The indispensable National Security Archives has released a memo by Rumsfeld (dated 6 October 2001) that has loads on the logistics of war. The memo covers Rumsfeld’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt and Central Asia, in preparation for the invasion of Afghanistan. The memo has loads of fascinating tidbits including, for example, this: Mubarak offered […]
Associated Press reports that jets belonging to the Libyan government bombed a Greek-owned tanker, killing two crew members: A military spokesman for Libya’s internationally recognised government says its fighter jets bombed a Greek-owned tanker ship because it had no prior clearance to enter an eastern port and acted “suspiciously”. Spokesman Ahmed al-Mesmari said the jets […]
In the last two weeks, two ships filled to the brim with hundreds of Syrian refugees have been brought in to Italian ports. The ships seem to have left Eastern Mediterranean, and sailed parallel to the Turkish coast, picking up most passengers from Mersin or other ports in Turkey, and arriving in Greek waters, heading […]
pulp fiction n. fiction of a style characteristic of pulp magazines; sensational, lurid, or popular fiction. 1928 Decatur (Ill.) Herald 10 Aug. 6/5 Wood-pulp fiction commands a price of two—sometimes three—cents a word (The Oxford English Dictionary) I sometimes think that pulp fictions touch on the zeitgeist, that they pick up on undercurrents of politics […]
As I wrote earlier, one of the most amazing sections of Deb Cowen’s amazing book is about how after its closure, Camp Bucca was transformed into Basra Logistics City. Today, yet another article has come out about how Camp Bucca was the incubator for ISIS/Da’ish: Baghdadi also seemed to have a way with his captors. […]
Christian Science Monitor reports that the British are building watchtowers along the Lebanese-Syrian border: “A lonely fortified watchtower built from stacked metal shipping containers, topped by a bullet-proofed observation booth, and protected from shrapnel and assaults by 18-foot-high walls of rock-filled Hesco barricades, marks the western edge of the regional campaign to check the expansion […]
Last week, huge protests took place in Brussels, with the trade unions reporting some 130,000-150,000 people showing up; and major clashes with the police. The protests in fact have been going on for some time now. And in the April protests, “hundreds of marchers adorned in the orange bibs of the BTB-ABVV docker’s union from Antwerp […]
My review of Deb Cowen’s wonderful new book, The Deadly Life of Logistics, is now out. I write The Deadly Life of Logisticsis organised around a series of themes whose interconnections are clear throughout: the integral conjuncture between the discourses of management studies and of logistics; the securitisation of labour; and perhaps most important, the illusory […]
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 […]
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 […]
