I have been bombarded the whole year with election mails from many of you. Below I have selected the most thoughtful or entertaining and put them on my website in case you missed them. Take a look at them and click them around to your friends. You need flash, a fast connection and the sound on. Behind the fun is a serious reality which I will get back to further down in this mail. But first take a look at:

www.american-pictures.com/gives/thanks

www.american-pictures.com/gives/Moore/thanks

www.american-pictures.com/gives/pizza
.....served with HOME SECURED "Freedom Fries " !

www.american-pictures.com/
gives/help/finding/the/PLANE/truth

www.american-pictures.com/gives/you/the/blues

www.american-pictures/gives/liberation

www.american-pictures.com/gives/Bush/a/human/face

www.american-pictures.com/
gives/billionaires/for/Bush/a/free/rap

And finally, isn't it time to join the world again? :
www.american-pictures.com/
gives/the/world/vote/on/Bush/and/Kerry

But most important are the informative background stories here:
www.american-pictures.com/gives/alternative/news
 

So you are about to elect a world leader and we Europeans feel terrible about the fact that we cannot participate in this - for the world - most important election we can recall. The other day Danish TV shocked most Danes by finding and interviewing a Dane who actually is in favor of Bush. This says something about the mood over here in a country which like Britain is your closest ally in the worsening war in Iraq. 

But here is a more disturbing thing. Countless people I have talked to over here admit that in their deeper subconscious thinking they feel some strange relief or even joy whenever they hear about another American war casualty in Iraq - even people on the right who support our own soldiers in Iraq. They don't like to admit that they harbor such emotions, but feel that those American deaths might be the only way to get Americans to wake up and see how Bush has betrayed the world, betrayed Iraq and sadly, yes, betrayed his own troops.

When so many of us have violence/terrorism in our own hearts we can't possibly win a war for "peace" and "democracy".  And if we Europeans entertain such negative thinking, just imagine what the Arab world feels! My belief is that much of the violence we now witness in Iraq might somehow be caused by our own violent thinking.

As a person of dual loyalties - both toward my new country America and my old country Denmark - I thus feel deeply troubled by the explosion of anti-American feelings which Bush has managed to stir up in such a short time all over the world - negative emotional reservoirs which are virtual breeding grounds for terrorism and which I have not seen so strong since the Vietnam war. It is so sad to think of when we recall all the good will and pro-American sentiments almost the whole world entertained in the Clinton era under a president who made everybody "feel" he was listening to the problems of the world. Could you imagine Bush like Clinton thrusting himself into the angry masses of the Gaza strip?

So if you have not yet made up your mind of whom to vote for, remember that we in the rest of the world think very highly of Kerry ......at least he had a passport before he ran for president - unlike his opponent!

So here is my voting advice for you. If you are normally a Democrat you should perhaps vote Republican this time. And if you are a Republican you should vote Democratic. Why? Well, I read a deep analysis the other day - I think it was in New York Times (I will put it on the web if I find it) - which compared the disastrous mistakes the Republicans have made under Bush with the mistakes the Conservatives did in England. These mistakes literally destroyed the Tories after years of rule and plowed the way for Labor under Blair to have virtual monopoly of the political scene. So if you hate the Republicans - New York Times concluded - you should allow Republicans to have four more years under Bush after which all the accumulated hostility of the world and the explosion of terrorism he inspires, the gigantic deficit gap he leaves for our children to pay, the widening gap between rich and poor he creates, the environmental destruction etc. - all of that will ensure that Americans for years to come will not trust Republicans to run their country again!!! Just read here how fast their greed robbed Iraq - and robbed Iraqis and Arabs of any goodwill towards Americans after their "liberation".

My personal reasons for writing this?  Well, like most of us these days I feel totally powerless witnessing the destructive course the world has taken under Bush. I don't like feeling powerless, so when I sat here on the road in Jutland on a rainy day - killing time between one of my American Pictures presentations and my aunts funeral - I had fun trying also to kill time for Bush making these web pages. After all - not everything should be sad under Bush! So enjoy them!

To my many Republican friends: I enjoyed our many discussions in the past. I hope you will see this mail as just another good dialogue between us - while you ponder - with most of the world now being against Bush - if he - being the voting choice of terrorists - really is working for your long term Republican interests!

With love

Jacob Holdt

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."  The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude."

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met but, somehow, now it's my fault."