Thursday Screening: March 7, 2024
Southeast Asia's dystopian microstate & Haiti's untenable gang violence
Happy Thursday. Donald Trump has unofficially secured the Republican nomination for President in the least surprising thing to happen since he announced he was running yet again in November 2022. NATO’s survival is now up to a coin flip of the American electorate in the fall.
It’s going to be a long 243 days until the election.
On that note, on to this week’s screening—today we’ve got a short feature on the horrific violence plaguing Haiti and a look at the dystopian society Singapore has built.
France24: Gang Warfare Plunges Haiti's Capital Into Crisis
Haiti is falling apart. On Monday, Haitian gangs engaged in a violent assault on the country’s main airport and orchestrated a jailbreak of hundreds of imprisoned gang members at two separate prisons. Militant Wire (subscription required) published a useful breakdown of the gang rule in Port-au-Prince last November. It’s a depressing state of affairs in a country already devastated by environmental disasters and a recent presidential assassination. France24 sent correspondents to the Caribbean state and captured footage embedded with both Haitian police and gangs that offered a bleak look at what should be a tropical island paradise:
Nova Lectio International: Singapore - The Perfect Yet Most Disturbing Dystopia
Singapore made headlines this week for inking megastar Taylor Swift to an exclusive southeast Asia stop on the international leg of her Eras Tour. The fabulously wealthy microstate was able to afford the millions to incentivize the sole regional stop in part because the state’s economy utilizes modern-day slavery and levies exorbitant fines on its population for minor civil infractions. The deeply centralized and authoritarian tiny nation has a fascinating history and interesting relationship with democracy:
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