Pyrexia’s Crepitus
Living. Adult content. And looking the other way.
Kazakhstan has a pretty sunny disposition for what is, ostensibly, a hellhole. In the middle of this dirt patch between Russia and China lies, a man toils to make his life better. He makes his living as a television reporter for Kazakhstan TV and his sister is the fourth most popular prostitute in the country. His name is Borat Sagdiyev, he has a moustache reserved for used car dealers, and he’s just landed on American shores.
Dreamt up by Sacha Baron Cohen on some lucid night, Borat is a creation of surreptitious glee. An anti-Semite to the nth degree, he badmouths the "nitwit" enemy nation of Uzbekistan, calls his pain-in-the-ass neighbor a girl for having an iPod mini instead of an iPod, and likes to make "sexy time" with his mother-in-law. This is just in Kazakhstan; America is chock full of more dangerous, giddy propositions.
Aided only by Ken Davitian (who plays his producer, Azamat), Cohen is a one-man-army of prodding laughs and ingenious performance art. Every laugh delivered by this transplanted outsider slowly peels away layers of false niceties and political correctness. On a small motor-home heading to California, three college frat boys divulge that slavery should be brought back and that women, Jews, and Muslims aren’t worth a damn. None of the "regular" people interviewed in the film are in on the joke that this is a mockumentary and that Borat is not really the yokel he pretends to be.
Directed by Seinfeld writer and Curb Your Enthusiasm/Entourage alumnus Larry Charles, Borat has to be the most unapologetically crass attack on the morals and values of America to reach these shores since the boys of South Park took to the big screen. Even better, these are laughs that never are scared of their audience or their timeliness. On his way to California to capture his "virgin bride" Pamela Anderson, Borat faces scenarios that coyly bring out America’s own inherent anti-Semitism and homophobic tendencies. In the film’s penultimate scene, Borat and Azamat face off in a naked wrestling match brought on by Borat catching his producer masturbating to a photo of Pamela. Replete with black bars, the two hairy bodies go into damn near every position imaginable and roll from their hotel room to a business convention going on the first floor; if Cohen doesn’t coax out our fears in subtle ways, he takes drastic measures to make sure we get it.
A Cambridge scholar from a firmly Jewish family, Cohen could have probably written papers for the rest of his life (his thesis was on Jewish Culture and the Civil Rights Movement). Instead, with Borat and his other characters, he has deviously found laughter as a key to sneaking in on hypocrites and the ridiculousness of modern American culture. Cohen’s obsession with the foul and perverse might make for an awkward view for some, but you can never blame Cohen for going too far when most films barely pass the starting line. His use of a tactless, chauvinistic alien thrown into our cultural hodgepodge brings new meaning to thoughtful humor and rethinks satire as an open minefield rather than a target at the end of a sniper rifle. At a rodeo in the southern states, Borat is met with thunderous applause when he tells a crowd that he hopes "Premier Bush drinks the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq" only moments after a rodeo master tells him he hopes they hang the homosexuals at the gallows. God help us all.
Big balls eh!
Tagged as: borat , movie ,comedy, Kazakhstan ,Sacha Baron Cohen
December 9, 2006
Manila - A Philippine court found one of four US Marines guilty of raping a Filipino woman inside a van at a former US navy base last year, sentencing the 21-year-old sailor to life in prison for "bestial acts".
The three other Marines were acquitted on Monday after a seven-month trial, which had prompted small protests against US-Philippine military ties and intense local media interest.
The Philippine government hailed the result but said the verdict would do nothing to harm close relations with the United States, which provides funding, equipment and training to Filipino troops fighting Muslim and communist rebel groups.
"The court is morally convinced that Lance Corporal Daniel Smith committed the crime charged," a clerk said, reading the decision of Judge Benjamin Pozon to a hushed, packed courtroom.
US Marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith (C) is escorted from a courtroom by police after he was found guilty of rape and sentenced to life imprisonment in a Manila courtroom, December 4, 2006.
The verdict, which included an order for Smith to pay 100,000 pesos ($2,000) in damages to the victim and her family, will automatically go to a higher court for review.
Less than two hours after the ruling, a US navy plane whisked the three acquitted Marines out of the Philippines to rejoin their unit in Okinawa, Japan.
"This has been a difficult and emotional matter for all involved, and for their families and friends," the US embassy, which had kept custody of the four Marines during the case, said in a statement.
Smith did not flinch when the verdict was read out but a quick volley of applause broke out inside the court. The victim, a 23-year-old management accounting graduate given the pseudonym "Nicole", burst into tears and said "Thank God".
"I am saddened the three got acquitted," the woman said, adding she was "willing to endure everything" in what was likely to be a prolonged legal battle during Smith’s appeal.
Question of Custody
The judge ordered Smith to be temporarily held at a jail in Manila while the two governments, bound by a Visiting Forces Agreement, resolve where he should serve his sentence.
Before sun down, local police brought Smith to the Makati City jail where he will spend the night while his lawyers petition a higher court to reverse Pozon’s order.
Citing the Visiting Forces Agreement, US embassy officials argued that Smith could remain under US custody until after a final decision was made by the Supreme Court, which will review the lower court’s ruling.
On the streets outside the court, 300 protesters, mainly women, cheered and punched the air triumphantly. Placards read "Jail the Rapists" and "US troops out now".
During the controversial case, critics argued the Visiting Forces Agreement gives US soldiers too much protection.
But the executive director of the agreement, Zosimo Paredes, said the verdict — the first legal test of the seven-year-old pact — could actually strengthen security and diplomatic ties between the United States and its only former colony in Asia.
"I think this decision works on both sides," Paredes told reporters, adding it would serve as a warning to US troops coming to the Philippines to uphold local laws. "The chance of this incident happening again is reduced."
From 1981 to 1988, when the United States had two huge military bases in the Philippines, at least 82 cases of sexual abuse of women by US troops were recorded but none of the accused was punished because the complaints were dismissed.
The woman accused Smith and the other Marines of raping her in November 2005 after she drank with them at a bar while the sailors were on shore leave at the end of two weeks of military exercises with Filipino soldiers.
The Marines said only Smith had sex with her and that it was consensual. They claimed the woman was being manipulated to incriminate them.
Pozon said Smith knew the woman was drunk and could not have consented to sex.
Tagged as: rape ,US Marine ,visiting forces agreement ,daniel smith ,Philippines
This commercial really helps me understand the workings of vehicle suspension better than any mechanical engineering book I have ever read.
