Volition

I went to the anti-war rally with Al, Martine, Lisa and some of her straight-edge crew. It was pretty impressive; the actual march took about an hour for us to walk from Victoria square to Parliament House via King William Street, Grenfel Street, Pultney Street then North Terrace. Probably about 3km.

While waiting for the march to get underway, we entertained ourselves by standing in the rain, getting soaked, and blocking off the Wakefield/Grote Street connector through Victoria Square so that the traffic had to go elsewhere.

Grenfel Street and North Terrace were interesting becuase quite a few cars and buses had been trapped right in the middle of the street. There was at least one bus full of people that would have ended up waiting for over an hour for the march to subside. Cars had been abandoned in the street as people got bored and went elsewhere, or (I hope) joined in.

By the time we got to Parmiament House the speeches had already started. We hung around for a while but it was starting to get sunny, we couldn't see anything and I needed to get to karate so we wandered off after a while.

An excellent turnout (people were estimating ten thousand before-hand), but I don't expect it to change anything. Australia can't afford to piss off the United States, and so we need to kow-tow to the current fucked-up US administration, which means going to war, killing innocent people in Iraq and getting our people killed as well. Great. At least the US will keep their oil supply in good stead.

I must look into putting together a head-mounted wear-cam so I can at least record, if not stream to the 'Net, visuals and sounds from this kind of thing.