Talk:Protests against the Iraq War/Archive 1

Attendence/Merge/Numbers etc.

(Article contents adapted from entry in current events)

Please supply cites for these attendance figures. The Anome 18:41 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps this should be merged with Support and opposition for the U.S. plan to invade Iraq, but any simultaneous action by (alleged) several million people worldwide is surely an historic event in itself? The Anome

No, it's not. It's a historic event. ;) -- Oliver P. 19:35 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. English usage. Google says:

"a historic" 578,000 hits

"an historic" 353,000 hits

The Anome 19:39 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

It's "an historic" (silent 'H') as in "70 miles an hour". Mintguy

Well, it would be if the "h" were silent, but people keep saying "an historic" with the "h" pronounced, which just sounds silly... -- Oliver P. (What? Did I hear the words "off topic" there?)

More fool them. Mintguy

It depends on where you're from. In the U.S. we pronounce the h, so we say "a historic". In some places in England the h is silent, so they would say "an historic". It's best to follow your local usage, and not try to imitate a foreign usage.

Scotland Yard estimated 1/2 million for London (that was on Radio 4 news at 16:00 on the day, so might have been revised since. The organizers were quoted as saying over 1 mil. -- Tarquin 19:55 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

And activists always say there are more than there really are. Remember the "Million Man March" where only a quarter million men showed-up? We shouldn't rely on the activists for accurate information in this regard. --mav 20:51 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

"And I love how they reported the peace march... 'Well, there were 400 people there. And they were using mirrors.'" - Kate Clinton

Scotland yard said it was 750,000 at teh end of it, but organizers sadi it ws 2 million. -fonzy

Sky News now report the march as involving over one million, RTÉ News reported approximately one million. Remember, while organisers do invariably over-estimate the numbers, the police often grossly under-estimate figures for three reasons:

• most marches are anti-government. It is in a police force's interest not to hype up the scale of such a march, as by the nature of their job they cannot be seen to be lending credibility to anti-government organisations.

• the police themselves often have a strained relationship with some organisers of a march; eg, in the anti-war marches, many of the organisers were associated with groups like the Socialist Workers Party, an organisation police forces generally have an antagonistic relationship with. So again, they would have no desire to 'boost the ego' of such organisations by suggesting a high number.

• Police forces are inherently cautious about supplying information, as journalists who deal with police forces invariably discover. They invariably go for the most cautious extimate. (One policeman told me once that if there was a march of what he guessed was 550 people, the police would round the figure down to 500, while the marchers would round it up, at minimum to 600, possibly 800 or 1000.

I know some media organisations follow a rule of thumb of taking a police 'number' and increasing it by one third. (One journalist I know said he reduces the highest estimate by 1/3, increases the police estimate by 1/3, adds them together then divides by 2. ) JTD 22:50 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Forget all the weird math - let's just say that the organizers give x number, police give y and some independent observers give z. --mav

${{\frac {4}{3}}p+{\frac {2}{3}}h \over 2}$, basically. ;-) -- Tarquin

ITN now says one million were in Hyde Park. (Sky News says 'more than a million'.) Normally, not all marchers would go as far as Hyde Park, so if one million were there, probably in the region of 50,000, possibly 100,000 will have dropped off (many to try to beat the traffic chaos by leaving earlier or feeling uncomfortable in such a crowd, feeling there are enough to 'send the message' and so leaving.) And ITN has now given 600 as the total number of cities where marches took place. JTD So has Sky News. 23:22 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

I just got back from the New York demonstration. At one point, they announced that there were between half a million and a million there. I guess the CNN report of 200,000 isn't that off then. It was crowded ... and cold. Danny 23:25 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Not as cold in Ireland. The organisers expected 20,000 and many expected that they would be hardpressed to reach that total. Instead they got 100,000, an astonishing turnout. In that context, 200,000 in New York sounds rather small for a city of its size.

I removed mass mobilisation from the article. The phrase is traditionally use by left wing groups and perhaps accidentially, gave the article a left-wing pro march feel. I've rewritten the opening in a more NPOV manner.

More estimates of London March turnout:

• Mail on Sunday: 1,500,000 ( 'middle-england' middle class newspaper)
• News of the World: 750,000 (right wing pro-Blair paper)
• The Observer: 1,000,000 (left of centre radical paper)

Breaking News: Report in The Observer (February 16) claims US Pentagon is out to 'hit' Germany by reducing US soldier numbers to deliberately damage the German economy. The State Department is reported horrified at Donald Rumsfeld's plan. Is Rumsfeld brain-dead or does he want to the US hated worldwide? The Bush administration is not highly regarded in Europe. Such a policy of petty revenge because someone won't let America do what American wants would turn all of Europe against it. JTD 00:21 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

100,000 in Montreal! O.O Certainly one of the largest protests in Canadian history. And I was there...! *swoon* - Montréalais

I'm concerned that the war of words between the NATO allies, especially over the refusal of Germany, France and Belgium to defend Turkey, may lead to the end of NATO. -- Zoe

Why are you concerned? What usefull function exactly does NATO perform nowadays that the "Communist threat" is nonexistant. snoyes 03:41 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

You say that after seeing what happened during the Gulf War and the actions in the Balkans? -- Zoe

Woops! I was thinking of CBS, of course, when I described CBC as American. My apologies to Canada. Tannin 22:45 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

Heh :) Say, do any Wikipedians have photos of any of the protests? That would be intensely cool. - Montréalais

Independent Media Centers often have lots of pictures of local protests. -- bpt 21:27 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

-35°C with wind chill is NOT a normal February temperature for Montreal. I've lived here for seven years and I have never had a winter this cold since I lived in Winnipeg. - Montréalais

moved sources for SA estimates here: (by snoyes 22:54 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC) - as long as the sources are credible they don't have to be cited on the page itself (could be in the link section if you want))

Cape Town 10,000 Johannesburg10,000

Why is there so much white space at the bottom? Nothing shows up in the edit box.Tuf-Kat

Everything is fine here. --snoyes 23:07 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Why can't people unite?

Why can't people of the world unite like this to solve problems like the destruction of the environment? - fonzy

Why is it they can put a man on the moon, but can't develop an adequate warning system for the signs of gingivitis in Hispanic children aged five to thirteen? Tuf-Kat

In answer to the first question, solving the problems of international war for oil is the first step in preventing the destruction of the environment. In answer to the second question, the reason they have not developed an adequate warning system for the signs of gingivitis is because they put a man on the moon. Susan Mason

It's a good point - you don't get many miles to the gallon in a tank. In fact, in a British tank you don't get any miles to the gallon at all, because they overheat and stop working. Martin

Maybe that should be the way around, Susan. Historically, the most common single case of war is population/environmental degredation/resource depletion. Iraq is one of the most environmentally damaged areas on earth. (We can blame Saddam for making matters worse, but the problems there started about 8,000 years ago with the clearing, irrigation, salinity, erosion, more clearing cycle.) Afganistan, ditto. And Sudan. And, if there was still lots of oil in Texas, would Bush be as keen as he is? Tannin

If this were about the price of oil, why didn't we retain control over the Kuwaiti oil fields after the first Gulf War? Why did we insist on leveling sanctions against Iraq when the effect of those sanctions was to reduct the global supply of oil, thereby driving our cost of oil higher? This "Blood for oil" argument is an obvious red herring. Wesley 23:33 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

A lot of us thought that the world was uniting on environmental issues but then the bushman in the White House blocked the Kyoto Protocol. (If that amadán [ irish for fool ] is going to go around screwing up the world, maybe we should all have notes in US presidential elections. But then if that happened, given how Bush is viewed internationally (as a shallow, thick as two short planks friend of the oil industry who got himself elected in a manner that if it happened elsewhere would be deemed democratically dubious) he'd come bottom of the list, probably beaten by Homer Simpson (who also seems to have a better grasp of English!) As you may have gathered, most of the rest of the world does not think very highly of Bush-een (gaelic for little bush) and keeps wondering what is a man of the ability of Colin Powell doing in such a nutty adminstration? OK, there's my Bush-rant of my chest for an hour. Back to some real work! JTD 23:47 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Don't get me started about BUSH I could go on all day. -fonzy

I'm fighting back the urge to say something obscene and sexist. Tuf-Kat

Ah go on, TK, we are all wondering now. BTW, is Bush as widely known in the US as 'shrub' (ie small bush) as he is in Europe? JTD 23:47 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

BTW, there was almost universal agreement on renaming the [UN Security Council and the War with Iraq] to [UN Security Council and the proposed Iraq war].

• on was seen as anti-war, ie the US waging war on Iraq, an interpretation pro-war people dispute.
• with was seen as pro-war, indicating two sides to the confict, which many anti-war activists dispute, arguing that Iraq is the victim.

Should we consider renaming this page as [Global protests against the proposed Iraq war]]? Opinions please. JTD 23:54 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with the move to "proposed". I've seen Bush called Shrub before, but I can't remember if its entirely on Wikipedia or not -- I think Bartcop does it sometimes, and maybe on The Daily Show, but it isn't really common.

Yeah, I've seen a few writers who call him "Shrub" in their opinion pieces, but it really isn't very common. If you used Shrub in this context to the average person they probably would have no idea what you were talking about.

Protests on different days

Does the 2003-03-08 Japanese protest writeup belong here? Previous listed events were in several countries on the same day.

Were there 2 protests on different dates in SanFran: one 65k, the other 150k? If so, was the 150k protest on 2003-02-15?

150k was on January 18. 65k was on February 15 (actually 16th since it was delayed for the Chinese New Year parade) as noted here. --Minesweeper 10:24 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

Orrder

Why is this (mostly) ordered with the newest at the top? This is an encyclopedia, not a blog. The UK schools kids write-up is like the 2003-03-08 Japanese entry, should this page not be for globally co-ordinated protests? Please post the 2003-03-18 source material here in talk, and isn't it 2003-03-20? I am Jack's username

I rearranged the order to newest-first, because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but the event we report here is evolving actually, and it's easier to add and see new things on the top. If this (...) war ends someday, I'd vote for re-arranging again chronological. And thanx for the hint on 18/20, I was confused a bit ;-) till we *) 15:06 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Numbers in Amsterdam

Writeup says 10.000 march in Amsterdam on February 15, quoted from the Boston somethingIforgot, NRC Handelsblad, a well known dutch paper, claims 70.000 people were there. Police also claims something like that. Surely not 10.000.

- Frank Quist

Global protests against war on Iraq (pre-war)

I put the older information on Global protests against war on Iraq (pre-war), so that this part of history can become wikified in a proper way ... (and because I found the page to big to handle) till we *) 22:55 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

demonstrations for & against this war

It might be a useful act to move some of the US demonstration entries to an article that lists all of the demonstrations for & against this war. The reasons I see that make this a good move are:

1. There have been a number of demonstrations inside the US both for & against the war (e.g., one "pro-troop" demonstration in Jackson, Mississippi attracted 2500 people). It can be said that by only listing the anti-war demonstrations, we are not being NPOV;
2. More detail can be given for these demonstrations (e.g., some were peaceful, but turned confrontational; the 20 March demonstration in Chicago allegedly turned into a police riot, etc.);
3. Antiwar demonstrations insdie the US have continued (for example, in Portland, Oregon there are been demonstrations every day since 20 March), but because they no longer attract large numbers of people, contributors may not feel these are as important as demonstrations in, say, Europe.

Comments? --llywrch 20:47 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think, this is a good idea, if move means to delete them here. One of the intersting things about this war is, that has in fact created global protests, including US. So, why not put a link with "More info about demonstrations (contra/pro) in the US" in the top of the page? till we *) 23:05 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way: This article is named protest against the war. If you want to report about pro-war protests, do it, but do it on another article. Maybe with a link like "There was also a number of pro-war protests, mainly in the US" somewhere in the top of this one. -- till we *) 14:52 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

My intention is not to remove notices of any US anti-war demonstrations: there have been more than what have reported in Wikipedia. Well, maybe if someone adds notice of a small demonstration (less than 500 people) to this article, I might move it to this proposed article.

But my intent is to suppliment the content that is presently here: to prove more information about US opinion concerning this war, & just how conflicted it truly is. -- llywrch 05:18 Apr 2, 2003 (UTC)

Afghanistan Protests

Is there any similar article with respect to protests against the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan? If so, I can't find it, and it should probably be listed in the external links for this article. Jmabel 22:03, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Media

"Critics accused the media of downplaying the demonstrations, e.g. when the Washington Post wrote about protests in Berlin: "Demonstrators also gathered in a half-dozen other German cities" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12210-2003Mar22.html), where half-dozen included Leipzig, Halle, Dresden, Jena, Rostock, Hamburg, Munich, Köln, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Nürnberg, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, Karslruhe, Heidelberg, Würzburg, Bielefeld, Hannover, Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Wattenscheid, Oberhausen, Duisburg, Mülheim, Herne, Hattingen, Velbert, Hilden, Datteln, Münster, Osnabrück, Bonn, Aachen, Saarbrücken, Kassel, Bremen, Oldenburg, Kiel, Heide, etc."

Wow. I'm pretty sure that needs some editing (removing the unnecessary, overbearing list mainly), but wouldn't feel right doing so without a reference to back up the suggestion that there WERE protests in more than half a dozen parts of a Germany. Since I'm pretty new here and still finding my feet a bit, I've also struggled with understanding what's considered 'credible' as a reference... could anyone point me in the right direction? Lawlore 22:45, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

Seems important to say, seems like it could be put more concisely. Lawlore, if no one deals with this in the next 3 or 4 days, feel free to ping me and I'll try to work out what best to do with this. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:22, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

Protests from all these cities were reported in German online media. First problem is that this is an encyclopedia in English, so sources in German are not optimal. Second problem is that many of the local online media do not archive everything they write, so the sources will be dificult to find again after a year and a half. Get-back-world-respect 19:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moved here from Talk:Global protests against war on Iraq (pre-war).

I was in Amsterdam on Feb15 and i know for sure, there were no 10 000 people. There were 80.000 to 100.000, at least 50k. If you know Amsterdam: The Dam was entirely overwhelmed with people, the surrounding streets for at least 700 meters as well. Thats a lot more than 10k. Please Correct. Thx. Lo from Adam

I was at the Madrid protest on 15 March 2003, and IMHO, there were definitely much more than 120,000 people. The source cited in the article for that figure is the Spanish newspaper ABC, widely known to be right-wing biassed (i.e. pro-Aznar). Other sources put the figure at around one million. A year later I was at the 12 March 2004 anti-terrorism protest, whose figure was officially given as 2 million for Madrid, and from what I witnessed, both the 15 March 2003 and the 12 March 2004 protests were massive and impressed me to a similar order of magnitude (the anti-terrorism protest was bigger, maybe twice or thrice bigger, but definitely not sixteen-times bigger), so I don't give any credibility to the relatively small 120,000 figure given to the anti-war protest by a pro-war media. Regarding the Guinness record for the 10-million-people global protests against war on Iraq, the total figure commonly given for the 12 March 2004 protest in Spain surpasses it by over a 10%. Uaxuctum 11:33, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Source for list

Is there a source or sources for the list of "Cities that participated in the February 15, 2003 protests"? I ask because so many of the names (especially in North America) are ambiguous, and can't be disambiguated without knowing what was really meant. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:00, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

The last link in that list: [link removed]. — Jeandré, 2004-11-18t18:21z

So, in short, we are referencing from a page in the Internet Archive whose outward links don't work, hence there is no way to clarify the meaning of ambiguous terms. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:56, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Some of them are links which may indicate where it is. In the case of Hyderabad, there is no link at ufp, so I've left it unlinked under F15 because I don't know if it's in India or Pakistan, and we can do that if we're not sure. Burlington does have a ufp link which says that it's in Vermont; I think we should link to it like so: Burlington. — Jeandré, 2004-11-18t20:22z

Why, why, why, did someone go through removing all of the links that I painstakingly added to disambiguate the bulk of these place names? -- Jmabel | Talk 08:22, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Davodd merged the histories of the 2 articles, and something must have gone wrong because the article went back to the pre merger version (notice that it didn't have any of the sections from after the war started). I've since reverted it back, and it now again has everything we've been doing on the 793 F15 list. Can I ask that we tackle the dabbing of the 793 F15 list systematically? I can continue from the top, and you from the bottom (or north America), using the method in the 2004-11-18t20:22z post? — Jeandré, 2004-11-19t19:58z

I'll go on doing what I can with North America. Within a week I'll presumably have everything in N.A. either disambiguated or commented. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:07, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

The cited page has more live links than I thought. It just happens that some of the first I tried were dead. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:47, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

I'm now done with the substance of this. Over a dozen placenames are ambiguous in the cited source; if you have other references, great. If someone wants to do the [[Burlington, Vermont|Burlington]] thing, go for it, just please don't turn it back to the ambiguous [[Burlington]]. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:30, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Web archive URL.

Undoing the TinyURL causes problems:

1. The URL is broken, with only the part after the 2nd "http://" becoming a link. The site can still be accessed if the entire archive URL is copy pasted.
2. In Mozilla (under GNU/Linux) the 793 and attendance tables overlap, making them unusable where they do (screenshot).
3. In Konqueror (under GNU/Linux) the tables do not overlap, but the link goes outside the 793 table.

I suggest we return the tinyurl link, and put the full link in an HTML comment. — Jeandré, 2004-11-21t10:32z

Fine by me. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:40, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Error

In list of cities for February 15th protests a province is listed incoreectly; "St. John's, Nova Scotia" should read "St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador" [Added by 134.153.181.34, 15 Feb 2005]

• Fixed -- Jmabel | Talk 22:32, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

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testing

Cairo Anti war conference

Not srictly about this page but I have made this page Cairo Anti-war conference. which is related by being about anti-war movment. I am planning to do some resursh on the egyption Anti-war movment generally at some point soon. It would be good if anyone could come and have a look at the Cairo Anti-war conference page as I am only one editing it so far.--JK the unwise 10:49, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Clean up

This article needs a major clean up. I have a few proposals for how to do it. First of all, having the dates linked when they're in a large format looks horrible. In addition, those city tables are awful and take up so much space. I think a sub article or some other way to display this is much better. Also, a good editing and moving of links is necessary, too. I'm happy to hear some comments about this, but this article needs major work. Páll 06:29, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, the article is getting huge and unmanagable. I think this probally discurages people to add more information. Febuary the 15th was such a huge event it is definatly worthy of its own page. Also I think the title of this page is a bit confusing, some of the protests days are global in that protests took place all over the world on that day, but others are not global in themselves as they only took place in one or a few countries, though I suppose they are part of ongoing protests all across the world.--JK the unwise 12:00, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that info on non global protests should be moved. — Jeandré, 2005-03-22t11:59z

To have the dates formatted according to a reader's prefs it has to be linked. The article was previously split, and the edit history is now difficult to figure out because the articles were merged. — Jeandré, 2005-03-22t11:59z

This article or section should be merged with 2003 Invasion of Iraq

I have removed merge tag as this article is surely big enough/contains enough information to have its own page. Also the protests against the war were/are a phenomena in itself worthy of indepth coverage. Still I do think we need to adress the overlap between the different pages about the war and about the opposition to the war. Some information might be worthy of migrating/duplication on the 2003 Invasion of Iraq page and vice versa.
here are all the anit war pages I know of Anti-war, Post-September 11 anti-war movement, Peace movement, Global protests against war on Iraq, Popular opposition to war on Iraq, Criticisms of War on Terrorism, Peace camp, World peace, Human shield action to Iraq and here are all the pages about peace groups (Some of these groups may not be exclusivly anti-war.) American: Peace Action, ANSWER, Not in Our Name, United for Peace and Justice,Vietnam Veterans Against the War, War Resisters League, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, American Deserters Committee
UK: Stop the War Coalition, CND, Committee of 100
Canada: Canadian Peace Congress
Egypt: Cairo Conference
"International": International Campaign Against Aggression on Iraq

Page title

I moved this article from:

• Global protests against war on Iraq

to

• Global protests against invasion of Iraq

...because

1. the latter title is utterly neutral
2. the former embodies the POV that the invasion was an instance of "making war on Iraq" - in opposition to the POV that the invasion was an instance of "liberating the people of Iraq from an evil dictator"

Even if 95% of Wikipedians agree with the anti-Bush POV and only 5% agree with the pro-Bush POV, that provides enough of a controversy, and Wikipedia should not take sides on controversies - especially by using the name of an article to frame an issue in such a way as to endorse one side's POV.

If we need to clarify whether the invasion of Iraq constituted a war on Iraq (whatever that's supposed to mean), we can easily do so - within an article. But this sort of thing can't be clarified in an article title.

Let there be Wikipedia:POV expressed. But don't let Wikipedia endorse any of it. Uncle Ed July 7, 2005 20:17 (UTC)

February 15th Protest (London)

I have created February 15th Protest (London) because being the the largest demonstration in the city's history it is worthy of its own article. I have made a start to it but I think there is more that could be said. I think that some of the the F15 demos in other countries probally need their own articles, a mabey some of the other big demo's. --JK the unwise 15:36, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Also I have found this page hanging around all lonely Halloween 2002 protest. Not sure were to index it, its not part of a global action but then again neither are some of the events currently on this page.--JK the unwise 15:46, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Global protests against the invation of Iraq?

There seems to be some abigiuity in the tile, as I said above it ... is a bit confusing, some of the protests days are global in that protests took place all over the world on that day, but others are not global in themselves as they only took place in one or a few countries, though I suppose they are part of ongoing protests all across the world. I have listed the options I could think of below please indicate which one you prefer or add new options for consideration.--JK the unwise 15:23, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Options:
1. Change the title to simply Protests against invasion of Iraq

This seems like the best option to me. It would also make the page more inline with Protests against the Vietnam War.--JK the unwise 15:23, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with JK the Unwise on this one, to rename the article to drop "global", since "global" can be kind of ambiguous (described in a moment), plus more localized demonstrations are worth mentioning here, too. Besides, what makes a protest a "global" protest? I would consider it something with either multiple sites (like ANSWER's oft-used Washington and San Francisco combo), or far reach (demonstrators converge on one site from far and wide). I've been to demonstrations in Washington where people have come from all over the place - not just drawn from the local DC area. Schuminweb 21:13, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Since no one has given a differnt opinion I'm moving it.--JK the unwise 18:49, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

2. Remove the demonstrations that were not part of global days of action and delete them

3. Remove the demonstrations that were not part of global days of action and put them on a seperate article; e.g. Non-global protests against invasion of Iraq