Hi fellow listers,

 

Though I routinely respond to post by other people, I rarely post
political stuff of my own. But this time things are turning ugly enough,
so ugly I have to make a statement.

 

I reside in France and, somehow, I'm identified as a French user when
accessing websites.

 

A friend asked me to test http://www.georgewbush.com
<http://www.georgewbush.com/> 

 

Now, guess what ? I get an error 403, telling that I'm not allowed to
view the site, both in Netscape 7.02 and IE6. Nothing to do with cookies
(I allow them) or with the firewall settings (I'm the network admin
person, so I know what kind of political vocabulary filtering we have :
none).

 

In other words, I'm denied the right to access relevant information.
This is a very serious breach of my rights as an individual.

 

Is that how the President of one of the largest democracies in the World
treats the international community ?

 

Is that how a candidate is supposed to regard the people of the Nations
of the World ?

 

Is that the natural way to enhance the prestige of the USA abroad ?

 

What is the candidate hoping to achieve ? Make friends abroad ? Restore
old wounded friendships ? Re-unite the world around the star-spangled
banner ? I doubt it.

 

This election season has already claimed a few victims : the prestige of
the USA, its standing as one of the largest democracies in the world,
its status as a beacon for democratic ideals. More concretely, the
current Administration is now acting alone in a few of its questionable
ventures, and clearly attracts little or no international support.

 

I sincerely hope that all of the above is not beyond repair. But that
depends on YOU, American voters.

 

Go it alone, GWB, because that's what you deserve. You were the Governor
of the Lone Start State, you're now the President of the Lone Cowboy
Nation.

 

By the way, I am a friend of the USA and of Americans of all flavours,
and have always been. You are as rich (intellectually and emotionally
speaking) and diverse as any Nation on Earth, so please remain as such.

 

But I'm fed up with your Administration, and I'm fed up with your
President's blatant disrespect for the international community of
Nations and People.

 

Today is your election. I hope you vote the most appropriate person into
office. That's your choice, my American friends. Since I do not hold a
right to vote in the USA, there's nothing much I can do to help. But in
my mind my choice is made.

 

BTW, http://www.johnkerry.com <http://www.johnkerry.com/>  works fine.

 

Best Regards,

 

Christian "proud to be a Liberal" Lheureux

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