The anti-war leader, Brian Haw, gave chase but the young Pole was just too quick for him.

I must add, after having been screamed at by this Brian Haw - and this is before I even really weighed in - that he comes across as something akin to those people who find themselves cornered by their own oddity. Those people who become famous for growing their fingernails freakishly long, and then can never cut them because that is now, "who they are," the person with the freakishly long fingernails. Unfortunately for Brain, when the war ends (and worse for him, democracy continues to spread in the Middle East) he will see his fingernails cut off.

As you will see from the link on his name, he is better known for his longevity than his reasoning, honored on the left for his dogged persistence moreso than for his cunning and disarming rhetoric. Actually his case, as he screams it in one's face, has much more to do with how long he has been sitting here, in opposition to the war, than the war itself (as do most of the articles about him). He puts the lie to the notion that all Brits are as magnificent in their wit as Christopher Hitchens (who today is in top form with this lucid article). No, instead after 3 years of sitting in Parliment Square, Haw still hasn't honed a few good lines; quite the contrary.

Haw does a good job of single-handedly representing all the hot-headed, spittle-spewing haters back in the U.S. for his ilk here in the U.K. Screaming and cussing at passers-by, accusing all who don't share his extreme views of supporting genocide and generally pushing anyone who is fair-minded away from his brand of anti-warism, which appears to have a monopoly on the anti-war message.

Except for the 14 year-old girl who gave a thumbs-up from her passing white strech-limo, he didn't get much support. The two commrades who were sitting with him expressed a sense of, well let me just say they explicitly agreed with me that he was doing more harm than good - while they sat quietly and let him rage at the genocide-supporting public and tourists.

I ended up leaving the Haw and his ramshackle display when a group of 3 male teens came up and started asking Haw loaded questions - until I outright asked them what they thought of President Bush and they said they liked him. So off we went into the London dusk to quiz each other about our respective lives.

By the dilation of their pupils and their outgoing manner, I wasn't surprised to learn they were a bit dosed on psilocybe (mushrooms). When they asked me what kind of music I listend to back in Chicago, I told them The Who (they hadn't seen Quadraphenia, shame that) and NAS (who they said had just played in London a few night previous, with obligatory gun shots fired in the venue. What a great city to be a teenager. Hi Sam, don't let your mom read this.