The Unmaking of Myanmar

“Every complicated and beautiful thing humanity ever made has, if you look at it long enough, a shadow, a history of oppression,” writes John Lanchester in the New Yorker. By tracing the history of human development, he finds that the rise of civilization has led to a litany of oppressive forces that we have yet to rid ourselves of, leaving readers with the question: could it really be that our ancestors had it better? 

For The New York Times, Jesse Singal speaks with Patrik Hermansson, a grad student who, using his Swedish nationality, went undercover for a year to infiltrate the world of the extreme right. From bragging about connections to the White House to plans moving forward, this is a chilling look inside a dangerous movement.

"Cheap Chinese-made sensors. Mad Max-style vehicle mods. Consumer drones turned into mortar-dropping weapons." For Wired, John Beck explores how warfare is changing in Iraq and Syria, from low end improvised devices to increasingly high-tech tactics. From modified humvees to drones delivering bombs from above, the future of urban warfare is playing out now in the fight against ISIS. 

A decade ago, three University of Manitoba students mysteriously disappeared, and then surfaced in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan, where they allegedly joined al-Qaeda. Clues to their state of mind are revealed in newly released letters to family left behind in Canada. With reporting by The Globe and Mail's Joanna Slater and Colin Freeze, and analysis from Amarnath Amarasingam.