Emil Brix - newly appointed Austrian ambassador to the UK - is so upset with the Sasha Baron Cohen movie, Bruno, he has called for a protest. Brix has a problem with 'cheap gags' that in his view cast Austrians in a bad light.

Sasha Cohen plays a gay Austrian fashion reporter in the movie. At one point he says that he wants to be the most famous Austrian since Adolf Hitler. This is one of the gags Brix finds offensive.

It's unclear how anyone could cast Austrians in a worse light than they cast themselves when it comes things Nazi-related. This is the nation that handed the far-right Freedom Party and Movement for Austria's Future 29% of the vote last time out.

Not so long ago a well known Austrian TV personality, Klaus Emmerich, made headlines when he said with reference to the election of Obama: 'I do not want the western world being directed by a black man. And if you say this is a racist remark, I say you are damn right it is.'

When Austrian far-right pin-up boy Jörg Haider was killed in a car accident, he was granted a state funeral. A high-end send off for a man who Carinthian writer, Egyd Gstättner, described as the center of a "fuhrer cult."

Bruno's Hitler joke is definitely topical when you consider what's been going down in Austria in recent years.

Brix also has a problem with incest related humor in the film. Bruno jokes at one point that the “Austrian Dream” is to “have a job, find a dungeon and raise a family there”. This is a reference to Josef Fritzl, the man who imprisoned his daughter in a basement and used her for years as his personal sex slave.

Brix wasn't amused: “It’s totally inappropriate. Everybody should speak up against that.”

That's the trouble - Austrians don't speak up. They're too polite or possibly repressed. You could run a Charles Manson-type cult out of your basement in most small Austrian towns and as long as you have a well trimmed moustache and tip your hat to the neighbors nobody is likely to interfere.

Ironically enough Brix praised the films of Austrian director Michael Haneke. He said Haneke's films gave a much more accurate portrayal of Austria.

Presumably this includes the Haneke film, Funny Games. It features two psychotics who lock a family in a cabin and make them sadistically attack each other.

Brix said: “Films by directors like these really deal with Austria.”

A Salzburg insurance company posted an ad in major papers in Austria seeking employees for sales and management positions but there was a catch... they had to be born under specific star signs.

No, not a joke. The company has zeroed in on Capricorn, Taurus, Aquarius, Aries and Leo as the astro signs best guaranteed to produce the most productive workers.

Before you scream "superstition!" - the company argues that its preferences are based on statistical research - although exactly what type of statistical research isn't exactly clear.

So will Librans, Geminis and Scorpios require affirmative action in the future if the trend catches on?

It has the appearance of discrimination. The company also has an answer for that. It contends that in terms of current guidelines hiring-by-astro-sign is not in fact illegal. It claims there is no discrimination related to gender, age, race etc since each astrological sign includes all of these factors.

Hmm... if you wanted to be cynical about it you could that say that it sounds like a crafty way of exercising closet preferences. The company could always claim that a problematic yet uniquely qualified candidate was a Pisces, thus giving the thumbs down while avoiding the accusation of bias.

No word if the company also vets potential customers' astrological charts to determine the relative degree of risk.

What is it about Austria and its tolerance for far-right racists and xenophobes? In the recent Austrian elections the combined far-right tally was 29% of the vote.

Heinz-Christian Strache who heads up the Freedom Party has been filmed hanging out with banned German neo-Nazis. He has openly mocked gay people, called for the deportation of immigrants and the repeal of laws banning Nazi revivalism. Nonetheless Austrians gave Strache and his far right loons 18% - close to a fifth of the vote. Eleven percent went to the late Jorg Haider's Movement for Austria's Future.

When you are speaking of far-right Austrian extremists, racism is to be expected. But when a mainstream Austrian TV personality named Klaus Emmerich drops blatant racist remarks about Obama, you have to wonder what the hell is going on.

Emmerich isn't just some fringe commentator. He is a well known personality on Austrian TV news, with a career spanning 61 years. He spent time in the USA as a correspondent for ORF - Austria's public television broadcaster. Emmerich has been described by Der Spiegel as the Austrian version of Wolf Blitzer, the well known CNN commentator.

On Wednesday, while discussing the US election on ORF, Emmerich said: 'I do not want the western world being directed by a black man. And if you say this is a racist remark, I say you are damn right it is.'

After digging this hole, Emmerich dug deeper. He said Americans were ... "racists, now as before, and it must be going very badly for them that they so convincingly ... send a black man, and a black, very good-looking woman, into the White House."

ORF has distanced itself from Emmerich's comments. But this hasn't cooled Emmerich's jets - quite the opposite. He told the Austrian Standard that the rise of Obama was 'a highly disturbing development' because "blacks aren't as politically civilized."

In an interview with Die Presse, he explains Obama's success by attributing it to "a devil-like talent to present his rhetoric so effectively."

In addition to being offensive, Emmerich's comments are so wrong and idiotic they almost defy a reasoned response. It obviously escapes Emmerich's attention that some of the greatest tyrants and jackasses in history have presided in the palaces and parliaments of Europe - and none of them had a trace of African blood in their veins.

Although ORF has disassociated itself from Emmerich's remarks, it has refused to fire him. It claims it is reviewing the situation. Very Austrian of them.

Joerg Haider spent the evening prior to his death in a gay club in Klagenfurt where he was seen in the company of a young man. Haider lacked the integrity to come clean about his gay preferences, and instead fronted the public image of the family man. Just one more contradiction in a life full of contradictions.

That night in the Klagenfurt club Haider downed the better part of a bottle of vodka and became so obviously drunk, a customer at the bar offered to drive him home, but was turned down.

On the drive home in his VW Phaeton, Haider passed another vehicle. He was speeding, clocking 142 k's when he ploughed into a concrete barrier. The Phaeton flipped over a number of times. Haider was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital. It has subsequently been reported that he was more than four times over the limit with a blood alcohol level of 1.8 milligrams per millilitre of blood.

The public expression of grief in Austria is on grand display, with overblown comparisons being made with the death of princess Diana. The grief fest has only been outdone by the pomp and ceremony of Haider's state funeral, where prelates of the Catholic Church were front and center. Hardly surprising, given the right-wing political connections of the Vatican in the not so distant past.

Despite Haider's less radical stance as leader of the Alliance for Austria's Future, he left a legacy in Carinthia that was difficult to shake. He was responsible for promoting discriminatory practices directed against the minority people of southern Carinthia, an autochthonous Slovene ethnic community - the Carinthian Slovenes. Haider pushed for Slovene students to be segregated from German-speaking students in school. He also put up opposition to the Austrian Constitutional Court ruling that called for bilingual road signs.

When the Court ruled that the road sign of the town of Bleiburg was unconstitutional because it was written only in German, Haider personally moved the road sign several meters in a theatrical protest. He compared his action to Jesus Christ moving the stone from over his tomb.

This is a man of whom Austrians are proud. So proud in fact that the public expressions of grief have to be seen to be believed. In a Guardian article Kate Connolly describes the carnival surrounding the passing of Haider:

The Carinthian writer, Egyd Gstättner, speaks with disgust of the "fuhrer cult" that surrounded Haider. He said that every Monday morning his 10 year old child was required by the religious affairs teacher to fill up a page of her exercise book with a black cross and Haider's name.

The creeping influence of the far right is gathering momentum in Europe. The economic downturn will add to their influence. It shouldn't be forgotten that it was high unemployment in Germany in the 1930's that facilitated the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Austrian police are investigating a road accident that took the life of Joerg Haider, head of the far right Alliance for Austria's Future.

According to reports Haider lost control of the Volkswagon Phaeton he was driving and went off the road. The vehicle overturned and Haider suffered severe head and chest injuries. There are no reports of any other vehicles being involved.

Haider was 58 years old. He was a far right Austrian politician known for his anti-immigration and anti-EU views. He made the news as governor of the province of Carinthia when he praised the employment policies of Nazi Germany. This wasn't his only pro-Nazi comment. He stirred up controversy when he referred to Nazi concentration camps as "punishment camps" and argued that the SS were "a part of the German army which should be honored." He was known to have a fondness for Waffen-SS veterans and attended a number of their ceremonies.

Haider was a former head of the Austrian Freedom Party which took 27% of the vote in 1999. When the Freedom Party broke up in the midst of serious internal conflicts, Haider founded the Alliance for Austria's Future. In the recent elections the Alliance won 11% of the vote.

Heinz-Christian Strache, a politician who has been filmed wearing military fatigues and carrying weapons in the company of banned German neo-Nazis, appears to be just fine with a sizable percentage of Austrian voters.

Strache's far right Freedom Party won 18% of the vote in the Austrian general election. The Movement for Austria's Future led by Jörg Haider won 11%, making a grand total of 29%. The combined far right tally is higher than that of the mainstream conservatives - the Austrian People's Party.

The success of the far right suggests that there a lot of angry Austrian voters who are willing to buy into Strache's brand of nationalism, extremist as it is. Journalist Hans Rauscher puts it best:

Strache appeals to the lowest reactionary impulses. A number of his statements reflect a paranoid mindset that sees immigrants, particularly of Muslim background, as a threat to "our daughters" who are in danger of being exposed to "the greedy stares and gropings of whole hordes of immigrants."

Strache was a one-time associate of Jorg Haider. The two have a history of feuding, that eventually led them to go in separate directions. Strache is further to the right and more outspoken than Haider.

This is Ian Traynor's take on Strache in a recent Guardian article :

Assuming there is a hell, metaphorical or otherwise, Hitler must be dancing his little jig. It looks as though the far right has found the formula to edge its way toward real power once again in a European nation. Given it's history, it's hardly coincidental that that nation happens to be Austria. It must be proud.

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man accused of imprisoning and raping his daughter, has made a frank confession to Austrian prosecutors. He asked for the confession to be released to the media.

Fritzl is upset. He thinks the media portrayal of him as a monster is one-sided. He claims he was driven to incarcerate his daughter for 24 years in the basement of his house because of "an addiction". The same addiction presumably that took him to Thailand for sex vacations.

Not only did his daughter Elizabeth become his entombed sex slave, she became the mother of his kids, seven in all - a grand total of fourteen when you include the children he had with his wife, Rosemarie. Fritzl's patriarchal control over the women in his family had something perversely Biblical about it. He even referred to the basement as "my kingdom".

Rosemarie went along with Fritzl's story that Elisabeth had run off to join a cult. She bought every tall tale he dreamed up, as did the neighbors apparently and the authorities. When Fritzl told Rosemarie that three kids had been dropped off at the house by Elisabeth - on a day off from cult duties presumably - she went along with that also. Given her lack of radar, you suspect he could have told her that Elisabeth had been abducted by space aliens and that the kids had been beamed down from a UFO without stirring up much suspicion.

The way Austrians have been depicted in the course of this affair makes them appear naive or possibly disinterested. Actually a more accurate explanation would be to say that there is a strong conservative streak in Austrian society. People tend to mind their own business and expect the same from others.

Austrian author Thomas Glavinic captures the attitude very well:

"The countryside hates everything that is at a distance: the government, the EU, the Americans, the Jews. There are old-boy networks and there is peer pressure. Those who don't work for their local voluntary fire brigade or at least donate money to their village fete are branded oddballs or outsiders. The rest, on the other hand, could beat up their wives and kids in their spare time. We wouldn't care. "It's just none of our business." "

Politeness goes a long way in Austria according to Glavinic:

"Most Austrians think that someone who greets them politely on the street is a decent man, and they would see no reason to question that theory even if that same person had a blood-smeared body bag hanging over his shoulder."

He describes a recent incident involving a wandering four year old to illustrate the prevailing attitudes:

" ... this is a country where last week a four-year-old traveled 120 miles from Graz to Vienna Neustadt on his own ... not a single person noticed him. Austrians hardly ever notice anything that might cause them discomfort."

The readiness to take Fritzl's tales at face value and the myopia of associates when it came to his behavior suggests most went along with his version. If they didn't it wasn't enough to raise the alarm.

The justifications in Fitzl's "confession" are undercut with self-pity. He refers to 'rescuing' his daughter from her terrible habits - smoking and drinking. Apparently imprisoning Elisabeth and forcing her into an incestuous relationship struck him as a reasonable antidote.

He denies Elisabeth's claim that he had sex with her when she was 11 and says he waited until she was older before raping her. The fact that he appears to believe that this will cast him in a better light demonstrates his complete failure to grasp the moral implications of his behavior.

When asked about a rape he committed in 1967, his response was "I don't know what came into me". You get the feeling that he sees himself as a naughty boy who misbehaved but who is basically a fine fellow underneath it all.

The influence of the tyrannical mother has clearly left its mark. The manners the mother sought to instill in him, he identifies with the 'Nazi era of my youth' - "I have always valued decency and good behavior".

The Nazis adherence to regimented outer form masked an amoral will to power. In Fritzl's case, despite the dark secret in his basement, he never for a moment dropped his gentlemanly conduct when out and about. Many locals who encountered him spoke of him in approving terms.

Fritzl's efforts to normalize the basement horror, by referring to it as his "second family" only adds to the underlying sense of revulsion.

In the prison in St Polten where he is being held, fellow inmates have been banging on the walls of his cell shouting "Satan we are going to kill you."