19 March 2006 Blog Home : March 2006 : Permalink
CHICAGO - The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters — shouting chants of "Stop the War" and calling for the withdrawal of troops — in demonstrations across the globe.
Obviously there were numerous demonstrations around the world each of which had many thousand protestors. Clearly this was like the demonstrations three years ago, right? er wrong as the next paragraph or three helpfully explains:More than 7,000 people marched through downtown Chicago in one of the nation's largest protests, saying the war diverts money from domestic needs and demanding the U.S. pull out of Iraq. One sign read, "Bush is a category 5 disaster." [...]
In Tokyo, anti-war rallies stretched into a second day, with about 800 protesters chanting "No War, Stop the War!" and banging drums as they marched peacefully Sunday through downtown Tokyo toward the U.S. Embassy. A day earlier, about 2,000 rallied in Tokyo.
Elsewhere Sunday, anti-war protesters demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia and up to 2,000 were also expected in Seoul, South Korea, which has the third-largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq after the U.S. and Britain.
Many of the demonstrations in Australia, Asia and Europe drew smaller than anticipated crowds. In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square.
If you do the sums we have under 30,000 demonstrators. Now given that Chicago was "one of the largest" lets be generous and assume that rallies in 2 other US cities had similar numbers (another 14,000) and we're still somewhere in the region of 45,000 demonstrators, although this could well be generous becauseMore than 1,000 people gathered Saturday in Times Square near a military recruiting station, which was guarded by police.
Something tells me that more than 1,000 is, in this case, less than say 2,000 so the NY demonstration was clearly a lot smaller than the Chicago one. Apparently there were demonstrations elsewhere in the world too but I think I'm pretty safe in my overall numbers. Which is just a trifle embarassing as the end of the paragraph about the London demo points out that:The anniversary last year attracted 45,000 protesters in the city.
In other words last year London alone had "tens of thousands" of protestors. This year the entire world had fewer.Oh lord, won't you buy me a mercedes benz?
My friends all drive porsches
I must make amends
Worked so hard all my life-time
No help from my friends
So oh, lord, won't you buy me a mercedes benz?