Jillian Steinhauer: Hannah Arendt’s Passionate Thinking

June 19, 2013

Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic yields an insight that’s fresher than “the banality of evil,” and just as true.

Nick Turse: The Terror Diaspora

June 19, 2013

The U.S. military and the unraveling of Africa.

Theodoric Meyer and Peter Maass: No Warrant, No Problem

June 19, 2013

How the government can get your digital data.

Kiran Herbert: Portland and Portlandia, Two Worlds of Whiteness

June 18, 2013

Oregon’s liberal mecca was made white by explicitly bigoted laws, and its hometown satire white-washes race relations.

Ikhide Ikheloa: Notes from my Middle Passage

June 18, 2013

Nothing could prepare me for America.

Tom Engelhardt: The Making of a Global Security State

June 18, 2013

The five uncontrollable urges of a secrecy-surveillance world.

Rebecca Solnit: The Far North of Experience

June 17, 2013

In praise of darkness (and light).

Joaquin Sapien: Objection Overruled

June 17, 2013

Top prosecutor must testify in wrongful conviction case.

Ocean Vuong: I Remember Anyway

June 14, 2013

Remember. You are already Vietnamese.

Leah Carroll: They Wanted Beautiful, Gorgeous Things

June 14, 2013

The teen crime ring that robbed Hollywood’s starlets, and the infinite media loops who love them.

Editors’ Picks: Reading About Race

June 14, 2013

Guernica‘s staff brings you their favorite writing on race, in America and beyond.

Zahir Janmohamed: Writer of Color

June 13, 2013

On being asked to speak for a whole community and region rather than yourself.

Caroline Cooper: The Act of Seeing The Act of Killing

June 13, 2013

A new documentary on Indonesia’s 1965-66 anti-communist genocide is taking the international festival circuit by storm. But in the country that most needs to see it, the film is underground, its crew largely anonymous.

Michael Grabell: Walmart Accepted Clothing from Banned Bangladesh Factories

June 13, 2013

The world’s largest retailer last month released a list of more than two hundred factories it said it had barred from producing its merchandise.

Chase Madar: How Dystopian Secrecy Contributes to Clueless Wars

June 12, 2013

The future of U.S. security depends on freeing Bradley Manning, not punishing him.

Robert Reich: A National Economic Strategy For Better Jobs

June 12, 2013

Job creation has stalled since the Great Recession but there’s plenty to be done to change that.

Kirsten O’Regan: Agora-phobia

June 12, 2013

Creative resistance, via public art, in an age of pessimism and a city of commerce.

Reginald Dwayne Betts: Travellin’ Man

June 11, 2013

His father taught him to crave brown liquor.

Jay Walljasper: Foodopoly

June 11, 2013

Our dysfunctional, corporate dominated food system threatens our health and the planet.

Victoria Brittain: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

June 11, 2013

How to pre-convict and pre-punish an American Muslim.

Bob Ostertag: Why I No Longer Give Away My Music

June 10, 2013

How the digital music biz makes it difficult for musicians to offer free downloads.

Christie Thompson: The Best Stories on the Government’s Growing Surveillance

June 10, 2013

What we know about what the government knows.

Robert Reich: The Quiet Closing of Washington

June 10, 2013

Gridlock in the federal government exacerbates division between the states.

Jay Walljasper: Bicycling Surges Across the US, Outpacing Noisy Critics

June 7, 2013

How the “bikelash” was overcome in New York and other cities.

Tom Engelhardt: Just Begin

June 7, 2013

A graduation day speech for the post-post-docs of life.

Nafeesa Syeed: Setting Down Roots in Istanbul’s Gezi Park

June 7, 2013

Protestors in Istanbul are settling in to Gezi park, where the demonstrations across Turkey began.

Joe Sexton: Problem Witness

June 6, 2013

A case to make prosecutors personally accountable.

Jay Walljasper: Potential Partners We Don’t Recognize

June 6, 2013

Why local government, co-ops, community organizations, and unions are commoners.

Christie Thompson: Five Ways Congress is Trying to Curb Rape in the Military

June 6, 2013

Senators have rushed to draft legislation to hold attackers accountable and provide support for victims.

Cora Currier: Four Years Ago Obama Promised to Investigate Afghan Massacre

June 5, 2013

Has anything happened since?

Richard Falk: Ending Perpetual War? Endorsing Drone Warfare?

June 5, 2013

President Obama, drone warfare, and the self-mystifying glories of American exceptionalism.

Noam Chomsky: Humanity Imperiled

June 4, 2013

The path to disaster.

Lois Beckett: Now, You Can’t Ban Guns at the Public Pool

June 4, 2013

The latest victory in a long-standing push to deny cities the power to regulate guns.

Lewis Lapham: The (Less Than) Eternal Sea

June 4, 2013

The Poet’s Metaphor and the Styrofoaming of the Waters.

Julia Cooke: Alice Aycock’s Five-Year Plans

June 4, 2013

The artist’s new retrospective finds a midpoint between text and structure, narrative and image.

Roz Bernstein: My Esquire

June 3, 2013

Looking back at Norman Mailer, Diane Arbus, Tom Wolfe, and the magazine that brought them all together.

Daniel Moss: Protecting Drinking Water by Preventing Pollution in Upstream Communities

June 3, 2013

Latin American water leaders discuss a commons approach for safe water.

Robert Reich: Economic Storm Clouds Ahead

June 3, 2013

Low wages are threatening future growth.

Andrea DenHoed: A Year of Amanda F***ing Palmer

May 31, 2013

Self-expression, self-promotion, and fan-participant culture via the divisive musician and artist of “asking.”

Michael T. Klare: The Cold War Redux?

May 31, 2013

Are Washington, Moscow, and Beijing using the global arms trade to create a new Cold War?

Robert Reich: A Time for Harry Reid’s Backbone

May 31, 2013

A president’s court picks shouldn’t require sixty Senate votes.

Tara Isabella Burton: Grounded by the Trout

May 30, 2013

Vasily Grossman’s newly translated meditation on travel writing, Armenian Sketchbook, embraces the messy truth.

Taxcast: “Britzerland,” Google and Apple in Court, and How Secrecy Kills

May 30, 2013

Google and Apple are forced to defend their tax affairs in public, the Lord of War makes an appearance, and more.

Joe Sexton: Ex-Prosecutor Won’t be Watching Brooklyn DA

May 30, 2013

A decade ago, Robert Reuland played a role in what surely would have made for a lively episode of the new series.

Andrew Bacevich: Naming Our Nameless War

May 29, 2013

How many years will it be?

Giulio Capperchi: America’s Most Enduring Common Ground

May 29, 2013

Since 1634 the Boston Commons has been shared by all.

EJ Dickson: The Art of Menstrala

May 29, 2013

Whether they consider it a painful burden or a “release” of the body’s “energies,” some artists are painting their monthly period. Literally.

Robert Reich: Lessons from the World of Tax Avoidance

May 28, 2013

How nations can negotiate with global capital.

Theodoric Meyer: As Need for New Flood Maps Rises, Congress and Obama Cut Funding

May 28, 2013

Congress has cut funding for updating flood maps by more than half since 2010, from $221 million down to $100 million this year.

Chat Travieso: A City for Reading

May 28, 2013

Inside the movement to bring the world thousands of tiny, crowd-sourced, community libraries.

Kim Barker & Justin Elliott: Six Facts Lost in the IRS Scandal

May 24, 2013

Amid the outrage, the big picture of social welfare nonprofits is easily forgotten.

Tom Engelhardt: Terracide and the Terrarists

May 24, 2013

Destroying the planet for record profits.

Camille Gage: How Artists Strengthen Communities

May 23, 2013

Public art is attracting government funding, but can it effect social change?

Raymond Bonner: A Prolonged Stay

May 23, 2013

The reasons behind the slow pace of executions.

Lisa Germano: Apathy and the Devil

May 22, 2013

The singer-songwriter talks with Dave Evans about her new label, the “protest album,” and her cats.

Mattea Kramer & Jo Comerford: How America Became a Third World Country

May 22, 2013

Ten years from now, looking back on the sequestration.

Robert Reich: Global Capital and the Nation State

May 22, 2013

Global corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom.

Rebecca Solnit: Too Soon to Tell

May 21, 2013

The case for hope, continued.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Somebody Give Bill Gates and Drew Faust a Copy of Citizens Disunited

May 21, 2013

The new book by “class traitor” Robert Monks shows a system at its breaking point—and names the twenty-four Americans who can fix it.

Paul Kiel: The 182 Percent Loan

May 21, 2013

How installment lenders put borrowers in a world of hurt.

Robert Reich: The IRS and the Real Scandal

May 20, 2013

The problem is that the IRS has interpreted our tax laws to allow big corporations and wealthy individuals unlimited political influence.

Mimi Hanaoka: Misadventures with the Mukhabarat

May 20, 2013

How can you prove to the Syrian secret police that you’re not an Algerian spy?

Andy Kroll: Billionaires Unchained

May 17, 2013

America’s new pay-as-you-go democracy.

Robert Reich: Pyromaniacs on the Potomac

May 17, 2013

The problem with Obama’s second term.

Kaavya Asoka: Shifting the Gaze

May 16, 2013

The Guggenheim’s current exhibition, No Country, challenges conceptions of modern Asian art.

Sarah Browning: Poetry as Provocation

May 16, 2013

Camille Gage interviews the poet, activist, and director of Split This Rock.

Paul Kiel & Mitchell Hartman: Soldiers Defeated by Debt

May 16, 2013

Federal law is supposed to protect service members from predatory lending, but many military personnel are trapped in high-interest debt.

Keith Meatto: Seven Ways of Looking at The Great Gatsby

May 15, 2013

Meditations on Jay G, Jay-Z, the art of plagiarism, and America’s love affair with money, guns, and decadence

David Vine: Where Has All the Money Gone?

May 15, 2013

Contractors have raked in $385 billion to build and maintain military bases overseas. How much of the total is fraud?

Nick Turse: Nuclear Terror in the Middle East

May 14, 2013

Lethality beyond the pale.

Carlos Franz: Normalcy without Liberty

May 14, 2013

Life in East Germany on display in a strange Berlin museum.

Robert Reich: Working Mother’s Day

May 14, 2013

In 1966, only 20 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home. By the late 1990s, 60 percent did.

Mira Ptacin: Is a Baby a Luxury?

May 13, 2013

When a chemical stick revealed that our little family was about to change, we were overjoyed. But not insured.

Rachel Riederer: Salman Rushdie’s Happy Irreligion

May 13, 2013

At an evening with the AAWW, the celebrated novelist shares thoughts on influence and identity, and offers advice to young writers

Jesse Eisinger: Act of Congress Stresses Hopeful Creation of Dodd-Frank, Omits Grim Ending

May 13, 2013

To a Beltway expert such as Robert Kaiser, that a dysfunctional and hyperpartisan Congress passed such a sweeping bill constitutes a small miracle.

Peter Van Buren: Homeland Insecurity

May 10, 2013

Seven years, untold dollars to silence one man.

David Morris: Hidden Power Grab Stops Communities From Deciding Their Own Futures

May 10, 2013

Increasingly states are quashing the power of local governments—and thwarting innovation.

Gina Myers: Holding It Down

May 9, 2013

Keith Meatto talks with poet Gina Myers about leaving New York, darkness in poetry, and the difference between growing up and settling down.

Christie Thompson: Is Obama Delivering on His Promise of a “21st Century” Approach to Drugs?

May 9, 2013

A look at the administration’s latest approach to drugs, and what they’ve done so far.

Tom Engelhardt: And Then There Was One

May 8, 2013

Imperial gigantism and the decline of planet Earth.