Prøve GULL - Gratis
CAN ULTIMATE FRISBEE HEAL THE MIDDLE EAST?
Reason magazine
|March 2025
FOR TEENAGERS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN AND ELSEWHERE, IT'S MORE THAN JUST A GAME.
-
STARTING AN ULTIMATE Frisbee league to repair a war-torn country sounds like the plot of a buddy comedy, yet it's a reality in Iraqi Kurdistan. After German and American aid workers introduced Frisbees to the country in 2019, the sport quickly caught on. By 2023, the scrappy Duhok Shepherds team was flying to Dubai for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Ultimate Club Championship. It was the first time many team members had left Iraq. By November 2024, the team was competing in Doha, Qatar, their uniforms proudly displaying both the Iraqi national flag and the Kurdish tricolor.
The spread of Ultimate Frisbee testifies to a kind of Western soft power in the Middle East, one far friendlier than bombs or bullets.
Invented by New Jersey high schoolers in the 1960s and popularized by hippies, the sport is now the basis of a European relief effort. Beyond those aid organizations, European players have run grassroots fundraising efforts to get the Iraqi Ultimate league off the ground. And Kurdistan is not the only part of the region in the grip of Frisbee mania. The MENA Ultimate Club Championship, a tiny affair when it debuted in 2015, now boasts over 400 players across 20 teams, representing everyone from oil-rich monarchies to stateless nations such as the Kurds and Palestinians.
Denne historien er fra March 2025-utgaven av Reason magazine.
Abonner på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av kuraterte premiumhistorier og over 9000 magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
FLERE HISTORIER FRA Reason magazine
Reason magazine
Cracks in the Map
THE IDEA OF carving out territorial exceptions to, or escape zones from, the hand of the nation-state has long captured the imagination of free market enthusiasts. In the 1990s, I was involved in several organizations devoted to the idea, and I witnessed the movement's gradual shift from a pipe dream of libertarian theorists to something attracting serious interest, and investment capital, from entrepreneurs, as libertarian-oriented free ports, special economic zones, charter cities, and even floating maritime cities (seasteads), began to look more politically possible. In 1993, my “free nation” group was meeting in a local North Carolina hotel; by 2011, I was sipping cocktails at a rather swankier “free cities” conference on the resort island of Roatán, Honduras—which, not coincidentally, today boasts its own charter city, Próspera.
5 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
DOGE BEFORE DOGE
BEFORE TRUMP HAD ELON MUSK, NIXON HAD HOWARD PHILLIPS.
17 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
Poland Climbs, Hungary Slips
LOOKING BACK ON his career as one of Poland's most prominent economists and political leaders, Leszek Balcerowicz offered a succinct lesson for policymakers everywhere.
3 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
PUTIN AND THE D-WORD
IN DONALD TRUMP'S VIEW, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY IS A \"DICTATOR,\" BUT VLADIMIR PUTIN ISN'T.
17 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
EDUCATING THE WORLD'S BEST AND BRIGHTEST— THEN SHOWING THEM THE DOOR
AMERICA'S STATUS AS A TOP DESTINATION FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IS AT RISK.
12 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
WHY EUROPEANS HAVE LESS
EUROPE IS POOR BECAUSE IT CHOOSES TO BE.
15 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
Let Prisoners Work for Themselves
For nearly two decades, some Puerto Rican prisons allowed a very different sort of prison labor.
3 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
What's Special About the Fed?
IN HIS SECOND term, President Donald Trump has tried to fire numerous federal officials, with varying degrees of success. Courts have occasionally intervened, raising questions about the extent of the president's power to terminate employees without cause and which agencies he can and cannot touch. But Supreme Court justices seem unanimous in their belief that the Federal Reserve is its own creature.
2 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
Strangling AI, One State at a Time
JUST HOURS BEFORE its passage, the Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) cut a proposed moratorium on states enforcing their own AI regulations. Though some regard this as a win for federalism, others argue that the current patchwork represents an abdication of the federal government's jurisdiction over interstate commerce, permits excessive compliance costs to be imposed on the American AI industry, and may ultimately sacrifice the U.S. lead in the field to geopolitical adversaries.
1 mins
October 2025
Reason magazine
A Spy's Eye View
NOT ALL OF James Bond's gadgets were fictional. In the 1969 movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond uses a strange-looking metal square to photograph supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s secret plans. The same metal square appears in the 2013 season of the Cold War-themed show The Americans, when an FBI asset is sent to copy documents in the Soviet Embassy.
3 mins
October 2025
Listen
Translate
Change font size