27.10.14
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 […]
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16.10.14
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. […]
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15.10.14
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 […]
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07.10.14
Excellent video animating East India Company 1798-1834… http://vimeo.com/43884291
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30.09.14
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 […]
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22.09.14
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 […]
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13.09.14
The world’s top three shipping lines are, in order, Maersk (Denmark’s second largest company after Lego), MSC (a privately-held Italian firm), and CMA CGM (a French firm). Some time ago, they decided that they were going to start up an alliance, P3, that would have allowed them to share vessels, thus streamlining which ports they would […]
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10.09.14
Derek Gregory has a post that weaves together Deb Cowen’s new book (which I await anxiously) and Charmaine Chua’s post, and loads of important links to Derek’s own work on military logistics.
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10.09.14
Charmaine Chua writes on the politics of logistical chokepoints: Sped along by transport deregulation and an associated wave of firm competition and consolidation, the containerization of bulk goods now allows a single dockworker to do what it took an army to accomplish in the past. Innovations in production technologies, such as flexible production, demand-driven manufacturing, […]
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02.08.14
Francisco Goldman and Jean-Claude Izzo speak to each other through their respective novels, The Ordinary Seaman and The Lost Sailors. Both are stories about waiting in the docks, literally, in a floating metal tub full of holes. Both tell stories within stories within stories – which is what you do when you are waiting. And waiting. When […]
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