arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

AMMAN, JORDAN — numerous demonstrations took place across Amman yesterday with thousands of protesting Jordanians calling for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The rowdy crowd also praised Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, as well as demonizing Arab nations they believed were helping the "evil empire".

Although the crowds were larger and more vocal this week, few if any were arrested. Police were there in droves in case things turned violent, and they completely blocked roads leading up to the Israeli Embassy.

Some 10,000 residents also took part in a protest in the city of Maan after clerics across the town called on Muslims "to launch a jihad against Americans wherever they are" in their weekly sermons.

Preachers also urged the Jordanian authorities to expel US troops deployed in Jordan, where the government has acknowledged the presence of "hundreds" of soldiers manning Patriot anti-missile batteries.

TEHERAN, IRAN - The first mass mobilization against the war took place today. Previous demonstrations were small. Around 60,000 people marched on the streets of Teheran. Speakers included high officials from all factions of the government.

BOSTON - Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Boston to protest the war in Iraq, the latest in a wave of peace demonstrations that circled the globe on Saturday. Officials and historians said was the biggest protest in Boston in at least 30 years, thousands chanted "This is what democracy looks like" as they paraded through the elegant streets of America's education capital.

The diverse crowd included not just students and faculty from New England college campuses but families and retired people -- many of whom said the U.S.-led war had triggered a political awakening in their souls.

"This war spoke to me as being wrong, unjust, and immoral and certainly not what American values are all about," said Susan Hughes, a former member of President Bush's Republican Party who lives in Groton, Massachusetts.

"Bush started this war to depose a dictator, but now we have an administration that is acting like the dictatorship we are trying to take out," the 46-year-old said as she prepared to march through Boston.

NEW YORK - Several hundred protesters, primarily pro-Palestinian and also opposed to the Iraq war, marched down Broadway from Times Square to Union Square in downtown Manhattan. Demonstrators waved large Palestinian flags and chanted for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas and against the war.

EUROPE - Earlier, tens of thousands rallied in France, Italy, Germany, and in the cities of Moscow and Budapest, to call for an end to the U.S.-led invasion launched to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Demonstrations in Europe followed similar anti-war protests in Asia and Africa, home to some of the world's biggest Muslim populations.

ROMA, ITALY - Also Saturday, several thousand marched to the perimeter of the Italian military base of Ghedi, near the northern Italian city of Brescia.

Thousands more rallied in Turin, Florence, Genoa, Bologna, Naples and in Palermo, where about 20 activists got onto the roof of the city's Politeama theater, hanging a banner that read: "Disobey the war."

PARIS, FRANCE - In France, another country whose government has taken a firm stance against the war, tens of thousands of people moved through the heart of the city. The organizers said 60,000 had turned out.

Around 5,000 demonstrators marched through the Mediterranean city of Marseille and the country's second city Lyon, while in the southwestern town of Rochefort protesters attacked a symbol of US commercial power by decapitating a "Ronald McDonald" statue outside a McDonald's fast food outlet.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND- Over 10,000 people demonstrated here led by dissident Labor Party representatives in parliament and the Scottish Socialist Party.

GERMANY - In a symbolic gesture, around 30,000 people in Germany formed a human chain between the northern cities of Munster and Osnabrueck, a 35-mile route taken in 1648 by negotiators who ended Europe's Thirty Years War.

In Germany 40,000 people formed a human chain in protest at the US-led war in Iraq, while a further 50,000 crowded into the capital Berlin.

The 50-kilometre (31-mile) chain stretched between the historic towns of Munster and Osnabruck in the northwest of the country where the two treaties to end the Thirty Years War, which took place between 1618-1648, were signed.

Meanwhile in Berlin the crowds gathered at the Victory Column at the heart of the city, according to police.

Banners read "Not a cent for Bushism" and "Chancellor, close our air space."

Police arrested 25 people who tried to block a highway leading to the U.S. Rhein Main air base in Frankfurt during a protest by more than 1,000 people. Some 4,000 others formed a chain around the U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart.

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Around 10,000 people marched in Dublin to criticize the Irish government's decision to let U.S. forces bound for Iraq use the country's Shannon Airport for refueling and stopovers.

CARACAS, VENEZUELA - Around 2,000 protesters, some carrying Iraqi flags and posters of Saddam Hussein gathered in Caracas, Venezuela, and chanted slogans against President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"This is an illegal war, it has no justification," said 18-year-old Muslem Fuad, a Venezuelan student of Syrian origin.

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - Around 6,000 demonstrators, mostly organized by left wing parties, marched on the streets of the capital, surrounding the American interests office and the US Embassy, a truly fortress in one of the most expensive residential neighborhoods.

BANGLADESH - Over 3,000 Bangladeshi protesters, mostly from the radical Islamic Constitution Movement, burned American flags and effigies of Bush.

Demonstrators called for Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried as war criminals.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - protesters ripped up an American flag and accused Australian Prime Minister John Howard of betraying the rule of law by backing the war, local media reported.

RUSSIA - Russian protesters gathered in front of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, waving red banners and calling on the Kremlin to form an international coalition to oppose the U.S.-led strikes and to help Iraq.

A crowd estimated at 6,000 people demonstrated in front of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - More than 10,000 people marched on the U.S. consulate in Cape Town, South Africa.

BEIJING, CHINA - In a rare move, Chinese police allowed 100 demonstrators to rally in a walled park in eastern Beijing on Sunday.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY - Another wave of demonstrations against the US-led war in Iraq rippled around the world with protesters continuing -- sometimes angrily -- to show their support for Iraq and frustration at the continuing conflict. Thousands marched, 150 were arrested.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - There was also tension in the South Korean capital Seoul earlier when demonstrators burned the US flag and scuffled with riot police after more than 4,000 South Koreans marched on the US embassy to oppose the dispatch of 700 South Korean troops to Iraq.

Chanting "No war, no war," many protestors carried portraits of US President George W. Bush showing a mock chest X-ray that portrayed a Nazi Swastika in place of a heart and an Iron Cross.

ATHENS, GREECE - Organizers said around 50,000 mostly young people took to the streets of the capital Athens in a march that headed for the US embassy where scuffles broke out between demonstrators and police guarding the building.

Banners read: "Bush vandal" and "Bush assassin" and "Make war on war and imperialism", while several slogans called on Greece to change its mind about allowing US forces to use the US naval base at Souda on the island of Crete for the war on Iraq.

ASIA - Earlier Saturday protests took place in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Pakistan and the Philippines, where protesters chose to mark their displeasure with the war by flying kites with slogans condemning the offensive.

MALAYSIA - In Malaysia the protest was less poetic, with armed riot police firing teargas at anti-war protesters in the capital Kuala Lumpur before chasing demonstrators through a crowded shopping centre, according to organizers.

VIETNAM, PAKISTAN - Hundreds of anti-war students demonstrated outside the US embassy in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, while in Pakistan some 50 men and women began a one-day hunger strike in the central Pakistani city of Multan.

They were protesting the killing of Iraqi civilians as anti-war protests continued across the country.

Indonesian women, including a popular singer and a soap opera actress, rallied outside the US embassy in Indonesia's capital Jakarta shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is the Greater) as they waved posters denouncing US President George W. Bush as "the king of terrorists".

YEMEN, EGYPT - Hundreds of women, some carrying placards declaring "the United States and Britain are the axis of evil," protested in San'a, Yemen. Elsewhere in the Arab world, 10,000 turned out at a rally organized by Egypt's ruling party in Port Said, and in Amman, Jordan, more than 3,000 people demanded that the kingdom expel U.S. troops.

CANADA - About 8,000 Canadians angered by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's decision not to support a war without United Nations approval marched in front of the Parliament building in Ottawa, waving flags of the U.S. and allies Britain and Australia.

SANTIAGO, CHILE - In Santiago, Chile, more than 3,000 people staged a peaceful march, and in Caracas, Venezuela, about 100 people called for an end to the war.