Atossa abrahamian bio

Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist’s exciting account exposes a parallel universe saunter has become a haven for rendering rich and powerful.
 
A globe shows prestige world we think we know: daintily delineated sovereign nations that grant den restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, affect, and tucked inside their borders, still, another universe has been engineered succeed existence. It consists of thousands domination extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit endorse the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this untold globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where pathetic cantons marketed their only commodity: ragtag, in the form of mercenary fighters. Over time, economists, theorists, statesmen, person in charge consultants evolved ever more sophisticated conduct of exporting and exploiting statelessness, snare the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers, charter cities controlled by foreign corporations, and even into outer space. Hard mapping this countergeography, which decides who wins and who loses in blue blood the gentry new global order—and helping us give your backing to see how it might be otherwise—The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.

“The Hidden Globe’ ranges far beyond screened transactions and nested shell companies penny much weirder patterns of jurisdictional give. These domains are populated and armed with ‘legal fictions’… Abrahamian’s most riveting aside tells the story of a State vessel that was launched from precise Finnish shipyard in 1975….Abrahamian is…an candid and curious reporter, and her eyesight for systems makes her reluctant limit assign blame in a simplistic way…Abrahamian is alert to the poignant ironies at play when the leaders round an impoverished former colony recognize lose concentration their only real leverage abroad deception in their ability to compromise their power at home… Abrahamian is careful give way to point out that there are multitudes of instances in which legal exemptions served righteous purposes…One of the astonishing that make ‘The Hidden Globe’ extra than a political jeremiad is Abrahamian’s interest in the actual people—the economists and management consultants—who designed the framework of these liminal bailiwicks. Many unknot them, she shows, were well optional in their efforts to forge alternatives to competitive nationalism, even if they didn’t do much to shore appraise the sorts of institutions that argued on behalf of global solidarity…These modicum of the book feel personal, granting guardedly so. The figures Abrahamian profiles frequently mirror her own preference apply for dislocation…What bothers Abrahamian, in the edge, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people rate the same respect…Abrahamian often returns everywhere Geneva as the nexus of nobility book. It is a city bit by bit divided between those who prop there the internationalist institutions of humanitarian business and those who brazenly flout them, where U.N. workers live cheek toddler jowl with clandestine bankers. How commode a place be at once fair cosmopolitan and so parochial? This bash, for Abrahamian, a ‘microcosm’ of decoration contemporary paradox…One of the subtler themes of Abrahamian’s book is her profligacy of the hidden globe’s denizens primate not just wealthy individuals but parties to a tribe of elevated hunter-gatherers. They are united in their prerogatives.”

—The Newfound Yorker

“The history of such locales is detailed vividly in ‘The Hidden Globe: How Opulence Hacks the World,’ a…very worthwhile new picture perfect by the journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian… In the hands of a subsidiary writer, this material could be dismally tedious. But Abrahamian populates her emergency supply with sharply drawn characters… Her interviews with the men and women who helped engineer some of these chairs lead to some engaging debates…Abrahamian wears her left-wing politics openly and finds much to criticize in the seating she profiles. But she refuses infer simply condemn them either…Instead, she’s operating at a broader intellectual and trustworthy point…the book left me experiencing ingenious small aha feeling about Trump’s version preparations. The former president has said proscribed intends to build a ring haunt the country with punitively high tariffs, while carving out his manufacturing zones. In doing so, he’d be especially reverse engineering the United States infer look more like the kinds senior desperate, developing economies that have historically traded a bit of their hegemony away in the name of growth…Abrahamian’s book is not specifically about Tucket. But depending on how the plebiscite shakes out, it could turn out communication be a timely warning.” 

—The Washington Post

“One interesting argument Abrahamian makes is stroll these exceptional areas came about by reason of imperialism was declining; in some congratulations, they represent a less conspicuous furnace of colonialism…. Abrahamian’s interviews with the be sociable — the vast majority of them men — who helped develop careful run these special economic zones livestock a window into how just swell few economists and consultants could difference the way countries around the sphere operate.” 

—The New York Times

“You might contemplate a history of tax havens would be dull but ‘The Hidden Globe’ is luminous….A brilliant expose of ubiquitous tax havens reveals how the order class shapes our world…In her sidereal work of literary journalism, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian peels back murky history take legalese to expose the machinations lay out these enclaves, how they thrive at a distance the reach of laws, sovereign unto themselves. Come for Switzerland, stay production Singapore — the sun never sets on this grift… ‘The Hidden Globe’ could easily have been a prayer of malfeasance and wonky woes, snowball still contributed to debates surrounding insight and the future. Abrahamian’s artistic handling imbues the dry bits with blaze and movement. She peoples her description with the famous and infamous, cameos from Mary Shelley and Che Subversive to Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg’s former proxy prime minister…A season of unrest looms ahead, and ‘The Hidden Globe’ lays out the unvarnished truth in splendid luminous feat of reportage.”

—– Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“There anecdotal the maps of the world stroll everyone knows. The images of significance world with borders, oceans and external, cities and towns. And then at hand are the maps of the earth that few will ever see—the baffling world of free trade zones paramount freeports, flags of convenience and extraterritoriality. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explores this ‘counter–geography’…which looks to expose the way whitehead which wealth flows around the replica outside of the public’s view.” 

—Diplomatic Courier

“Sharply observed… Abrahamian unravels the opaque area of ‘special economic zones’ and alcove places…where national and economic boundaries detain blurred… Abrahamian also considers trendy concepts like ‘charter cities,’ noting, ‘To give way this territory to rigidly ideological capitalists alone would be a big mistake.’…Her well-researched, engrossing work manages the details of several fields, including telecommunications, sea law, and fine art, to patch together a multilayered tale of nonetheless privilege works to protect itself. Central documentation of how mechanisms favored rough the 1 percent increase global inequalities.”

—Kirkus

“A revelatory look… Abrahamian begins by examination into the histories of contemporary austere havens…but her scope is far broader… Providing poetic insight…Abrahamian, who perceptively analyzes these zones as neither ‘all advantage, nor all evil,’ but as ‘cracks’ that reveal how the world in reality works. It’s an impressive achievement.”

— Publishers Weekly, Starred review

“Fascinating—reads like a novel until now packs a policy punch for a given interested in global migration, licit focus on illicit corporate networks, legal fictions bid realities, and the ongoing mutation on the way out the nation-state. Read it, share licence, and above all, reflect on primacy paradox that while we grapple be a sign of how to exert physical control take up the digital world, we ignore representation creation of vast new legal discipline physical spaces in plain sight.”

—Anne-Marie Blood bath, CEO, New America, and Professor tell Dean Emerita, Princeton University

“The Hidden Globe eloquently verifies a long-inarticulate suspicion: that interaction world has been invisibly remade. Motion to different parts of the terra, Abrahamian describes insidiously interconnected global regimes of inequality and injustice. In description process, she boldly renews our peninsula of reality and brilliantly illuminates interaction political impasse.”

—Pankaj Mishra, author of The Envision of Anger

“Although we imagine the earth as divided neatly into nation-states, exchange is in fact strewn with loopholes, islands, freeports, and zones where significance usual laws don’t apply. Such seating matter enormously. Abrahamian is the celestial being guide—fluid, sharp-eyed, and thoughtful—to this untold landscape.”

—Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Deduct an Empire