What's behind the demise of the Canadian Liberal Party? "It is tempting to blame Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff," writes Jordan Michael Smith, "but politics were equally cruel to the other two leaders the Liberals had in the last five years." In fact, "the success of programs initiated and implemented by the Liberals has been the very factor responsible for their downfall." (Photo: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper; Richard Lewis/2009/Flick cc)

"Throughout the [Middle East and North Africa]," writes John Kelsay, "there is little in the way of organizations ready and able to step in and move the various countries toward democracy. What we are seeing is a generational change--not, however...a change governed by the aspirations of a new generation of citizens, internet savvy, pro-Western, and pro-democracy, eager to reject both autocracy and the Islamist alternatives. Rather, the torch is being passed to a younger set of autocrats." (Image: Tunisians protest days after Ben Ali's departure; N. Nouri/Flickr cc)

June 12 marks the two-year anniversary of the Iranian election that set off the Green Movement. Josh Eidelson interviews a leader of the Iranian labor movement on the prospects for democracy and labor recognition. "The last regime fell not because there were millions of fundamentalists in the streets but mainly because the oil workers went on strike....I think the Green Movement leaders have come to see that without working-class support they cannot fight this government." (Image: An Iranian labor protest)

Director Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death's strength lies in "indelible images...silently conveying the profound despair of war," writes Leonard Quart. It "succeeds more in capturing the fate of the occupied population of Nanjing than in illuminating the individuals who inhabit it."

Intern Nation author Ross Perlin "calls internships a 'curious blend of privilege and exploitation,'" writes Tim Barker. "But the proportions of the mix can...vary quite widely....We need to do more than fine-tune the gears of meritocracy. If our goal is 'original, autonomous self-definition' at work, or even something as modest as a living wage, we need to interpret the entire economic framework." (Image: College internship fair; Andy Colwell/2009/Flickr cc)

Developer Bruce Bender once asked of the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, "How often can a basketball team, a major league franchise, go from one place to another? How often is a new arena going to be built?" "By the end of [new documentary] Battle for Brooklyn," writes Norman Oder, "we're left wondering: Are those remotely the right questions?" (Image: Atlantic Yards neigborhood map, courtesy of Tracy Collins)

"We know what we need to do to create jobs," writes Daniel J.H. Greenwood. President Obama and his congressional allies should "propose real solutions to put people to work and to undo the shift of bargaining power to the rich. Then make Congress vote on them. If one project gets voted down, propose two more.... Sooner or later, the voters will get the message: unemployment and the destruction of the middle class are political choices, not an economic inevitability." (Image: Argonne National Library/Flick c.c./2009)

"In countries where dissenters are silenced," writes Michael Harris, "disasters like Chernobyl are magnified." Nowhere is this more evident than in Belarus, "where the remembrance of Chernobyl's victims has become an intensely political act." (Image: D. Markosian/2011/Voice of America/Wikimedia Commons)

Even though government institutions "have prevented a 1930s-style depression," writes Luther Carpenter, "the Western industrial world is crumbling." The French Socialist Party's social and economic project, however, offers a path for "getting France out of the silent depression and into a new mode of production and consumption," without cutting services for working people. (Image: Chourka Glogowski/ 2010/Flickr creative commons)

Bob Dylan turned seventy this May. As Peter Dreier writes, Dylan might have turned away from politics, but "his peace and justice songs have had a life of their own. 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'The Times They Are a-Changin'' will forever be linked to the progressive movements of the 1960s and used to rally people to protest for a better world." (Image: Rowland Scherman/Wikimedia Commons)

Costica Bradatan describes the uncanny power of political self-immolators: "They bring about, in those communities where they occur, a certain sense of regeneration and renewal, the promise of a new political beginning. Far from being an annihilating occurrence, death becomes in such cases a life-enhancing event, as strange as this may sound. In the end, the practitioners of this rare 'art of dying' are not gloomy figures and apostles of self-destruction." (Image: Tunisian artists with portrait of Mohamed Bouazizi; Logan/2011/Wiki. Com.)

Clayborne Carson traveled to Israel/Palestine in March for an Arabic-language production of his play The Passages of Martin Luther King. "I had arrived with a sense that they could learn important lessons from the African-American freedom struggle but had begun to see that any sustained freedom movement tended to view itself as unique and only truly understandable from the inside." (Image Ramzi Maqdisi, right, playing the role of Martin; courtesy of the author)

Immigrant youth activists fighting for the DREAM Act “are one of only a handful of bright spots for pro-immigrant advocates amid a climate of marked anti-immigrant hostility,” writes Daniel Altschuler. “As time has gone on, these students have become increasingly defiant, developing innovative and daring grassroots organizing and protest tactics....Dreamers will need to continue to draw on their courage and creativity to pry open a window for national legislation to protect them and their families.” (Image courtesy of Steve Pavey

Why did New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg pick Cathie Black to be his new education chancellor? Murray Hausknecht argues that "She was chosen because she had no educational experience....Black was the perfect candidate: someone with the experience Bloomberg valued and no professional commitments that would make it difficult for her to unquestionably embrace his education agenda." (Image: Gothamschools/Flickr cc/2010)

In recent years, write Giorgia Serughetti and Alessandro Lanni, "Italians became accustomed to reports of scandals filled with odd characters, both female and male, depicting an almost definitive connection between political and economic power and the abuse of women's bodies, within a system embraced by Berlusconi's leadership." But the "entrance of Berlusconi's personal life into public debate may have at least one positive side effect: it has led Italian women, and some men as well, to a new spirit of commitment." (Image: Hytok/Flickr c.c./2009)

"If Israel refuses to cease building settlements in the West Bank," writes Ruth Rosen, "the newly unified Palestinian government will ask the UN General Assembly to ratify it as a new and sovereign state in September....Since time truly is running out, Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman's new film, Between Two Worlds, couldn't be more timely."

Five Dissent writers offer reflections on the killing of Osama bin Laden—on how it was carried out, its potential impact on government policies, and its meaning to and reception by the public. Read responses by Michael Walzer, Lindsay Beyerstein, Feisal G. Mohamed, Fred Smoler, and Bhaskar Sunkara.

“The twentieth century ended with the mass destruction of Marx effigies,” writes Marshall Berman. “It was said to be the ‘post-modern age’: we weren’t supposed to need grand narratives or big ideas. Twenty years later, we find ourselves in the grip of very different narratives....At the dawn of the twentieth century, there were workers who were ready to die with the Communist Manifesto. At the dawn of the twenty-first, there may be even more who are ready to live with it.” (Image: Wolfgang Thieme/Wikimedia Commons/1971)

Each April since 1994, writes Noam Schimmel, we hear "a predictable steady stream of statements of solidarity with Rwandans and promises of that rhetorically reliable but rarely acted upon conviction, 'Never Again'... Commemoration is of vital importance. But it is not enough. The genocide is over, but the consequences of it are being felt again and again. The suffering, injustice, and destructiveness left in its wake are ongoing and deeply disabling." (Image: Amy Rathgeb/2008/Flickr creative commons)

“There is really only one group in American society that remains largely immune to the lure of originalism: historians,” writes Saul Cornell. “When most historians look closely at originalist arguments, what they usually find is bad history shaped to fit an ideological agenda—what historians derisively call ‘law office history.’” (Image: U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787/Junius Brutus Stearns/1856)