
Perhaps I was wrong about yesterday’s turnout. Look closely at the image below. The closeup is just a small part of the big picture.

(Sources: Annahar , Yahoo! )
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I blog in The Beirut Spring about Lebanese society and politics. I started in February 2005 after the killing of P.M. Rafik Hariri.

abou steif,
I think the turn out was realy good considering the weather and the fact that most people are fed up with the whole situation and just can’t be bothered any more.
In the end everybody had somewhere to go yesterday, except for the poor Oranges, I didn’t see any of them at the Mughneih funeral, I wonder why!
I was a really big crowd. And the notable thing was that it was not all “northern”, with strong Christian, Sunni, and Druze “contingents”. It was notable that Geagea was apparently able to mobilize a large “cohort”, making up a large part of the crowd; this may have a lot to do with Aoun’s silence on that day. It was also notable that, of all people, OTV was only able to “front” Wi’am Wahab, with most FPM figures silent, just content to do some figuring at the funeral.
And the fact that Tripoli was not all empty may have had as much to do with security concerns as with the rain. Someone has to “man the fort” while the others are “away”. In many ways, we may have crossed a qualitative boundary, as those shots fired in the air have more to do with “delimiting territory” than “celebration”. One case in point, the FL did some fireworks displays to mark the death of Muighnieh, ostensibly claiming this was to celebrate Saad’s speech. This is kinda like a reflection of the baklava offerings that marked the death of Tueni and others.
The turnout was more than good it served the intended purposes. I am particularly satisfied that aoun’s claimed representation was finally put to the test and shown its true fading colors. FPM is the weakest link in M8 and yesterday that link took a direct hit!
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Does anybody have any estimates on crowd sizes for the 2 demonstrations yesterday? Such numbers are indicators -certainly not the most important ones or the only ones, but still useful - on which way the wind is blowing.
The numbers are very important thats for sure, the victory is as important as well, but the most important thing is how are they going to take advantage of this victory??? and M14 has proved itself incapable for the past 3 years to take advantage of the momentum.
I hope history won’t repeat itself and after rallying all these people for a huge showdown they won’t wake up the next day with the feeling that they have achieved nothing but empower a couple of loosers who are going to go kiss the resistance ass.
I see the Zoom in and out method has worked!!
As for comments that nothing has changed…Did you think it will??
Once IT is operational (and the 4 murderers tranported out) you’ll see a lot of changes…Not until then!!
Thank you Mustapha for this post!!
Considering that many people are migrating and leaving Lebanon: this crowd was great! We Are Proud!!!
Lebanon is our country and We chose our destiny!
So, the people are still willing to “speak up”, yet the M14 leadership still seems unable to take that vote of confidence and turn it into anything but soft-pussyfooting around and talk of “consensus”. I don’t get it.
So what’s the consensus?
100,000 people?
500,000?
1 million?
Happy A,
does it matter on whose is bigger???
does ne 1 know about the price per head..??
i heard 400 per bus, 200 per car… this is good for our economy, i hope we have more of the same
Mustapha… I love the new logo. looks great on Safari.
Wow, that is a LOT of people!! Very good to see that so many are still invested in Lebanon’s future –a future of peace, prosperity and reform!