just the men then?

oh goodie i can take the day off...

We Loyalists will be there, most Orange Order divisions will be traveling to London for that protest as will thousands of loyalist football fans from across the country. We definitly don't want the Pope in our country!
 http://www.orange-order.co.uk/

i wouldnt worry 'a woman', couldnt seriously answer the call of "March forth brave warriors and forge a better World with your will of steel." anyway!

Pope Benedict has said he wants to "extend the hand of friendship" to the whole of the UK during his visit.

He also urged the UK to resist "more aggressive forms of secularism" after being welcomed by the Queen at Holyrood House in Edinburgh.

Tens of thousands of people cheered and waved flags as he travelled through the city centre in the Popemobile, although small protests also took place.

The Pope will lead an open-air Mass in Glasgow later before going to London.

The trip is the first to the UK by a Pontiff since John Paul II in 1982. It is also the first to be designated a state visit because the Pope has been invited by the Queen rather than the church.

Pope Benedict was greeted on his arrival by the Duke of Edinburgh, Catholic leaders and a 30-strong honour guard from the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Lord Patten also welcomed him on behalf of the government.

Once at Holyrood House, the Queen and the Pope exchanged gifts before each made a speech to those gathered outside.

The Queen said the visit was an opportunity to "deepen the relationship" between Catholicism and the Churches of England and Scotland. She also praised the Catholic Church's "special contribution" to helping the poorest and most vulnerable around the world.

The Pope said he wanted to "extend the hand of friendship" to the entire UK, not just the Catholic population.

He added: "Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate."

The Popemobile then joined the annual St Ninian's Day parade where, despite tight security, police estimated that about 125,000 people turned out.

After the parade, the pontiff travelled to a private lunch with the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland Cardinal Keith O'Brien. Before going inside he met school children who presented him with bouquets of flowers.

Presbyterians, secularists, and other groups in Edinburgh had planned to protest against Vatican policies on birth control, gay rights and abortion, although police did not report any large demonstrations.

BBC correspondents said small groups turned out from the organisation Protest the Pope and from the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland.

I'm sure it wasn't meant intentionally but it's a bit of a major faux pas to refer to "men" on Indymedia when you really men and women. Get with the times dude! (Hope it's safe to assume "Mark" is a dude!)

Good luck with smashing religions of any flavour though.

"To call September 18th a 'protest' would be like calling the Battle of Hastings a skirmish. This day represents the first and perhaps the only chance we may have in our lifetime to deal a decisive blow against the Evil Empire, called the Vatican."

I'm curious. What exactly about this protest do you expect will "deal a decisive blow" to the Catholic Church?

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly getting a fair bit of attention, and will make it clear to plenty of Catholics in the UK that people hate their religion. But beyond that...

"History is shaped by single dramatic events and many empires have crumbled before when faced with the will of the people expressed in an uncompromising display of total outrage."

See, this is where you're just wrong. History is NOT shaped by single dramatic events; it is shaped by constantly evolving social factors, ongoing campaigns, demographic shifts, political changes and countless other issues. While they may erupt in "big moments" from time to time, those moments are a manifestation of the wider change, not the cause of it.

I've yet to see any indication that this Protest the Pope business is willing or able to carry out any sort of activity beyond protesting this one visit, let alone any consideration of what that activity might be or how you expect it to harm the Vatican.

Fighting against the Catholic Church is nothing new; they had a decent go of it in 30s Spain (  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_(Spain) ), a time and place where Catholicism was a far more pressing issue than present-day Britain, and carried out with methods most people nowadays would be far too timid to engage in. The fact Catholicism remains the majority religion there might be a hint that any idea this protest will "bring down the empire" is little more than a teenage wank fantasy.

Still, should be amusing watching Dawkins and co prattle on about it for the next week or so, plus plenty of hand-wringing from politcians of various shapes and sizes. Good for a laugh at least.

You lot are just as bad as the pope and his minions, worse, in fact, as you are acting out of pure religious bigotry. Take your King Billy and fuck off!

If you're that loyal (to the Queen) will you take the whole royal family and keep them in the North of Ireland where you are welcome to fund their lavish lifestyle, and keep the parasites from robbing the rest of us.

My profound apology for using the word 'men' but I used it in the traditional manner to denote ALL people of any gender.

Being politically correct can make it hard to compose certain messages.

I do, however, apologize.

I hope this silly error does NOT detract from the message.

Five held over Pope terror alert
breaking news

Five men have been arrested by the Metropolitan Police in London in relation to a potential threat to the Pope.

The arrests were made at 0545 BST at addresses in London after counter-terrorism officers received intelligence of a potential threat.

The five men have been taken to a central London police station.

Officers are continuing searches at premises connected to the raids.

In a statement from Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police said that the five men had been arrested in an operation launched by officers from the force's Counter-Terrorism Command.

The five were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The five men are 26, 27, 36, 40 and 50 years old. They were arrested in an armed operation at business premises where searches are continuing.

Residential premises in north and east London are also being searched. Officers have not found any hazardous items.

Pope Benedict XVI and his brother Georg Ratzinger stand in the baptistry where they were baptised, inside the Church of St. Oswald during the pope's visit to Marktl am Inn, Sept. 11, 2006. The pope spent part of the third day of his six-day tour in Bavaria at Marktl am Inn, a village where he spent the first two years of his life. (Andreas Gebert/Reuters) Click to enlarge photo

The mists of history swirl around Pope Benedict XVI's hometown in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps in Germany.

It was there that he came of age as Joseph Ratzinger and served in Hitler Youth during the rise of the Third Reich.

Shining a light on that history offers a glimpse of the context underpinning the Vatican's current crisis, which results from the pope's decision last month to rescind the excommunication of a renegade, ultra-conservative bishop who actively denies the Holocaust.

The decision unleashed a firestorm of controversy, with the German government weighing in last week, Israel's chief rabbinate severing ties with the Vatican, and Catholics and Jews worldwide feeling that decades of hard work and goodwill in improving relations between the two faiths had been undermined.

So can we draw a line from this oversight by the pope, this inability to see how much his decision would insult so many, back to his German past and a decision as a 14-year-old boy to join the Hitler Youth?

Most thoughtful Catholics and many Jewish historians I know would say, no, that is not a line that can be drawn, nor is it fair.

But one man who knows some of the hidden truths in the pope's hometown of Traunstein is Father Rupert Berger, and his story deserves telling.

Berger, now 81, was ordained a Catholic priest alongside Joseph Ratzinger and his brother, Georg, in 1951 in the beautiful church in the center of the town where they all grew up together.
But there was something that set their two families apart.

Berger's family sympathized with the Catholic resistance to Nazism in the town. Rupert was the same age as Joseph Ratzinger and at 14 years old he refused to join Hitler Youth. His family suffered as a result. He told me in an interview in 2005 that his father was sent to Dachau. He returned after the war and became the mayor.

Ratzinger's father was a policeman. The family was never affiliated with the Nazi party. But the Ratzingers chose to go with the vast majority of Germany and acquiesce to the regulations requiring 14 year olds to join Hitler Youth. They wanted to survive and allow their two sons to focus on academics in the seminary. So Ratzinger and his brother joined at 14 and went through with the parades and the salutes to the Fuehrer. Ratzinger also served briefly with a German army anti-aircraft unit just before the end of the war.

When I interviewed Berger in April 2005, just after Ratzinger had been elevated to the papacy, he spoke well of Ratzinger's intellect and discipline as a young man. But he said he couldn't understand why Ratzinger had insisted for so long in so many public statements that no one had a choice but to join Hitler Youth.

The Papal Visit team and Holey See desk at the Foreign Office have answerd freedom of information requests on Whatdotheyknow.com, stating that hardly anyone asked about Mr Ratzinger's costs - there was one request which they didn't think to publish on their publications page. They list a number of requests that read as though written by the same person, about "vile" mockery of the pope's human rights record in private.

Unless of course, you know differently: do you know of anyone who wrote a Freedom of Information request to the Foreighn and Commonwealth Office about the cost of the Pope's visit? A journalist? An activist? If so please ask them to add a comment on the whatdotheyknow page above. Here it is again:

 http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/answers_to_all_foi_requests_abou#incoming-134511