Most readers will remember the closely-contested second round of the Austrian presidential election, in which the Green candidate eked out a narrow victory over the FPÖ candidate, thanks to a large number of postal votes that tipped the balance. There were “irregularities” in the voting process, to the point where the FPÖ is officially contesting the result.
Now a new twist has emerged: it seems that the mental competence of the president-elect, Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party, has been thrown into question. According to the report, back in March an unnamed party petitioned to establish a guardianship for Mr. Van der Bellen, due to his impaired mental capacity.
Note: If the date is correct, the petition was filed before the first round of the presidential election.
The story has appeared at Politically Incorrect and Unzensuriert.at, in German and English:
Österreich: Probleme mit dem Bundespräsidenten
In einem Schreiben an alle österreichischen Parlamentsklubs wurde bekannt, dass beim zuständigen Bezirksgericht in Wien am 24.März 2016 die Anregung auf Sachwalterschaft für den Bundespräsidentschaftskandidaten Alexander Van der Bellen eingebracht worden ist.
Darin wird die Problematik einer Demenz des Bundespräsidenten thematisiert. Dieser ist laut Artikel 80 Abs.1 Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz auch Oberbefehlshaber des österreichischen Bundesheeres, sodass das Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung davon besonders betroffen ist.
Der Leser kann die Anregung auf Sachwalterschaft in JPEG oder PDF Format herunterladen und sich selbst eine eigene Meinung dazu bilden.
Austria: Problems with the Federal President
In a letter addressed to all political factions in the Austrian Parliament, members of Parliament were informed about a proposition regarding guardianship for the federal presidential candidate Alexander Van der Bellen. This proposition was lodged in the District Court in Vienna on 24 March 2016.
Therein the problem of dementia of the Federal President is discussed. This person is, according to article 80 paragraph 1 Federal Constitution, also commander of the Austrian army, so that the Ministry of Defence will be particularly affected.
The readers can download the proposition of guardianship in JPEG or PDF format and form their own opinion.
(Click to enlarge)
A big thank-you to JLH for translating the text of the legal document shown above:
To the District Court of the Inner City of Vienna
Marxergasse 1a
1030 Wien
Copy to all parliamentary groups
June 24, 2016Proposal for Guardianship for Dr. Alexander Van Der Bellen,
born January 18, 1944 in Vienna, residing in 1060 Wien, service address Rooseveltplatz 4-5/Top 6,1090 Wien.According to consistent case law of the supreme court, any person has the right to submit a proposal for the appointment of a guardian in the appropriate district court. The court must officially examine these circumstances.
“Any person who has the impression that someone is in need of support in the form of a guardianship, can propose a guardianship procedure in the district court. After the proposal is received in the appropriate district court, a suitable person will be entrusted with the procedural guardianship of the person in question. Subsequently, the court issues an evaluation, in which it shall be determined whether the medical prerequisites for a guardianship (mental illness, mental deficiency or dementia) are present in the person in question. The medical evaluation and possible tasks which can be required of a guardian will be discussed in the court on a date set and confirmed in the decision.” (Guardianship folder 2014 of the Social Services Institute)
In the present case, there exists the impression that the person concerned — Alexander Van der Bellen — has a mental illness and dementia, and therefore requires support by a guardian.
“Psychopathological status:
The person concerned is responsive; his focus at this time is limited. His line of thought is regular in tempo but clearly erratic, circuitous. The person in question repeatedly loses the thread of his thoughts and concludes in irrelevancies. Critical faculty and understanding of the disease are degraded. Confabulations cannot be ruled out. Cognitive performance is impaired, affecting both short-term memory as well as intermediate-term and long-term memory. The ability to achieve an overview in more complex matters is clearly impeded and diminished. Heightened suggestibility cannot to be excluded.
In the Mini-Mental-State Test, he scores 21 points of a maximum possible 30 points.”
In addition to this is a serious illness which made it necessary for the person concerned — a chain smoker — to submit to chemotherapy in the private clinic, Rudolfinerhaus 1190 Wien, as well as numerous medical treatments. Apart from that, there are already metastases in several parts of the body, so that he is impaired both in health and psychically.
However regrettable this condition of ill health is, the affected person is no longer capable of managing all the affairs of daily life alone.
You can’t make this stuff up.
I believe the mental competence of all Greens representatives can rightfully be called into question. If they were honest the would call themselves The Insane Party.
As a conservative, and living next door to Canada’s only Green stronghold (Gulf Islands) I agree completely.
Gulf Islands has a tiny newspaper which I pick up for a laugh, (literally) you just wouldn’t believe how thoroughly stupid ‘greenies’ are! (or maybe you would?) Of course, they will not print my letters in their biased, nutty little rag!
Greens are, shall we say, extreme. This doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes have a point, especially regarding pollution of the seas, but their ire is often misdirected; carbon emissions could be considerably reduced if shops and banks were compelled to keep their doors closed, so not wasting fuel heating or air-conditioning the street, and if food shops were made to put doors on their fridges and freezers, yet they seem unconcerned with this. Maybe an agenda to make everyone’s lives more miserable?
You live in a beautiful part of the world; visiting my brother in N Vancouver (most recently last month), I’ve seen several of your lovely islands, off Vancouver and Seattle. Shame about the geological instability; may you and yours (and mine) stay safe.
Carbon emissions? I hope you’re joking. Carbon dioxide is plant food and not a significant factor in the “greenhouse effect.” Greens are loonies; even broken clocks are right twice a day…
Please do a little research on the “science” of global warming. I recommend climate depot and wattsupwiththat.
A good site for data on climate matters is green-agenda dot com. It’s a static site but there is a lot of good info there.
I would alsorecommend ‘CO2 science’ site.
Global Warming would be wonderful if it was happening.
That was me, anonymous by mistake, simi. I didn’t mention climate change, just pollution.
“This doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes have a point, “
It is the same with any cult that wishes to mislead the people. There must be just enough truth in their manifesto to suspend the disbelief of those with only a passing acquaintance with the truth. Once snared like that, then they can start to build the falsehoods.
Jordan, I must agree with you, but with one very important qualification.
Whilst I think the members of the traditional left wing parties have many stupid and destructive ideas often driven by envy, in my experience they tend to be motivated by personal greed and a lust for power but they are invariably sane and rational.
The same cannot be said, in my experience, of Green Party members. Almost (see the two exceptions below) to a man and a woman they have been absolute nutters. And very often not even well-meaning nutters. It is indeed, outwardly, the Insane Party, with what can only be described as a quasi-religion – no offence to people who have traditional religious faith – as its ideological base.
The Australian Green Party has a policy of abolishing the mining of coal. Australia is a commodities export driven country and if Australia stopped selling New South Wales (the biggest state’s biggest value trade item) and Queensland coal to China, Japan and South Korea our economy would sink overnight to the GDP per capita of that of Bulgaria (I just checked, it would become much poorer than Bulgaria!) or Morocco, maybe lower. I tried mildly making that simple point to a Green Party activist some years ago and the response was basically: “So what? The world has got to stop using fossil fuels to save the environment!” I don’t believe he understood anything about economics, balance of trade, currency valuation, interest rates, etc, and did not feel he needed to. He seemed to believe that with the cessation of Australian coal mining and exports it would all somehow work out okay. I was horrified by his ignorance and the possibility that people like him might actually exercise political power.
Asked what his principal policy interests were, upon being elected Australia’s first Green lower house parliamentarian, Adam Bandt, a married father of one, cited two: gay marriage and gay adoption. Environmental issues did not seem to figure at all.
I was stunned at a lunch about 6 years ago to be seated next to a very personable and quite intelligent man who transpired to be the local Greens candidate in a regional electorate based on the small coastal city of Port Macquarie – a haven for urban retirees in an agricultural area. He conducted himself in conversation like a reasonable human being, he even volunteered that gay marriage didn’t play well in a conservative rural electorate. He was apparently genuinely motivated by a desire to protect the environment and did not think the Labor Party was the right vehicle to achieve the goals he sought.
I was keen to encourage him to rise up the Green Party hierarchy, applying the maxim: much better him than some nutter. I asked him did he want a word of advice and he said “Yes”. I told him to distance himself from the Green Party’s rabid anti-Israel stance as it was a toxic policy. I explained that whilst the majority of people may well be indifferent to Jews and Israel, it does set off alarm bells in most people’s heads when they hear somebody obsessively disparaging Israel, they smell a rat. He actually listened too. Unfortunately he, unsurprisingly, has not since risen far in the Green Party.
The other type of non-insane Green, and the type that does rise to the very top of the Party, is exemplified by the classic “watermelon”: green on the surface but deep pink on the inside. The daughter of two Communist Party office-holders, and a one time Communist Youth League official herself, Lee Rhiannon, is a long-time (1999) Greens senator, who was the editor of the Moscow-aligned Socialist Party of Australia’s official publication right up until 1990, the year she joined the Green Party. Before embarking on her new political career, she changed her surname so that her Communist Party background wouldn’t be readily identified by the public. Rhiannon, she must have loved that Fleetwood Mac song, doesn’t seem much interested in environmental issues, she does however pursue policies that would be right at home in the CPA: a “watermelon” with the thinnest of green skins. Oh, and naturally, being an inner-city feminist with 3 children, she is very supportive of Islam and a champion of the BDS movement against Israel. Ms Rhiannon and the other 7 Green senators held the balance of power in the upper house of the Australian parliament for most of this decade.
So whilst it is entirely correct to characterize the Greens as deeply irrational, often less than sane, people, this usually applies only to the party rank and file and most of their voters. The leadership cadre (cf Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit) seem to be extreme left opportunists that cynically exploit the community’s interest in environmental and “social justice” concerns in order to advance a Gramscian hard left political agenda.
Julius,
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Such stories give a depth to the comments, and I find them very interesting.
Just as a comment, you mentioned the rabid anti-Israel positions of the left. The paradox is, the mainstream liberal Jewish organizations are also very leftist and oriented towards “social justice”, whatever that means in reality (like redistribution of wealth). But, they also support Israel, sometimes putting them in conflict with their natural social justice allies.
I’m wondering how long they will keep up the tightrope act. This is one reason I advocate putting US relations with Israel on a rational, rather than emotional, basis. Emotions are fleeting, whereas reason, as long as you use it, remains stable.
Golly! This complicates things somewhat! I knew he liked Mickey Mouse cartoons but this latest is not a very good look! Poor chap! Maybe his guardian (if/when appointed) could relinquish the Presidency for him and give it back to the rightful winner! Or would all that be too hard to understand for the Greens/Marxist/Left to contemplate?
“According to consistent case law of the supreme court, any person has the right to submit a proposal for the appointment of a guardian in the appropriate district court. The court must officially examine these circumstances.”
It’s too bad we can’t invoke such a law to Obama’s head examined.
“The person in question repeatedly loses the thread of his thoughts and concludes in irrelevancies.”
[offensive substance!] I have dementia, that’s the problem.
Really? You can’t say [offensive substance!]. Well alright then. With all respect, I guess I’m learning where the lines are drawn.
I don’t think you draw those lines quite as tight on your own comments though. Just sayin’ is all. It’s early, first cup of coffee and such.
Holy moly, Batman! Rick just said I have larded my responses with [offensive substance!]
If that be the case, sir, please find said offensive substance in one of my comments and I shall immediately remove the whole thing. I’m not saying that such words don’t sometimes get by because I fail to see them. But I don’t say them.
As I have over the years, I repeat: home-schooled children are often sent over here for their “current events” reading (though some of those ‘events’ have themselves become far too horrific for children to read). For that reason we promised to keep the comments thread free of casual crudities. However, there remain hundreds of comment threads in other domains where you can say [offensive substance!] and far more. But here? No bodily substances need apply – oh wait! If they’re in Latin,by all means. In the latter case, they offer kids the opportunity to ask mum or dad about the word and it’s off to the online dictionary to see what’s what.
Now masticate that while you imbibe your morning stimulant, Rick…
You can explain all you want, it won’t do any good. I have dementia!
Ooh, ooh, ooh! {Horshack}
Merda. There, Latin!
May I presume this man is not married? Wives, or I should say spouses, usually notice a mental or physical decline far before anyone else does.
So who is presenting this to the court? Just wondering.
This is not a legal document at all!
It seems to be an anonymous defamation, using the specific austrian bureaucratic option for every citizen, to demand an official guardianship for an (allegedly) mental impaired fellow citizen .
This should not be the kind of tool, we use for our political fight. It´s an attempt, to drag Van der Bellen in the dirt.
I regret, that this was first issued at PI. I think, this was a fault.
Quote: “…an unnamed party petitioned to establish a guardianship.”
Is it possible that ‘anyone’, including co-workers or opposing politicians can petition for such a guardianship order? Or – must there be a familial relationship? The above translations also do not appear to provide any conclusive medical certifications of diagnoses.
I may not agree with his politics, but the lack of supporting documentation and identity of petitioner (which may reveal any untoward bias) is troubling.
I’ve been wondering the same thing. But I have no idea about any further background to this. I’m just assured that the document is genuine. Beyond that, the brief PI/Unzensuriert explanation is all I have.
Shouldn’t it make him more qualified? Would fit in perfectly with other loonies such as Juncker, Tusk, Merkel, etc.
They aren’t looney, they’ re stone cold sociopaths. At least with dementia patients running the show, they’d be relatively harmless and no bother to s***w over the rest of humanity.
One thing a lot of people do is underestimate high ranking politicians. They didn’t get to that position by being a bumbler or nice. They got there by being one mean SOB who can lie and cheat better than his opposition. They know full well that they are doing to their respective countries, it’s just they don’t care as long as it makes them wealthy.
You find the same in management in large corporations, Wall Street or government organizations. These are human sharks. They don’t think like the average joe. Morality and ethics don’t exist for them, thought they may use them as leverage on the normal folk.
Very interesting perspective. Certainly some books on sociopaths claim that a sociopath who is able to maintain impulse control and calculate for his own future benefit has an advantage in some environments.
Possibly, in the modern country, with its government and banking so remote from the citizens, and in public corporations, with their stockholder voting, the sociopath has a greater leeway than, say, in a smaller, more homogeneous country where people are more familiar with all the representatives and the issues. Also, a small, privately-held company is more resistant to the sociopath, as the leadership is spending its own resources, rather than the money of others.
I’ve felt that Obama is like a corporate raider. He has no commitment to the company (US) or its culture, but has come in to advance his goals (socialism, Islamic advancement and racial identity). The well-being of the company itself is unimportant and entirely subservient to his real goals. Note that Merkel, as well as Obama, grew up in a culture much different from the culture in which they rule, so they have no emotional commitment to it.
It kind of reminds me of our own (US) Presidential race. I know a few friends of Hillary supporters, and it seems the Hillary supporters are entirely impervious to any actual facts about Hillary: Facts such as pathological lying, violent temper tantrums, self-enrichment, gross incompetence, abysmal ignorance and so forth.
It seems in the politics of ideology, the actual characteristics of the candidate are almost irrelevant to much of the electorate.
I’m struggling to complete a post which mentions Hillary’s character traits…
I just received a message from a friend asking if I’d heard about the recent death of someone who was slated to testify against Hillary. Haven’t looked into it myself yet. From what he said it seems the fellow did something like dropping a dumbbell on himself.
Kind of like committing suicide by two shots to the back of the head. I once read a list of the people who very conveniently died, or were killed, to benefit the Clintons and it was over a page long. I do believe the Obama regime has several very convenient deaths under its belt also, though not as many.
Just had a response ready to post and it disappeared…darn laptop…
I agree there are many unanswered questions about this family’s Kill List. Not to mention book-length lists of people they (Hillary mostly) hate, envy, plan to get even with, etc.
And the disease is evidently heritable – see the staff departures at the Clinton
CashFoundation since Chelsea assumed command.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3087477/Senior-staff-quit-charity-foundation-difficult-Chelsea-Clinton-entourage-nearly-big-father-s.html
She may be her mother’s daughter, but she inherited many of her father’s features. Thank heavens for plastic surgery. Some of those unfortunate problems were fixable:
http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/huge-scandal-chelsea-isnt-bill-clintons-daughter/
Over the years we’ve been told how much Bill loves Chelsea and I don’t doubt their veracity…to the extent anyone as damaged as William Jefferson Clinton can be be said to feel real affection. It’s my guess he saw his role as protecting Chelsea from her mother.
But that stuff is already in the TMI range…I wish they would go away so I wouldn’t have to think about any of them.
The guy was NOT going to testify against Hillary. That is an urban legend, and probably deliberate disinformation designed to discredit “right-wing extremists”.
The man’s name is John Ashe; he was awaiting trial on fraud charges.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/disgraced-u-n-leader-john-ashe-died-weightlifting-accident-article-1.2685625
Nothing to do with Hillary at any point. Check Snopes on this one; it’s accurate.
See http://www.snopes.com/un-official-john-ashe-killed-the-day-before-he-was-to-testify-against-hillary-clinton/ for the known specifics re. the death of John Ashe, “a U.N. diplomat from Antigua.”
Using G-rated language only?! I bow to your creative abilities. 🙂
Some call it my school marm censorship, but a promise is a promise. Having once been a home-schooling parent, I get their concern.
But even if you’re using snark here, that’s okay. You’re an exceptional commenter. Besides, I much prefer the term “gluteus maximus” to the usual three letter word for one’s rear end. It’s fun.
No different than hard core Trump supporters.
Hmmm…I wonder who the soft-core Trump supporters are? How about the medium-core Trump supporters?
Did you know that the term “hard core” is reserved for people like us, hard core VastRightWingConspiracy paranoids? SweetHillary has enriched our political lexicon in so many ways. Thus, as members of the hard core VRWC – a term she dreamed up when her husband’s rigid, flaming satyriasis could no longer be papered over so she was forced to play offense. It’s a position for which she is well-suited.
So, if it’s not too much trouble could you please differentiate among those hard core, soft core, etc. Trump supporters? We don’t want to be blindsided should they suddenly appear. Specific identifiers would help.
Back to you, Cliff…
Nah. I disagree. I’m a hard-core Trump supporter, but I’m not a blind Trump supporter. I know his weaknesses like Trump University. The first time I saw his video shilling for it, I knew it was a con job.
But, I’m a realist. Show me a politician, leader, or even human being, without character flaws. Trump has enough successes, and a consistency of his positions for the past decade or so, that I think he not only will stick to his main policies, but has the competence to advance them. I also think he is not likely to engage in costly and very, very dangerous foreign adventures, such as deposing friendly governments and carrying out unnecessary military exercises on Russia’s border.
Trump has irritating but relatively benign character flaws, while Hillary has massive, very, very fatal flaws. So, I definitely disagree with comparing hard-core Hillary supporters with hard-core Trump supporters.
It seems like mental incapacity is a prerequisite requirement for a successful liberal politician. A minimally sane person cannot possibly advocate suicidial destruction of one’s own country and people.
I can’t find a single news report responding to a Google search of “van der bellen + sachwalterschaft”. I would have thought there would be some opposition-supporters keen on getting the facts out there if there was anything to be gained from this.
Re John Ashe–There’s an old Columbo (I think that’s the series) in which the killer uses an iron pipe to crush the victim’s windpipe from behind. Then he drags him into his exercise room, lays him on the weight bench and rests a heavy barbell on his neck.