Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[sylvester80]

"The Worlds's Biggest Antiwar Rally Ever"

http://www.msnbc.com/news/872342.asp?0dm=B13NN

Tens of thousands rally against war
Australian event first of dozens around the globe

Protesters in Melbourne take to the streets Friday against a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq.

MSNBC NEWS SERVICES

MELBOURNE, Australia, Feb. 14 — A global series of antiwar protests kicked off Friday with tens of thousands of people rallying here against any U.S.-led war on Iraq. Organizers said the protests, most of them set for Saturday, could make up the world’s biggest antiwar rally ever.

SOME 100,000 people took to the streets of Melbourne, chanting antiwar slogans and waving banners that read: “No blood for oil,” “Don’t bomb Iraq,” and “We are all one.”

The main target of the demonstration was U.S. President Bush but it was also directed at Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair in committing troops.

On Saturday the protest movement will move west to Europe. London protest organizers expect 500,000 people.

Blair, who has unflinchingly supported Bush since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has seen his popularity plunge in successive opinion polls as a result.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has traveled to London to address the protesters. “Iraq is a challenge that must be put in perspective. It is not the priority that Bush and Blair have made it to be,” Jackson told BBC radio, urging Blair to meet Saddam in Baghdad.

VALENTINE’S DAY PROTEST
On Friday, twinning Valentine’s Day with the antiwar movement, protestors chained themselves and a pink heart to the railings across the entrance to Blair’s Downing Street office.

But Londoners are by no means alone in their distrust of the American motivation for the conquest of Iraq and fear of the possible global conflagration it could trigger.

Organizers in Rome are expecting more than one million people to attend Saturday’s peace march.
“This is not a political or union rally, this is a mobilization of feeling,” said organizer Carlo Testini.
German peace groups say they expected more then 100,000 people to join protests around the country.
“People think it’s time to finally do something themselves,” organizer Kathrin Vogler said.
In Paris, organizers said they expected more than 50,000 to take to the streets.

U.N. MARCH BANNED
In the United States, antiwar organizers plan protests in major cities. In New York, activists plan to rally near the United Nations on Saturday but will not be allowed to actually march through streets.

A federal appeals court agreed Wednesday that the city did not violate the First Amendment when it banned plans for a march.

“This is a stunning blow to democracy, to the liberties we all thought we could rely on, even in times of hostility,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which brought the issue to federal court.

Judge Barbara Jones concluded that the city’s response was appropriate in “this time of heightened security,” especially because the protest’s organizers gave the city little time to prepare.

The ruling resulted from a lawsuit brought by United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of antiwar groups sponsoring rallies throughout the world.

OPPONENTS GO TO COURT
Opponents are also taking their campaign against Bush to courts in Europe and the United States.
Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has already filed legal papers threatening to take Blair and Defense Minister Geoff Hoon to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for crimes against humanity if a war goes ahead.

In Boston, U.S. soldiers, members of Congress and others sued Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday to prevent the United States from invading Iraq without a congressional declaration of war.

“The president is not a king,” said John Bonifaz, an attorney for the plaintiffs, who include three members of the military and six members of Congress, among them Democratic Reps. John Conyers of Michigan and Jim McDermott of Washington.

Bonifaz said a resolution Congress passed in October backing the possible use of force against Baghdad was unconstitutional and did not give Bush the authority to invade Iraq.