This struck me as really strange at first--first of all, it was a little bit weird to be around people very vocally concerned about other nations' freedom and rights, and once I got used to it and began to appreciate it as something I should expect, I wondered just how the United States--mind, the 'land of the free and the brave' and 'give me your tired, your poor'--got flipped about so much. And not just concerning our own problems with human rights--I'm betting the nicer questioning methods in Guantanamo are worse than anything China has been doing recently--but also with respect to our ignorance and apathy of the problems being faced across the globe--problems that may or may not be directly traceable back to us and our self-absorbed ways.
A more-or-less impromptu Tibet-freedom protest in the city center. Does this look like anything that could ever happen in the United States? These are normal, middle class people! Not college kids, not angry teenagers (although, goodness knows, germany has enough of those!), not crazy liberal hippies!I feel a little ashamed that I don't actually know that much about the China-Tibet conflict or the genocide in Darfur or any of the other major human rights issues currently raging (http://www.amnesty.org is helping with the ignorance--why wasn't i made to attend more amnesty events?! i only know half of last years board!). I don't know what the best solutions are, but I think I've started to pick up a little bit of German disgust with US-Americans' apathy though.
