Dominoes Falling

There was a Free Lebanon demonstration on Parliament Hill today. I didn't manage to catch as much of it as I'd have liked to, but I think I've got a nice representative sample of photos. A goodly-sized crowd was still around, even though starting to disperse after speakers had come and gone. Interestingly, that's the same pole as here, now considerably less lunatic in its aignage. They know who their friends are... ...Though listing Chirac as an ally might be a bit of wishful thinking. But it's just no fun for the chattering classes to accuse anyone of ordering torture, unless their name rhymes with "Shrumsfeld;" haven't you heard? Given that Assad's Syria is a Baathist police state in the same mould as Iraq was, I think that's perhaps the first even quasi-appropriate use I've ever seen of a swastika in a protest sign. Note the references to UN Resolution 1559. It's a shame that some people still hope that the UN is capable of carrying out such resolutions, or even really willing to. "Christians, Muslims, Druze, unite. One voice alone, the same cry: Out!" You know, some of us believed this sort of thing was, in fact, bound to happen, after the liberation of Iraq. A year ago the fact that Lebanon is a Syrian satrapy wasn't even on the radar of internationalist do-gooders; now a movement for representative government free of Assad's mini-Stalinist tyranny is happening without them. (I didn't see many pasty-faced hippies around. Maybe it takes a bit more effort to march in steadfast resolve for a good cause, than in paranoid hatred?)