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“Bush, Blair, CIA… How many kids did you kill today?”

Some literary wag (and I think it was Gore Vidal but I am sure I will corrected in short order if it wasn’t) once quipped that politics is showbusiness for ugly people. Regardless of the provenance of the quote, I am quite sure that it must have been coined in honour of the Stop the War Coalition. Never in all my days have I cast my gaze upon such a motley collection of bedraggled, unsightly, grotseque and snaggle-toothed specimens as gathered today in Central London. An alarmingly high number looked as if they had been dragged from the wreckage of a motorway pile-up.

I can attest to this first-hand because, as your intrepid Samizdata correspondent, I took it upon myself to get ‘down and dirty’ with the Anti-Bush protests this afternoon.

I took my camera along because, frankly, I was expecting sparks to fly but as I stepped out of Goodge Street Underground Station into the pre-demo melee, I detected an atmosphere that I judged to be disappointingly muted. Perhaps I had set the bar of my expectations too high. The gathering protestors seemed to me to be quite bouyant but way short of combustible. You don’t spend three decades attending soccer matches in England without developing a sense of smell for impending mob violence. There was not even a whiff of it here.

But there was a full compliment of ‘usual suspects’ complete with the by-now-ritual paraphernalia of street protest; whistles, drums, claxons, flags, banners, costumes, papier-mache puppets, rubber masks and pink cardboard tanks (I was sorely tempted to point out that it more closely resembled a half-track but I suspected that displaying even that rudimentary level of military knowledge would be sufficient to mark me out as an infiltrator). At least there was the customary hotch-potch of causes and grievances to be relied upon. Socialist Workers, Young Socialist Workers, Old Socialist Workers, Retired Socialist Workers, Communist Revolutionaries, Trade Unionists, Enviro-mentalists, Gay Rights, Animal Rights, Anarchist Rights, a whole slew of ageing CND veterans, a mere smattering of Islamic banners and one po-faced old duffer demanding ‘Subsidies For The Arts Now!’. No, this was pretty much a whitebread event. Or, more accurately, a redbread event. It was if the Guardian has disgorged the contents of its subscription database onto the streets of London.

The banners were a bit of a let-down too. Aside from the widely-distributed prints most were a litany of worldly woes all of which were were the fault of George Bush. I don’t think much in the way of design had gone into them and their banner faces were clearly too small to list all the outraged grievances. They often started at the top in big bold letters which gradually got smaller and smaller as they worked their way down resulting in a waving forest of eye-test charts.

But, unfazed by such trivialities, the more legible demanded ‘Peace For Iraq’, ‘Hands Off Cuba’, ‘Free Palestine’, ‘Smash Capitalism’ and ‘Bush Out’. Or maybe it was ‘Hands Off Capitalism’, ‘Peace For Bush’, ‘Smash Palestine’, ‘Cuba Out’ and ‘Free Iraq’. I can’t remember precisely. I can remember a tall, wirey twenty-something who was marching in front of me for a while bellowing anti-Bush slogans with a brio that would have been quite dramatic had it not been for the fact that he was holding aloft a McDonalds ‘Happy Meal’ Balloon. Somehow I don’t think he was quite with the programme.

I traipsed along with the circus while the tom-toms throbbed and the rhythmic chants rippled periodically down the tightly-marshalled line. It was while I was weaving my way around trying to get some decent snaps that I found myself alongside a beard-and-sandals job chanting into a megaphone that was obviously faulty (probably as a result of a Haliburton-Mossad black op) and rendered his pearls of wisdom utterly unintelligable. To me it sounded like:

“Aarg zahg fahg blahg GEORGE BUSH wahg pahg”

Judging from the response of his immediate compadres I was not alone because they chanted along as far as ‘fahg’ before even they tailed off, unable to comprehend precisely what evil doings of the POTUS they were supposed to be denouncing.

And that rather typified the day for me really. I don’t think it ever quite got to where it was supposed to go. The crowd seemed determined rather than spirited and even the attempts to raise the collective morale with big, rousing cheers seemed to peter out into mumbling and more steady, obedient marching.

It had a ‘going-through-the-motions’ feel about it. I am sure they are just as enthusiastic about their various causes as they ever have been but it felt as if they were unable to tap into it in any meaningful way. It wasn’t really a street uprising it was theatrical event. The actors performed with conviction but there was no getting away from the fact that it was a simulacram and not real life. Like a couple who have decided to divorce but still live together. They sit around the dinner table together and pick up the kids from school all the while knowing that it is sham. It was dutiful and formulaic but passionless and not a little self-conscious. I am sure they all still believe in their visions but perhaps they are haunted by the nagging worry that nobody else does.

By the time they snaked their way onto Waterloo Bridge, they had almost become engulfed in silence. It was beginning to resemble a long forced march to a labour camp and the audible attempt at rousing another chant succumbed to the collective necrosis (“Bush…Blair…Lousy Hair”). I decided to take my leave at that point. Gone was all the snarling nihlism and revolutionary bravura I had witnessed back in February. All that remained now was a long trail of the incoherent, the incomprehensible, the dysfunctional and the faintly repulsive. This was not so much a demonstration as a wave of human spam.

antiglobos_sml.jpg

Where have we seen them before?

cavemen_sml.jpg

Hope we don’t see them again

cuba_sml.jpg

Fidel Castro has nothing to do with Cuba’s plight

demoshot_sml.jpg

The Moonbat Carnival

illuminati_sml.jpg

Little did they suspect an Illuminatus was among them…Mwuhahahah

karl_marx_flag_sml.jpg

He was overseeing the day

mad_commie_sml.jpg

Yes that is a hammer and sickle

Starsandswastika_sml.jpg

Hey, what about some British profiteering for a change?

workersrevparty_sml.jpg

Yes, the day belonged to ordinary, upright citizens

I must admit that the attendance was pretty impressive. They did well to get the numbers out and the TV Broadcast news is reporting a figure of around 70,000 which is pretty respectable for a mid-week demo. The oraganisers, of course, are claiming anything from 150,000 to The Entire Population of the Northern Hemisphere. If form is any guide then their collaborators in the press will add a zero or two to the final tally in the editorial eulogies to come.

And that was that. I am home now and relaxing in my creature comforts as Mr Bush will be doing after tomorrow when he flies back to the USA feeling justifiably pleased with himself. Both he and Mr Blair may well have been under some manner of security threat this week. But not from this lot they weren’t.

81 comments to “Bush, Blair, CIA… How many kids did you kill today?”

  • Amelia

    Thanks for the report. Can’t wait to compare your version to the mainstream media’s tonight.

  • “Bush, Blair, CIA..How many kids did you kill today?”

    Probably a lot less than died during the average day under Stalin, Hussein or Pol Pot, but I may be wrong.

  • Abby

    David Carr has an extraordinary gift for satire.

  • John Harrison

    Great report, David! I don’t know if you saw the toppling of the effigy of Bush in Trafalgar Sq or wherever it was that was shown on the news. It just gave me the impression that, despite many of their protestations to the contrary, most of the protesters wish Saddam Hussein had never been removed. I can understand the antipathy to going to war, even though I don’t agree, but until that point I didn’t really take in that this was actually a pro-Saddam demo.

  • Verity

    Abby – Yes, David Carr is a very funny writer.

    Reading his description and looking at the photos, it struck me that things haven’t change much after all. This is exactly the same rabble that would have roamed the countryside with travelling shows and circuses in medieval times, and perhaps before. They would have run up ringing bells, blowing whistles or shaking bladders in one’s face, insisting one enjoy the show and give them money. And in those days, with no other entertainment available, people would have done so.

    The ancient town I live in in the south of France has an annual medieval festival. There were two young women, dressed in medieval clothes, in front of the church, doing an ancient kind of jumping dance. It was an intricate and energetic dance and they were very good at it. But they were ugly and I found myself wishing they’d found prettier women to perform, before realising that, of course, this is exactly the type of woman who would have been performing 500 years ago. Julia Roberts and Jennifer Anniston would have been rich men’s wives or girlfriends. Ugly young women who were missing teeth and couldn’t afford soap to wash themselves or their hair, would have been on the streets performing for the crowds. Plus ca change …

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Great post.

  • Chuck

    Good stuff, was curious about just what WAS happening there in the streets!

  • Abby

    Verity: Yes, Carr is almost Steyn-esque. I am deeply envious.

  • John

    What, no puppets on stilts?

  • Julian Taylor

    Wow, Deus Ex players at a British protest. No ‘hands off Walton Simons’ banners I see though.

  • “Politics is show business for ugly people” is widely attributed to James Carville, former political adviser to Bill Clinton. For what it’s worth.

  • I went down to Trafalgar Square a bit later (not being quite as much a morning person as DC). Dear oh dear. Litter strewn all over the place, people creating bonfires, oh, and the way these people dress. If this is the future leave me out.

  • Mark Holland

    Careful now!

    Down with this sort of thing!

  • David Hall

    I remember flicking the TV on on Wednesday and seeing the half-arsed protest some of them did before Buckingham Palace, and marvelling how the BBC could make a group of maybe 200 people look like an army of millions just by clever camera-work. Switching over to ITV revealed the full panorama which was actually quite pathetic. I was holding a few hopes that the case would be similar today – but I guess a couple of thousand of these people can be found anywhere at short notice for these kind of events.

    I don’t know how the rest of you feel but most people who I’ve expressed my views regarding these demonstrations (complete waste of time even during the war, thankyou very much) have agreed with me. None of them really knew what these people had against Bush.

  • David Hall

    Actually that reminds me of a rather amusing image that I found during the whole war protest thing. It depicted two women sitting on some steps waving a placard saying “Lesbians against Bush”. Crude perhaps, but it made me laugh anyway 😉

  • Katherine

    Ah, David Hall, your lesbians have nothing on our lesbians here in San Francisco. During last winter protests grateful public was treated to a placard with a photo of female pubic hair with this cunning caption: “This bush is for Peace”.

    Great post. Thank you!

  • Rockabilly

    Medieval ugly women doing a jumping dance in public pretty well sums up contemporary feminists. And I suspect the lack of real violence among these shitforbrains in London is more than made up for by their American cousins in Miami.

  • These marchers are angry they’re losing totalitarian regimes they can praise. I gotta wring my hankie now.

  • john

    …in a waving forest of eye-test charts.

    “I see, said the blind man.”

    marvellous imagery! thanks

  • Richard S

    Can’t they come up with a chant that doesn’t remind me of the Godawful sixties?!!

  • Thirteen

    Go away, tiresome blogroaches not welcome,
    Love Samizdata Admin Roach Patrol

  • Jwarrior

    Hey, I saw that black geeza with the red afro in Watford on Saturday night! He was all in red then too, although he had a T-shirt on that said Cocaine not commie! I guess he isn’t afraid of a little capitalism when he goes to buy his Columbian.

    He was sitting on a bench all on his own, all night banging his bongo (the drum, not his todger!). I guess he was in training for the protest. They always have some tit banging a drum at these protests!

    These protesters are soooo going to get caught on the wrong side of history!

    Hope you had a nice long shower when you got back, who knows where the protesters have been!

    Cheers for the report!

  • moptop

    I see that one of the protesters can type into a computer, based on the comment of Thirteen.

  • “Hands Off Cuba… Stop US Aggresion”?

    We’ve got an embargo on them, how much more hands off can we get?

  • Thirteen

    Go away, tiresome blogroaches not welcome,
    Love Samizdata Admin Roach Patrol

  • Joel

    Thanks for a most entertaining account. Sounds strangely like a Children’s Crusade for wheezing geriatrics, showing up a few decades–or a few centuries–too late.

  • I wouldn’t expect people who haven’t mastered the intricacies of the toothbrush to pose much of a problem.

  • Thritene, you are SO clever…

    Unfortunately, those you embed yourself with demonstrate their lack of reasoning capacity, their choice to support losing, anti-humanitarian ideologies and their marked inability to direct meaningful negativity or disdain at any but the most shallow of questions…

    The Good Guys are the Right People, NOT because they declare themselves to be, but because they do what they say, say what they mean, learn what they mean and what they take meaningful stands for by courageously engaging in discourse and debate, then re-arranging their internal descriptions of reality in accordance with the outcomes and input during said debates.

    Leftists and their ilk engage in (SOMETHING, perhaps even inhalation of mind-altering or consciousness-crippling substances) behaviour which makes it difficult for them to reason, understand and persuade AND makes it difficult for them to get to the demonstration on time.

    Reality… it’ll bite you in the S every time!

  • bill

    Ariel photography goes a long way toward setting the head count right. Last time it was used here it cut the “Million Mom March” down to about 50,000 in spite of their claims to 750,000+. In San Francisco it cut a 40,000 person march down to about 5,000.
    If the BBC doesn’t use a helocopter, surely some techno-geek could cobble together a R/C aircraft with a digital camera aboard. Even a tethered ballon works fairly well.

  • ernest young

    And to think, – this is the freedom so many good folk have laid down their lives for!

    It is all so sad…..

  • Jason

    “I wouldn’t expect people who haven’t mastered the intricacies of the toothbrush to pose much of a problem.”

    Don’t talk about the British like that.

  • More pictures from London

    Here

    and

    here

    and

    here.

    Don’t miss the discussion at

    Vanguard News Network

    and visit the

    Reader Mail pages for further comments.

    Updated daily

  • Ah, the Nazis at Vanguard are cheering on the protesters.

    Figures.

  • veryretired

    Thanks for the great report. Your description was even better than the pictures. It is unfortunate these utterly outmoded and pathetic reactionaries can still generate so much media exposure, but maybe showing who they really are is the best argument against them.

    There was a nice article linked through Instapundit the other day describing the arguments against and criticisms of some of Reagen’s policies back in the early 80’s. The similarity to the ridiculous allegations against the current administration are striking.

    For the record, I don’t particularly care much for Bush, just like I don’t watch actors’ kids in movies that they so obviously earned all through their own talent, (uh-huh, uh-huh) but he is hardly the anti-Christ. I suppose he might make an adequate middle manager in the fast food industry, if his name was Schwartz, but I don’t detect much evil cunning.

    Anyway, thanks for the laughs and the photos.

  • “Aarg zahg fahg blahg GEORGE BUSH wahg pahg”

    It’s the black speech of Mordor!

    Which would explain the guy in the second picture.

  • Patrick W

    Great post!

    I didn’t catch the TV news until later. All I saw on Sky News was an insanely energetic loser bouncing up and down on a Bush effigy, a firework going off and then the camera pulled back to reveal two placards being held aloft in the Trafalgar Square mob. One read:

    “I just farted” and had a big arrow pointing down.

    The other read:

    “I like boobies’.

    Tells you all you need to know really doesn’t it?

  • “Aarg zahg fahg blahg GEORGE BUSH wahg pahg”

    It reminds me of the Call of Cthulhu by H.P Lovecraft.

    “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

    In any case, whether thay are Cthulhu cultist, Orcs, or this bunch, I wouldn’t care to associate with them.

  • Mark Noonan

    True to form, and as earlier predicted above, the Vanguard site is saying that 350,000 showed up….probably end up being another Million Man March (give or take half a million).

  • …human spam

    Pure class. I suspect it’s a phrase that has legs on it.

  • I do not like political pictures. especially when they represent the unknowing, uneducated masses.

    I like things that are pure and happy. I like Bush. Got his autograph then I shat on his hands…at lest I would like to.

  • snide

    so i guess aaron is just another frigging nazi sympathiser who is all bitter and cut up that saddam hussain is not still exercising his sovereign right to torture people… i mean what with aaron being an american and having his constitution to fret over, which is of course far more important than people getting their balls ripped off with pliers in some place he could not find on a map, why should he worry about what happens to a bunch stinkin’ a-rabs?

  • Julian Morrison

    My favourite demo is still the pro fox hunting one.

  • Dave F

    Sky News cuts to the marchers, plodding past their very excited young reporter.

    “I’d like to show you posters, but most of them are too rude for TV,” she shouts.

    At that precise moment, a fat bloke looms behind her with a crudely lettered banner that says: ‘BUSH YOU C–T”.

    Hasty cut away to Trafalgar Square, studio anchors fighting to
    contain mirth.

  • Rob Read

    Julian,

    The Euro Referendum Demo is the one I’m looking forward to.

    p.s.

  • S. Weasel

    The Telegraph is unskeptically reporting 100,000 – 200,000 marchers. The photo in their online edition shows one fellow waving a sign saying “Bog Off Ape Boy”. Ape boy? Jesus! What exactly is that supposed to communicate?

    I imagine a whole lot of that crowd loathe Bush (but lionize the likes of a Castro or Mugabe) out of some wheezy old Marxism-versus-the-West fixation. But I get the impression marchers of the ‘ape boy’ variety hate him because…his eyes are too close together and he walks funny. How much deeper can it be?

    And incidentally, David Carr, you unquestionably da man.

  • That guy in the second photo looks like he escaped from the Lord Of The Rings. Obviously looking for his precioousssss….

  • Nancy

    David, thanks for making the effort to go out and get the pics, and for your (as usual) brilliant commentary. I still smile when I think of that past picture of the misguided woman trying to hand you a placard. I laughed out loud when I first saw it.

    Watching both the BBC and the MSNBC version of Bush and Blair’s press conference was telling. A reporter asked Bush sanctimoniusly about his reaction to such great numbers of people hating him. Bush laughed and said, “I don’t know that they do.” Then he said the freedom was a wonderful thing, he didn’t notice many reporters asking Kim Jong-il how he felt about being hated, and didn’t see too many protesters in the streets against his regime. He shut the guy down. He then said that he knew the protesters hated war, but he hoped they loved peace and liberty.

    While MSNBC showed the entire exchange, BBC editing portrayed only Bush saying that freedom was a wonderful thing and the comment at the end about hoping the protesters loved liberty. That was followed by a smarmy voice over sneering, “Doubtless they do, they just disagree how to go about it.” Obviously, editing for
    effect goes on everywhere, but it’s interesting to see it in action.

    I thought that Bush handled the generally negative media very well. BTW, the Queen gave a lovely speech at the dinner held in his honour.

  • Ordi

    I was watching a special on the JFK assination last night. They showed footage of a protest in 1960. In the footage you saw the same sign shown in the third picture! “Hands-Off Cuba”

    Can’t they come up with something (anything) new in 40 Years! And they tell us “they” are the enlightened one! LOL

  • Ian

    Brilliant Article, thank you.

  • Ed Royce

    You know. As odd as it sounds. That REALLY looks like it’s fun. Consider what a hodge-podge of signs, purposes and agendas there are all mixed in together. I’m sure it would be simplicity itself to make a witty, but innocent, sign and meld right in.

    Something perhaps along the lines of “Free Americans imprisoned in the Upper Socio-Economic Strata!” or something. Who knows. A big enough sign and a slavering disregard for reality and I might impress a Revo-Chick enough to get lucky.

    🙂

  • maxinquaye

    I once went to one of the anti-globo protests with a sign saying, “FREE THE PRODUCER CLASS”. None of the other protestors noticed, and I got in all the pictures they had on TV and in the paper.

  • The Sky broadcasters were amusing yesterday. One called the 1000 French drafted in the “cheese-eating surrender monkey contingent”. What was most amusing was their snickering at the debacle with the statue; the fact they could not get it down and that it looked like Jacko.

  • “…a wave of human spam.”

    BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh that made my day, man. Thanks.

    Great (scary) pictures. The Soviet fan with the big red ‘fro was hilarious.

  • HTY

    The march of freedom and capitalism will leave these protesters and their beloved Soviet Union on the ash heap of history. The latter is already gone, the former can’t be far behind.

  • I’d love to know what all those people were doing in 1999, when Clinton was attacking Serbia…

  • More photos from the London protest

    Here

    Slow load, the site’s getting a lot of traffic.

  • Clinton wasn’t attacking Serbia, NATO was.

    And that makes it all okay, you see.

    A package of peanuts to the person who first spots the inherent contradiction in the above.

  • NATO is a defense not an offensive organisation. We all knew that but Clinton didn’t care.

  • Katherine

    My friend was visiting England in mid 90’s interviewing for a postdoc at Oxford. That was at the time when we were all learning about Serbian atrocities in Bosnia. There were protests in London all right: against allegedly inhumane treatment of cows exported from England to the Continent. My friend, aghast, kept asking why the misplaced priorities; the answer she got was: “Bosnia is not our concern”.

  • zem

    By way of comparison, here are some photographs of the protest during Bush’s visit to Australia last month.

  • R C Dean

    I’m sure it would be simplicity itself to make a witty, but innocent, sign and meld right in.

    I happened to be in Santa Fe last year and ran into some kind of hempy anti-globo BUSHITLER protest trying to keep us from bumping off Saddam. I wanted to hand out signs that said “Hands Off the Butcher of Baghdad!”

    I mean, isn’t that what they all wanted?

  • Joe Lemyre

    Good lord, the parade of delusion over at infoshop is hysterically funny. My favorite is the “right wing trollbait removed” comment by the moderator amidst the raving lunacy of lefty comments. Thanks, Mark, your post made my day !

  • My pleasure Joe.

    I agree. The anarchists and oh-so-concerned self described “liberal” types are either naifs or disingenuous, guileful frauds. However I hold the cowardly “republicans” and
    “conservatives” and
    “libertarians” (me, me, ME!) in equal contempt.

    Liberal? Conservative? Libertarian? Republican? Democrat? Tory? Labour?

    What’s the difference, they’re all greedy, self-interested frauds and liars. The political labels they hang on themselves are interchangable. The “It’s All About Me !” party would encompass them all.

    Is anyone still under the illusion that any of the “parties” or politicians actually gives a damn about the people and nation they claim to represent? These beings fancy themselves performing in a branch of show business, which they are, and their primary attention is directed toward personal PR and ego gratification.

    Read Sir Oswald Mosley’s
    ‘Britain First’ speech of 1939, one of the most moving orations ever given in the English language, imo. Then ask yourself if the “conservatives” or any of the other parties today is saying anything that even remotely approaches Mosley’s vision for his nation.

  • Warren Eckels

    Let’s see…he wanted Great Britain to forget about its agreements to protect Poland, thought the Sudetenland annexation was simply Germany getting its own territory back, and added some generous doses of anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism.

    The only substantial parties I can think of where this rhetoric is common are French…Le Pen’s National Front and the Leftist wingnuts that stabbed the French Socialists in the back. I would list Pat Buchanan’s Reform Party, but that split into two wings after a fourth-place showing in the 2000 Election.

  • h

    END FASCISM – ELECT HILLARY!

  • End fascism, elect Hillary ? And who says Americans don’t ‘get’ irony?!

  • Devin Carter

    Very good – Make your political point by insulting the appearance of your opponents. While most people who like to have a go at the Stop The War coalition say they are hypocratically voilent in protest, you do so in saying they aren’t voilent enough. It’s a win-win situation for you neo-conservatives isn’t it? And just what is wrong with reading the Guardian, does it not have those funny little stories in it about pidgeons that play ping-pong? Is it the lack of breats on show that is your problem? Or are there too many of those big words you just can’t comprehend?

    Oh well, keep it up Dave, you just might one day be reporting in a tank for fox news, you might even get to shoot you some A-raabs! Yehaaw!

  • Frank Pulley

    Brilliant piece of reportage: but surely they don’t warrant this sort of brilliant literary attention? ‘Care in the Community’ is to blame. Most just forget to take their tablets and this is the result.

    Human spam … I agree with the posts above and I award you my Pulleyzer prize for that one phrase alone.

  • Simon Jester

    Why is Grauniad the only word that Devin can spell correctly?

  • Jim

    Love the faux-sophistication, Devin. Tell me, did you have to train on how to piss on people from a Great Height, or does it just come naturally?

    And what, pray, is wrong with breast display?

    (‘alf a mo’, wasn’t the Daily Mirror against the war?)

  • D

    I have 2 questions
    (1) – Where do these people come up with the figure that Bush has murdered millions? I mean who exactly is he killing?

    (2) – Why do these idiots think that the Soviet Union was such a great place that they wear the shirt promoting it? Haven’t they heard of Stalin, the KGB, Russian Mafia? I mean “dude WTF.”

  • Justin Hiner

    I wasnt surprised by the hammer and sickle, or the socialist party demonstration. We all know perfectly well that is the underlying agenda for these people.

  • Chris Fletcher

    I voted for Bush. I will vote for him again!

    He is doing a GREAT job! He could do a better job if the democrats and a few republicans would cooperate. Can’t wait for 2004! Go Bush! You to Dick!

  • George

    Why was the poster boy for socialized dentistry at the rally?

  • Your an ass

    Go away, tiresome blogroaches not welcome

  • bennyc

    yeh, its all very well being cynical and satiring the non-explosive marches, it’s all very well saying the marches don’t change anything (they haven’t)
    yet i love the way that any kind of active protest is just looked at quaint, silly and pathetic, with people who are comfortable enough to make those comments. The human cost, the emotional cost of the people, often in countries far away inflicte dby our governments is so horrific if people in this country knew even a fraction of what people went through they wouldn’t be able to be so intellectual and detached. Instead of laughing at the paucity of the demonstration why don’t you go out and do something yourself?

    We have the luxury to laugh at protest

    i realise i run the risk of being called a humourless killjoy

    but i don’t care

  • bennyc

    yeh, its all very well being cynical and satiring the non-explosive marches, it’s all very well saying the marches don’t change anything (they haven’t)
    yet i love the way that any kind of active protest is just looked at quaint, silly and pathetic, with people who are comfortable enough to make those comments. The human cost, the emotional cost of the people, often in countries far away inflicte dby our governments is so horrific if people in this country knew even a fraction of what people went through they wouldn’t be able to be so intellectual and detached. Instead of laughing at the paucity of the demonstration why don’t you go out and do something yourself?

    We have the luxury to laugh at protest

    i realise i run the risk of being called a humourless killjoy

    but i don’t care

  • nigel

    do you think we should bring back baadar mienhof and the red army faction and can i be deputy we could revolt against the americans for their sinful acts on Saddam and Al Quaida.

  • With all this division into “left” and “right,” no one’s looking out for tradition 🙁

  • JP

    Hands off Cuba.
    I am writing from America and I need to inform you that the USA certainly does have its hands on Cuba. In the Miami area of Florida there two paramilitary groups that train and conduct operation against Cuba, Alpha 66 and Omega 7 (the two I know). These operations have included the bombing of hotels to affect Cuban tourism. I believe an Italian tourist was killed in on of these bombing.
    These groups have a nudge-nudge, wink-wink relationship with the CIA and FBI. Its a complete double standard when it comes to terrorism and it is complete bull%*%t.
    In the early nineties I attended a securty conference in Miami, hosted by G.Gordon Liddy, and met a few guy who had worked as “contract military advisors”. They confirmed rumors I had heard about US covert action against Latin America (they were for it).
    I know that many of the protestors that you see at the rallys are quite silly, but the US is up to some very immoral stuff in Latin America, and its not to defend “freedom”.