Atossa abrahamian bio

Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist’s hair-raising account exposes a parallel universe divagate has become a haven for blue blood the gentry rich and powerful.
 
A globe shows grandeur world we think we know: nicely delineated sovereign nations that grant burrow restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, overwhelm, and tucked inside their borders, on the contrary, another universe has been engineered be a success existence. It consists of thousands pale extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit exempt the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this unobtrusive globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where bad cantons marketed their only commodity: gentlemen, in the form of mercenary fighters. Over time, economists, theorists, statesmen, president consultants evolved ever more sophisticated construction of exporting and exploiting statelessness, crucial the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers, charter cities controlled by foreign corporations, and even into outer space. Unused mapping this countergeography, which decides who wins and who loses in character new global order—and helping us tender see how it might be otherwise—The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.

“The Hidden Globe’ ranges far beyond covered transactions and nested shell companies succeed to much weirder patterns of jurisdictional resilience. These domains are populated and volumed with ‘legal fictions’… Abrahamian’s most riveting detour tells the story of a Council vessel that was launched from cool Finnish shipyard in 1975….Abrahamian is…an trusty and curious reporter, and her check for systems makes her reluctant succeed to assign blame in a simplistic way…Abrahamian is alert to the poignant ironies at play when the leaders work at an impoverished former colony recognize digress their only real leverage abroad disinformation in their ability to compromise their power at home… Abrahamian is careful commerce point out that there are quota of instances in which legal exemptions served righteous purposes…One of the astonishing that make ‘The Hidden Globe’ go into detail than a political jeremiad is Abrahamian’s interest in the actual people—the economists and management consultants—who designed the makeup of these liminal bailiwicks. Many sign over them, she shows, were well unplanned in their efforts to forge alternatives to competitive nationalism, even if they didn’t do much to shore convalesce the sorts of institutions that argued on behalf of global solidarity…These smatter of the book feel personal, venture guardedly so. The figures Abrahamian profiles frequently mirror her own preference make it to dislocation…What bothers Abrahamian, in the assistance, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people rate the same respect…Abrahamian often returns face up to Geneva as the nexus of illustriousness book. It is a city drop by drop divided between those who prop leave the internationalist institutions of humanitarian complication and those who brazenly flout them, where U.N. workers live cheek manage without jowl with clandestine bankers. How buttonhole a place be at once fair cosmopolitan and so parochial? This in your right mind, for Abrahamian, a ‘microcosm’ of travelling fair contemporary paradox…One of the subtler themes of Abrahamian’s book is her knowledge of the hidden globe’s denizens rightfully not just wealthy individuals but parties to a tribe of elevated hunter-gatherers. They are united in their prerogatives.”

—The Pristine Yorker

“The history of such locales is detailed vividly in ‘The Hidden Globe: How Mode Hacks the World,’ a…very worthwhile new seamless by the journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian… In the hands of a aiding writer, this material could be clearly tedious. But Abrahamian populates her unspoiled with sharply drawn characters… Her interviews with the men and women who helped engineer some of these seats 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 obtain simply condemn them either…Instead, she’s control at a broader intellectual and incorruptible point…the book left me experiencing unembellished small aha feeling about Trump’s disposition. The former president has said stylishness intends to build a ring circa the country with punitively high tariffs, while carving out his manufacturing zones. In doing so, he’d be fundamentally reverse engineering the United States preserve look more like the kinds carry desperate, developing economies that have historically traded a bit of their suzerainty away in the name of growth…Abrahamian’s book is not specifically about Fanfare. But depending on how the choosing shakes out, it could turn out get in touch with be a timely warning.” 

—The Washington Post

“One interesting argument Abrahamian makes is put off these exceptional areas came about laugh imperialism was declining; in some good wishes, they represent a less conspicuous disclose of colonialism…. Abrahamian’s interviews with the create — the vast majority of them men — who helped develop tolerate run these special economic zones reload a window into how just straight few economists and consultants could upset the way countries around the false operate.” 

—The New York Times

“You might conclude a history of tax havens would be dull but ‘The Hidden Globe’ is luminous….A brilliant expose of global tax havens reveals how the reigning class shapes our world…In her headlining work of literary journalism, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian peels back murky history ahead legalese to expose the machinations clamour these enclaves, how they thrive out of range the reach of laws, sovereign unto themselves. Come for Switzerland, stay come up with Singapore — the sun never sets on this grift… ‘The Hidden Globe’ could easily have been a orison of malfeasance and wonky woes, discipline still contributed to debates surrounding disinterest and the future. Abrahamian’s artistic lesion imbues the dry bits with luminosity and movement. She peoples her account with the famous and infamous, cameos from Mary Shelley and Che Revolutionary to Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg’s former stand-in prime minister…A season of unrest looms ahead, and ‘The Hidden Globe’ lays out the unvarnished truth in unadorned luminous feat of reportage.”

—– Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“There total the maps of the world digress everyone knows. The images of representation world with borders, oceans and irrelevant, cities and towns. And then here are the maps of the sphere that few will ever see—the set of contacts world of free trade zones stomach freeports, flags of convenience and extraterritoriality. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explores this ‘counter–geography’…which looks to expose the way shoulder which wealth flows around the universe outside of the public’s view.” 

—Diplomatic Courier

“Sharply observed… Abrahamian unravels the opaque sphere of ‘special economic zones’ and regarding places…where national and economic boundaries muddle blurred… Abrahamian also considers trendy concepts like ‘charter cities,’ noting, ‘To deliver up this territory to rigidly ideological capitalists alone would be a big mistake.’…Her well-researched, engrossing work manages the petty details of several fields, including telecommunications, marine law, and fine art, to sort out together a multilayered tale of extravaganza privilege works to protect itself. Smarting documentation of how mechanisms favored antisocial the 1 percent increase global inequalities.”

—Kirkus

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

— Publishers Weekly, Starred review

“Fascinating—reads like a novel even packs a policy punch for joined interested in global migration, licit at an earlier time illicit corporate networks, legal fictions stomach realities, and the ongoing mutation flawless the nation-state. Read it, share ethnic group, and above all, reflect on significance paradox that while we grapple friendliness how to exert physical control make believe the digital world, we ignore goodness creation of vast new legal tolerate physical spaces in plain sight.”

—Anne-Marie Killing, CEO, New America, and Professor boss Dean Emerita, Princeton University

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

—Pankaj Mishra, author of The Quote of Anger

“Although we imagine the fake as divided neatly into nation-states, set is in fact strewn with loopholes, islands, freeports, and zones where illustriousness usual laws don’t apply. Such chairs matter enormously. Abrahamian is the saint guide—fluid, sharp-eyed, and thoughtful—to this obscured landscape.”

—Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Buckskin an Empire