“The demise of the Qaddafi regime represents a new phenomenon in the now protracted Arab Spring, following the nonviolent protests that brought down Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt this winter,” writes Ariel I. Ahram. “Libya’s path could be a harbinger of things to come for countries like Syria and Yemen, where unrest occurs in the context of pronounced societal cleavages and more fragile states apparatuses.” (Image: tally on September 9 in Tripoli; Ammar Abd Rabbo, Flickr cc)

Dissent presents the third installment of its series “Party of the Future: Voices from the Millennial Generation,” on young Americans abroad. “Our seven did not arrive on foreign shores carrying unearned confidence,” writes Nicolaus Mills. “Whether they went abroad in the role of visitor, soldier, reporter, or Peace Corps volunteer, they did everything they could to avoid being viewed as Ugly Americans who respect neither the language nor the culture of the country they are in.” (Image: Alexander Chaikin, Shutterstock)

The editors of Dissent have asked some of our contributors for their reflections on what has changed in the ten years since the attacks of September 11. With responses from Mitchell Cohen, Michael Kazin, Sarah Leonard, Nicolaus Mills, Feisal G. Mohamed, James B. Rule, Nick Serpe, Greg Smithsimon, and Bhaskar Sunkara. (Image: ccho, 2009, Flickr creative commons)

The “‘abolitionist approach’ to child labor represents mainstream institutional and political thought about how best to protect the world’s children from economic exploitation,” writes Neil Howard. “But the evidence suggests that it doesn’t work.” Child workers and their families are “caught between the structural injustice that hollows out their incomes and well-meaning but misguided campaigns that prevent them from doing anything about it.” (Children miners in the Congo; ENOUGH Project, 2009, Flickr cc)

Legislative bans on Sharia have passed or are under consideration in a number of states. But while Sharia is used to justify draconian punishments and misogyny in other countries, it “does not mean the same thing when it appears, for example, in the text of a Texas marriage contract,” writes Rafia Zakaria. “Those who refuse to separate out such cases hold entire communities responsible for the political machinations of distant actors whose use of Sharia may share only scant resemblances with its use in the United States.”

In New York City, “old-guard Democrats over the last few decades have settled into backroom fiefdoms that continue to wield an immense amount of political clout, albeit behind the scenes,” writes Nick Juravich. In Brooklyn, they are now challenged by the reformist New Kings Democrats. “They want that machine to work, even if it never has before.” (Image: Boss Tweed on a tobacco label, 1869, Library of Congress)

“We have high unemployment because growth has been anemic and jobless,” writes Judith Stein. “Keynesians argue that the stimulus of nearly $800 billion was too small to make up for the huge loss of demand, at around $2 trillion. They are right. But even if the stimulus had been bigger, it aimed at boosting consumption, not the public investment that is needed to alter the composition of the American economy.” (Image: San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge; Roy Mesler, 2006, Flickr cc)

Anna Hazare, a “self-styled anti-corruption crusader,” has captured the world's attention with his Gandhian campaign. But his movement has so far been “dangerously tinged with authoritarianism and Hindu nationalism,” writes Mitu Sengupta. Still, “the reference to Gandhi should not be simply dismissed as a convenient political ploy. It speaks to what the Hazare movement wants to be, and to the transformative potential of what has transpired in the last few days.” (Image: Anna Hazare with supporters in April; vm2827, Flickr cc)

“The unflinching realist gaze of [Alaa Al Aswany's] novels suggests that he is not given to simplistic utopianism,” writes Feisal G. Mohamed. “But it also suggests a deeply felt humanism....If democracy is the solution for Al Aswany, it is not out of naive optimism so much as out of the recognition that we are never less human than when we have unchecked power over others.” (Image: Anti-military council protest in Egypt in July; Maggie Osama, Flickr cc)

"The Help is a crowd-pleasing, feel-good film that allows white audiences to feel superior to the racist, complacent white women of Jackson, and stirs both black and white audiences to applaud the nobility of the black maids," writes Leonard Quart. "The film eschews realism in its settings and its characters. But in a summer of the usual special effects–ridden blockbusters and forgettable romantic comedies, it’s good to see a Hollywood film deal with a significant subject, however adulterated."

"In Shalom Neuman’s portraits," writes Lester Strong, "the subjects are not just surrounded by objects, but in some sense are the objects—the products of consumerism run amok. These works are at first glance quite whimsical, but on careful inspection appear more than a little sinister....It’s disturbing art, and meant to reflect the disjointed times in which it was created." (Image: Shalom Neuman's Fusion Golems)

Terry Glavin argues against the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy. “The pall that has fallen over Afghan democrats has nothing to do with American guns or American money. What has changed are the reasons the United States is giving for having soldiers in Afghanistan in the first place, and the fire-sale price the White House is now willing to offer to pack everything in.” With an exchange between Michael Walzer and Glavin. (Image: Afghan National Army troops; Teddy Wade, 2009, U.S. Army)

“[B]ecause chimpanzees are so close to us, we tend to find it amusingly incongruous to mock that sliver of biological difference between us by, for example, dressing them up in clown clothes and teaching them to ride tricycles,” writes Benjamin Hale. “Through ridicule, we magnify that less than 2 percent difference into a gulf.” But to “see an animal display...vulnerable, joyful, and dissipated human behavior is a profoundly unsettling feeling.”

“As India completes its sixty-fourth year of independence from British colonial rule on August 15, along with twenty years of market reform, one must pause to reflect on the future of this vibrant but troubled nation,” writes Mitu Sengupta. “[T]he country’s profound disparities of wealth have undermined many of its achievements. India’s population is effectively divided into two classes of citizens, one with access to a full complement of rights and privileges, and one without.” (Image: A demolished slum dwelling in Mumbai; Joe Athialy, 2005, Flickr cc)

“The collaborative model of Japanese unions contributed to their early success in securing benefits,” writes C.D. Alexander Evans. “But this kind of cooperation, unsurprisingly, retarded the development of an independent labor movement”—and has sometimes “led to tragedy....[But] the post-crash economy is beginning to create a labor movement that is newly dynamic.” (Image: Protesting for victims of the Minamata disaster; W.E. Smith, Wiki. Com.)

Henry Kissinger “does not ask Americans to abandon their values” in dealing with the People's Republic of China, “but suggests that his own realist approach, in which they are subordinated to the presumed needs of the state, is infinitely superior,” writes Warren I. Cohen. “There is, of course, another approach.” (Image: Kissinger and Mao in the early 1970s; Wiki. Com.)

“[T]he two-state vision, the only proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that does not require a fundamental (and probably multi-generational) transformation of the two people’s sense of themselves, is fast receding from view,” writes Farid Abdel-Nour. “A move as symbolically powerful and radical as the admission of Palestine to full UN membership would increase this vision’s admittedly meager chances of being realized.” (Image: demonstration against the wall in Ni'lin; mar is sea Y, Flickr cc, 2010)

“What is happening in Israel?” asks Michael Walzer. “As usual, no one expected, no one predicted, the massive uprising of Israel’s young people—joined last Saturday night by large numbers, amazing numbers, of their parents and grandparents. What started as a demand for affordable housing has turned into something much bigger.” (Image: Tel Aviv demonstration on 8/6/2011; Sharon G., Flickr creative commons)

“The Rhino Charge raises an obvious question,” writes Meera Subramanian: “why do a bunch of people need to drive a lot of really fuel-inefficient vehicles into some of the last wild remnants in the world, then proceed to run over some trees, and uproot others with their winch lines as they dig their tires into sensitive soils on steep slopes...all in the name of conservation? The short answer is, because it brings in buckets of money.” (Image: davida3, 2010, Flickr creative commons)

“It appears that the...Israeli public has succeeded where so many other outside actors have failed,” writes Neri Zilber: “to put real pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With 150,000 Israelis all across the country taking to the streets this past Saturday to demand, in effect, government intervention to lower the cost of living and an increase in state welfare, Netanyahu is facing the stiffest challenge yet to his premiership.”