Police chased around 300 mostly younger demonstrators as they rushed into the streets to try to block cars and then stormed the Alexanderplatz station, temporarily cutting the city’s main east-west public transport axis.
“Bush has declared war against half the world,” said 27-year-old protester Kai Kroker. “There’s no counterweight to his power — it’s more dangerous than the Cold War.”
Around 1,000 anti-war and anti-globalisation demonstrators continued protesting after Bush departed for Moscow, but the mood was decidedly more relaxed.
Playing off Bush’s Texas roots, organisers called the action “Cattle Herders not Warmongers” with demonstrators dressed as cowboys and American indians following a flat-bed truck laden with hay and speakers blaring country and western music.
“We picked the western theme so when Americans see the photos they’ll feel a bit ridiculed and maybe will think a bit more about what their Texan president is doing,” said one man wearing a black cowboy hat with a silver sheriff star.
Bush earlier made a speech in the German parliament which was briefly interrupted by members of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) — the successor party to the East German Communist SED that built the Berlin Wall — who unfolded a banner reading: “Mr Bush and Mr Schroeder, stop your wars.”—Reuters