Protest the Pope 2010

[skull_bearer]

Wow. That was like being run over by a truck made of pure fucking awesome.

So, first I head over the Hyde Park corner, and find the place swampted with god-botherers, including a whole bunch of school-trippers. WTF? Are these people nuts? Why are they taking their kids here, haven't they been reading the news about this bastard? There doesn't seem to be anyone around. I nap for an hour.

I wake up, and lo and behold, there are a handful or so of people with anti-pope signs (anti-pope! It's like antipasti and just as delicious!). I head down to meet them with an "Aha! Finally, sane people!" He have a laugh, and I begin my tried and tested routine of human loudspeaker (I have an unusually loud voice):
"If god is meant to be all-powerful, all-knowing and omnipotent, and this is the best representative on earth he can come up with, what sort of god are you worshipping here?"
"I am here, getting ATHEIST COOTIES on you! Beware the atheist cooties! FEAR THEM!"
"You're taking your kids here? seriously? Why don't you take them to a nice museum, or the Globe? I hear the merry Wives of Winsor are playing at the Globe! Why bring them here where they'll be bored stiff? And, well, their not the only thing which will be stiff..." *obscene hand gesture*
*upon seeing a bunch of people waving England flags* "Nationalism and religion, two bad things which go WORSE together!"

Then more people turned up, bringing our quota to about a hundred. Still way massively outnumbered, but hey. We set off down to Park Lane to get ready to march, and I ran into an old friend who was totally unsurprised to see me there (I'm so predictable). After about an hour of waiting around (In which the chants of "What do we want?" "A secular Europe" "When do we want it?" "NOW!" changed to "What do we want?" "TO GET GOING!") we eventually set off.

At one point early on, a group of Catholics stood on the pavement as we went by, and waved a banner, jeering at us. The reactions ranged from "Shame!" and "SCUM!" To some complete arsehole rushign up and snatching the banner, which was they dragged into the crown and trampled. I managed to rescue it, and returned it to the Catholics, and said that those idiots were not representative of the protest as a whole. They said "Well, we should have expected it, we were asking for trouble." I said "No, really, Freedom of speech, you have every right to be here." Then shook his hand and went back into the crowd.

It was abotu then, when we'd reached a bit of high ground on our way to Piccadilly Circus, that I looked back and suddenly what I though was my friend's exaggeration, that we had thousands of people here, suddenly became not so much of one. I'd thought maybe 600 people, max. People have a tendancy to estimate more people than were actually there. It actually became a problem eventually, because the protest had been planned for 2,000 and way, way more had turned up. No one's sure how many yet.

Well, needless to say it was awesome. There were speeches made by Richard Dawkins and Peter Thatchell, and a whole bunch of others. It was loud and brilliant and although by that time my voice was completely gone I did manage to distinguish myself by screaming "BASTARD!" at all the right moments.
Then it was over. Paramour managed to scare of Richard Dawkins and we both retired to the Sherlock Holmes pub for a direly needed drink.

So yeah, it was great. There we a bunch of people with the most awesome signs (My personal favourites: "Romans go Home!" and "Down with this sort of thing!" with its companion "Careful now!") Oh, and condoms everywhere. We were using them as balloons. At one point, one of the speakers was highlighting the Catholic lie that condoms are full of holes and thus do not stop HIV, then paused and pointed out that one of these 'useless' condoms was currently being used as a balloon and thus was the perfect example of that lie. We played condom volleyball.

Absolutely bloody exhausted, but an amazing showing, and it was great to see so many awesome people. Fun all round.

Comments

[sorion.livejournal.com]

Ha!

Seriously, I wonder if the pope ever realises just how much damage he's doing and how many deaths he's causing... asshole.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the people in the United Kingdom who used to believe the Raj was the best thing that ever happened to the Indian Subcontinent think given the endless wars between India and Pakistan and the Bangladeshi genocide? I could give two shakes of a rat's ass about Cardinal Ratzinger. He's no Kurt Waldheim in terms of his WWII service. All the same he has about the biggest case of Foot In Mouth Syndrome of any leading world leader save.

[sorion.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I couldn't care less about the "use to"... and I'm not British, so...

Ratzinger calls same sex marriage one of the "biggest evils" in the world today. He couldn't care less about HIV. His dealing with child abuse in his oh-so-loving church is disgusting. He preaches the word of a supposedly all-loving God with the tongue of a deeply prejudiced man. He is no politician, yet his word weighs a whole fucking lot all over the world (unlike political leaders who are regional problems, with the possible exception of the US president).

Too much influence, too widely spread, too dangerous. Today.
So, yeah, I care about that.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And in the United States billions are spent on greater, more glorious bombs as every year thousands of people starve to death with money that could be invested on improving things there. Every year people remain locked in perpetual civil warfare because by this point people have grown up knowing only warfare and have no understanding of peace. Every year Indigenous peoples on two continents exist in concentration camps because a genocide enabled the great continent-spanning civilizations to grow great as they were subjected to extermination and assimilation by force.

At the end of this century 90% of human languages will be extinct. At the end of this century in fact it's debatable if we will recognize the world's political situation at all when climate change starts biting everyone in the ass hard.

So don't whine about the Pope, who has no divisions, and no actual influence, certainly not with a little scrap of land next to the old Papal states. Popes have never succeeded in getting the Faithful to honor their words in any means other than the breach. This very day citizens in the United States passively watch one ongoing creeping genocide of a people by a state that is one of our most fervent allies and remain locked in intractable wars and hemorrhaging our future on wars we will never win and have not the ability to do so.

In short, who gives a fuck what Pope Sidious thinks? How many divisions has the Pope?

[sorion.livejournal.com]

In short, who gives a fuck what Pope Sidious thinks?

Look. I thought I'd made clear that while I don't care what he thinks, I care about the damage he's doing.

Just because other damage is done, this one doesn't count? I don't think so...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is because of beliefs he holds dearly. What damage did he do to Britain beyond what its leaders have done to it themselves due to this recession?

[sorion.livejournal.com]

I'm not British. I'm talking about the world, not Britain. The last time I heard, Britain wasn't Catholic, first and foremost, what with them having their own church and everything.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Well, it's costing us 12 million to host him, and I can think of a lot of things that money could be used for instead...