Melbourne brought to a standstill by anti-war protest
Melbourne's inner-city has come to a standstill as thousands of people rally against a war in Iraq.
Swanston Street in Melbourne's inner-city is overflowing with thousands of people calling for peace.
Some climbed scaffolding to get closer to the stage at the State Library where politicians and people from the Victorian Peace Network voice their protests against a war.
The network has told the crowd the war is not about terrorism or weapons of mass destruction but it is about oil.
Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja has called for Australian troops in the Middle East to come home.
The crowd is meant to march to Federation Square but it is already overflowing.
It is thought the protest is the biggest peace protest in the country since marches 30 years ago against the Vietnam War in which Australian troops fought alongside US forces.
Oh yes, newpapers still love a good cliche photograph.
Report from Deputy Editor Sedgwick who was on the spot looking for a copper to wallop with a banner, but the bloody boys in blue were far too nice and, dare I suggest, even sympathetic. Wasn't like that back in my day, damn coppers have gone soft! I blame Reg Hollis!
I would estimate there to have been 100 - 150 thousand at the rally, (I am totally naff at estimating crowds) however most of the streets in the Melbourne CBD were packed and traffic brought to a standstill. To pinch an esoteric phrase used by highly qualified statisticians "there was a shitload of people there". A complete cross section of ages (from old farts like me to toddlers who had taken off time from writing their Ph.Ds to register their protest) and, to use an term of which I am very chary, "classes".
Jim Cairns, a warrior from the Vietnam Moratorium days, a former deputy Prime Minister and the conscience of the Australian Labour Party in the 60s was present ... more in sorrow and dismay than in anger and protest. He is ailing and fading fast, but was there for one last hurrah. Genuinely chilling was the intermittent playing of air raid sirens.
The rally may well have been a pissing into the wind ... dunno ... but as long as some of the gungho Australian politicians cop some of the spray it will have been worthwhile.
And now a word from our sponsor, Sheriff Bush
Mmmm ... as at 14/2/2003 it's been 516 days since George W Sheriff said he'd catch Osama bin Laden 'Dead or Alive!'
Fancy our Mark Latham describing President Bush as "the most incompetent and dangerous President in living memory". Shame, Mark, shame!
"Here is a bit of collateral damage: The first time I met Abu Ziad was in 1998. He had been the chief accountant with the British Iraqi Oil Company. Then, he had five children and lived in a big house by a bomb shelter. He recalled how during the Iran-Iraq war, when nearly 1 million young men died on each side, he would be at home in Baghdad, hearing the sounds of women wailing in the night for another lost son, husband or lover. He remembered thanking God that he had married late, and that his children were too young to be sent to fight. Then, three years after that war, President Saddam led them into another. At 2am on February 13 1991, two bombs hit the al-Amiriya bomb shelter near his home. The first was a drilling bomb that pierced the roof and cut open the central heating tank. Boiling water poured through the ceiling on to the women and children below, who were playing dominoes, watching Tom and Jerry videos dubbed into Arabic and eating kebabs.
Only 15 minutes later, the second bomb exploded with such force that he never had the chance to identify the bodies of his wife and four of their five children: Zena, aged 14; Fuad, aged 12; Lena, aged seven; and Sadaad, aged six. "I saw a body being brought out, then I saw it was Zena's, but they were piling them on top of each other and I couldn't see if it was her. We weren't allowed to go close." Later that morning, Abu Ziad stood outside the shelter. He remembers noticing the ankles of the dead women and children. Their skin had been branded with the metal coils of red-hot mattress springs as they struggled to climb over the metal beds, and each other, to get out. The doors had been locked for security. Four hundred and six people, mostly women and children, died inside." SOURCE.
Oh yes, George. The terrorists brought this war to you – and now you’re taking it back to them, you're gonna smoke them out, you're gonna have them on the run. You're gonna hunt them down one by one, all across the world. Abu Ziad and countless other innocent Iraqi bystanders won't be able to thank you enough.
The irrefutable evidence Colin Powell has given us that Osama is in bed with Saddam. PORKIES, COLON, PORKIES!
