WTF Is It Now?!?

Hated 'gun-crazed celluloid cowboy' Faces Protests in Europe

According to a poll published by Der Spiegel magazine yesterday, 65 per cent of Germans believe that the United States is pursuing its own national interests by taking part in or planning wars around the world.

'America's right to self-defence, claimed after September 11, has become a pretext for making war,' says a leaflet circulated yesterday by the Axis of Peace, one of the left-wing groups organising the anti-Bush protests. The leaflets handed out on the streets of central Berlin were snapped up, and not only by the security men who are already scouting Berlin for signs of dissent.

There will be no conscious echoes of John Kennedy's 1963 'Ich bin ein Berliner' visit. Then, Kennedy drove around West Berlin in an open Lincoln and took flowers from young German women. The shops were closed for a day of celebrations.

This time Mr Bush will see virtually no Berliners. He will travel in closed convoys of armour-plated vehicles. The shops will be shuttered only because of fears of rioting. The Coward of Crawford's model will rather be that of Ronald Reagan who, shielded by bulletproof plexiglass, stood at the Berlin Wall in 1987 and appealed to Mikhail Gorbachev to rip it down. More than 50,000 demonstrated against him.