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The Men in the Middle

Dissent Magazine
If there’s an engine that continues to draw millions of workers into the Persian Gulf’s draconian labor regime, it is the middlemen—the underground network of recruitment agents that reaches into every corner of rural South Asia, dangling the possibility of a better life before communities ravaged by neoliberalism.

Cities And States Paying Massive Secret Fees To Wall Street: Report

David Sirota International Business Times
Currently, about 9 percent -- or $270 billion -- of America’s $3 trillion public pension fund assets are invested in private equity firms. Assuming the industry standard 2 percent management fee, that quarter-trillion dollars generates roughly $5.4 billion in annual management fees for the private equity industry -- and that’s not including additional “performance” fees paid on investment returns. But even the $5.4 billion number could be drastically understated.

America's Political Obsession With the "Middle Class" Hurts Workers

By Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig The New Republic
Thanks to the economic volatility of the last several years, and thanks to the fact that many of those who imagine themselves to be part of the middle class have been disproportionately impacted by the recession compared to their ostensibly middle class compatriots, a sense of belonging in the middle class no longer correlates with the socioeconomic stability of a spot in the middle.

Inside American Students' Fight For Justice in Palestine

Donna Nevel Alternet
As someone who has participated in programs on a number of campuses and has a child in college, I have been inspired by the organizing taking place for justice in Palestine. My own organizing has been strengthened. Through Students for Justice in Pa

US Wages ''War on Terror'' in the Philippines

Adam Hudson Truthout
Although Islamic State regularly captures global headlines, the so-called fight against ''terrorism'' is not just confined to the Middle East. The United States quietly maintains other fronts in the War on Terror - including the Philippines.

Anne Braden's Tireless War on Racism: The South's Rebel Without a Pause

Heather Gray Alternet
Her biographer Cate Fosl has wisely said about Anne, "Hers has been among the most forceful and persistent of white voices for racial equality in modern U.S. history." Fosl's "Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South" is an invaluable history of our Southern civil rights movement.

Faculty Join Fast Food in the Fight for $15

Justin Miller The American Prospect
Like the other low-wage workers that protested yesterday, the ultimate goal of the burgeoning adjunct faculty movement is fair pay and decent working conditions. What yesterday’s demonstrations showed was that this could be a substantial and sustainable struggle that is primed to create waves throughout the labor market. And unifying all low-wage workers—from fast food to faculty—will be an important part of that.

What Makes Abraham Lincoln Such a Radical Politician Even Today?

David Bromwich Reuters
We may try to hedge our descriptions, bring Lincoln into perspective, call him a pragmatist and cut him down to a size more comfortably proportioned to our own. The truth is almost too great for us to recognize. He staked the future of the republic on his commitment to put slavery on the course of ultimate extinction.