The FPA’s Must Reads (June 14 – June 20)

“I Have Sinned Against the Lord and Against You! Will You Forgive Me?”
The New Republic
By Eve Fairbanks

Adriaan Vlok, who served as South Africa’s minister of law and order during the apartheid regime’s last and most brutal days, is now seeking to wash the feet of all the black Africans he helped repressed. Eve Fairbanks reports on the complex mix of forgiveness, suspicion, hostility, and confusion his mission of repentance has aroused in both black Africans and his fellow white Afrikaners.

The Slumdog Millionaire Architect
The New York Times
By Daniel Brook

Daniel Brooke profiles Hafeez Contractor, one of India’s most successful and prolific architects, whose middle and upper class buildings are constructed in seas of slums and underscore India’s enduring struggle with a shocking inequality.

A portrait of Europe’s white working class
Financial Times
By Simon Kuper

Simon Kuper deconstructs the caricature of “half-witted racist scroungers in tracksuits milking the welfare from their sofas” that supported far-right populists in recent European elections in order to gain important insights into this often misunderstood culture.

The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets
Medium
By Jason Fagone

Jason Fagone follows Jason Leopold, an expert in the Freedom of Information Act, on a quest to expose the U.S. government’s deepest secrets, as well as redeem his own personal journalistic failures.

Porklife: building a better big
Mosaic Science
By Sujata Gupta

Sujata Gupta explores how centuries of selective breeding have fundamentally transformed the farm animals that are the meat staples in much of the global diet.

Blogs:

Reassurance First: Goals for an Ambitious Weimar Triangle by Dominik P. Jankowski
American-Somali relations: What’s in the words? by Abukar Arman
Cyprus: How to kill two birds with one stone by Mark Varga
Insurgencies and Their Equipment: Modern Challenges on the Field of Battle by Richard Basas
The Slippery Slope Hazard of U.S. Economic Sanctions by George Paik