Encyclopaedia Britannica Films

The UK is about to become one of the world’s foremost surveillance states, allowing its police and intelligence agencies to spy on its own people to a degree that is unprecedented for a democracy. By James Vincent.

Pipeline protesters attempted to remove burned out vehicles blocking the Backwater Bridge on Highway 1806, which led to an hours-long standoff with police using water cannons to repel protesters on [a below freezing] Sunday night. By Caroline Grueskin.

Before leaving Pulitzer Hall, the Columbia Journalism School building in Manhattan, on Election Night, I stopped by our makeshift newsroom to absorb some of the evening’s excitement. It was still early in the process; polls were just beginning to close around the country… By Ari L. Goldman.

The NSA has operated a top-secret surveillance program out of an iconic AT&T building in Manhattan, documents indicate. By Ryan Gallagher and Henrik Moltke.

There has been a concerning question surrounding the newly-elected President of the United States, Donald Trump. And that question is: What were people thinking? By John Kuroski.

Mike Pence’s ascent to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a tremendous coup for the radical religious right. By Jeremy Scahill.

No white hoods required. By Charles P. Pierce.

Democrats who defended the extraordinary expansion of executive power under President Obama may suddenly be having second thoughts. By Alex Emmons.

The president-elect may soon upend an Obama-era police reform tactic. By Maurice Chammah.

Edward Snowden warned us about the abuses of our national security state. Now look who's in charge of it. By Graham Vyse.

His campaign tells us a lot about what kind of Commander-in-Chief he would be. By Evan Osnos. (Sept. 26, 2016)

The most comprehensive account to date of the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers in late 2015. By Pen America.

The numbers of activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota continue to swell. The mainstream media continue to ignore it. National politicians continue to pretend that nothing is happening. And the local police continue to douse protestors in pepper spray, beat them, arrest them, and charge them with felonies for exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of speech.

It’s an awful day for a lot of people, but it’s also a day to broadcast the social norms you care about. By Jesse Singal.

The cavalier use of the term, by everyone from Robby Mook to Vladimir Putin, is morally obtuse. By Patrick Blanchfield and Patrick Iber.

Julian Assange talks to John Pilger.

Since its inception, one of the main preoccupations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been black rebellion.  From the early days of the Harlem Renaissance until at least J. Edgar Hoover’s death in 1972, the FBI has had a fascinated fear of African American literature. William J. Maxwell discusses how the FBI extensively surveilled black writers — and how, in turn, African American literature was shaped by an awareness of the dangerously intrusive eye of the FBI.

William M. Boardman writes: If the President had any intention of honoring anything relating to the sacred lands of Native Americans, he would not be planning to ‘let it play out for several more weeks.’ Sacred lands have already been destroyed. Sacred lands are being destroyed no, not only by the pipeline construction but also by the massive militarized police response to nonviolent protest.

Documentary filmmaker and climate reporter Deia Schlosberg was arrested in North Dakota earlier this month. By Julia Wick.