[-empyre-] Under the Beach

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

just read an article by Angela Mitropoulos on Mute regarding last 
year's "race riots" in Cronulla
http://www.metamute.org/en/Under-the-Beach-the-Barbed-Wire
i don't remember seeing this posted here yet, but i apologize if i 
missed it.
She discusses the relationship between racist policies and recent 
anti-terror laws, and goes on to incorporate economic structures 
("flexibilization") as well:
"On the third day of rioting, the NSW Premier announced emergency laws 
to give police, among other measures, the power to ‘lockdown’ those 
beachside suburbs under threat. This was, he declared, a ‘war’ and the 
state would ‘not be found wanting in the use of force’. And so the task 
of the Cronulla pogrom was more smoothly accomplished by the police 
acting as border guards, refusing entry to the beaches to those who 
could not prove that they belonged there. The ‘lockdown’ laws, in 
summary, allow the state to remove entire suburbs from the ostensibly 
normal functioning of the law for periods of 48 hours. Among other 
things, and within the designated ‘lockdown’ zone, the laws remove the 
presumption of bail for riot and affray, allow for the area to be 
cordoned off to prevent vehicles and people from entering it, empower 
police to stop and search people and vehicles without warrant or the 
standard criterion of suspicion, and to seize cars and mobile phones 
for up to a week.
In some respects, this could be viewed as a sequel to the so-called 
‘anti-terror’ laws; recast here as an explicit attempt to 
reterritorialise the ‘moving mêlée’ – as one journalist described those 
engaged in the retaliatory riots."
This article also reminded me of Francesca da Rimini's text in the last 
Sarai Reader...
best,
ryan