Meaningful Protest

In the West, protesting has long since become a form of amateur theater, and when each performance is over, the players meet at Starbucks for coffee. But in Lebanon, it's for real:

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters shouted insults at Syria and demanded the resignation of their pro-Syrian government in a Beirut demonstration Monday, marking a week since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

This is all the more remarkable because those Lebanese protesters are only too well aware that their own post-demo visits may be not to Starbucks, but to their own graves, as in 1982:

When I stepped forward to my spot by the trench, I saw the pile of bodies in their still tainted by running blood, which horrified me so much that I had to close my eyes and I had to contain myself to avoid falling off.

As expected, streams of bullets were fired towards us and everyone fell in their blood into the trenches, whilst the ones who were inside the other trench got shot inside the trench where they stood"
[...]
They would cut the guts of a baby while his mother held him, and then fire a stream of bullets onto her to prevent her from giving birth to another future opposition member.

Oh, and how disappointing is our current Canadian Prime Minister? Glad you asked:

Prime Minister Paul Martin yesterday mistakenly suggested Syrian troops in Lebanon are there to "keep the peace."

Canada's drift continues.