, countries with wonderful standards of living, that I would gladly relocate to if I had a good opportunity even just for the skiing - into the muslim "heaven" of awful slums in large German, Swedish, French and Belgian cities. They dont even see this exodus as a chance to escape from their main predicament. I have to admit stupid people frighten me a bit.

3 things, I may have mixed them a bit.

1 - past experience specifically with muslim migrants (some may have been refugees) in Europe - overall not great, mostly they consider our social system and political correctness as signs of weakness. They consider themselves superior, the first generation may be grateful for a better life than back home but the second and third generations feel superior to non-muslims (especially jews and atheists, but also christians) and entitled to benefits while hating the secular state. Will the current and future waves accomodate better? This has nothing to do with our imperative to help those in need, it is a practical problem. Also not racist - although I do admit racism and xenophobia are a major problem in many parts of Europe and trouble me very much in my own country. More so than the Vietnamese or Ukrainians or people from the Balkans "these people" organize in clans and tribes and will try to impose their view of the world on us, who organise in tiny families and on facebook. Albanian thugs are well organised but they dont hold the view that everyone else should be an Albanian thug too.

2 - current wave of migrants and refugees - lets assume we are talking only about real Syrians boarding boats in Turkey trying to reach Greek islands and not people from all over north africa trying to reach Italy or anyone else trying to reach the EU (possibly pretending to be Syrian). So we have this exemplary Syrian family which has run away from a war to Turkey. They are safe there, only they have to either stay for a couple of years in a refugee camp before they can try to find work or they have to survive in a grey economy sort of like Mexicans in the USA. They know that if they dont apply for asylum in Turkey and manage to set foot on EU soil they can ask for asylum there and be treated better than in Turkey. So these boat people are actually not running from war to asylum but rather from one asylum to another. They make sure not to stop in Greece or Croatia or Austria or Hungary but head for Germany or Sweden. Mostly I believe they have no idea of political geography but they have mobile phones and friends who have already made the journey and know how to milk the local system. So for purposes of compassion they are refugees and totally need our help but from a clinically economic (yes, materialistic) point of view they are very much migrants. Migrants we feel obliged to help because they are sort of refugees too.

3 - the mass and speed of the exodus means we are stretched to accomodate them and they will later start to passionately hate us because Europe will not be the heaven they expected it to be.
A few thousand refugees every year are no big deal even for a small EU state. Hundreds of thousands will be very difficult to take care of in the entire union. Inviting more is just irresponsible.

The good news is that the real Syrian refugees who make it to Europe will probably be the more resourceful, better educated part of the current wave of incoming people and will be able to take care of themselves fairly quickly by my estimate. Also they are mostly variants of Shia - the less orthodox branch of muslims. I am worried more about future waves than the current one.

Maybe we have messed up a bit but we need to learn from our mistakes, and even Germany is now guarding its borders. It would be better if we were able to guard the Shengen perimeter.
Then if we wanted to save more refugees we could send trains or planes to pick them up in Turkey or Jemen. You know, set up an EU consulate there so they could directly apply for asylum in the EU country of their picking. But we have to make a conscious decision first - how many people from the desolate and failing parts of the world do we want to save over a given time period so that we dont fail ourselves. Are we failing? Ask the jewish families who used to live in Malmo until recently.

I dont know of any country other than Germany or Austria were the term "never again" is given that monumental weight in education.. saying that ww2 is largely glossed over in shools is so wrong it actually hurts...

Interesting. And (over in Austria) Hitler was 11 years old.

The bits and pieces that I've seen of Greece's new list of reforms includes a measure that is strikingly similar to this.

Good stuff. Even officials from Austria went down to Zagreb to check out this system, so kudos to our Croatian comrades for this "invention" of theirs.