When we were wandering along the street we bumped into what I thought was a gay pride parade:
Upon inspecting more closely (click pictures for big versions, as per usual) I began to notice more manky dreadlocks and anti-israeli placards than I imagine are present at most gay demonstrations
After a few seconds it began to dawn! We had wandered into the middle of an anti-war demonstration. It was everything I hoped it would be! There were hippies with bongos:
Hippies with badly painted placards (also the guy on the right is creeping me out):
And sometimes I found myself quite confused:
Should I stand firmly behind the guy saying "Hands off Lebanon and Gaza, NO WAR!" with a picture of a bomb with a cross through it, or should I listen to the one saying "Support the Arab Resistance!" with pictures of mutilated babies. On one hand we have somebody shouting "stop bombing the arabs" and on the other somebody shouting "support the arabs bombing israel".
It is all very confusing to me and I am not good with politics, so I'll just move on and pretend the last paragraph never happened.
There are two interesting things in this picture, firstly somebody is carrying a "Buffet King" placard, talk about awesome oppurtunistic advertising. Secondly the lady in the middle of this picture wanted to show everybody mutilated babies:
Good for her, I guess. At least she is expressing herself. Shortly after this, however, the parade got in full swing. OH YEAH! It's our very own communist party:
There were about ten of them. Marx would be proud, I'm sure.
At this point I went on my merry way and left the march behind, after a nice afternoon trundling around Edinburgh we decided to look at the Scottish National Gallery and who should be there but the anti-war/israel/blair/showering/bush parade we saw earlier!
This baby seems to have a very good grasp of politics, considering her tender age:
I managed to grab a couple of closeups of the placards here:
and here:
Considering that there were thousands of people present the police presence was pretty small, here are some of them:
I'm glad everything was peaceful. Even though I poke fun at the protestors I know that they're marching for something they believe passionately in. I am glad there was such a friendly atmosphere throughout.
In the following picture the scottish national gallery is the building to the right. The man to the left is probably a tramp.
I noticed this too late to include it in the main body of the post, but just before the communists walked past we got to see some quakers! (yep, there are two of them. The old guy and his daughter)
As per usual, my flickr contains everything.
Upon inspecting more closely (click pictures for big versions, as per usual) I began to notice more manky dreadlocks and anti-israeli placards than I imagine are present at most gay demonstrations
After a few seconds it began to dawn! We had wandered into the middle of an anti-war demonstration. It was everything I hoped it would be! There were hippies with bongos:
Hippies with badly painted placards (also the guy on the right is creeping me out):
And sometimes I found myself quite confused:
Should I stand firmly behind the guy saying "Hands off Lebanon and Gaza, NO WAR!" with a picture of a bomb with a cross through it, or should I listen to the one saying "Support the Arab Resistance!" with pictures of mutilated babies. On one hand we have somebody shouting "stop bombing the arabs" and on the other somebody shouting "support the arabs bombing israel".
It is all very confusing to me and I am not good with politics, so I'll just move on and pretend the last paragraph never happened.
There are two interesting things in this picture, firstly somebody is carrying a "Buffet King" placard, talk about awesome oppurtunistic advertising. Secondly the lady in the middle of this picture wanted to show everybody mutilated babies:
Good for her, I guess. At least she is expressing herself. Shortly after this, however, the parade got in full swing. OH YEAH! It's our very own communist party:
There were about ten of them. Marx would be proud, I'm sure.
At this point I went on my merry way and left the march behind, after a nice afternoon trundling around Edinburgh we decided to look at the Scottish National Gallery and who should be there but the anti-war/israel/blair/showering/bush parade we saw earlier!
This baby seems to have a very good grasp of politics, considering her tender age:
I managed to grab a couple of closeups of the placards here:
and here:
Considering that there were thousands of people present the police presence was pretty small, here are some of them:
I'm glad everything was peaceful. Even though I poke fun at the protestors I know that they're marching for something they believe passionately in. I am glad there was such a friendly atmosphere throughout.
In the following picture the scottish national gallery is the building to the right. The man to the left is probably a tramp.
I noticed this too late to include it in the main body of the post, but just before the communists walked past we got to see some quakers! (yep, there are two of them. The old guy and his daughter)
As per usual, my flickr contains everything.
