Bush didn’t make any friends at his stop at the Senegalese island Goree yesterday. After touring the island site that was a launching ground for slave traders, Bush gave an anti-slavery speech. Unfortunately, all the residents of the island had been herded up and penned in a football stadium. So much for anti-slavery.
“We never want to see him come here again,” said N’diaye, hiking her loose gown onto her shoulders with a frown.
As the sun rose over Goree before Bush’s arrival, the only people to be seen on the main beach were U.S. officials and secret service agents. Frogmen swam through the shallows and hoisted themselves up to peer into brightly painted pirogues.
Normally, the island teems with tourists, Senegal’s ubiquitous traders, hawkers of cheap African art, photographers offering to take pictures and all the expected trappings of a tourist hot-spot in one of the world’s poorest countries.
On Tuesday, shutters on the yellow and red colonial-style houses remained shut. The cafes were closed and the narrow pier deserted, apart from security agents manning a metal detector, near the sandy beach. A gunship patrolled offshore.
“We understand that you have to have security measures, since September 11, but to dump us in another place…? We had to leave at 6 a.m. I didn’t have time to bathe, and the bread did not arrive,” the father-of-four said.
“We were shut up like sheep,” said 15-year-old Mamadou.
Absolutely disgusting.
(via Atrios)
Silly boy.
Bush doesn’t give a damm about those people because they don’t vote. And more important they don’t give him money. Bush wants to stay in power! He will do what ever he has to do. He doesn’t care what he has to do. This was a stump speech for the faithful back home. If it served him, Bush would bring back slavery in a NY second.
Coning out firmly against slavery! What a bold stand!