Internecine Wars: Cinders of Lebanon

[The flag of Hezbollah, Source: Wikipedia]

"This decision was a declaration of war and the start of war on the resistance and its weapons. Our response to this decision is that whoever declares or starts a war, be it a brother or a father, then it is our right to defend ourselves and our existence."

-Hassan Nasralla, Leader of Hezbollah, from his televised address on May 8, 2008

The Saudi- and Western-backed Lebanese government decided on Tuesday, May 6 to shut down the private telecom network operated by Hezbollah. The government also accused Hezbollah of placing cameras outside the Beirut airport to monitor government officials. These actions coincided with labor leaders' declaration of a general strike, demanding higher wages and protesting economic policies.

Nasrallah's words, "whoever starts a war, be it a brother or a father..." should not be taken lightly. The diverse religious make up of Lebanon has been relatively peaceful for many years. Indeed, many Lebanese Christians supported Hezbollah.

Immediately after Nasrallah's televised address on Thursday, May 8, Hezbollah followers took to the streets in Beirut with barricades and gun fights to enforce the general strike and forcibly oppose governmental actions that Nasrallah declared an act of war. For the past week, militants have occupied Mulsim neighborhoods in Western Beirut, and cut off access to various transportation roots out of the city. Their military prowess and the events are chronicled today in an article from BBC.

[Burning tires block the highway linking Beirut with the coastal village of Jiyeh, Lebanon. Photo: NYTimes]

[Barricade to the Beirut airport, Lebanon. Photo: NYTimes]

[Shiite Militants on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: NYTimes]

The pictures really are beautiful: sexy young Lebanese militants, wearing bandannas and kefias, taking arms against their government, stopping the flow of capital with barricades of burning tires.

In a poetic tit for tat, militants set fire to the studios of Future TV (founded by assassinated former prime minister Rafik Hariri) and a newspaper owned by government officials. The Future TV studio was home to program, SuperStar, a licensed subsidiary of American Idol. The government tried to shut down Hezbollah's communication network, so the group responded by burn the government's television station.

[Studios of Future TV, set aflame by Hezbollah supporters]

Below is a clip of sexy runner-up, Saad Almojarad from season 4 of SuperStar!



Are you in love with him yet? Because I melt when I watch him sing. Also note, the Lebanese subsidiary is so much classier than American Idol; full orchestra, backup singers, semi-formal dress, good music. But I digress...

A New York Review of Books piece from 2004 has a nice summary of Hezbollah's current structure and history, so I won't go into it all here. By way of summary: Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist group by Israel, the US, the UK and three other "allies in the war on terror." The EU has never listed them as a terrorist group. The Arab world respects them. They are Shi'ite. The group formed in 1982 in resistance to an Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, and they have largely fought to reclaim those occupied territories ever since. Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, and Hezbollah has largely kept the promise it made (after the civil war of 1975-1990) to refrain from using its arms against the Lebanese people. They are now a legitimate party in the Lebanese Parliament and won nearly 20% of seats in Parliament in the May 2006 elections. Several UN reports praise the group's many Humanitarian efforts.

An excerpt from one such report:

"The group currently operates at least four hospitals, 12 clinics, 12 schools and two agricultural centres that provide farmers with technical assistance and training. It also has an environmental department and an extensive social assistance programme. Medical care is also cheaper than in most of the country's private hospitals and free for Hezbollah members.

Most of these institutions are located in the country's more marginalised areas, such as Beirut's southern suburbs, in South Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley. 'We have special sections all over the country that provide financial and food assistance to the poor,' said Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Nabulsi. 'We also run an emergency fund for instant care in case of immediate hospitalisation.'"

What is really fascinating about Hezbollah is they have largely functioned as a government within a government. Indeed, that appears to be the terms of the struggle that have played out over the past week. On Wednesday the government rescinded the two decisions to shut down the group's communication and intelligence networks. By Thursday the Arab League began brokering talks between them.

Of chief concern in these talks was Hezbollah's arms, which it was previously permitted to keep after the civil war to continue it's fight against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. According to the BBC article cited earlier, the Arab League diplomats asked that Hezbollah, "pledge to refrain from resorting or returning to violence in pursuit of political gains." They also asked for the initiation of talks "on spreading state sovereignty throughout the country, and defining the state's relationship with 'all organisations'".

It's a total crisis of state sovereignty. Of course, in light of contemporary chatter about "globalization" and the "receding concept of state sovereignty," I should refine my point. Hezbollah demonstrated, during the last week, that it was the most capable military force operating in Lebanon. Of course, they demonstrated that fact in 2000 when they pushed the Israeli occupation out. The militant group forced the sovereign state to paradoxically acknowledge their right to own and operate telecomunications equipment that they undoubtedly used against that same state in last week's crisis. Hezbollah allegedly operates surveillance cameras at the Beirut airport to spy on officials; but the Lebanese government reassigned the airport's chief of security, who had called for the destruction of the cameras.

I wouldn't want to argue that the conflict of the past week is some kind of traditional revolutionary moment. Hezbollah might, in fact, represent some kind of alter-sovereign--a constituting power that has yet to be fully constituted. It remains in a position of alterity in relation to the "sovereign state" of Lebanon, yet it exercises many of the powers of a sovereign.

If they win more concessions (like a veto power) in future negotiations, will Hezbollah adhere to a normalized Parliamentary path? If it is demanded of them that they disarm, would they do it to gain prominence as a political party? My guess is that Nasrallah knows he has semi-sovereign power in Lebanon; why would he ever give that up? They are in a unique position as "resistance," which is, in this case, a position of strength. It will be interesting to see what they do with it.

The story reminds me of the Goya painting Kronos Eating His Children. The Lebanese state declared war on it's own resistance fighters--those who fought Israel for so long. It's like chopping off the arm that defends you. The really difficult question: why on earth did the state do it? Didn't they know it would provoke such a reaction from Hezbollah? Were they counting on it? Perhaps they're trying to draw the U.S. into a conflict with Iran and the Shi'a. The negotiations that unfold in the next few weeks may provide answers to these questions.

Photo of the Month: Hillary's Mirror

[Hilliary supporters at an Indiana rally, Source: NYTimes]

This photo is totally uncanny. At first, it's kind of funny, but it becomes more of a horror-show the more you look at it. Kind of like this year's primary season!

1). The sexy boy front and center. Gorgeous skin, nice bone structure, beautiful lips. Tricked out in full Hillary regalia; two buttons, a sign and a T-shirt. But why is he so brooding and angry?

2). The look of terror on the old lady's face in the back right. You'd think Hilliary had just flashed her tits or something with the face that woman is making.

3). Woman on bottom right. Confusion? Disbelief? Surprise?

4). The placid calm of those to her right and left. WTF?

5). Why is the grandma in the pale blue giving the look of death to the ethnic woman with a green sign to the bottom left?

6). Look closely behind the ethnic woman. Look at that creepy fuckin' kid! Morbidly obese, ghastly white, beady little eyes. Is it about to puke? Is it male or female? It's like a Mark Ryden painting up in there.

[Mark Ryden, "Little Star," oil on canvas]

"In his fourth Seminar, La relation d'objet, Lacan states that 'the mirror stage is far from a mere phenomenon which occurs in the development of the child. It illustrates the conflictual nature of the dual relationship.' The dual relationship (relation duelle) refers not only to the relation between the Ego and the body, which is always characterized by illusions of similarity and reciprocity, but also to the relation between the Imaginary and the Real. The visual identity given from the mirror supplies imaginary "wholeness" to the experience of a fragmentary real."

(source: wikipedia)

Do you imagine Hillary's consciousness ever registers this cross section of her "base"? Do you think she can see anyone over the blazing spotlights they use to blow out her face and obscure her age? She probably looks out and sees hordes of adoring fans, a reflection of her own love for herself in the blur of the crowd. Of course that mirror gives wholeness to the terrifying experience of the fragmentary Real.

Unfortunately, we are not spared the pleasant illusion of the Imaginary.

Prisoners of Katrina Part III: "Camp Greyhound"

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had no postal service, no public utilities, no hospitals, and very few people.

However, five days after Katrina made landfall, New Orleans, built a temporary jail. Under the direction of State Prison Warden Burl Cain, prison laborers from Angola assembled cages out of chain link fencing and razor wire in the parking lot of an abandoned bus station to create what the good warden called "Camp Greyhound."

"This is a real start to rebuilding this city, this jail," warden Cain said to the NYTimes.

Why did New Orleans start reconstruction by building a prison camp?

There was a lot of media attention on stories of people in New Orleans performing heroic acts:

But that attention shifted from images of heroism to images of predominantly black people doing some "Katrina shopping."


Remember the "looters"?

Of course that video was the sensationalist one. See how another news network turned the same footage into a comedic farce:



A sleight of hand: the first newsreel edited out footage of white people looting, while the second includes them. Coincidence? Perhaps. Consider the following two photographs and captions pulled off the AP.


The caption to the photo of the black man reads, "A young man walks through chest deep floodwater after looting a grocery store." The caption of the photo for the white people reads, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store." Many people have written about the representation of "black looters" versus "resourceful whites," and I don't want to recapitulate that debate here.

I'd like to start an analysis of how this conceptual framework enabled the slide into governmental procedures far more dangerous than mere racial bias in media coverage.

As rumors circulated of violent crime, roving bands of black men shooting at helicopters, and general chaos breaking out in the flooded city, police and National Guardsmen switched from performing rescue operations to conducting military patrols and checkpoints in the streets. Gov. Kathleen Blanco issued a statement to CNN: "I have one message for these hoodlums: these troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will."

Rumors of violent crime have now been proven unfounded, and the "crime" was largely limited to petty theft.

Police and military personnel claimed there was an outbreak of "total anarchy" or an "insurgency" throughout many parts of the city, and responded with an unprecedented deployment of 50,000 National Guard Troops, and some 20,000 active duty Military personnel.

"This place is going to look like Little Somalia," Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. "We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."

The images do look like a third world urban war zone. In fact, Many of the National Guard troops who Gov. Blanco said "know how to shoot and kill" learned those techniques in tours of duty in Iraq, before being redeployed to New Orleans. I can't help but wonder why an African metaphor was chosen instead of something more current, like Fallujah.

[Photo from CNBC, the man above was arrested for looting because he was in possession of a few beers]

"A combat mission" in an American city began. As valuable government personnel and resources shifted a portion of their focus from rescue and evacuation to law and order operations to fight the chimera of violent crime, the portion of the population who could not evacuate was made into prisoners of this war--detainees.

But the jail was underwater.

So "Camp Greyhound" was the first public works construction project of New Orleans. Over the course of the 6 weeks of it's operation, 1,200 detainees were bussed in to the depot where they were processed and held for many days without trial before being shipped off to other facilities throughout the state. Detaines slept on the asphalt.

Claude Moman, the first detainee according to USA Today , allegedly stole a rental car on Thursday after the storm and drove to the Greyhound bus station to get a ticket out of town. Instead of finding an escape route, he drove into the center of the New Orleans state of exception, was charged with auto theft and put in a cage. One group at Camp Greyhound was arrested for fleeing the city in a "stolen" mail truck. Most were arrested for looting.

There are a number of questions we could ask about the racial dimensions of this situation. For instance, why were rumors of black men shooting down helicopters simply accepted as fact?

While I think the racialization of crime is an important question, and I'd like to return to it more fully in future posts, there's another line of inquiry we could take. The government failed to plan for the evacuation of the poorest of neighborhoods, and placed 20,000-30,000 uncomfortable, tired people into a cramped sports field for five days with minimal provisions. What if violent crime had broken out inside the Superdome? Are the origins of Katrina crime to be found in a violent people, "hoodlums" in Gov. Blanco's terms, or in poor government planning?

The "criminals of Katrina" are clearly victims of circumstance. A government that could not ensure their survival criminalized their survival techniques. A government terrified of armed citizens armed itself to the teeth. A government whose jail flooded constructed a camp to administer justice. A simple reading of these events would be that of projection, or scapegoating, and there is no doubt that media attention shifted from a scathing portrayal of government problems to a terrifying portrait of chaos.

[Detainees being processed at Camp Greyhound, September 2005, NYTimes]

The spectacular drama of a breakdown in "Law & Order" appears to be a drama of anarchy, rebellion and criminality. At a deeper level of analysis, the situation is actually a crisis of raison d'état. A government that failed it's citizens with poorly constructed levees, bad crisis management and delayed evacuations, violently reestablished its legitimacy with force. "Camp Greyhound" and the militarization of New Orleans are flip sides of a cypher that we might use to uncover our contemporary political situation. If government failures in the Katrina crisis transformed the human figures of that failure into detainees at one end of the spectrum and refugees at the other, might the large scale socio-economic failures of government be transforming similar figures into America's swelling prison population? In this analysis, Katrina appears to have exposed the dark underbelly of a generalized governmental failure and a corresponding expansion of military tactics over the population. Put concisely, when the state's power to protect its citizens floundered, the criminalization of citizens of New Orleans reestablished a reason for the existence of the state.

We might extend our argument even further. Perhaps, the fact that scenarios of this sort are poping up around the globe is evidence of a larger scale crisis of raison d'etat. That is certainly the perspective of the military establishment. Pentagon planners, and military officials are using Katrina data to conduct war-games of future domestic scenarios, according to Army Times. In fact, Congress passed legislation in 2006 overturning the century old Posse Comitatus Act, banning the deployment of active duty military personnel on domestic soil. The law was repealed in subsequent legislation in 2008, but the precedent has been set.

In the security complex that responded to Katrina, we can see the growing indistinction between police and military operations. The combat mission has been generalized, and so have the camps.

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to dystopolitik using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites