Post by neilcrud on Mar 2, 2007 21:01:38 GMT
Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament / Troops Out Of Iraq Demonstration,
London, Saturday February 24th 2007
London, Saturday February 24th 2007
(Write up by Dave Cox, pics by Matt Misfit)[/b]
Its 5:20am, the alarm goes off like a piece of glass ripping through my brain, get up, drain the main vein an start waking everyone else up who’s kipped on my floor in order to get to the colwyn bay train station on time (6am), the coach pulls up, were all fuckin knackered but in a (very early) morning kind of confused way, we’re all abit excited aswell. A few people cant make it, inevitably a few would drop out last minute, oversleep, or maybe even give up in a apathetic kind of way, makes you wonder if the people that showed no interest whatsoever in the first place in going to London have subconsciously accepted that were actually living in a fascist dictatorship now without realising it, or worse, realising and accepting.
We plod along, step on the coach, an it pulls away, 6 hours later we arrive in London, just as the discussion is at the hilarious climax topic of how mummy warned us of the “big bad man” of London town, he is 50 ft tall, uses cars as skateboards and can smell a 22 year old welsh lad from 50 miles away, Pat tells us he didn’t have the luxury of a caring mother and admits she used to kick his football on the motorway when he was little an tell him to go an fetch it…
We step off the coach, cross a (very) busy road, and catch up with the huge mass gathering in Hyde Park, take shit loads of flyers off people for all kinds of different (but probably equally as important) campaigns against all kinds of corruption, genocide and imperialism, stuffed in my pocket for another time to read. We join the huge line of people and wait for the march to begin… as we leave Hyde Park, a man (not in police uniform) taking photo's of demonstrators faces (suspiciously close-up photo's) is put on the spot "Hey whats your police number mate?" he reacts with a blatant stutter or words, caurght red handed, cant be the press, they would want to take photo's of loads of demonstrators in one picture, not up close an personal pictures of each person’s individual facial features etc... this negativity is soon drowned out by the overwhelmingly positive amount of people chanting, singing, beating drums, blowing horns an whistles, holding placards with messages that you’ve been screaming at your tv for months (if not years) and thought you were the only one thinking them (i.e. DON’T ATTACK IRAN!). Nearly everyone we walk past who wasnt joining the march, seemed to be showing their support with thumbs up, peace signs and welcoming optimistic expressions, I even spotted an american couple thanking everyone that caurght their eye as they walked past them. not all americans are ignorant, 'god-fearing' patriots, despite what the media betrays them as. That american couple I saw are what I would call true patriots (without being nationalist), I personally believe within the next 5 to 10 years there will either be a complete revolution in America, or a complete militarized police state take-over with the use of martial law and detention camps, the path America will go down will depend on whether the American people wake up and act before its too late (not convinced? research Halliburton and their $385 million investment in detention camps across America with the pathetic excuse that they are built in case of a ‘national emergency, i.e. natural disaster or terrorist attack’. Now look at how the military took over, and killed so many people in New Orleans in 2005, and no help was sent for over a week after the disaster accured, and ofcourse September 11th being carried out by criminal elements of the Bush Administration (don’t take my word for it – research it yourself and prove me wrong), who also profited massively, and have since used September 11th as an excuse to invade any country they want, as well as a domestic take over, scaring the public into giving up their liberties)… Oh and the exact same thing is going on in Britain (London July 7th 2005 bombings were clearly an inside job to scare us into agreeing with war and allow our government access to otherwise, very personal things, like our privacy, British MP’s were openly discussing how they would need detention camps to “quarantine” british citizens if a chemical or biological attack took place here, not to mention this problem/reaction/solution scenario where they tell us there isn’t enough room in our prisons… so we must therefore need to start using “army detention camps” (Please save us New World Order, stick us in camps, away from the nasty terrorists!). You have to realise, if your government is willing to put you in a detention camp if a situation like a chemical or biological attack came round, wouldn’t you want to make sure it was a genuine threat before they put you in the camp? They still refuse to have a public enquiry into the IRA bombings, not to mention the July 7th bombings in London, this is serious stuff going on right infront of our eyes, research it and prove me wrong please!!!
Anyway (sorry I got carried away there) as we march together round the corner and up towards Piccadilly Circus, the drums seem to get louder, the voices up a gear, and the bumps on the back of my neck begin to stand on end, natural ecstacy, amazing feeling, the big buildings, the huge lights, the (designed to be) intimidating tall statues and coca-cola adverts, you realise what you are facing is purposely designed to make you feel small, like you don’t stand a chance in making a difference, but when you see 100,000 people marching with you with the same ideals as you, you quickly realise those ideals in your head are a common human instinct, and you aren’t actually going insane, suddenly you get the conforting reality that we might just stand a chance after all, the government is the minority, and theres a fucking big gap in numbers inall!
The march continues up the road and into Trafalgar Square, we work our way through the crowd to get to the edge of the balcony, to witness a sea of people cheering a speaker stood at the bass of Nelson’s Column (I think that’s nelsons column…? Picture on the right…).
We spent the remainder of the day sat on the wall, on the end of the back balcony next to the steps going down into the square, listening to the speakers. There’s far too many to list (and it’d be a bit tough for me to mention them all) but the speakers that stood out for me were George Galloway (he warned that if our government goes ahead with attacking Iran, then there wouldn’t just be protests against it, there would be all out riots, he called for the british people to leave their jobs, go on strike, do whatever it takes till all this death and destruction is brought to an end). The last speaker also struck a chord with me, the man who for the past 6 years has camped outside parliament, day and night, protesting against the war in Iraq, Brian Haw. I don’t really want to try and explain what he said, I think you should just watch the video that’s been uploaded on youtube here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwmq5mh_5PM
I’ll finish this with what Matt Misfit said on the link2wales forum, cos he summed up whats going on in Iraq really well: “The place is fucked up. Sectarian violence and death squads funded and generally caused by the occupation. And their about to do it to another country! Iran. We've seen all this build-up before havent we, with Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction, the media darkening the whole country and its culture, all abit too familar dont you think?!
The west is full of apathetic cunts, their minds full of celebrety bullshit from the media, safe in knowing that they are comfortable and they can one day, if they focus hard enough, see themselves living the same rich comfotable lifestyle. Combine that with a dose of how the muslims and those in the East are so different to us in the media with a very nasty twist of "terrorism" (and its purely terrorists, pah!) so the people will back their armed forces going bombs away in the middle east aswell as being so shit scared they will accept an Orwelian police state. Meanwhile, the US has fucked up Somalia (they bombed buildings supposedly harbouring Al Queda but also annihilated the entire Islamic government in power, so the warlords are back in control, leaving america to, probably, install a new "friendly" government) and we dont see that in the news do we, the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afganistan are riddled with depleted fucking uranium from our weapons (which is a war crime) so it like Hiroshima with mothers giving birth to the fucking elephant man and we....are going to attack them, for wanting nuclear power!! And thats just the tip of the motherfucking ice berg! AGHHHHHHHH! The west is brainwashed into thinking we are the good guys. Wake-up, its easy!”
more pictures can be found here: s42.photobucket.com/albums/e310/MATTMISFIT/London%20Protest%2024%2002%2007/
Dave Cox