Watch ProPublica reporter and bailout bird dog Paul Kiel talk to Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF and currently an MIT economics professor and Baseline Scenario contributor, about the current financial crisis. Johnson expounds on his recent article in The Atlantic, explaining how Wall Street and Washington, D.C., have come together to form the “most advanced oligarchy” in the world, [...]

“At the heart of this wide-ranging comics indictment of American Empire are the terrific human stories of those who have resisted—including wonderful autobiographical episodes from author Howard Zinn’s own courageous and inspiring life.”—Joe Sacco, author of Safe Area Gorazde
“Ingenious in its conception and brilliant in execution, this comics version of Howard Zinn’s classic history breathes [...]

If you read only one book on the route to this financial meltdown, I
recommend this one: BAD MONEY: RECKLESS FINANCE, FAILED POLITICS, AND
THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM. The author, Kevin Phillips,
has a history of being way ahead of the curve. As a young man working
for Richard Nixon, he wrote THE EMERGING REPUBLICAN MAJORITY, a [...]

“If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” - World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin
The world is running out of its most precious resource. True Vision’s timely film tells of the personal tragedies behind the mounting privatisation of water supplies.

More than [...]

Trouble the Water follows a couple from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and their return home two weeks after the hurricane. It begins with footage shot by the couple, who documented the approach of the hurricane and the moment the floodwaters began to rise.

Next week marks the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. President Bush visited New [...]

During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in [...]

Making sense of the recent national debates over offshore drilling, biofuels, and nuclear power can be a challenge.There’s one issue President Bush and presidential hopefuls John McCain
and Barack Obama all agree on: expanding the use of nuclear power.
President Bush addressed nuclear power at a news conference Tuesday and
hailed it as a way to reduce American [...]

In Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. …

Data Visualization

Explore data visualization through a 3D viewer and use your mouse to further manipulate the data and create your own [...]

In the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine, David Corn writes, “Who’s to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that [...]

The Century of the Self is an acclaimed documentary by filmmaker Adam Curtis released in 2002.
“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” - Adam Curtis
To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is [...]