Lebanon: Raise a Fist and Resist
Paris and Washington together? Syria, y'know you in trouble.

France and U.S. look to rein in Syrians

PARIS The assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister killed in Beirut on Monday, may reinforce a rare convergence of interests between France and the United States, diplomats and analysts said Wednesday.
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Neither Paris nor Washington has publicly blamed Damascus for the attack, but both see in Hariri's death an opportunity to rein in Syria, albeit for different reasons.
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Their methods, however, are likely to differ despite their mutual interest in limiting Syria's dominant role in Lebanon. Among other things, France has resisted an American demand that Europe list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
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The United States has been openly worried about Syria sponsoring terrorist activity in the Middle East, a concern that was reinforced when a car bomb killed Hariri and 15 others Monday.
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The French, meanwhile, support the kind of democratic and anti-Syrian currents in Lebanon once represented by Hariri. But the country's interest went beyond the political: Hariri was a close friend of President Jacques Chirac, who went to Beirut on Wednesday to offer condolences to the family of the slain politician. Their friendship symbolized the close historic and cultural ties between the two countries, and, by extension, France's influence in the Middle East.

The former colonialists, the new hegemon...and....a pissed off population.

BEIRUT: Tens of thousands of Lebanese turned the funeral on Wednesday of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri into an outpouring of public wrath against Syrian, blamed by opposition leaders for the bomb that killed him.

Men wept as the procession wound through Beirut streets plastered with posters of the Sunni billionaire slain in a suspected suicide car bombing on Monday. “Syrian out, Syrian out,”
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A security source said at least 150,000 people had joined the funeral march, but other witnesses estimated hundreds of thousands of mourners had taken to the streets in one of Lebanon’s biggest and most diverse gatherings for decades.

Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Sufis, Coptics..all coming together, right now...over Rafik...Hmmmmm, I think anger is the next stage of the healing process.