Graz, Austria: Terminated

Arnold Schwarzeneggar, the current occupant of Cal-ee-for-nee-ah's Executive Mansion, did the right thing a couple of weeks ago by declining to commute the death penalty of Crips gang founder Tookie Williams, who was then summarily and justly executed for a series of particularly disgusting murders. The families of the victims were final able to breath a well-deserved sigh of relief that Williams, for sure, would no longer walk the streets again, courtesy of some closet Marxist judge, of whom California has many. But Arnie terminated that, and rightly so.

Uh, save for the usual peaceniks, as well as the Greens (read closet Communists) who seem to be running the show these days in Arnie's hometown of Graz in Austria. They'd named their stadium after the pre-Tookie Terminator several years ago to honor their most famous contemporary son, a classic poor-boy-made-good in America.

Except that now, he'd made bad. Always ready to forgive violent criminals, mass-murderers, and dictators, but never giving a rat's derriere about their victims, the Greens raised a ruckus and got Schwarzeneggar's name removed from their stadium. But, actually, not quite:

...when Schwarzenegger, now governor of California, declined to commute the death sentence for Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Los Angeles gang leader who was executed in California two weeks ago, the reaction in Graz, where the death penalty is seen as a medieval atrocity, was swift and angry.

"I submitted a petition to the City Council to remove his name from the stadium, and to take away his status as an honorary citizen," Sigrid Binder, the leader of the Green Party said in an interview in Graz's stately City Hall, describing the first step in the chain of events that led to the renaming of the stadium. "The petition was accepted by a majority on the Council."

But before a formal vote was taken on the petition, Schwarzenegger made a kind of pre-emptive strike, writing a letter to Siegfried Nagl, the town's conservative mayor, informing him that he was withdrawing Graz's right to use his name in association with the stadium.

There will be other death penalty decisions ahead, Schwarzenegger wrote, and so he decided to spare the responsible politicians of the City of Graz further concern.

Ganz' Mayor Nagel, who claims to be against the death penalty himself, tried to "reason" with Arnold, knowing the PR blow this nonsense would deal to his town. NY Times reporter Richard Bernstein observed that Nagel

...blames the leftist majority on the City Council - consisting of Greens, Social-Democrats and two Communists - for trying to score some local political gain at Schwarzenegger's and - he believes - Graz's own expense.

"One stands by a friend and a great citizen of our city and does not drag his name through the mud even when there is a difference of opinion," Nagl said in a letter he wrote to Schwarzenegger. "I would like to ask you to keep the Ring of Honor of the city of Graz which you received."

Arnold by not only pre-emptively withdrew naming rights to the stadium, but Terminated his "honorary citizenship" as well, shipping back Granz' "Ring of Honor" which had obviously become quite the opposite.

Bernstein, ever the NYTimes reporter (the piece appeared in the International Herald Tribune, once co-owned by the Times and the Washington Post, but now only owned by the former, which pulled the rug out from under the Posties a couple of years ago), now editorializes, but inadvertently tips his leftist hand in favor of the Grandstanding Greens:

The very heated nature of the debate revealed something very European about the collective consciousness, how a relatively small place like Graz, certainly a place with no military might or diplomatic power, wants to play a role as a sort of moral beacon, waging the struggle for the good.

Graz, a place of old, onion steeples, museums, and art nouveau architecture, designated itself five years ago, via a unanimous vote of the City Council, to be Europes first official city of human rights, and while the designation has no juridical meaning, it provides a sort of goal to live up to.

"We are against the death penalty not only in word, but really against the death penalty," Wolfgang Benedek, a professor of international law at Graz university, said. Benedek is also director of the European Training Center for Human Rights, created five years ago in Graz to further its ambition to be a human rights center. It is a sort of human rights academy designed to promote respect for the rule of law especially among the new democracies of Southeastern Europe.

Yeah, right. Wonder what kind of world we'd live in today if the patrons of those "onion steeples" had put themselves on record as opposing the Nazis in the 1930s. Of course, moral equivalency reigns supreme again today, as one can easily see in this cynical treatment of an American Republican, even a nominal one like Arnie. Such a surprise.

Once again we note the invisible hand of the contemporary "international government" lobby, which is where the collectivists have gone to hide since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Eastern Europe's Workers Paradise. Ever wonder why Amerikkka's left, and its friends in the judiciary cite "international law," which actually has little if any real standing in US jurisprudence? No doubt, this lobby would rather be ruled by the good Greens of Granz rather than the Chimpy BushMcHitlers in Washington, DC. We are still dealing with an international movement here. It's merely morphed in a sinister way that's tough to detect unless you parse each sentence carefully.

Observe: Austria's highly moral Pope Benedek is quite obviously a kind-hearted fellow who is moved by the usual repentance shown by mass-murderers in Amerikkka whose appeals are running out:

It was also the particular circumstances of this case that led to this reaction, Benedek continued, meaning the special circumstances surrounding Williams case, of a man who had written a children's book aimed at steering young people away from violence, had already spent two decades in jail , and who seemed, to many Europeans at least, to have reformed himself.

Write a children's book, win a Get Out of Jail Free card. What a concept! Again, in case you missed it, there's not a word in this article about the victims of Tookie's murderous rage nor their families. Because that's never the point.

Never forget that the bleatings of frauds like Ganz' Greens and legal professors like Benedek all have a single purpose—the undermining of Western traditions, in this case legal ones, and the relentless advancement of a collectivist agenda that will be led, of course, by them. It was fine for Arnold Schwarzeneggar to be an honorary citizen and have a sports stadium named after him. Until he deviated from leftist orthodoxy. The penalty for all such transgressions is clear: you will be thrown out into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Arnold was not really important. But the symbolism was.

But Arnold fooled them. He terminated Ganz and all its pretensions. There's a lesson here, folks, for all those who would seek accommodation with the die-hard left. Terminated.

UPDATE: Graz officials have apparently revised Website materials in a way that essentially "terminates" Ah-nold from their history. Didn't the Commies used to do this in their history books? Hmmmm...