'Blood-stained' protesters stop traffic in Northwood (From Watford Observer)
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'Blood-stained' protesters stop traffic in Northwood
1:50pm Wednesday 27th May 2009 in
A wedding march swiftly transformed into a mock bloody funeral today as protesters against bombing in Afghanistan blocked a main road to stage a mass “die in”.
“Can I have some more fake blood over here?” asked one of about 47 members of Justice Not Vengeance, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Catholic Worker Movement commemorating the bombing of a wedding party in Haji Nabu, Afghanistan, two years ago today.
“I'm not sure you need any more” said another as police officers surrounded the rain-drenched, wedding-dress-clad “corpses” by Northwood Headquarters.
The protest, which started around noon at Northwood Underground station, brought chants, banners, drums and leaflets up Watford Road and Sandy Lane before it was stopped by police before reaching the gate of Northwood Headquarters.
Dozens of police vans and cars lined the surrounding streets, diverting traffic away from the main road and onto side roads while the walking and lie-down protest took place.
The protest's organiser, Maya Evans, who in 2005 became the first person to be arrested for staging an unauthorised protest near the houses of parliament in London, said: “We wouldn't let 47 people die at a wedding in this country so why should we allow it to happen in a different country.”
When asked what her alternative was to military activity in the region, she said: “The dropping of US bombs on civilians is not going to solve the problems in Afghanistan nor is a phoney Government the US Government tries to put in place. It has to be a grass roots solution that comes from the people of Afghanistan.”
She also condemned what she said were torture camps set up by the United States Government, backed by President Barack Obama.
A similar protest held in Northwood in 2003 led to 70 people being arrested for sitting down in the road.
Ms Evans said the current protest was arranged beforehand with the police and the RAF base.
Comments(12)
Bendean
says...
3:01pm Wed 27 May 09
Garston Tony
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3:43pm Wed 27 May 09
snowfish
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4:22pm Wed 27 May 09
snowfish
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6:26pm Wed 27 May 09
Garston Tony
says...
8:16am Thu 28 May 09
Oh, and please don't mistake US policy which is rather off hand about collateral damage and our own troops who do make mistakes but take a hell of a lot more care
Roy Stockdill
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12:53pm Thu 28 May 09
As someone else has pointed out, I don't recall anyone lying down in the streets of London to protest about the 30-odd deaths at the hands of Muslim suicide bombers, or the more than 200 deaths in the Madrid train atrocity.
I seem to recall that the Americans claimed at the time that the bombing of the wedding party was provoked by guests firing guns in the air, supposedly part of the Afghan wedding culture but not a terribly clever or wise thing to do in a war zone!
The protestors are clearly on the fringes of the Loony Left, who hate their own country and hate America even more. Probably they would like us all to live in the Middle Ages, as most Afghans and other fundamentalist Muslim countries do.
Garston Tony
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1:59pm Thu 28 May 09
Saying civilian casualties are a fact of war does not excuse criminally shoddy reasoning and the US armed forces are renowned for shooting first and thinking later. An yet they wonder why so many hate them?
Garston Tony
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2:01pm Thu 28 May 09
Roy Stockdill
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2:14pm Thu 28 May 09
Garston Tony wrote:Yes, quite true, but the Americans have always been like that. It's the Hollywood-style cowboy culture, the frontiers spirit of the early settlers and the hero worship of stars like John Wayne that they cannot seem to eradicate from their national psyche. Plus, I am sorry to say that Americans are very often not the brightest people in the world and, despite the amazing advances in communications, especially with the march of the Internet, so many of them are still very insular and ignorant of the world outside America. I suspect many of the American troops and airmen are not as well trained as our men and indeed some of them probably are just trigger-happy boys.
There a story at about the same time of some farmers being killed by a US drone because one of them looked about the same height of Bin Laden? The image was taken from high up did not show any facial features and just because one of the farmers looked taller than those around him they were killed. Saying civilian casualties are a fact of war does not excuse criminally shoddy reasoning and the US armed forces are renowned for shooting first and thinking later. An yet they wonder why so many hate them?
I've heard old soldiers from WWII say that they preferred facing the German guns because at least they always knew which way they were pointing, whereas with the Americans they never knew!
The fact remains, though, that the West is involved in a war against the medieval barbarism of the fundamentalist Muslim world, a war in which we are fighting for the survival of our way of life. Inevitably, mistakes will be made and sometimes the innocent will suffer. 'Twas ever thus and anyone who thinks otherwise is being extraordinarily naive.
Garston Tony
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2:54pm Thu 28 May 09
CallowlandChris
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11:56am Sat 30 May 09
Roy Stockdill wrote:The contradictions in this post are simply jaw dropping – the anti-war protestors are attacked for protesting too much and then Muslims are attacked for not protesting enough. The anti-war protestors are savaged for ‘hating their country’ but then you go on to slag off almost every country you can – the pesky French, stupid Yanks, and backward Arabs. The wonderful thing is that there is a Roy Stockdill equivalent in all these other countries writing the same tedious nationalist twaddle but with the countries mentioned re-jigged a bit!
The naivety and self rightousness of the protesters is staggering. FACT: In war zones mistakes are inevitably made, people get killed and very often it is innocent civilians whose sad deaths are part of a far bigger picture. These demonstrators are the kind of people still going on about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the simple and indisputable fact is that the H-bombs dropped on Japan speeded the end of WWII by several months and in the long run saved far more lives that would otherwise have been lost. Likewise, many French civilians died in the D-Day invasion of 1944 and its aftermath, but it was unfortunately a necessary adjunct of the defeat of the Nazis - not one that the French always recognise, of course. As someone else has pointed out, I don't recall anyone lying down in the streets of London to protest about the 30-odd deaths at the hands of Muslim suicide bombers, or the more than 200 deaths in the Madrid train atrocity. I seem to recall that the Americans claimed at the time that the bombing of the wedding party was provoked by guests firing guns in the air, supposedly part of the Afghan wedding culture but not a terribly clever or wise thing to do in a war zone! The protestors are clearly on the fringes of the Loony Left, who hate their own country and hate America even more. Probably they would like us all to live in the Middle Ages, as most Afghans and other fundamentalist Muslim countries do.
As has already been pointed out, the comparative elements used simply don’t work – I can protest about my national army being involved in an illegal war, where as expecting a Muslim to protest about the 7th July bombings is nuts as those suicide bombers where not ordered to go out and do their despicable acts by the elected government or the leaders of the Islamic Faith. It’s like when Celtic fans batter Rangers fans and claim it’s because of religion – utter garbage, I bet none of those thugs (from either side) have stepped foot in a church recently –they are simply nasty people looking for an excuse to hit other nasty people.
By the way, the old causalities of war cliché is easy to cart out when you are sitting safely in your suburban semi, but when it is your family being blown up then I suspect your opinions might be a little less circumspect. Incidentally, while I had nothing to do with this protest, your assertion that the protestors want to live in the Middle Ages does not make any sense. Senility is no excuse for such disjointed thinking – I oppose a illegal war therefore I want to live like they did in the 13thcentury? No, I oppose the war and have no desire to live in anything other than the present – although from the neo-colonialist ranting of some of your other posts I suggest you wish you were living circa 1850!
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'Blood-stained' protesters stop traffic in Northwood
'Blood-stained' protesters stop traffic in Northwood
'Blood-stained' protestors stop traffic in Northwood
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Garston Tony says...
2:12pm Wed 27 May 09