Thoughts on military mobilities, trade and capital accumulation, struggles over labour and citizenship rights in the making of transport infrastructures.
I grew up with a number of Persian-language classic novels on the bookshelves of our house. Throughout my childhood (I was a precocious reader) and teenage years, I tended towards Sadeq Hedayat and Simin Daneshvar and Jalal Al-e-Ahmad. A bit predictable really. My father was from the south; Jahrom, specifically. He had a soft spot for a number […]
Rather terrifying to think that the ice has melted so much that ships can navigate through: The polar route to the port of Bayuquan, China, is about 40 percent shorter than the route through the Panama Canal, according to Fednav. Through fuel savings, the company expects to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions during the voyage […]
Fascinating piece from Guernica magazine about how more and more ex-soldiers and military logistics firms are going into the oil business: This concentration of former service members owes partly to the fact that military training makes many uniquely suited for work in the domestic oil and gas industry. That, at least, has been Dave’s experience. […]
I have had -broadly speaking- four large and interconnected set of research interests thus far: Palestinian commemoration of political violence -massacres and battles, heroes and martyrs; the counterinsurgency work of US, Israel and colonial militaries; the politics and political economy of leisure and pleasure; and now my transport stuff. In a previous post I managed […]
Shipping containers, as I wrote before, are fascinating things. Deb Cowen’s superb new book has on its cover an amazing photograph of shipping containers tumbling atop two destroyed cranes in the aftermath of the devastating 2011 earthquake in Japan. Shipping container act as symbols. When they are empty or abandoned, they speak of declining or […]
Excellent video animating East India Company 1798-1834… http://vimeo.com/43884291
I discovered something interesting that somehow I had managed to miss all those years ago about the massacre at Karantina… Years ago, I wrote in my first book (which was based on my PhD research) which also included stories about the Phalange massacres of Palestinians (and others) living in the Karantina area of Beirut. As […]
It seems like Mohammad al-Fayed (of Harrod’s fame – and obviously many other ventures) was also in the port business. In 1964, he entered a deal with Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti, whereby he invested $5 million in the harbours, established pilotage and ports, and in return was to receive the income from the […]
They are EVERYWHERE! Here is Michael Dirda writing about campy pirates: Many [film pirates] are also distinctly camp. The first pirate most of us encounter is Captain Hook, who, as played by Cyril Ritchard in the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan, glories in the mincing affectation and extravagance of a boisterous drag queen (there were, […]
