I was there and am completely pissed off by the crap cafe and their crap statements, podium discussion and general attitude.

So great journalism Mike! You managed to find out exactly what you wanted to find.... great.
 

This post was meant to be a bit sarcastic. Everyone -- especially the cafe -- was fronting and demonstrating. I didn't like the cafe's attitude, either; it takes more than statements to be moral.
 

I am just bothered about what yu wrote on the last thread on this subject where you clearly stated that you didnt want to depict this as racism because of how this might go down in the USA. This is simply excusing racism, or not? No matter what you think of Bush or his foreign policy has no relevance to this cafe or to racism in general in Germany. Just look at who is heading the US foreign policy at the moment and tell me when someone like Condi would have a chance of rising to that level in Germany as an accepted German citizen.

If it was irony then sorry for being mad at you because I was annoyed at the cafe but I think you should definately tell the true story rather than making out that the cafe and the people were protesting together. Its not fair to put them in one topf as it were. The cafes cynical PR idea of organising a podium discussion to look like they were part of the action was rather disgusting I thought. Especially as those invited to speak were not told of the reasons and the Green party member trying to bring in an anti-diskriminierungs law, his own law would mean that the cafe owners would have been arrested. In actual fact the undercover police were helping the cafe throw out people (1 guy correctly perhaps) who tried to voice their anger at the cafe at what was meant to be an open discussion. All those who spoke at the podium discussion were also forced in one way or another to admit that the cafe´s policy statement was racist. But still no real apology as far as heard and the ex-workers still have no jobs and the attempts to legally stop the protest continue (though I cant 100% say that for def).

I just felt your post did not truly or fairly reflect this and found your earlier comments saddening. Sorry if I was out of order.

Cheers

Doughnut Boy

P.S. Perhaps later but a friend is arriving from San Diego tonight and i have to pick him up from the airport at you guessed it just around 8.
 

Yes, just to be clear, this post is sarcastic: Strange that everyone on Sunday was all of a suddenly piously anti-racist, no racists to be found, not even at the cafe.

The cafe needed to do 2 things: apologize, and give jobs back to the people who refused to sign that stupid sheet. It sounds like they haven't, which is lame.

In any case, I don't want to excuse racism in the name of my attitude toward US foreign policy, or anything like that. I just wanted to call it by its right name. Because there *are* loads of people who would jump on a story like this and use it to prove a cliché about Germany, or Europe, and most of them seem to lurk on Little Green Footballs.