Laleh Khalili

The schedule for Exeter Centre for Gulf Studies virtual seminar series (2026-2027) is now up. You can register for the events at arabislamicstudies.exeter.ac.uk/events/ (click on the relevant month on the calendar to find the events).

Featuring work from @achewood-official.bsky.social, @mfriedrichnyc.bsky.social, @schooldaves.bsky.social, David Wingrave, @yarbatman.bsky.social, @lalehkhalili.bsky.social, Ricardo López Cordero, Peer Schouten, @ijt2106, Claudia Ross, and more. thebaffler.com/issues/no-86

Shipping companies are some of the most evil out there: www.ft.com/content/8c87...

Also, Serbia. This piece from last year lays out the stakes of protests there: newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Phew

So basically, the Pentagon refused to evacuate families of US service members from Bahrain because "it would look bad at home", but senior leaders evacuated their own family members and left Bahrain under the cover of "military exercise". Yeah, the US is definitely a failing empire...

A wild aspect of this gobsmacking piece is the Israeli method of blackmail: they allow a money launderer (Kushner) to set up his illegal bank account in Israeli national bank, then they make it difficult for him to pull out his money unless he does as he is told. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve at lowest level since the reporting of its volume began in 1982:

So not only has the Davos in the Desert (the Saudi investment initiative) been cancelled, but the cost of chartering private jets out of Saudi is up 50% www.ft.com/content/c0d1...

eBay users! Don't ignore today's email, even though it looks like a boring standard update to the User Privacy Notice. They want to use your data to train AI models. If you click the link over the words "the right to object", it takes you to a page with a toggle button letting you opt out.

The AHA is making people signs paths of loyalty to the institution, so that it can defend Israel lol. www.chronicle.com/article/the-... I think anyone working with or joining the AHA in any capacity is complicit.

Well, well, exploitation of Congo is at the heart of all of this: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/17/u...

Inshallah for our time too...

Man, I am usually good at detecting AI slop and on checking and double-checking for AI. So sorry for posting those Pink Panther photos, both of which were AI slop. Should have done my due diligence.

Sorry folks I fell for AI slop

How universities in the US are totally embedded in the Israeli war machine: truthout.org/articles/us-...

Love this poem by Joshua Clover with its wink to Frank O'Hara:

Pop pop pop www.ft.com/content/cf5f...

Ansar Allah are using new tactics against Saudi Arabia: www.ft.com/content/afa0...

What is horrific about this graph is that Israel was buying more arms/GDP than anyone else in the world, and was using that armament to bomb a population of people trapped inside an open-air prison:

Holy shit, the cost of shipping oil is right now around $38 per barrell! (According to Bloomberg)

Has Sarah Vine (who seems to have a caustic word to say about everything including politico-ex-wives) said anything about her ex-husband's girlfriend getting charged with sex crimes?

The US is so utterly corrupt. Do you remember those dodgy bets on oil made right before Trump made announcements about Hormuz? Well the the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal derivatives regulator was gonna investigate and see what happened: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Given the timing (Salem was charged BEFORE the first essays on Arday appeared) I am persuaded that Arday's public lynching was intended to distract from Salem's crimes and her relationship with Gove, which only ended a few days ago.

It says something about the strategic direction of AnsarAllah's activities that they chose to hit Saudi airports right before the "Davos in the Desert" conference (and a few other oil/finance shindigs). e.g. CEOs of big oil companies have withdrawn from a conference there!

‘Ships turn off their AIS transponders for a variety of reasons. Naval vessels of all nations mask their position far more often than they acknowledge.’ @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on ghost fleets. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

It is amazing that the right wing press were salivating over an Oxford prof getting caught w paedophilic images, and then as soon as they figured that she is Michael Gove's (ex) girlfriend, they all memory holes their articles about her.

So Israel enforces apartheid beyond its borders? www.middleeasteye.net/news/air-fra...

I really like the Anne Carson choice of Nobel literature but do keep wondering why the global lens of Nobel literature c. 1960s has been so tightened to (mostly) north Atlantic (white) writers...

As long as tanker costs (and their insurance premiums) are this high, it doesn't matter how many actual barrels come out of the Strait of Hormuz (using US air cover or US Navy sailors aboard). www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Nasser Abourahmeh is one of the best theorists of Palestinian liberation writing right now. Every paragraph, every sentence of this piece is quotable, and the whole thing is brilliant: www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/sto...

"The last thing I did is the report on Gaza naming what is happening there as genocide. One of the main reactions to that report [was] paying tribute to me for my courage.. why would you need courage to speak the truth?" Navi Pillay upon winning the 2026 Nobel peace prize