Jake Blumgart interviews Balázs Nagy-Navarro, who has been leading a hunger strike by members of the media in protest of Hungary's new restrictions on press freedom. “They put down a rope with a sound box and it plays the same three songs, all day long....[W]e realized it was music just to annoy, just to disturb us. At first it was just on the news desk balcony. But now they have put it in a closed box and they have two guys almost guarding it. They said it was under the instruction of the CEO of the company. You can now understand the reality of the absurd tragicomedy that is going on here.”

What's happening in Wukan? Jeffrey Wasserstrom interviews Rachel Beitare, a journalist on the ground in the Chinese town in revolt. “[T]he village’s situation encapsulates almost all of the big issues that trouble Chinese society: rural poverty vs. rapid development, unchecked power, growing economic gaps, environmental degradation, corruption, official violence, the balance of power between Beijing and the provinces—it’s all there.” (Photo by Helen Lee, via Google Plus)

“In the border regions of Sudan,” writes Eric Reeves, “we are witnessing a ghastly reprise of the conduct that has defined Khartoum’s brutal military control of its restless peripheries for decades.... [J]ust as the regime has turned Darfur into a ‘black box,’ from which no honest accounts can emerge, so too has it drawn a veil over its actions in Blue Nile, South Kordofan, and Abyei.” (Image: UN photo of Abyei after northern attack, Flickr cc)

“The Republicans have concluded that the failure of Solyndra proves that the government shouldn’t ‘pick winners’ or try to act as a venture capitalist,” writes George Sterzinger. But the United States “must find ways to support innovation in energy technologies that carry environmental benefits. The loan guarantee program is one way to do that.” (Photo by Lawrence Jackson, White House, Wikimedia Commons, 2011)

A Dangerous Method "is filled with literate dialogue" between Freud and Jung, writes Leonard Quart, "keeping under control David Cronenberg's more anarchic visual imagination." The film "looks more like a well-mounted, decorous, and sometimes static Masterpiece Theater production."

The first round of the Egyptian parliamentary elections is over, and the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party has come out on top. “The FJP’s inevitable missteps in the new parliament might make Egyptians look elsewhere in the future,” writes Feisal G. Mohamed. “One can only hope that they will look left rather than right, and that organized and competent parties will be waiting there to greet them.” Now with an update following the run-off elections. (Photo by Mosa'ab Elshamy, via Flickr creative commons)

Dissent brings you audio and video from two events it hosted this November. Listen to a discussion on Phase II for Occupy Wall Street, featuring Liza Featherstone, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Hirsch, Nikil Saval, and Dorian Warren, here. And watch a panel on the internet and democracy, featuring Evgeny Morozov, Jillian York, and Deirdre Mulligan, here. (Photo by Brennan Cavanaugh, Flickr creative commons)

Earlier this year, Herman Cain said that “when Margaret Sanger—check my history—started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world. It’s planned genocide.” “Cain was wrong about Planned Parenthood and about Sanger,” writes Peter Dreier, “who is a far more interesting figure than the straw woman created by opponents of reproductive freedom.” (Image: Margaret Sanger, seated, middle; Library of Congress)

“[T]raditional print critics claim the Internet has replaced expertise with amateurs, fanboys, and obscurantists,” writes Charles Taylor. “Web enthusiasts counter that we’re in a new golden age of film criticism and accuse the traditionalists of jealousy, resentment, and Ludditism. In other words: idealization of the past versus idealization of the present; resolution via what Pauline Kael once referred to as ‘saphead objectivity.’ Screw that.” (Image: Sabine Schostag, Wikimedia Commons, 2009)

“Like many brilliant artists, Guthrie was a mass of contradictions,” writes Zach Pontz. “He touted peace but sung often of war, he took a job as a radio host for Model Tobacco Company despite his contempt for capitalism, and though sympathetic to the plight of mankind he was known to act terribly toward his wives and was often absent as a father.” Despite all this, “with the recession-sparked social upheaval of the Occupy protests, America could use a Woody Guthrie or two.” (Image via Wiki. Com., Library of Congress, 1943)

The occupation of Zuccotti Park was cleared out early this morning. While the occupiers will face difficult decisions in the coming days, their recent adoption of a new, complementary governing body provides a useful tool to that end. Matthew Wolfe reports on the transition from the sole use of the general assembly—“both a soapbox and a chorus, a leaderless collective that is at once communal and individualistic”—to the adoption of the spokes council. (Image: General Assembly in Zuccotti Park; Bogieharmond, Flickr creative commons)

“Berlusconi’s fall was precipitated not by Italy’s center-left opposition, but by rebels within his own coalition desperate for a change of leadership,” writes Alexander Lee. “In allowing the 2010 budget report to pass without opposition, the Partito Democratico and its allies have illustrated that they lack a realistic alternative. With Italy staring financial oblivion in the face, this is cause for real concern.” (Image: Barb Mayer, 2011, Flickr cc)

“[T]o what extent are we protecting women’s ‘freedom,’ ‘choice,’ or ‘autonomy’ when we focus on abortion as a right in the absence of other social protections for women and families: subsidized day care, job security, a family wage, quality public education, and universal health care?” asks Amy Borovoy. “The discourse of ‘choice’ alone has not provided a sustaining moral framework for handling the necessity of abortion, which will always be a final recourse.” (Image: Paul-W, 2011, Flickr creative commons)

“In 1959, at a time of violent unrest among American youth, a publisher commissioned a study of juvenile delinquency from Paul Goodman,” writes Horatio Morpurgo. “The resulting volume, Growing up Absurd, was an immediate if unlikely success...[F]ifty years on he is once again unknown. But to reread his book in the aftermath of this summer’s riots in Britain is to be visited by uneasy feelings.” (Image: Fire at a store during riots in London in August; Andy Armstrong, Wiki. Com.)

“On October 1 the state of California launched a much-anticipated plan to ‘realign’ the state’s criminal justice system,” writes Elliott Currie. The program “has been ballyhooed by its promoters as nothing less than a ‘revolution’ in criminal justice.” But it “will leave intact a crisis of crime and punishment that is much more entrenched and much more severe than current rhetoric suggests.” (Image: California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo; MrPlow5, Flickr cc, 2011)

“Progressives and mainstream Democratic pundits disagree with each other about many issues at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests,” writes Danny Goldberg, “but with few exceptions they are joined in their contempt for drum circles, free hugs, and other behavior in Zuccotti Park that smacks of hippie culture....Yet it is precisely the mystical utopian energy that most professional progressives so smugly dismiss that has aroused a salient, mass political consciousness on economic issues.” (Image: Woodstock, 1969; Wikimedia Commons)

“Occupy Wall Street is well on its way to becoming the first major populist movement on the U.S. left since the 1930s,” write Joe Lowndes and Dorian Warren. But it is “better historically situated to take on issues of exclusion” than other populist uprisings in American history. Read more Occupy Wall Street coverage here. (Image: David Shankbone, Flickr creative commons, 10/6/11)

Dissent has asked a number of organizing scholars and practitioners--James DeFilippis, Robert Fisher, Eric Shragge, Randy Shaw, David Walls, and Erik Peterson--to comment on Zelda Bronstein’s “Politics’ Fatal Therapeutic Turn” from the Summer 2011 issue of Dissent. For the first time in years, many see potential for a remobilization of the American Left. We hope that these arguments will help carry forward discussions about where (and how) to go from here. (Image: S. Brunn, Flickr, 2010)

From Dissent's coverage of Occupy Wall Street: “[M]ove beyond the park and meet the rest of the 99 percent where they’re at.” “[T]he emergence of something like OWS was predictable, at least in retrospect, after the failure of its predecessor, Obama-mania.” “OWS is giving people the opportunity to identify with a national struggle while advancing causes relevant to their local communities.” “The recurrent theme was that politics was of, for, and by corporate America and that this movement represented an alternative to that.” “Bring tarps.” (Image: Assembly in Washington Square, 10/8/11; D. Shankbone, Wiki. Com.)

“Whereas Franklin Roosevelt attacked the 'economic royalists' and built and mobilized his political base, Obama entered office with an already organized base and largely ignored it,” writes Gar Alperovitz. “When the next financial crisis occurs, and it will, a different political opportunity may be possible....[A] long era of social and economic austerity and failing reform might paradoxically open the way to more populist or radical institutional change.” (Image: David Shankbone, 9/28/11, Flickr cc)