MERDE IN FRANCE is reporting miserably low turnouts for antiwar protests there.

UPDATE: Just emailed Paris correspondent Claire Berlinski to ask how big the crowds were. Response:

So small that I had no idea there were any. The crowds for the post-Christmas sales on the rue de Rivoli were murder, though. I thought I’d faint trying to get at the snakeskin boots.

Western consumerism reigns triumphant.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt sends this link and says the crowd looks big to her. I don’t know — the actual photo shows at most a few hundred people, tightly framed, so it’s kind of hard to judge by that. In fact — though this is pure speculation — it looks like the kind of photo I’d take if I wanted to make a small demonstration look big. (LATER: Kind of like this description.) Where’s the aerial photo showing people covering acres and acres? Anybody got one?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Charles Johnson reports that turnouts seem to be low all over — except in Damascus. Then there’s this not-entirely credible report from Baghdad.

STILL MORE: Merde in France emails:

The French media would do everything possible to make the crowds look big if they could. This evening’s news only covered the entire subject of international demonstrations for about 6 minutes with the majority of time concentrated on Washington DC (where the thinned out crowd was very evident).

No attempt was made to create the illusion of mass protests. It just wasn’t possible from any angle.

Perhaps the snakeskin boots were too appealing.

Damian Penny also reports low turnouts worldwide, though the tentacles of the antiwar movement did reach to Newfoundland, with results he reports.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Collin May joins the chorus reporting that French protest turnout was dismal.

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Sounds like the turnout in Sweden was better, at least on a per-capita basis.