Okay, Wikipedia says that the total population of Beirut is somewhere between 1.8 and 2.1 million, depending on whether or not you count the suburbs. Lebanon itself has only got 3.7 million people total.
So that's right around ONE QUARTER OF THE TOTAL POPULATION of the country who thought it was worth their time to take the day off of work or school or whatever, drive downtown, try to find parking, and yell their lungs out with 999,999 of their closest friends, just to send a friendly message to Bashar Assad that he should sod off and die or something.
I live in the fourth-largest city in Japan, Kyoto, total population about 1.5 million. I can't imagine anything that would make one-third of the people here all go to one place and holler like a bunch of rednecks, unless the Hanshin Tigers won the pennant again.
Man, these people REALLY want to be free, God bless 'em.
Amen! An old Scorpion song has been gnawing away at the edge of my brain since the first large Lebanese protest, shades of the fall of the Eastern block.