LOS ANGELES — Patrick Swayze personified a particular kind of masculine grace both on and off screen, from his roles in films like “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” to the way he carried himself in his long fight with pancreatic cancer.
Swayze died from the illness on Monday in Los Angeles, his publicist said. He was 57.
I can’t say I’m too familiar with his career but he seemed like a good man and a good actor. Also, he was great in that Chippendale’s sketch. Rest in peace.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote on Sunday, September 13 that Wednesday’s (September 9) outburst by South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress was racially motivated. As we told you earlier, Wilson shouted, “you lie,” when the president said his health care plan would not cover illegal immigrants.
Dowd writes: “What I heard was an unspoken word in the air — you lie, boy!… Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.”
Liberal columnists are not alone in suggesting that any opposition to the president is race-driven. Texas Democratic Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson tells the Politico: “As far as African-Americans are concerned, we think most of it is.”
And California Democratic Congressman Mike Honda adds: “There’s a very angry, small group of folks that just didn’t like the fact that Barack Obama won the presidency. With some, I think it is (about race.)”
But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says to CNN: “I don’t think the president believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin.”
It’s fair to say that *some* criticism is racially motivated. But there are plenty of other reasons why this is happening. It’s more partisan tension than racial.
The more conservative factions in this country don’t care that we’re the only nation without a universal health care system, because “socialism” is still a dirty word in this nation. The GOP has taken advantage of gullible citizens and convinced them that if Obama‘s plan gets passed, he’ll kill all the grandparents. And even before that the Republicans convinced America that Obama has turned this country into a socialist country…even though it was Bush who gave the O.K. to bail out Wall Street a year ago. In these respects and more, it’s fair to say that criticism of our president is more based on his politics than on the color of his skin.
In her new book, Blood & Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia, author Jasmin Hristov writes: “For roughly forty years, the Colombian state has been playing a double game: prohibiting the formation of paramilitary groups with one law and facilitating their existence with another; condemning their barbarities and at the same time assisting their operations; promising to bring perpetrators of crime to justice, while opening the door to perpetual immunity; convicting them of narco-trafficking, yet profiting from their drug deals; announcing to the world the government’s persecution of paramilitary organizations, even though in reality these ‘illegal armed groups’ have been carrying out the dirty work unseemly for a state that claims to be democratic and worthy of billions of dollars in US military aid.”
As the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere, Colombia has long been the US’ most important ally in Latin America. Simultaneously, Colombia has also become the hemisphere’s worst human rights violator, with Colombia’s numerous paramilitary organizations recently taking center stage, as they’ve gradually become directly responsible for more human rights atrocities than the formal military and police. In the name of fighting “narco-terrorism,” poor people and dissidents are massacred, assassinated, tortured, and disappeared, among other atrocities—done to eliminate particular individuals and to “set an example” by intimidating others in the community. 97 percent of human rights abuses remain unpunished.
In recent years, a variety of human rights organizations, as well as mainstream academics and journalists have found it impossible to ignore the astronomical human rights violations. However, even though these groups have accurately reported on the actual atrocities, Jasmin Hristov argues that in their reports, the atrocities are largely de-contextualized from the powerful forces in Colombia and the US that directly benefit from this repression. According to Hristov, this mainstream presentation serves to mask the fact that US and Colombian elites directly support (via funding, training, supervising, and providing legal immunity for) state repression carried out by the police and military, as well as illegal paramilitary groups that are unofficially sanctioned by the government. Whether it is murdering labor organizers or displacing an indigenous community because a US corporation wants to drill for oil on their land, Hristov passionately asserts that death squad violence is purposefully directed towards sectors of society that stand in the way of the ruling class’ efforts to maintain economic dominance and acquire more resources to make even more profit.
In her book, Hristov does make a convincing argument that Colombia’s notorious death squads are inherently linked to maintenance of the country’s extreme economic inequality. Particularly since the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s that have increased poverty, Colombia’s poor continue to resist their oppression in many different ways. In response, state repression on a variety of levels is needed to terrorize unarmed social movements and other community groups and activists.
Throughout Blood & Capital, Hristov seeks to expose the rational motivations behind state violence for capitalism’s economic elites in the US and Colombia. In meticulous detail, Hristov shows how the super-rich benefit from state repression and how the violators of human rights have essentially become immune from any consequences for their actions. If death squads are truly to be abolished in Colombia, we must look honestly at how and why they exist today. Hristov’s new book is a powerful tool for exposing who truly calls the shots.
Neoliberalism or neopoverty?
Hristov asserts that “it is not a mere coincidence that during the era of accelerated neoliberal restructuring, the deterioration in the living conditions of the working majority has been accompanied by an increase in the capabilities and activities of military, police, and paramilitary groups, as well as the portrayal of social movements as forces that must be monitored, silenced, and eventually dismantled.”
I don’t know if it’s fair to blame this atrocity on neoliberal ideology. But surely this helps make the case against prohibiting drugs. You’re only creating crime instead of discouraging it.
(WMR) — The mercenary private security contractor once known as Blackwater and now called Xe Services LLC is being reported in the Pakistani press as being seen with “other suspicious foreigners” in Peshawar and other parts of Pakistan.
A little history: “private security contractor” is a euphemism for “Team America.” Blackwater is a private militant force that helped the US government fight its war in Iraq. They’re not government-owned but they still work alongside US troops and other allies. As for this latest development, so much for that “respecting Pakistan’s status as a sovereign nation” bull. Let’s get Osama and then get the Hell out of the Middle East!
And now, some tennis news!
Playing an oddly listless match while exhibiting the body language of a man undergoing a tax audit, No. 2 seed Andy Murray was battered by No. 16 Marin Cilic in a stunning 7-5, 6-2, 6-2 fourth-round loss on Tuesday that produced a rare men’s upset in the United States Open.
Perhaps more surprising than the result, though, was how it happened. Murray, who used to have a reputation for moping when things went poorly, had climbed to the top of the rankings on his ability to adjust mid-match and create ways to win. But in this match, Murray’s game disintegrated as Cilic, an up-and-coming 20-year-old from Croatia, plowed through the match without showing any emotion.
“It just got away from me,” Murray said. “I couldn’t get myself back in the match. I couldn’t find any way to get into the games and he was dominating the points.”
Murray had come into the tournament looking strong, having won one of the two hard-court warm-up tournaments — in Montreal with a victory over Juan Martin del Potro — and losing to No. 1 Roger Federer in the semifinals of the other in Cincinnati.
But his game had no bite and after Cilic overcame some errors early in the match, he turned all of his varied weapons on a mystified Murray.
The match started slowly, with errors on both sides until they reached 5-5 in the first set. There, Murray played a horrible service game, double-faulting to 0-40 and Cilic converted his first break. He then held off Murray’s attempt to break and grabbed the first set.
“I returned poorly and he served well,” Murray said. “That was really the difference. Once he got that first set, he hit the ball really well and started playing really aggressive.”
Murray visibly sagged after that swing of events and Cilic pounced on his growing vulnerability, breaking Murray in the first game of the second set.
From there, it became a march to Murray’s demise. He hung his head, swung his racket in frustration and swore to no one in particular after one Cilic mis-hit dropped in for a point. After the second set loss, Murray threw his racket to the ground.
From there, Cilic kept his all-business expression and never let Murray back into the match. He was painting the lines with forehand winners while Murray struggled to keep his forehand in the court. Murray never adjusted his game or tried any new tactics, other than growing continually more annoyed at what was happening.
Serving at 2-4 in the third set and defeat seemingly inevitable, Murray played perhaps his most dispirited game, flubbing a forehand into the net to get broken a final time. Cilic served out the set with ease and the upset was complete.
Cilic was not the most likely candidate to pull off this upset. Though on the rise at age 20, having reached his No. 17 ranking, he had never beaten a top-three player. While he is a strong server, it has never been a true weapon in top-tier matches. Against Murray, though, he had 10 aces and faced few challenges on his service games.
Now, he draws del Potro in the quarterfinals after del Potro advanced with a dominating 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Juan Carlos Ferrero in their fourth-round match.
BERLIN — The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, pushed back Tuesday against international criticism over an airstrike ordered by German troops that claimed the lives of scores of people in northern Afghanistan, even as NATO announced that it appeared civilians had been among those killed in the bombing.
Well hey, we have a war to fight, and unfortunately civilians will sometimes be victims. So this is totally justifiable, right?
I mean, it’s not like the chancellor of Germany has no problem killing innocent people, right?
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In order of when I saw them…oh, and spoiler alert.
“Star Trek” – 8
Great effects, acting, and, for the most part, writing. Good balance of honoring the franchise’s past and updating it. And take it from me, who’s pretty unfamiliar with the franchise: you don’t need to be a hardcore fan to enjoy this movie.
Two quibbles: Nero’s revenge story is a little too similar to Khan’s. I know this is *supposed* to be unoriginal but come on. Also…how is beaming Kirk and Sulu in mid-air ANY different from getting Spock’s mom?
“Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” – 7
The kids are much better at acting this time around. The effects are great as always. The script does a decent job condensing the infamously long book to the bare essentials. But the movie also has three big, er, “conditions,” all having to do with the writing.
1) Unoriginality: Again, I know it’s a sequel, but come on. I liked the “Chosen One Destined to Destroy the Devil” story better when it was the story of Hercules, Jesus, The Lord of the Rings, Narnia, “Star Wars,” “The Matrix,” and every superhero ever. At least the chosen one, Harry is much more likable than he is in the books since they cut out just enough Live Journal teen angst to make him sympathetic instead of irritating.
2) Laziness: Magic is already the ultimate deus ex machina, but a room that turns into whatever you need it to be? Good luck potion that Harry idiotically finishes in one chug? Come on.
3) Totally contrived romantic tension: Alright, I can handle Ron and Hermoine. They didn’t even hug at the end of the second movie, remember? But when the *Hell* did Harry and Ginny start liking each other like that? Not “Chamber of Secrets,” that’s for sure. Well hey, Harry *is* the Messiah, so throw him a girl by story’s end. If Ron can score with Matt Hurton’s girl by chewing scenery and whining, it’s only fair the chosen one gets to spoon his best friend’s sister.
“(500) Days of Summer” – 10
It’s everything DeCarlo hypes it up to be and then some. And fortunately, the movie has much more going for it than the brief, barely-noticeable inclusion of a Black Lips song. All K.L.Y.A.M. readers got here by searching “Black Lips,” right?
But seriously now…out of the three movies I saw this summer this was the most emotionally powerful…and this is coming from someone who teared up when I first read of Dumbledore’s death. The hero, Tom, may be a little selfish and idealistic, but that doesn’t stop us from feeling sorry for him when the girl of his dreams doesn’t exactly return the favor. But we also laugh with him at the happier moments of the journey. As for the title character…she’s a better villain than Nero, Voldemort, and Draco Malfoy put together.
Another big perk is the storytelling method. The film takes a cue from Tarantino and puts the 500-day plot in shuffle mode. It’s striking, watching an awkward visit to Ikea only to flash back to a much more fun time, with the same people, at the same place. Tom’s surreal fantasies illustrate his emotions, from the pure bliss of the Hall and Oates number to the tragedy of the foreign art film. The montage of supporting characters’ definitions of love illustrates the movie’s heart-breaking thesis: that when a couple has two different definitions, it won’t work out.
Looks like this story has a fairly happy ending…
LOS ANGELES — Residents began returning to their homes Wednesday in several neighborhoods that had been threatened by a large wildfire chewing through the foothills near Los Angeles as cooler temperatures and moister air allowed firefighters to begin gaining in their battle to control the blaze.
Kids Like You & Me (KLYAM) 