From the latest issue
Neal Ascherson: A Future for Abkhazia
“On the way to the frontier, we stopped the car for a last look at Abkhazia. A new monument stood by the road, the effigy of a scowling, whiskered Abkhaz chieftain with sword and shield. The statue commemorates the war of 1992-93 which routed the Georgian army, cost ten thousand dead on both sides, and established an ‘independent’ Abkhazian state.” [ read more . . . ]
Mahmood Mamdani: Mugabe in Context
“There is no denying Mugabe’s authoritarianism, or his willingness to tolerate and even encourage the violent behaviour of his supporters. His policies have helped lay waste the country’s economy, though sanctions have played no small part, while his refusal to share power with the country’s growing opposition movement, much of it based in the trade unions, has led to a bitter impasse. This view of Zimbabwe’s crisis can be found everywhere, from the Economist and the Financial Times to the Guardian and the New Statesman, but it gives us little sense of how Mugabe has managed to survive. For he has ruled not only by coercion but by consent, and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa.” [ read more . . . ]
Donald MacKenzie: How to Start a Hedge Fund
“You could walk around Mayfair all day and not notice them. Hedge funds don’t – can’t – advertise. The most you’ll see is a discreet nameplate or two. An address in Mayfair counts in the world of hedge funds. It shows you’re serious, and have the money and confidence to pay the world’s most expensive commercial rents. A nondescript office no larger than a small flat can cost £150,000 a year. Something bigger and in the style that hedge funds like (glass walls, contemporary furniture) can set you back a lot more. It’s fortunate therefore that hedge funds don’t need a lot of space. Two rooms may be enough: one for meetings, for example with potential investors; one for trading and doing the associated bookkeeping. Some funds consist of only four or five people. Even a fairly large fund can operate with twenty or fewer.” [ read more . . . ]
Robert Vitalis: The bin Ladens and Their Money
- The Bin Ladens: The Story of a Family and Its Fortune by Steve Coll
“Steve Coll’s book tells two stories: a big one about how the bin Laden family cashed in on the oil bonanza in Saudi Arabia, and a smaller one about Osama’s role in the family business before he turned to holy warfare. Although well written, lucid and packed with useful detail, The Bin Ladens doesn’t establish much of a connection between the family firm in Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden’s jihad in Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and America, except that oil wealth funded both. The bin Laden group isn’t among the world’s largest engineering businesses, although readers might finish this book believing that it is: Coll calls it Saudi Arabia’s Halliburton, even though the latter is an oil services firm, not a construction company. He is at his best excavating details from the mountain of documents generated by various bin Laden brothers in the lawsuits and divorce settlements that have followed on several decades of deals gone sour.” [ read more . . . ]
Plus
Thomas Jones on Malcolm Gladwell
Michael Wood on Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma
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