As our television screens toggle between pundits squabbling over Obamacare’s insurance rules and ads for erectile dysfunction remedies, another health care battle rages in village clinics and corporate boardrooms. Multinational brands and technocrats are concocting supranational policies to hold poor patients hostage to pharmaceutical markets across the Global South through elaborate intellectual property schemes in international trade.
In memory of Nelson Mandela, we present the following selections from Dissent essays on South African politics over the last thirty years.
In the Fall 2013 issue, Hans Kundnani wrote about the German Social Democrats’ struggle to challenge Angela Merkel’s approach to the Eurozone crisis. Read his update on the new grand coalition here, and read the original article here.
Since the end of the Communist regime, Poles have celebrated their Independence Day on November 11. Under conservative governments, marches on November 11 have become expressions of national chauvinism and homophobia, punctuated by outbursts of violence.
Once there was a golden age of democratic capitalism. Chastened by the Great Depression and cowed by vigorous labor movements, a generation of leaders forged a new type of political economy in the aftermath of the Second World War that united economic growth with robust welfare regimes. Then in the 1970s something went wrong. At least, that is how the story goes.
In 1913, the Armory Show gave thousands of Americans their first glimpse of modern European painting. Now, in an exhibit entitled The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution, the New York Historical Society has made it possible for us to see what all the excitement was about.
This week, Michelle and Sarah share some good and bad news, including suggestions from listeners and a look forward to the Black Friday actions at Walmart next week. Journalist Liza Featherstone joins them to talk about Walmart’s corporate culture and the challenges it poses to organizing. They conclude with thoughts on Seattle’s new socialist city council member and the value of solidarity.
As the still-unfolding revelations of NSA surveillance over virtually all of Americans’ telecommunications show, it is clear that privacy advocates have their work cut out for them. Two recent books decry the privacy violations but stop short of formulating workable ways to protect privacy interests.
European Muslims were once embraced by the left as a natural ally, but the relationship has become increasingly fraught. If the parties of the left don’t want to lose voters to new religious formations, they must create the conditions for people of faith to feel more comfortable in national institutions. There is room for more complex answers than those offered so far.
Violence against gays and lesbians in Russia has never been as intense as it is today. The more politicians discuss implementing anti-gay laws, the more attacks occurred against sexual minorities. And Russia’s LGBT community is too weak to withstand this aggression.
This week, Sarah and Michelle consider tough questions about academic labor, free speech, technology, and incarceration. Plus an interview with Bonnie Castillo on the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan and the role of labor in disaster relief.
Yossi Klein Halevi’s Like Dreamers tells the story of the members of the 55th Paratrooper Reserve Brigade, who played in securing Jerusalem during the Six Day War. From the peace movement to the settlements, the paths followed by the brigade’s veterans was a microcosm of Israel’s most intense schisms.
Evgeny Morozov and Jaron Lanier, themselves lapsed true believers in the Internet gospel, warn that the widespread and quasi-messianic enthusiasm for the Internet underwrites a technocratic agenda inimical to the survival of democracy. But their critiques never fully grapple with larger political and economic questions.
This week on Belabored: looking forward after the elections, Walmart workers on strike again, and the dangers of trading tax breaks for “job creation.” Then, an in-depth look at the world of outsourcing: labor struggles in China and Bangladesh, the shady world of global temp agencies, and outsourcing right here at home. Featuring an interview with Bangladeshi labor organizer Kalpona Akter
Everyone now knows that “the tuition is too damn high,” but lawmakers have only proposed making it a little easier for the indebted to pay off their creditors. Absent from the debate is a genuinely “public option” that would turn education into a binding democratic right.
