The res­ig­na­tion of the gov­ern­ment is Lebanon is being hailed as a “boost for democ­ra­cy” Reports describe Beirut as “a sea of excitement”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1428151,00.html. ABC News and oth­ers are report­ing that “Syr­ia is about to announce its with­drawl from Lebanon”:http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=553479. How won­der­ful it would be if “Beirut could emerge”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut from its thir­ty years of chaos with the start of the “1975 civ­il war”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War.
Even good change can cause tur­moil. David Hirst, writ­ing in the guardian, won­ders whether the upheaval threa­t­ends to “desta­bi­lize Syr­ia and turn it into anoth­er iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1430243,00.html: “After the exam­ple of elec­tions, how­ev­er flawed, in occu­pied iraq and Pales­tine, has come this new, unsched­uled out­break of pop­u­lar self-assertion in a coun­try [Lebanon] where a sis­ter Arab state, not an alien occu­pi­er, is in charge.”
For the lat­est news, you can turn to the “Guardian’s spe­cial report on Syr­ia and iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/0,13031,928812,00.html. To jump in the fray, you can turn to the Non­vi­o­lence Board­’s thread on the “res­ig­na­tion of the Lebanese government”:http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/viewtopic.php?t=3297