Protests: ‘Four Moron Years’

IN Geneva, they read patriotic poetry. In Vienna, they drowned their sorrows and plotted their revenge. In London, they staged a candlelight protest outside the US Embassy.

Across Europe, a continent none too friendly to George Bush, locals and US expatriates united in their opposition to the US president and marked his inauguration with some unabashed Bush-bashing - complete with Four Moron Years buttons.

The Austrian chapter of Democrats Abroad, which scrapped plans for a black-tie ‘un-augural ball’ because of the tsunami in southern Asia, gathered its members at a traditional Vienna wine bar decorated with American flags “to scheme, plot and plan the retaking of our country.”

“I’ve been wearing dark colours since November,” said John Battaglino, a New York City native who teaches chemistry at the American International School of Vienna and who wore a black jumper and jeans to the party.

“Close to 50% of the US thinks like I do,” he said. “If it had been 70% or 80% who voted for Bush, I’d be rethinking the colour of my passport,” he said.

In London, anti-Bush demonstrators had a candlelight protest outside the US embassy, staged by the Stop the War Coalition, which staged mass rallies opposing the Iraq conflict in 2003.

Mr Bush’s re-election was widely seen as negative for global peace and security in 16 of 21 countries polled in a BBC World Service survey released on the eve of the inauguration. On average across all the countries, 58% called his re-election a negative development; only 26% described it as positive.

Protesters in Germany held a rally at Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate under the slogan: You’ve Got a Voice.

“We call on all people worldwide who are against the policies of the Bush government to take part in the demonstration or organise one in their own cities,” said Vote 44, the group which organised the protest.

In Prague, supporters of Senator John Kerry held what they dubbed the What Might Have Been Inaugural Party, and in Geneva, there was a Counter-Inaugural Dinner kicked off with a reading of the Langston Hughes poem Let America Be America Again.

In south-western France, Democrats Abroad screened a film called Bush’s Brain, and its supporters in Paris dressed in Kerry blue and gathered at a trendy bar for “a dialogue of truth about the Bush agenda and its global effect on all of us”.