Hundreds in Brussels Protest Bush's Visit

[meganmonkey]

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Hundreds of demonstrators protested George W. Bush's visit Sunday, hours before the U.S. president was to arrive in Belgium at the start of a conciliatory swing through Europe.

--snip--

"He is coming to persuade and influence the European leaders. We are afraid the European leaders will distance themselves from their people," said Pol de Vos, one of about 700 anti-Bush protesters marching peacefully in downtown Brussels.


Police have mounted an unprecedented security operation for the visit, deploying 2,500 officers — 1,000 more than usually deployed for the three or four summits that bring European Union (news - web sites) leaders to the Belgian capital each year.


An alliance of 88 environmental, human rights, peace and other groups have planned protests near the U.S. Embassy for Monday and near the EU headquarters on Tuesday.

---snip--



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050220/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush


btw, This is the top story on Yahoo News homepage LOL.

[Webster Green]

1. Hundreds?

Hmmm.....

'Liberal' media protest numbers conversion table:

Several = Hundreds
Hundreds = Thousands
Thousands = Tens of Thousands
Tens of Thousands = Hundreds of Thousands
Hundreds of Thousands = Millions

Any questions?

[drdtroit]

9. You got it! n/t

[TahitiNut]

20. Yeah. That's why they have 2,500 police activated. For "hundreds." Right.

The corporate media spin is detestable. There isn't another head of state in world history that's been so "protected" from any display of dissent. Not Stalin. Not Hitler. Not Mussolini. Not Tojo. Not Saddam. None.

[kris10ep]

48. More importantly....

there 88 different groups of protesters.

environmental, human rights, peace, etc.

Even assuming a low number in each group...that is a significant number.

[goddess40]

54. are we paying for all this security?

What kind of bribe did we pay Brussels to let bush talk there?

[Chipper Chat]

2. Betcha wont see this story on Fox.

"Fair and ballast"

[neweurope]

3. There we probably more but the main protests will be to-morrow and

Tuesday.

----------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[ananda]

4. and then Monday

Also, I can't wait for Monday's protests at EU hq.

Go Europe!

Sue

[leftchick]

5. PHOTO HERE! Good One!

A caricature of U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites), right, is seen in the center of Brussels during a protest against Bush's upcoming visit to Belgium, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2005. Bush set out Sunday on a European trip to strengthen ties with allies after sharp disagreements over the war in Iraq (news - web sites) and is making stops in Belgium, Germany and Slovakia over five days. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

[leftchick]

6. Another Is that statue pissing on bush's head?? LOL!

Protesters display signs denouncing the visit of U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) in Brussels February 20, 2005. Several hundred people protested against the visit of Bush, who is due to arrive later today to attend meetings at NATO (news - web sites) and with European Union (news - web sites) leaders. REUTERS/Yves Herman

[candle_bright]

8. That statue

is called the Mannequin-Pis. No joke!

And it is a fountain, with the water coming out of its penis.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

29. Can you imagine if Asscroft ruled Belgium?

Mannequin-Pis would be the first thing to go...

[MADem]

44. Yeah, JimmyJeff Gannon-Guckert modeled for it as a child! n/t

[bpilgrim]

11. FYI - post protest images here -> images.GlobalFreePress.com

http://images.GlobalFreePress.com

first create an account, then upload at will ;->

this way we can have a permanent archive to refer back to and post their image urls in your favorite blogs to remind folks that the neoCONs have no mandate.

don't forget to vote for your favorite images as well =)

if you have any problems ping me at DU.

psst... pass the word :bounce:

peace

[Kolesar]

7. that bush mannequin / caricature is great! ... eom

[Supersedeas]

18. Outstanding....what no FAUX coverage??

[ClayZ]

13. YAY!

I love this! I bet there is 2000 not 200!

[Cha]

10. There must be thousands then..

I know how the media covers bush protesters..very litely.

Thanks to all the people of Brussels who are out there protesting that little homicidal monkey.

[tinanator]

35. there wouldnt be so many people so close together for "hundreds"

thats way better than a 1000. As you would expect.

[LeaderlessResistance]

12. Demonstrators Protested George Bush

Karl Rove, Senior Adviser to the President, speaking about how this administration is going to fight terrorism in the USA "This is going to be more like the conflict in Northern Ireland,where the Brits fought terrorism." How right he is, as "we the people" seek to free ourselves from Patriot Act and the despotism of an intellectually inadequate tyrant.

[ClayZ]

14. More Pics... Now here is some SUNDAY reading!

http://www.stopusa.be/home/
pics of protest here too!
http://www.stopusa.be/campaigns/BushBxl/photos.php?section=FABHBC

:bounce:













:kick: :kick:

[LinuxInsurgent]

15. just hundreds...

comon Europeans...get off your asses...move!

[ClayZ]

16. More than 1,000 people were gathering

in front of the Brussels' Bourse, for the anti-Bush action organised by the Brussels Tribunal.
Stop.USA has strongly contributed, namely with a serie of 20 panels, representing the countries bombed by the US, and meaning that the problem is not the sole GW.Bush

GATHERING is the key word.... it was early,yet!






:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[LinuxInsurgent]

19. nice pic!

[Catamount]

17. Thank You and the others with such great pics and info.....made my day!

Had to turn on the msm this morning just to see if any demos were happening, but it was too early. Just got to see "our*" leave.

[ClayZ]

22. I contacted the website and thanked them for the Photos!

http://www.stopusa.be/home/

click home and contact....

Here is a cartoon from there.




I just hope Mr. and Mrs. bu$h sees some of the protests! ! !





:kick:

[Tigress DEM]

21. kick

There's another thread about this earlier also.

[diamond14]

23. PHOTO of condi....she 'came' on the plane with her hus----...oops..bush*

Belgium's Prime Minister Monsieur Guy Verhofsadt greets US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (R) as she arrives in Brussels with US President George W. Bush.(AFP/Paul J. Richards)

seems Belgium's Prime Minister does not want to SHAKE her hand...looks like he's trying to back away from any association, as condi PUSHES herself onto him for a photo-op...





bush* after finishing his 'session' with condi....wife? what wife?



notice how bush* doesn't even help his Xanax-ed Stepford wife down the steps....

[ClayZ]

24. Condi cartooned on Brussels Protest site

They keep acting like they think they are WELCOME.


:kick:

[Catamount]

28. LOL, Miss Hammerhead at work!

[progressivebydesign]

25. Is THAT why my friend in Belgium said they booked 700 rooms???

Everyone in Belgium is freakin' cuz Bush booked 700 rooms for his visit. Why? Easier to slip around undetected in the night?

[ClayZ]

26. 700 room 1400 guards ....2 per room.. heh heh

They probably booked upstair, downstairs, and the 4 neighboring HOTELS.

Pretty soon he will have to travel in a stainless steel ball like a gerbal...


:eyes:


:kick:

[diamond14]

27. more American tax money DOWN THE DRAIN for photo-ops...

700 rooms at $ 200 a night for three nights = $ 420,000.00

and that's just for the ROOMS....


here in America, we'll just have to LEAVE MORE CHILDREN BEHIND for lack of money....


Homeless Veteran lives on the sidewalk in OUR Nation's Capital, Washington DC....more than 9,000 Veterans are living like this in OUR Nation's Capital....we have no more money to take care of OUR War Veterans - injured by chemicals, bombs, bullets, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and SHELL-SHOCKED...OUR Veterans live on the concrete, badly needing medical care, mental health counseling, career and job counseling, public housing and DIGNITY....bush* has abandoned these Veterans....DISPOSABLE HEROES...while bush* spends OUR tax money for 700 rooms in Brussels....sick reTHUGlicans...sick..

[ClayZ]

34. It costs us a lot to have bu$h humiliate himself some more!

And to think of his military dis-service to our nation.

NOT!

He worked harder at being a cheerleader than he worked in the National Guard. But guys like the one in the picture, who probably suffered so much trauma in Viet Nam, end up homeless.

How can bu$h lay down his head and sleep at night?

Many of the soldiers lucky enough to come home from Iraq are not in any better shape than the Viet Nam Veterans were (and still are).

SHAME ON the USA! Support the troops, indeed!
















:kick: :kick:

[zann725]

40. I was also thinking of how soldiers in Iraq often don't have enough food

....as I watched a Food Channel special yesterday about the White House Kitchen. There was soooo much oppulent food cooked there all the time, not just for the President...but for his staff, and guests. And it was very clear how much excess of this very expensive food was thrown away daily. The insensitivity of the show upset me so, I turned it off. How could they flaunt such oppulence in front of a nation where millions went hungry daily, and whose fighting soldiers often don't get 3 meals/day, and adequate water??

[ClayZ]

42. Makes me pretty angry. I pass a woman each Saturday,

(the only day we go out to work) who sells a newspaper called Real Change. It is to help the homeless and she is. She lives in a shelter. http://www.realchangenews.org/ Better at the news than most MSM.

bu&h and his budget are really going to make it tough on folks who can't get better anyway.

Hope the new chef leaves bones in his fish! (I know that was not nice)


:mad:

:kick:

[neweurope]

43. We can be absolutely sure that the HOSTS have to pay for the

comfort of the mass murderer. My country's onbe of them.

:grr:


----------------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[proudbluestater]

38. What a great diplomat Rice is gonna make, huh?

Still hasn't mastered the concept of "personal space." Oh, that's right, in Bushworld it no longer exists.

[leftchick]

49. they never hold hands...

she must not want to touch him. I can't blame her.

[meganmonkey]

50. LOL he has cooties

The worst kind of evil death cooties. :silly:

[NVMojo]

30. Angry reception for Bush

From correspondents in Brussels
February 21, 2005
From: Agence France-Presse
ABOUT 1000 people have demonstrated against the Bush administration in central Brussels ahead of the US president's arrival.

Protesters brandished signs reading "Bush is not welcome" just a few hours before George W. Bush was to touch down at the start of a European tour.
Huddled on the steps of the Brussels stock exchange, the activists held up an Iraqi flag, another bearing the Cuban colours, and waved a rainbow-coloured banner bearing the world "Pace" (peace).

Another banner declared: "President Bush, the world is calling you to account."

more...

http://finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,12320150-23109,00.html

[Cha]

31. "President Bush, the world is calling you to account."

That's Great! Because our fascist press is NOT!

[NVMojo]

32. it's a pathetic truth, isn't it?

[ClayZ]

37. We need to be CALLING him into account HERE and LOUDER, Too!

If we just stand by and let them go to war with Iran without shutting this country down, we are complicit. We should be putting on orange clothes and sitting in every state capital until they listen to us, screaming "Bloody Murder" already.


:kick:

[Cha]

47. And we should have been doing

that since 2000.

I was out there in NYC on Feb 15,2003 when "the world said NO to war".

[struggle4progress]

33. I wonder how many tens of thousands of police ...

... have been deployed so W won't have to see anybody who disagrees with him.

[Catamount]

36. Good point. I'd say 666,666

[ClayZ]

39. I'm not sure they have enough police who would do that!

Seems to me he has himself cornered for the rest of his life. I was just playing checkers with my 6 year old grandson and he has more sense than bu$h. He looked at the board, pointed to one of his checkers, got a sad look on his face, and said, "that's a dead man standing there."






:kick:

[lala_rawraw]

41. Do they

have to get a sanctioned spot too or is this just an Amerikan rule?

[oasis]

45. "Who's your daddy, you damn chocolate making crybabies?" Bush

thought to himself as his convoy drove by.

[Cooley Hurd]

46. Kick - nitwit's live on TV now speaking...

:puke:

[98geoduck]

51. Why Bush will fail in Europe

An interesting snipet from
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5130903-102273,00.html

He wants more help from the Europeans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably in other places yet to be announced; European backing for American policy on Iran (and Syria and Israel/Palestine); and no European arms sales to China. Those are Washington's priorities. There is a further list of secondary issues, commercial as well as political.

His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the United States today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.

First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.

American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical. Three thousand were killed in the Twin Towers, but most advanced societies have already had, or still have, their own wars with 'terrorism' sustaining losses proportionately as severe: the British with the IRA, Italians and Germans with their Red Brigades, the Spanish with the Basque separatist Eta, and so on. It has been a condition of modern political existence.

The American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded in Europe as irrelevant to the reality of terrorism, overwrought in scale and destruction, and perverse in effect, vastly deepening hostility between the Western powers and Muslim society. To most Democrats as well as Republicans, 11 September was the defining event of the age, after which 'nothing could be the same'. Their imperviousness to any notion that this might not be so astonishes many abroad. Many European believe it is not the world that has changed, but the United States.

The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power.

This claim rests on the argument that an international system in which there is more than one major power is no longer acceptable. Two years ago, Condoleezza Rice told the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London that 'multi-polarity' in the past had been 'a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war but did not promote the triumph of peace'. As a theory of political society, she said, it stands for rivalry and competition. 'We have tried this before. It led to the Great War ... '

This obviously is untrue. The simultaneous existence of major as well as minor powers was the political reality throughout modern history, despite efforts to overturn it, most recently by Hitler and Stalin.

[ClayZ]

52. Does * or pickles know how many people watched the POWER OF

NIGHTMARES? And that he is the boogyman under the bed?

Someone should show them! heh heh

www.informationclearighouse.com
scroll down on the left to videos...

[earth mom]

53. Love hearing this news-anything that makes Smirky squirm is great news! nt