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

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

How the government can get your digital data.

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

Nothing could prepare me for America.

The five uncontrollable urges of a secrecy-surveillance world.

In praise of darkness (and light).

Top prosecutor must testify in wrongful conviction case.

Remember. You are already Vietnamese.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

His father taught him to crave brown liquor.

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

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

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

What we know about what the government knows.

Gridlock in the federal government exacerbates division between the states.

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

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

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

A case to make prosecutors personally accountable.

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

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

Has anything happened since?

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

The path to disaster.

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

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

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

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

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

Low wages are threatening future growth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many years will it be?

Since 1634 the Boston Commons has been shared by all.

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

How nations can negotiate with global capital.

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

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

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

Destroying the planet for record profits.

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

The reasons behind the slow pace of executions.

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

Ten years from now, looking back on the sequestration.

Global corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom.

The case for hope, continued.

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.

How installment lenders put borrowers in a world of hurt.

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

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

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

The problem with Obama’s second term.

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

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

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

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

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

Lethality beyond the pale.

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

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

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

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

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

Seven years, untold dollars to silence one man.

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

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

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

Imperial gigantism and the decline of planet Earth.