The Roar and the Quiet?

I'm amazed at the quietness in the media following the truly historic
and unfrequented world-movement protest that occurred on Saturday, the
so-called "2-15 uprising."  Without wishing to blow it out of proportion
-- after all, it must be sustained over time to have an impact of real
significance -- I note three precedents set that seem not to receive the
attention they deserve:

There has been:

1. Nothing as big since 1968.
2. Nothing as big on a single day.
3. Nothing as big before a war.
4. Nothing as globally coordinated.
5. Some individual gatherings were the largest ever seen in that
country, including that at Hyde Park in London.

Here are some facts patched together from mostly Euro-centric articles.
(I welcome people to add to these facts):

On February 15, 2003 perhaps more than ten million people in more than
600 cities around the world marched against US plans to attack Iraq.  It
was the largest world-scale protests since the Vietnam War.  The largest
public protest in Britain's history saw about 1 million people gather at
Hyde Park in London.  Between 300,000 and 500,000 people demonstrated in
Berlin, at the largest rally since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Nearly 1 million people turned out in Rome.  Combined, 300,000
demonstrators walked in France, 500,000 in Germany, one million in
Italy, and two million in Spain.  More than 200,000 people, some waving
banners asking "How many lives per litre?" thronged the streets of
Sydney, Australia.  About 10,000 protested in India's eastern city of
Calcutta with banners reading "No blood for oil" and 5,000 gathered in a
Tokyo park.  People protested on five continents in an unprecedented
display of global coordination.

Elson Boles
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Sociology
Saginaw Valley State University
University Center
Saginaw MI, 48710