Monday, October 18, 2004

Stop the War 17/10/04 Reloaded


Authorities strenuously deny claims of excessive policing ...
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This demonstration was nothing like the original Stop the War march. This one was a lot smaller and was an attempt to unify all sorts of disparate protest groups from across Europe under one banner; anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-globalisation, anti-racism, anti-all sorts of things. They were protesting against everything and so ended up protesting against nothing.
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Nope, it didn't work. Only a few thousand people turned up, less than you would expect at bottom league football match, and the majority of marchers weren't even British; which kind of took the edge off their calls for changes in the British Government.

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The irony of a global, international coalition protesting against, er, globalised international business seemed lost on all of them

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And they were all so po-faced and humourless. The only intentional laugh all day came from a couple of blokes, sipping from cans of lager, trying to wind-up a nearby group of anti-globalisation protestors:

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'What do we want?'
'A quarter pounder'
'How do we want it?'
'With fries!'
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Full field report and photographs here:

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