Channel 5 news gave fair coverage includung interviews with Tony Benn John Pilger and Biannca Jagger. They stated that the protest muslim and non muslim was a statement by people insiting that their voices were heard and demonstrated the extent of the anger against the continued bombing.

posted up my shit pics from today at  http://www.budeiri.fsnet.co.uk

Gotta say it was good to see so many ppl BUT FOR FUCKS SAKE IN TEH FUTURE MAKE SOME NOISE. i was there with revolution and we were the noisiest (verbally)group in teh first half of teh march, no one else chanted or made any noise. Anti cap block was drummign which was cool, but the rest of ppl were so fucking passive. WALKING AROUND LIKE THE COPS WANT U TO WITH A SWP BANNER DOES NOTHING when will ppl learn - you gotta make noise, action to achive things. damn at least ppl came i suppose, but anti war demos will never get anywehre if ppl are this passive.

news coverage -
euronews - 20 secs about "pacifists in london" fuck that im not a pacifist and neitehr were thousands of otehrs there.
iTN - 2 mins report inlcuding interviews with tony benn etc, and some other ppl. Alright repoert

both focused far too much camera wise on the religous elemenets presetn there tho

peace wonko

So far the best mainstream report is on Reuters- the figures given out by the Police (and faithfully reported by their lapdogs in the media- including the Guardians web coverage) are just laughable. The Reuters report follows:


LONDON (Reuters) - Chanting slogans and waving banners, thousands of protesters have marched across London calling for an end to U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.

Demonstrators of different ages, religions and backgrounds chanted "Bush, Blair, CIA, how many kids have you killed today?" and waved placards urging "Stop the War" and "Not In My Name."

The Stop the War Coalition estimated that 100,000 people attended the march on Sunday, which they said was the biggest of its kind since the Vietnam War three decades ago.

"This is absolutely massive. We've never had such a variety of people coming together with one voice. This really shows that people do not support the bombing," said Stop the War spokesman Mike Marqusee.

But police said there were 15,000 people at the march, which snaked through London from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, where anti-war campaigners such as Bianca Jagger and former Labour politician Tony Benn spoke to a cheering, whistling crowd.

Benn said people should be putting pressure on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's main ally in the fight against terrorism, to end the bombing, which he said was killing thousands of innocent people.

CARNIVAL ATMOSPHERE

A similar demonstration in October attracted 20,000 people according to police and 50,000 people according to organisers.

Witnesses said there were larger numbers of people at Sunday's march, where the carnival atmosphere provided some warmth on a cold, grey day.

An hour after the first protesters ended their march, members of trade unions, socialist and anti-war groups such as CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and pro-Palestinian organisations piled into Trafalgar Square.

Protesters said that despite the fact that the U.S.-led coalition appeared to have the upper hand in the fight against the Taliban, there were growing numbers of people opposed to the war in central Asia.

"This turn-out is amazing. It shows that most people are really dissatisfied with the war. And replacing the Taliban with the (anti-Taliban) Northern Alliance, is just replacing one group of bandits with another," said Sue Jones of anti-capitalist group Globalise Resistance.

Andleen Razzaq, a Muslim marching for the Just Peace organisation, said thousands of Muslims had come from all over the country at the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"Ramadan is a time when Muslims look to themselves and try and find a way to a better world. It's very important that we are here today. We're not saying we have answers, we just want a just solution," she told Reuters.

Just got back from the demo this afternoon. The rain held off and it wasn't too cold. The march started from Hyde Park
and I wanted to join in with the samba band, so I watched the start of the march passing by me on Park Lane, and an
hour later, I could hear the samba band approaching towards the back of the procession. Apparently they'd been held for
a while by police because of their connection with the anti-capitalist bloc and internet rumours that they had planned to
peel off from the main march and cause a little bit of happy mayhem around town. They were very heavily surrounded
by police, but the dancing and pecussion was loads of fun and yes we were definitely the noisiest bit of the protest - I agree with comments made above, and would add that with that many people around the police wouldn't have stood a chance if we'd decided to reroute to another target like media or embassies. We should be testing our freedom, not complying meekly with proscribed routes.

When we finally arrived at Trafalgar Square the atmosphere was amazing - the square was totally packed "shoulder to
shoulder", and I would estimate that there were double the number of people from last time. On that occasion, the police
said 20,000 and the organisers said 50,000, so I would guess there were 30,000. On this occasion the police are saying
15,000 which is a blatant lie, and the organisers said 100,000, so I'd guess we're looking at maybe 60,000. The crowd
was very very mixed, with many children, many elderly, and people of every religious, cultural and ethnic grouping.

As it's Ramadan, there was a prayer at 4.15 to mark the breaking of fast and the Square fell quiet while the beautiful
sound of the imam filled the air. We broke open our much needed sandwiches (along with many other non-Muslims
who had fasted in solidarity) and listened to Jeremy Corbyn MP, John Pilger, George Monbiot and many other
inspirational speakers.

When we left, the square was still very busy and and the tubes were packed with protestors heading home - a great
atmosphere with people striking up conversations with strangers all around. I don't know yet what is planned next, but
hopefully it will be even bigger again next time. The only downer was that once again that we got all of 20 seconds on
the main ITV news - I doubt the papers will give much coverage to what was the largest London demo for decades either.
I really think that we should march on media targets in future - blockade the BBC or newspaper offices - maybe then
they'll take notice and stop their cencorship.

Peace

Rikki

I just got back from the march and I have to say that the police reporting 15,000 is just **obscene**. There was _at least) four or five times that many. If you were generous, you might even say 100,000 people. I simply cannot believe the bullshit the corportate media publishes.

Even by their own standards, the official figure should have been at least 40,000, since last time the police figure was 20,000 - and there were more than twice as many on this march as the Oct 13. march.

It seems that the Govt. decides on what would be the best figure to put out, politically, they tell the Police to declare this number, and the corporate media just complies, uncritically.

DISGRACEFUL. We should target some of our activism at the media and also raise public awareness on the problems of bias and lack of accuracy of reporting of the mass media under Capitalism.

We have to put the guardian on the Mayday Monopoly board

or at least they have been infiltrated by the enemy, which i guess amounts to the same thing.. it's especially disgraceful after all their hand-wringing mea culpas after they *didn't cover the last one at all!* (oh, we dont do demos, and it was in the observer so we thought we didn't have to write about it...) so they promised the coverage for this would be big - and we dont even get a fukkin photo on the website! how any of them can still claim they are journalists and not propagandists is laughable.

definitely bigger than Oct13, but we wont know the number for sure until the arial photos are released, which they certainly dont want to do. go on 'guardian', demand it! makes u wonder who they're 'guarding'...

There were definatley more than 15000 there. Thats *such* a made up number, designed to demoralise. Did anyone see all the speeches? Is there a good report of them anywhere? I'd really like to find out more about that young woman from the Edinburgh Stop War Alliance, the Afghan girl who dreamed of a stable democracy and an end to imperialism and battling over gas and oil. Does anyone recall her name please? Any links people??

*feeling invigorated, not alone, and very suspicious of the regular media*

The agenda is full tilt over and over again - even with the numbers game- this was a BIG demonstration. The New World Order is out to belittle us - literally. Ways to fight/peace this thing?

The interesting point is that they felt the need to lie so blatently on this one. How many thousands, coming home from the march, must have laughed out loud when they heard the figure quoted? How many more people now know that the police will lie for political reasons?

It is partly their fear of and berwilderment at a growing movement, that makes them try to portray it as a shrinking one.

Anyone know how al-Jazeera covered it?

The media lie that only 15,000 attended is obscene. We have to challenge this. I stood on Park Lane to try and meet some friends who I had missed at our arranged asembly point. I stood there for forty minutes (from 1:25 - 2:05pm) and saw thousands pass me by. I tried to estimate numbers by doing a rough head count a few times and got on average over 100 passing me in a minute. Thats over 4000 in the time I stood there. When I gave up waiting and joined in, I looked back over the park and could hardly see any drop in the number still waiting. A large number of people were also joining the march in the middle of Park Lane, by cutting across the park instead of waiting to be "let out" by the police at Marble Arch, and are additional to my rough head count.
Does anyone know how late the end of the march actually left Hyde Park?
I was on teh first march, and there were much, much more on this one. So the "official" lie of 20,000 last time and 15,000 this time is inconsistent in itself.

i wouldn't have a clue about the numbers there - i can't judge but maybe 50,000? what would i know.

the square was filled when we (student cnd) arrived - apparently an hour after the front - and i thought we were near the back but the anti-capitalists arrived 20 minutes later. did the police hold them up at all?

we were with one samba band as we left hude park and, yeas, there was a police cordon around them - so bloody stupid!
like people carrying big fuck-off drums are going to sprint off from the police. anyway, grosvenor square's a legitimate enough place to demonstrate... oh! and the american embassy happens to be there. the levels of control demo policing reaches these days is daft

yeah all mainstream reports say 15,000 - blatanylt not true, all your shoppers standing and grinning in piccadilly circus could testify to that, but the guardians crap report did at least have the photo on the front...

ben

just could not resist adding something to this list of
people who went to the anti war demo.
I was eleted!! I feel now that there are a lot of people out there who think like me. Pity that Channel 4 last night
gave so little space to the demo: They announed: 15.000
demostrators> the news remained on screen perhaps 50sec to 1 min. but the football news was much much longer than that!
Thanks god there is an alternative!!! The people united will never be defeated! It is still a valid slogan!!!
Yesterday I experienced that unity after a very long time.
Lets keep up with it.
Ciao, to all of you
Gea

I didn't get why people were talking about the Guardian, when the march was on a Sunday? They did put a big pic and the start of an article on their front page today, but they gave the police estimate and the Stop The War estimate without any comment about the huge disparity, which I suspect will make the ordinary reader think that Stop The War are lying.

Anyway, I've complained to the newsdesk as well as the Beeb, ITN, and C4. Hope lots of others have too.