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Belabored Podcast #46: What’s Left, with Adolph Reed  

This week, Belabored talks to political scientist Adolph Reed about his recent article in Harper’s magazine, examining the broad prospects for today’s left, the need to focus on inequality, why the labor movement matters, and why Democrats relying on big money donors is like keeping a Komodo dragon in your bedroom. Plus: a strike in Vermont, a lawsuit at McDonald’s, a modest proposal for executive salaries, and more.



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Risk, Rated X: Geopolitics and the Pickup Game  

In January, the well-known pickup artist Roosh V created a sub-forum on his website to discuss the Ukraine conflict, thanks to “heavy interest” in the topic among his fans. What will happen if the “pussy paradise” joins the European Union?



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Putin to West: Go Frack Yourself  

By the time Crimeans went to the polls yesterday, it was clear that their referendum on secession added little more than rhetorical flourish to a military and political fait accompli. With over 95 percent of those polled voting to join …





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[VIDEO] Anti-Corruption Movements in India and China  

On Thursday, February 27, Dissent and the India-China Institute co-hosted a panel on anti-corruption movements in China and India at the New School in New York. Speaking on the panel were Jiayang Fan (a contributor at the New Yorker), Mehboob …



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How (Not) to Kill a Philosopher  

In a recent review of Louis Althusser’s On the Reproduction of Capitalism, Anne Boyer misrepresents key aspects of his thought. At the center of her argument is the claim that “Althusserianism has been a Marxism for those who prefer their …



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Belabored Podcast #44: The Work of Sex Work, with Melissa Gira Grant  

This week, Belabored talks to Melissa Gira Grant, whose new book Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work dismantles the myths surrounding sex work and challenges us to think about sex work in the same framework in which we put other kinds of labor. At the heart is the question: should workers have to love their work in order to be able to demand rights and protections on the job?



The United States of Inequality  

The work of Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez on the evolution of top income shares has yielded a lasting and iconic image of American inequality: a long historical curve that starts high in the early years of the twentieth century …



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Kicking the Foreign-Intervention Habit  

Barack Obama is willing to withdraw almost every American soldier from Afghanistan and wants to reduce the Army to a size that would make another prolonged engagement abroad nearly impossible. Under his plan, the force of 450,000 would be the …





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Olympic Blindness  

There is a temptation on the part of all presidents of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to declare whatever games they have presided over a success. Thomas Bach, the IOC’s new president and himself a gold medal winner for Germany …









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Belabored Podcast #42: (Almost) Striking in Portland  

In news: United Auto Workers’ defeat in Chattanooga, Tennessee, port truckers and wage theft, minor league ballplayers suing over wage violations, the U.S. government’s reliance on sweatshops, the strike by University of Illinois faculty, and why the Congressional Budget Office is wrong about the minimum wage. And Portland teacher Elizabeth Thiel on militant teacher unionism in Oregon.