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What Do Syrians Want?  

Five years since the start of the war, reporting on Syria has gone from an upbeat story of the Arab Spring to a tableau of horrors. The horrors are undeniable, but what the story lacks is a chronicle of Syrian resistance.



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Feminism at the Polls  

The Democratic primary revealed the fault lines of both establishment feminism and the socialist left. It also suggested an appetite for the kind of feminism we need—one that understands the impact of economic and foreign policy on the majority of women’s lives.





Unequal Lives  

If there’s one issue that has dominated the left in recent years, it’s our belated recognition of the explosion of economic inequality in the United States. Most of us were aware of its growth through the Clinton and Bush years, …



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Spring 2016  

To access Dissent’s full Spring issue, please click here. This page is a placeholder.







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Big Philanthropy Takes the Bus  

Since the early 2000s, when the Shell-backed EMBARQ began promoting bus rapid transit (BRT), a wide range of philanthropists and transit advocates have seized on the “technical fix,” which promises to solve a recognized problem without challenging the power relationships that created it.



War Porn  

whenever possible, you should avoid kill zones such as streets, alleys, and parks   Driving the edge of Sadr City through bumper-to-bumper afternoon jam, I heard Lieutenant Krauss behind me yell, “Weapon on the left.” “What, where?” the BC shouted. …



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Ripped from the Headlines  

Hollywood has always had a strong appetite for fact yet a curiously lax attitude in adhering to it. The typical biopic, for example, focused on celebrated figures, from Abraham Lincoln to Cole Porter, and tended to be sloppy and selective, …



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The Women of the Easter Rising  

“No one likes a woman who yells loudly about revolution,” wrote Rebecca Traister in February. She was writing about the presidential election, of course, but the words stuck with me for months, especially when I was in Ireland this March …







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Game Over for the Tar Sands?  

Plunging oil prices, indigenous-led protests, and a new, liberal government have called the future of the tar sands into question. But will all this be enough to defuse Canada’s “climate bomb” for good?



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Department of Climate Defense  

The U.S. military is one of the world’s top consumers of fossil fuels. But it has also done pioneering research on climate change, revealing how deeply connected climate disruption is with other forms of social and political turmoil. Michael Kazin interviews climate scientist and longtime Pentagon official Jeffrey Marqusee.