Nasrallah's Reaction to the STL Indictment

Hassan Nasrallah’s speech about the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) indictment was a spectacular display of political theatre. We have become accustomed to the Hezbollah leader’s master performances, and today he did not disappoint. The speech had all the usual ingredients: criminal evidence, intricate conspiracies, and a defiant but reasoned political message. It seems that Nasrallah is pinning his hopes on winning the public opinion battle by undermining the credibility of the STL and dissuading his opponents in March 14 from pursuing its agenda.  

The Forensic Alternative to the Truth: Thoughts on the Nasrallah Speech and the Difficulty of Writing History in Lebanon

The artist Walid Raad (The Atlas Project) observed a curious aspect of the Lebanese Civil War: confronted by their own powerlessness in the face of car bombs, the police turned to recording meticulously all details of the crime scene without any serious hope of finding the perpetrators. The press would always report the license plate and engine numbers of the cars used in the bombing, as well as other details such as colour and make. Many questions about the war remain unanswered, but we have an encyclopedic record of all the secondary facts, and this is as close as we ever got to writing the history of the war. As the state disintegrated its agents went through the motions, reducing their official roles to that of skilled scribes.