JOANNE LAURIER—Alexander Payne’s new film Downsizing, is an uneven, but engaging science-fiction satire that proposes to solve the earth’s ecological and other problems by “downsizing,” or physically shrinking, human beings. The creator of such noteworthy films as Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002) and Nebraska (2013), Payne employs, in Downsizing, a generally light touch in attempting to address pressing social ills.
Yearly Archives
2017
The contradictions of the bitcoin-blockchain frenzy
10 minutes readNICK BEAMS—”Last Thursday, for example, shares in the Nasdaq-listed Long Island Tea Corp., a company that has never reported a profit, rose by as much as 500 percent on news that it was changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp. The company said it was ‘shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of an investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology.'”
ANDRE DAMON—There is no other country that intervenes in the political affairs of foreign states so directly, regularly and shamelessly as the United States. American foreign policy is one massive intervention in the politics of other countries, running the gamut from propaganda, destabilization, financing of opposition parties, electoral fraud and coups to military bombardment and occupation, all of which taken together have killed more people than any government since Nazi Germany.
Remembering Cuito Cuanavale, Angola—the turning point battle against Apartheid South Africa
23 minutes readRONNIE KASRILS—The newly independent African states of the region could not countenance the status quo, and Angola in particular was fighting for its very survival to crush UNITA and eject the SADF presence. Soviet advisers and the Cuba command in Angola gave assistance in support of these aims.
JOE EMERSBERGER—Betrayals, however, can be deterred and their destructive impact minimized in political parties that deeply empower their ordinary members. Correa’s emphasis was heavy on macroeconomics and other policy details, not on developing that kind of political party. The example of Venezuela shows how devastating macroeconomic errors can be for a left wing government, but Ecuador is on its way to becoming another kind of cautionary tale.
