London-Seoul-Tokyo March 19/20 protest round up

The London anti-occupation demo yesterday was excellent, big, lively, colourful, young, old, noisy and above all... sunny. Nothing like marching on a warm sunny spring day to raise the spirits a bit. There were at least 100,000 people there and for me it was definitely the best anti-war demo since the (supposed) end of the war in April 2003 (unfortunately I missed the massive Stop Bush demo in November 2003 as I was in Korea at the time). Anyway, if you want an entertaining report on the day check out leninology. A couple of pics (from IMC) to give you a flavour:


Into the haze


Taking over the streets...


Taking over Trafalgar Square

And this placard wins second prize in the funniest of the day competition (first prize goes to the one that read "Cherie, take the kids and run, while you still have time"):



Sounds as though the demo in Seoul was pretty decent too, attracting some 5-6000 protesters according to the organisers. Oh My News has the goods here.


피켓의 숲 / forest of placards


Protesting, Korean style

The BBC was reporting that there was a 4500-strong anti-war demo in Tokyo. If these figures are correct (I couldn't find anything to verify them) this is very good, especially considering that the Japanese anti-war movement has been a bit lacklustre in general and certainly wasn't able to mount the sort of opposition to the deployment of the Japanese "Self Defence Force" to Samawah that the Korean movement was able to mount against their country's deployment to Irbil. Perhaps it was Condi's visit that galvanised people into action.