Somebody got a video of my speech to yesterday’s amazing demonstration in London against the occupation of Gaza. Two minutes limit and a huge crowd is a difficult brief. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=04d_1231674275
I had marched in the body of the massive demo, which had been fine but for the extraordinary decision by the police to close the pavements and narrow the route to a bottleneck at exactly the point where it passed the Israeli Embassy. In consequence three score hotheads who wanted to kick off there could block the whole thing. The police reacted to that by penning in many thousands into just this narrow point, and donning riot gear.
A more sensible police would have had the flow at its widest as it went past the Israeli Embassy and hurried people through at speed. Anyway, the crush that resulted from the constriction was really pretty scary, especially for the hundreds of children. I had Nadira with me who is five months pregnant. So I arrived to the stage rather rattled and with nothing prepared to say. But it went fine, and “Zionism is Bullshit” came out quite spontaneously, but felt for me personally like an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment of political truth.
There go all my American sales.
Lenin has the best photos (that sounds unnervingly like “Satan has all the best tunes”.)
http://leninology.blogspot.com/
The Heathlander the best report
http://heathlander.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/huge-demonstration-in-london/
Press coverage focussed entirely on the 0.01% of troublemakers. The 4,000 Zionists who rallied in Trafalgar Square today got much more sympathetic coverage.