Bush over here in Germany - pissing us off

He's visiting the City of Mainz, which has been pretty much closed down. I heard of people commuting to Frankfurt that had to stay in the city, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to get to work the next day. It's not like they shut down Washington DC for this jerk.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,343310,00.html
Bush Arrives in Germany, KFC Closes
Schools, public offices and businesses -- including a large General Motors-owned Opel automobile plant in nearby Ruesselsheim -- have shut down as have highway, ship and train traffic. This, despite the general economic depression afflicting the nation. Even hospitals have, as much as possible, been cleared just in case of an emergency. The city's 1,300 manholes have been we ...... All this to accommodate Bush for seven hours as he tries to make up for years of giving Europe the cold shoulder. Our question, again, is it all worth it?

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,343281,00.html
With a Hush and a Whisper, Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans
During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice. Was Bush afraid the event might focus on prickly questions about Iraq and Iran rather than the rosy future he's been touting in Europe this week?

In 1982 the DDR put on a show for western journalists and politicians in a small town. The town residents weren't permitted outside and they brought in extras to pretend to be happy communists spouting the party line when it came to politics. Bushies like that sort of thing.

I've been there once and want to be able to spend more time there. But now it's polluted!

We really don't want him back. Maybe you could give him a sports franchise to fuck up. Just don't let him get involved in politics or anything important.

I know he pisses the world off on a daily basis.

I spent several months in Germany a few years ago and I loved it. I was actually planning on moving there until my boyfriend (German) dumped me - over the phone! - after 3 years together. The bastard!
But my memories of the country are all very positive. Wonderful people, food and beer. And those should be the important things in life :)

to the German government for not allowing a dog-and-pony show. It's nice to know that democracy thrives somewhere. I can't wait to visit Germany (and France) this summer. I feel very emotionally attached to both countries right now!

:hug:

This morning the BBC, when it isn't fawning over Camilla, mentioned there were protestors---something that would get scant notice in the US. The BBC, perhaps one step above the US pravda mouthpiece, while still pushing the unity meme, managed to mention that the protests were limited to an atrea miles from the event. Germany has it's free speech cages too, I see.

:shrug:

AT LEAST 4000 demonstrators vented their anger at the visit of US President George W. Bush to Germany today but were kept well away from a castle where the president dined.

Shepherds.

Grandma's baby doggie might get hurt!

And we didn't like it one bit. He is such a freaking COWARD that they had to lock down all of midtown for the republican convention. Many New Yorker simply took the week off because it was impossible to get around the city. It was a total police state here. So we sympathize, we apologize, and we're glad it's not us this time.

I got more exercise running from NYPD in that one week than I had for a year before that.

She was in Guantanamo on the Hudson! It was an insane, infuriating week. But I didn't miss a protest, I was out every day screaming at the Chimp, I hung out with great people, and it was actually quite exhilarating. New York was UNITED in protest and it was very very cool. But we must NEVER FORGET that freaking BLOOMBERG SOLD US OUT - handed our city over to the RNC. Jailed New Yorkers who objected. Shut the city down so the republicans could use it for their personal playground. It is an OUTRAGE and Bloomberg should PAY for it. Anthony Weiner just announced for mayor and he specifically brought this up, and I am going to back him because of it. I think I will sign up now to volunteer. I want BLOOOMBERG OUT!

I didn't hear about this. Did they actually lock up people for protesting? Did they charge her with anything? Did they deny bail?

And they kept them in jail until the RNC was over - pre-emptive arrests, if you will. The RNC actually rented the jail themselves! It was an old bus depot on the waterfront. Oil on the floors, smelly. People were getting sick. A judge sanctioned the NYPD for doing it. It was really police state, martial law tactics. In some cases they dragged an orange NET around a group of protestors and just arrested anybody who was caught inside, including bystanders. I'll find you some links.

There are lawsuits over it now.


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Protesters challenge NYC arrests
By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Cindy Fiore came to New York on Aug. 31 to see her daughter, go shopping and protest the president during the Republican convention. She got home to Connecticut 36 hours later, dirty, hungry, sore, fingerprinted and, she says, angry "on every level."

* * * *

• The New York Civil Liberties Union filed two wrongful-arrest lawsuits in federal court on behalf of protesters. The group is also challenging why the police fingerprinted nearly 1,500 protesters. Fingerprints are not supposed to be taken for misdemeanors. As a result, the city destroyed 1,481 sets of fingerprints taken during the convention.

• The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based legal advocacy group, is seeking class-action status on behalf of all those arrested. The lawsuit charges police with illegal arrests and holding demonstrators in unsafe conditions. The city used a former bus garage on a riverfront pier to hold those arrested.

• The city may be held in contempt of court for holding protesters more than 24 hours, and as long as 66 hours, despite a judge's order to release them. As many as 560 protesters remained in jail after the judge's order. The city could be fined more than $500,000.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-06-nyc-protesters_x.htm?csp=34

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Arrests at GOP Convention Are Criticized
Many in N.Y. Released Without Facing Charges

By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A01

NEW YORK -- One late August evening, Alexander Pincus pedaled his bicycle to the Second Avenue Deli to buy matzo ball soup, a pastrami-on-rye and potato latkes for his sweetheart, who was sick with a cold.

He would not return for 28 hours. As Pincus and a friend left the deli, they inadvertently walked into a police blockade and sweep of bicycle-riding protesters two days before the Republican National Convention began. "I asked an officer how I could get home," Pincus recalled. "He said, 'Follow me,' and we went a few feet and cops grabbed us. They handcuffed us and made us kneel for an hour."

Police carted Pincus to a holding cell topped with razor wire and held him for 25 hours without access to a lawyer. The floor was a soup of oil and soot, he said, and the cell had so few portable toilets that some people relieved themselves in the corner. Pincus said a shoulder was dislocated as police pulled back his arms to handcuff him. "Cops kept saying to us, 'This is what you get for protesting,' " said Pincus, whose account of his arrest is supported in part by deli workers and a time-stamped food receipt.

Pincus was one of 1,821 people arrested in police sweeps before and during the Republican convention, the largest number of arrests associated with any American major-party convention. At the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, which unlike New York's was marked by widespread police brutality, cops made fewer than 700 arrests.

* * * *

In the days after the convention, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly stated that "every NYPD officer did a great job." But interviews with state court officials, City Council representatives, prosecutors, protesters and civil libertarians -- and a review of videos of demonstrations -- point to many problems with the police performance. Officers often sealed off streets with orange netting and used motor scooters and horses to sweep up hundreds of protesters at a time, including many who appear to have broken no laws. In two cases, police commanders appeared to allow marches to proceed, only to order many arrests minutes later.

Most of those arrested were held for more than two days without being arraigned, which a state Supreme Court judge ruled was a violation of legal guidelines. Defense attorneys predict a flood of civil lawsuits once protesters have settled the misdemeanor charges lodged against them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34245-2004Sep19.html

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In addition to what Stephanie said above -- yes, I saw this with my own eyes a bunch of times that week... They would simply surround a crowd with big orange nets and arrest everyone caught inside, protester or not. They dropped off people at the Guantanamo, and held them longer than was legal -- in some cases, days, and a circuit judge had to force NYPD to release some of those people in the end, without any charges having been brought against them. Also, they arrested people for protesting in cases they wouldn't have arrested them for just being there -- like, we were hanging out at Times Square with a group of people, unbothered, then a RNC bus drove by and we chanted something and gave the finger in the direction of the bus (something I did a lot during that week, and it took me a while after RNC to get rid of the habit of flipping birds to buses) -- before we knew it there was a swarm of NYPD with their nets... I managed to outrun them, but there were some old ladies in there who couldn't.

And it was very easy to see which cops were good cops and which were bad. Some of those pigs glowed with bloody intoxication and loved roughing up, beating and arresting people. Some, it was easy to tell, just hated being there, looked at us apologetically, smiled and shrugged...

It was a trip.

By the end of the week my male friends that I was out protesting with had lost their minds with outrage and they were walking right up to conventioneers and getting right in their face and telling them to go home. It got up close and personal and confrontational. It was just so outrageous the way they trampled on our rights and on our city. It was ugly. We were furious. And exhilarated at the same time.