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"Are you American?"

Recently, on a cinema outing to the Potsdamer Platz, a friend of mine and myself came accross a most heartening form of rebellion. Several temporary stands had been set up at various locations around the Plaza, in the Cinemas and the adjacent mall.

The were manned and womaned by anti-Bush campaigners who were trying to get American Expats living in Berlin (of which there must be about ten- 15 thousand) to register for their voice to be heard in the upcoming presidential elections from across the Atlantic. Very motivated and very energetic, passers- by who fit the profile of a possible American (which is everyone) whether they had regiostered to vote.

Their problem in this case was not voter apathy, for the stands were rather well visited (though not as well as the MOMA exhibition, which we had gone to before), but the lack of Americans attending. I counted many Germans with an interest in getting rid of George Dubya, quite a few tourists (some of them were American, but they vote in their own country, or so we may hope), but no-one with the right to vote in the November Elections.

Most people however, did walk away with one item under their sleeve: A t-shirt with the admirable slogan "Buck Fush" printed on it in a Western-style Font. So even if these activists do not recruit as many electors as they hope to, they will at least have helped us to express our opinion with amazing clarity.


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