"The use of labor disruptions as “attacks” on the supply chain follows directly from positing global trade as vital to natl. security...A legal act asserting workplace democracy, when viewed through this lens, is not just like an attack—it is an attack on the integrity of flows."

"The Container Security Initiative, a program defined and administered by American authorities, posts Customs and Border Patrol agents in dozens of foreign ports to inspect U.S.-bound cargo." As of 6/2022, MENA ports in the CSI included Haifa, Aqaba, Ashdod, Dubai, & Salalah

"While...imaginaries of...labor...conjure scenes of manufacture...transportation has long been understood as...a form of production...Marx outlines how use value...may require a “change in location” & thus an “additional process of production, in the transport industry.”

In 2002, after worker deaths, the ILWU stressed for its members to strictly follow safety procedures. The maritime employers' association called this a slowdown, locked out the workers. Dell, Ford, Boeing complain. Bush II invokes Taft-Hartley against the workers at Port of LA.

"Noncitizens make up 99% of the private [UAE] workforce, making the very status of citizen exceptional...No place on earth matches the UAE in this regard. But it is precisely this emaciation of political rights in the face of trade flows that makes Dubai so appealing to the US."

"On Feb 8, 2011, 6k Suez Canal workers initiated a wildcat strike. Dock workers stopped work at the port of Ain Al Sokhna, disrupting Egypt’s sea links to the Far East. The NYT reported “Disastrous economic losses are expected if the strike continues." Mubarak was out on Feb 11.

"2000 years ago Cicero placed the pirate outside of normal law—in the complicated position of a criminal beyond criminality. Long predating any conception of human rights, Roman statesmen conceived the pirate outside of the human by virtue of the threat they posed to humanity."

Blackstone reiterates the exceptional status of the pirate, stating “[The pirate] has renounced all the benefits of society and government, & has reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature, by declaring war against all mankind, all mankind must declare war against him."

The [Suez] Canal...currently draws more than 20,000 ships into the Gulf of Aden every year, [constituting] 95% of European member states’ trade by volume. [One scholar] asserts that the Gulf of Aden “is one of the most, if not the most, traveled sea routes in the world.”

"Central in growing [shipping] costs are the rising rates of insurance for ships In 2010...the cost of a binder for vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden reached $20,000 per voyage, excluding injury, liability, and ransom coverage... a 40-fold jump in cost from 2007-2008."

"[According to Somalis], the primary motivating event for the rise in piracy was illegal overfishing & illegal toxic waste dumping. This devastated fishing & removed a significant source of livelihood for coastal communities. The “pirates” assembled as a volunteer coastguard."

"Between 2006 and 2011, 20 states prosecuted 1,063 Somali pirates, w/ more than 900 prosecuted in 11 states w/i the region...the Seychelles has become a focal point of these efforts, w/ the construction of...new state-of-the-art high security cells in 2011 paid for by the UNODC."

"While Dubai may be exceptional in its particular coupling of frenzied economic activity & anemic political rights, it is precisely this exceptional form that is serving as the model for the protection of infrastructure & trade flows & reshaping of ports across the global north"

"Weizman draws our attention to the fact that Haussmann implemented plans for Paris that had been developed elsewhere; it was colonial battlespace in Algeria that provided the template for [the more famous] violent reforms in Paris."

"If one of the most powerful forms of protest to emerge in recent years was the “Occupy” movement, we might say it was in Oakland more than NY where the movement best demonstrated its capacity for analysis & action, & here the question of the port & global logistics was central."

A prominent feature of the last chapter of this book is an analysis of UPS's 2010 "We Love Logistics" ad campaign, which in retrospect was a weird thing to put on TV youtube.com/watch?v=VCh6Hn…