Category Archives: Middle East

A short op-ed on the Ever Given blockage of the Suez Canal

So on 23 March a massive 400-metre long ship, the Ever Given, blocked the Suez Canal. I wrote a piece for the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog about the event. Big ships were created to avoid relying on the Suez … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, construction, environment, infrastructure, logistics, Middle East, political economy, ports, shipping conditions, ships, transport | Leave a comment

A review essay on the Belt and Road Initiative in the LRB

I was thrilled to publish a piece for the London Review of Books on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Instead of wanting to look at it through the eyes of the Chinese or -more egregiously- US policy-makers, I was really … Continue reading

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Salwa Aleryani’s project on infrastructures and the maritime

Salwa Eleryani is a Yemeni artist and graduate student at UdK Berlin who has been working on a project evocatively called She smiled as though she were squinting at the future through heavy smoke. The project, as part of the … Continue reading

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Interview with 032c Magazine

An interview I did with Victoria Camblin a few months ago is now up on the site of 032c magazine. I won’t cut and paste as their graphics are pretty cool: https://032c.com/laleh-khalili-sinews-of-war-and-trade

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, environment, free ports/zones, infrastructure, labour, logistics, media, Middle East, militaries, political economy, ports, seafaring, shipping conditions, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Carceral Seas

I gave a talk to the Millennium Conference in October which can be seen here: And hopefully it will be published in the next few months!

Posted in empire, imperialism & colonialism, labour, logistics, Middle East, militaries, piracy, political economy, the sea, war | Leave a comment

Interview with Project on Middle East Politics (PoMEP)

Below is my interview with PoMEP founder Marc Lynch on Sinews. It is more focused on the politics of the Middle East than some of the other interviews I have had: The Podcast can also be heard via this link:

Posted in infrastructure, labour, Middle East, political economy | Leave a comment

Book launch at Princeton

Conversations -formal and informal, over lunch or over Zoom- with Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi are always immensely fun: they are rich, go in unexpected directions and always invoke lots of new ideas, and lots of new ways of seeing even stuff I … Continue reading

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Brilliantly fun interview with Tank Magazine

Last month the brilliant Thomas Roueché interviewed me on Sinews for Tank magazine. The interview can be found here: https://tankmagazine.com/issue-84/features/the-sinews-of-war-and-trade/ I am not reposting the content, because the piece has such cool graphics on their website!

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, environment, finance and insurance, infrastructure, labour, logistics, Middle East, political economy, ports, shipping conditions | Leave a comment

Interview with Doug Henwood for KPFA’s Left Business Observer

As always it is really fun to talk to Doug, given that he was a merchant marine in his youth, and he is a great conversationalist. We chatted for his Left Business Observer in early August and the conversation went … Continue reading

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A review of Sinews of War and Trade in The Baffler

I was thrilled to see such a brilliant erudite review of the book by Harris Feinsod. All at Sea Surveying the watery expanses of the world economy By Harris Feinsod, 24 August 2020 Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, environment, finance and insurance, free ports/zones, infrastructure, logistics, Middle East, militaries, oil, shipping conditions, transport, war | Leave a comment