Bahiya Hariri, Mr. Hariri's sister and a member of parliament, used her speech to reach out to both Hezbollah and its godparent Syria, which has long seen Lebanon as its last negotiating card to retrieve the occupied Golan Heights from Israel. "We will stand by Syria until its land is liberated and it regains its sovereignty on the occupied Golan Heights," she said, prompting boos from the crowd. As for Hezbollah, she said, "We insist on building together with them the future of great Lebanon." [ emphasis mine - JSW ]

More human interest details here.

Another clever sign.

The latest of many Iraqi protests against jihadi/Baathist terrorists (most of which were ignored by the MSM).

Jim Geraghty spanks Matt Yglesias, who richly deserves it. I see Matt's attitude a lot in people who profess to care about liberal principles.

Jim also points to this comment by Stephen Green that would make a great chain email to send all your liberal friends (the ones who are still speaking to you, anyway). And check out the fact-checking by Frank Martin. (The other comment Jim quotes is good too.)

Colors.

UPDATE: Tom "Lexus and Olive Tree" Friedman notes another manifestation of the new Arab Street:

From Baghdad to Beirut, the Middle East has seen a series of unprecedented popular demonstrations for democracy. There were, however, two street protests in December that got virtually no coverage, but were just as important, if not more. One took place in the Egyptian Nile Delta town of Mahalla and the other in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya. Both of these raucous Egyptian demonstrations, which involved marches, strikes, denunciations of the government and appeals to Parliament, were triggered by President Hosni Mubarak's decision to sign the first substantial trade agreement with Israel since Camp David. That decision brought Egyptian workers from both areas into the streets. They were furious. They were enraged. Why?

They were not included in the new trade deal with Israel.

Business people don't have much use for ideology, they just want to make money, which is why utopian ideologues hate entrepreneurs. More Friedman:

Looking at Eastern Europe on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall, said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a lecturer on the Middle East at Oxford, "we could have predicted which countries would have an easy transition to democracy and which ones not." Countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, which had a history of liberal institutions and free markets that had been suppressed by communism, quickly flourished. Others farther east, which did not have such institutions in their past and were starting from scratch - Bulgaria, Romania and the former Soviet republics - have struggled since the fall of the wall.

The same will be true in the Middle East, where democracy will not just spring up because autocrats fall down. It will arise only if these countries develop, among other things, export-oriented private sectors, which can be the foundation for a vibrant middle class that is not dependent upon the state for contracts and has a vital interest in an open economy, a free press and its own political parties. The development of such a private sector was crucial in democratizing Taiwan and South Korea.

Which is why Iraq - with a longstanding tradition of entrepreneurship, which resurged as soon as the war ended - will become a civil democratic society before Russia will.

UPDATE: You really need to see a series of photos to get an idea of how huge the Beirut demo was. Or a fish-eye lens. Or video.

UPDATE: Best blog post title on the Lebanese situation.

UPDATE: Heh.