Category Archives: war

Battlefield to Boardroom

I wrote about the business managerial pretensions of former special operators for the LRB: https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/laleh-khalili/stupid-questions And then had a chat with Thomas Jones on their podcast: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/the-special-forces-fantasy

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Interview with the Jacobin about the Suez Canal

I can talk about the Suez Canal forever — and here I did! 😀 The Suez Canal Is a Lifeline for Global Capitalism AN INTERVIEW WITHLALEH KHALILI The Suez Canal blockage inspired a thousand memes, but its consequences for the … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, infrastructure, logistics, Middle East, political economy, shipping conditions, transport, war | 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

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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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

An interview with Katy Fox-Hodess on Logistics, Labour and State Power

20 August 2020 I was honoured to be interviewed by my amazing colleague and comrade, Dr Katy Fox-Hodess (whose own work is also cited in my book and with whom I worked when we put together sinewswartrade.org. Below is the … Continue reading

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

Shay wa nana podcast

I had a wonderful conversation with Zein El-Amine on his Shay wa Nana radio show on Wednesday 20 May 2020! WPFWFM.org or 89.3 FM in DC area. Zein has lived in Bahrain (on a military base!) and in Saudi Arabia, … Continue reading

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Of Ballast and Land Reclamation

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 … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, construction, environment, imperialism & colonialism, infrastructure, political economy, transport, Uncategorized, war | 1 Comment

The Multivalence of Infrastructures II – Rail

I am reading a fascinating article about colonial engineering. Canay Ozden’s fabulous “Pontifex Minimus” is about the British engineer of the Low (or old) Aswan Dam, and the article just drips with all sorts of wonderful quotable sections.  For example, … Continue reading

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The Multivalence of Infrastructure I – Roads

As always Paul Rabinow’s French Modern is an extraordinary reminder of how transport infrastructures serve functions at once military and commercial – and in fact “war, commerce, and transit” (in Paul Nizan’s memorable phrase) cannot be prised apart. Here is Rabinow … Continue reading

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