In one of the most significant environmental decisions the Trump administration has taken, a ban on offshore drilling was lifted on 4 January 2018. The New York Times reported: While the plan puts the administration squarely on the side of the energy industry and against environmental groups, it also puts the White House at odds […]
That extraordinary image is from some time in the 1970s, and the container-ship steaming so serenely in Hudson River is a Jugolinija ship belonging to the Yugoslav national shipping line. What is of course poignant about the image is that neither the shipping line nor the World Trade Center towers exist any longer. I think […]
This really is the best journalism about Somali piracy I have read. It is immensely sympathetic to the ordinary crewmen, many often belonging to the global South, who are the victims of the piracy. But it also shows the extent to which piracy itself is today a form of enterprise; with wage workers who are starving […]
GUEST POST BY R.Z. Having spent the last couple of years researching Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), attending their industry gatherings and military expos, I was very excited to shift gears to a new project and curious what differences I would find in the world of Middle East logistics. On 17-18 March I attended […]
15 February 2015 16.00 We have arrived too soon, because of steaming at high speed through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, in order for the ship to make it to Ningbo for an earlier slot that has come free, but now the slot has been given up for Chinese […]
“and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick The first incident of its kind happened last night. Hopefully, also the last. I was in the wheelroom in the dark, keeping easy company with my favourite ship’s officer and favourite cadet. One of the below-deck officers who had […]
This one is for my friends Rachel Shabi and Waleed Hazbun, who might recognise something of the pathos of our common paternal utopias in it… 11 February 2015 “Hyperbole is the main stock in trade of publicists, boosters and even anti-boosters in some artists. Yet redemptive hyperbole and apocalyptic hyperbole amount to the same thing. […]
9 February 2015 20.00 “Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, [… the] prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I could see.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick For the next few days, we shall be traveling on the sea in a monotony of sunshine, humidity, warmth, and reading […]
8 February 2015 You begin to realise how much Marx actually crafted his writing when you compare Capital I to Capital II. The former is beautifully edited, funny, extensively footnoted, erudite, and with a gorgeous narrative structure that inexorably push you forward as the book goes on. Not so Capital II which was assembled from […]
Marsaxlokk-Jabal Ali: At last at sea 5 February 2015 11.00 Occasionally in the night, the ship bumps against the berth and that is when one remembers that one is not on solid ground. I can’t wait for our ship to take off tomorrow, so that I can actually feel the motion, and especially at night. […]
