Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan | Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Once again, our editors run down some of their favourite articles from the past month.
Also, a paywall trick, courtesy of your friends at The Envoy — open a private browsing tab and copy the title of the article into Google! Generally, you will be able to go directly to that article through a search engine, but not from an outside website. The private browsing tab will prevent the site from accessing your cookies (and checking if you've tried to access the article before).
Robert Gorwa:
The war in Syria rages on—yet the refugee crisis is no longer consistently making headlines, as international interest seemingly shifts away from the plight of the Syrian people, and towards Putin and the geopolitical implications of Russian involvement. This article provides a powerful personal narrative about life in a war zone, and helps counter some of the frustrating arguments that one hears on a daily basis (that the Syrians are "economic" rather than “political” refugees, for example).
Read "The Sad Fading Away of the Refugee Crisis Story" @ Foreign Policy
Stefan Kostic:
In an creative industry of large teams and media-shy (outside of the industry press) developers, there isn't anyone like Hideo Kojima. The New Yorker shines a light on one of the industry's great auteurs' decision to leave the studio he helped raise to prominence.
(Paywall) "Why did Hideo Kojima Leave Konami" @ The New Yorker
Parmida Esmaeilpour:
"Youth is no longer cool." Hanna Rosin thinks that “perhaps the young did themselves in, with their enduring obsession with kale shakes and BPA-free water bottles and salvaged-wood bar tables and fully strapped two-strap backpacks, … which suggests that the ineffable quality of youth we all lust for—a reckless hunger for life—now belongs to a generation still willing to sit on a stoop and smoke.” Kale shakes or not, none of us have a chance against Linda Rodin.
Read "Old People Are Cool" @ The Atlantic
Behbod Negahban:
It's hard to walk the line between condemning Palestinian attacks on Israelis and recognizing the role that the Likud government has played in inciting them. And yet, that hasn't hindered Peter Beinart. In this piece, Beinart analyzes the recent upsurge in Israeli-Palestinian violence with all the lucidity and historical insight regular readers of his articles have come to expect.
(Paywall) "What Martin Luther King Would Say About the Violence in Israel @ Haaretz
Mitchell Bosley:
In his follow-up to the equally excellent "Dissolve the United States," Albert Berneko skewers the United States' lackluster presidential candidates. With Hillary Clinton as the best realistic hope for the American left (sorry Bernie), and the Republican contest shaping as a two-horse race between populists Trump and Carson, Berneko sees little room for optimism. His solution (with tongue firmly in cheek) is to dissolve the United States.
Read "No, Seriously, Dissolve The United States" @ The Concourse
James Watson:
Howard Jacobson tackles the growing need among academia and the literati to frame arguments into Manichean 'phobias. As he puts it, "to be easily offended is to be shut off from the invigoration of that argumentative give-and-take we call liberty; not to understand the poetics of provocation is to miss out on the joys of living in a literate and robust society that excels at satire and burlesque."
Emma Saddy:
When most of the news on attracting people to the Muslim faith comes from a negative radical perspective, this piece is a progressive breath of fresh air. Un-Mosquing involves making Muslim spaces which are traditional, but welcome members who would ordinarily be discriminated against, from LGBTQ members to divorcees. A positively framed piece on Muslim faith aside, it is also nice to hear of such an active effort being made to allow religious teachings to evolve with the times.
Read "The 'Un-Mosquing' of American Muslims" @ The Atlantic
Honorable mention:
"Fall into fall with former warlords!" @ Foreign Policy