Bush is not welcome in Brussels (Re visit on 02/22/2005)

[Mokito]

(Belga) De Amerikaanse president George W. Bush komt op 22 februari volgend jaar naar Brussel voor een bezoek aan de NAVO en de Europese Unie. Dat heeft de woordvoerder van de Duitse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Joschka Fischer donderdag laten weten. Een hoge NAVO-functionaris heeft de datum intussen bevestigd.

De Morgen



To mark the visit of George W. Bush to Brussels in February 2005, peace, environmental and human rights organisations will be organising nonviolent protests against the criminal unilateral policies of the US President. President Bush has shown during his first term in office that he represents the single greatest threat to humanity.

-snip-

Protests are planned on Monday 21st February at 5pm in front of the United States embassy in Brussels. During the visit, on Tuesday 22nd February, a colourful protest will take place in Brussels. The time and location will be announced later. A number of groups continue to call for an economic boycott of selected US products in opposition to Bush's policies.

-more-

Indymedia Belgium

Edit: Mods, I'm not sure if this qualifies for LBN. Please move if necessary.

[MsConduct]

1. Question: How come everyone, except us, is protesting? n/t

[rawtribe]

2. We don't have

a free press.

[shraby]

3. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it

does it make a noise?

[Just Me]

26. Great rhetorical analogy!!!!

[MsConduct]

19. I can't figure out how and when that happened! Has it just been...

since the 2000 election? Or has it been longer and I didn't notice until dubya and his band of marauders took over?

[aikido15]

4. We are protesting

Are you in US?

[aikido15]

5. go to...

www.answercoalition.org also Women in Black are all over the country and they protest Israel's genocide on the Palestinians, usually once a month in most cities.

[MsConduct]

20. Thanks for the link. And welcome to DU! n/t

[Hekate]

10. Santa Barbara California continues weekly protests

Every Sunday, all day, the crosses of Arlington West are planted in the sand of the most-trafficked public beach in the area, where thousands of tourists and locals have seen it since November 2003. The core group of volunteers, consisting of both veterans and non-veterans, describes this activity as the most meaningful thing they could possibly do on a Sunday.

A local carpenter began the project and continues to make crosses, more every week. One member, a Korean War vet, has personally funded and given away some 50,000 post cards with a photo of the crosses on one side and a message on the other. Word of Arlington West has spread across the country and to other nations, and news camera crews from Italy and Germany visited early on.

Bereaved families have come by, looking for the names of their loved ones, sometimes bringing flowers. Young soldiers and marines, some in dress uniform, have come by to look for the names of fallen comrades. One mother asked that the names of her son and his three friends be kept together, as they had died together. Soon after that, the AW crew began putting in the front rows the names of those whose family or friends had come by, sometimes from hundreds of miles away. Those rows now number around 15% of the total.

I invite you to visit, either in person or online at
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Arlington_west_121003.htm

Every Saturday morning there is a peace walk up the main drag by a dozen or so people. In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, we had hundreds, couple of thousand, one time five thousand. Those of us who can no longer do that now have not forgotten why we did it then.

Every Friday at noon the Women in Black stand on the corner by the Art Museum in silent vigil.

Protest continues, but so does work such as counter-recruitment. Part of the mission of Veterans for Peace involved in counter-recruitment is to educate high school students and their parents about the No Child Left Behind schools act and about the presence of military recruiters on school campuses. Counter-recruitment activities (such as staffing an information table and getting invited to panel discussions in classes) also take place at the local community college and at the local branch of the University of California. Outreach efforts will soon be made to non-collegiate, working youth. Discussion has begun on how to find and fund a drop-in center for returning veterans and/or for youth to explore options other than military service in this particular war.

We're here, we love the promise of what our country stands for and what it could be, and we aren't going away.

Hekate

[MsConduct]

21. Wow...I am impressed. Thanks for the info, I'm passing it on to...

my friends in California.

[0007]

14. 'Tis just a matter of time. The fuse is being lit!

How long can we keep hearing about our soldiers dying and then getting smart answers from Rumsfeld?

The list is so long that there's not enough time for the average person to read it and maintain a living.

[MsConduct]

22. I agree wholeheartedly! I am beyond sick and tired. n/t

[Meme]

6. our dutch prime minister will have the time of his life

kissing the bastards ass :eyes: too bad they´re nonviolent protests. would be way more fun to kick the idiot :think:

[aikido15]

7. Love it!!!

Make your voices heard! :mad:

[nine23]

8. At least they have some time for planning.

In Canada, we had about 10 days...a pittance considering we're geographically one of the largest countries in the world. Had we had more time, our numbers would've grown big time.

Belgium, on the other hand, is right in the thick of it...a tiny country bordered by France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Should be good. Still, like Canada, it begs the question: Why does this freak even bother leaving the US? "The most hated man on the planet" is not, and never has been, simple lefty, anti-war rhetoric.

It's deep, and it's for real...


on edit: forgot to say...LOCK 'EM UP FOR WAR CRIMES, BELGIUM!!!

[neweurope]

9. Damn! Brussels! Far, timeconsuming, expensive trip, but I'll have to go

Couldnt the * come to Germany? Would be much easier for me :)

[pinniped]

11. This line...

--President Bush has shown during his first term in office that he represents the single greatest threat to humanity.--

It's sad that there's so many Kool-Aid drinkers in this sad country.

[Meme]

12. nice little twist from fox...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,141060,00.html

Europeans being accused of not wanting to help the Iraqi people. gees... I think this guy is right. I´m gonna buy myself a bomb and help the Iraqi people out there, right now.

[Supersedeas]

17. the US Media will always trivialize protests against Bush aggression

Hundreds of thousands will become tens of thousands at the strike of a US executive producer/editor's pen.

[Tripmann]

13. If he addresses....

...the EU ministers in Brussels they should ALL stand up and turn their backs on him, if not they are giving credibility to his genocide. Of course, thats only if President Kerry isn't visiting instead ;)

Tripmann

[leftchick]

15. I can hear him now, screaming at them....

about how the terrists hate us for our freedoms... it's like a bad movie.

:(

[neweurope]

16. Just checked the Fox-link and I'm seething.

Never read Fox before. May I please bomb Fox?

What a world do we live in where something like that dirty propaganda-machine can be called a "news channel"? "Der Stürmer" comes to mind, the anti-Jew-propaganda paper of the Nazis. Same language, same turnig of facts.

"the European Union — the French project designed to eventually rival the United States in worldwide influence." Ah, so the European Union with it's millions of citizens is "a French Project" I'm being informed.

"Secretary of State Colin Powell was just forced to lecture the Euros". Forced to lecture, no less. I wished Fischer had kicked him in the butt last night instead of sending him beer. A wealthy man should buy his beer himself anyway and not take a handout from the German taxpayer.

"They won't go help the Iraqis — whose difficult lives the Euros always bemoan — because they're in a snit about Bush and the Americans." That's just a lie; the promised German soldiers are already working in Abu Dhabi with Iraqis. And I sure hope they're not going to set foot in Iraq!

"Hopefully Bush smirks and makes them mad again." That ist so... so ... I have no words for that, really. I'd very much like to tell Fox that we can't get any madder than we are already. The damage has long since been done.

Rabble-rousing agitation. And the good folks listen to that * voluntarily?

[Meme]

18. *edit*

I´ve only read stuff at Fox twice. This piece of crap today, and some column from Cal Thomas about baby-killing doctors in Holland, ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140612,00.html ) which he kinda indirectly compared with the nazis, and I was ready to jump on a plane to kick his ass personally. The stuff these people write.. It´s so damn stupid, I don´t even know whether to laugh my ass of, or to cry my eyes out.

[uhhuh]

23. To NewEurope And Meme

I understand your reaction and I also would like to see Fox disappear, but as we who live under the current dictatorship of the chimp know, discussions of bombing Fox and others, even in jest, could be considered threats, and so I would like to post the obligatory condemnation of your hostile words against Fox News and assure the government thugs that are probably monitoring this board that we who are here in the U.S. and are subject to their new expanded "lone wolf" disappearing powers in no way encourage actual physical bombing be done to the right wing propaganda machine known as Fox News.

I think this will satisfy the requirements of contrition for you fascists, so you may cancel the trucks to round us up and stop the calls to have DU purged from the internets. Thank you.

[Meme]

27. I´m so sorry

didn´t mean to cause problems or anything

*starts editing messages*

and hey, just in case they really do read all these messages, I am a NON-violent person. I care about this damn war for a reason, and "bombing" fox was just my anger expressed. Just so you know, you dictatorship-war-innocent killing-chimpansee encouraging possible spy.

[uhhuh]

30. I know what you meant

I was kind of making a joke about the required contrition thing, but it is almost getting that bad, and I do believe we are monitored.

It won't be long until we ARE required to shout down dissent and watch everything we say if we don't get this situation turned around soon.

[Meme]

32. well

you scared the hell out of me :p because since I don´t live there sometimes I don´t know what is a joke and what´s not ;) but it wouldn´t surprise me if it will come to the point where they actually monitor everything that´s said, like you said. And if something ever happens to Fox I don´t want some re-elected fool to bomb my tiny tiny country, just because of what I´ve said here ;)

[neweurope]

36. uhuh is right. Since to-day everybody here should be very careful

with their wording. Don't mean to depress anybody... We know that we agree and what we agree upon. Let's start to be a little more moderate in what we say. Even if that was a little tongue-in-cheek, uhuh: It is definitively right. That Lone-Wolf-thing - I had seen it coming. But when I read about it to-day I still went all cold inside. That means you all, my friends. If I may call you that?

[Rochambeau]

33. Agree with you Neweurope. It's a pure load of pig shit.

That pig shit of an article is food for the red states masses. And the pig is called John Gibson.

[VegasWolf]

24. They hate us for our freedoms! n/t

[Just Me]

25. You'd think the way the world reviles GWB,...

,...would provoke the American people to ask themselves, "Why? Isn't there something wrong with this picture?"

Are 51% of us really living in such mindlessness as to be completely blind to such blatant realities?

[mike_c]

29. yes, 51 percent are indeed utterly clueless....

A substantial number of them probably couldn't find Belgium on a map, let alone understand why those urp-e-ens are upset about our Dear Leader.

[Vidar]

28. Thank you, Belgium. I have hope for the rest of the world.

[madbelgiancow]

31. You are welcome

[Vidar]

35. Great name.

[Duncan Grant]

37. Welcome to DU!

Hope you will post frequently here at DU. A European's perspective and analysis is very informative (and often reassuring). :hi: :thumbsup:

[texpatriot2004]

34. He is not welcome anywhere!