the picture sizes (dimensions and file size) are massive.
they're being resized and re-uploaded.

why do people on this site keep banging on about how 'a to b' marches don't 'change the world', you know, neither do small direct actions, but the world does change through a myriad of actions building up pressure and creating an alternative consciousness and forcing politcal change, do you really think Italy/Spain would have withdrawn/promised to withdraw troops without the massive anti-war movements in their country?

Read the 'Blair's Wars' book to see the effect of the anti-war movement on almost stopping the UK going to war

Read the history of the movement 'stop the war' to see the massive amount of direct action taken by people around the country on the day war broke out

Know that Labour had a special meeting to discuss whether the election should be before the demo earlier this year, do you think they've ever discussed changing their strategy over a small direct action protest? no....

direct action protests are just as symbolic as marches, they are neither more radical nor more effective necessarily, and the stop the war movement is without question the broadest and most diverse (and therefore the strongest) movement this coutnry has seen....

so stop the carping!

I was there in the thick of it, 'world changer', so, I must still have some faith in the process of the traditional public demonstration then, eh?

...As it would seem do many others, otherwise the only people you would have seen on the streets of London on Saturday were cops on overtime.
And of course the usual officially sanctioned masses contributing to the national debt.

When I say it didn't change the world, I'm not being cynical, I'm being pragmatic and realistic.
The 'A to B march' reference is merely an accurate description of what the format of the march was - a covenient shorthand description, which is, I'm sure, the way most people who use the term intend it as.
Equally, if it had been more chaotic in form I would have described it as such.

You also seem to be overlooking the fact that my overall review of the day is actually a positive one. It does seem to me (as I'm sure it will to others who read these comments) that you are finding fault for the sake of it.

******

Also, in future if things need resizing (which I have no problem with), please don't butcher the layout in the process (which I have a BIG problem with), as some us of put a lot of hard work into getting things how they want them to look.

This is not just a trivial item either, as, if this keeps happening you will deter many people from putting up their stories, for fear that their contributions will also be changed out of the context they intended them.

Hi there, I resized these pictures in a big rush as I didn't have much time and sincere apologies for changing the format from the long horizontal picture strips (1st, 3rd and 5th pictures). I did this because if I just reduced all of these pics to fit onto the indymedia page width then some of the pics would have been very small, specificaly the first set. I apologise again, but thought I was doing the best thing for the pictures at the time, since they were so huge, but yes it was a hatchet of the format you uploaded those three pictures in, so sorry indeed.

If you want them changed back (to smaller versions of the horizontal strips) please mail the publicaly archived imc features list or more private imc contact list (email addresses below) or re-upload the picture sets resized to your specifications, either here, or as a new newswire post.

features list email:
imc-uk-features ATNOSPAM lists.indymedia.org

contact email:
imc-uk-contact ATNOSPAM lists.indymedia.org

This submition has been butchered. The size and format of the photos should be left as the author intended, to change this is nearly as bad as changing the authors words. How can a panaramic view of the whole square be reduced to the same width as a photo of a few police vans on the mall? The layout of the piece like the words convey a message - this has now been lost, please restore the original. Thank you.

People uploading ridiculously large photographs is a problem. It his happening too often.

Resizing photographs is also a problem, as it means someone's contribution is changed.

There is a solution. Indymedia can ignore files over a certain size, no doubt this can be set easily. This would encourage those who don't understand about computers to learn, while having no effect on those who can use computers properly.

Firstly, thank you for the apology - apology accepted, although you have just made extra work for me!!

But, the above commentor is also correct in their analysis.

Yes, the old adage applies here - a picture IS worth a thousand words, and the way I presented them was intentional, as, not only were they presented that way for practical reasons, to save strain on servers and downloaders by attempting to use as few media files as possible, but, also, the images were grouped thematically, both to tell the story of the day in an easy to scan narrative form (much akin to older print journals, like the Illustrated London News used to do), but, also because after I looked at the photos, I realised there were definite pictorial themes there, which would work well as sets.

It's also worth noting that I'd written the copy to reflect the content of the pictures.

However, I should also concede that the image sizes (at 90 dpi) were also quite large (they were still half the resolution of the originals though, at 180dpi, which would have been enormous), so, in future when I'm considering layouts for the Newswire I shall bear this in mind.

To try and alleviate this, I shall repost the story (sometime in the next 2-3 days), with a similar layout (as I intended), but, slightly smaller images.
I should point out though that it can be very tricky trying to figure out an appropiate dpi for the Newswire, as, sometimes the usual 'web-friendly' 72dpi just doesn't give enough definition for pictures with a lot of detail in them, so, it's always a bit of a trade off between what is good for downloading, and what will work for the pictures.