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Sunday, 4 July 2010
The Male Pregnancy
Couvade syndrome, the popular name is 'sympathetic pregnancy'. And here's the surprise, more expectant fathers experience this than you might think, everything from weight gain to cravings.
Early research in Australian shows around one in four men experience at least some of the symptoms of pregnancy.
Reclaiming Phil Spector's troubled genius
For many people, the name Phil Spector is now more synonymous with murder than with a long and illustrious music career. Famously labeled "the first tycoon of teen" by Tom Wolfe, his recording methods and innovations produced the type of songs that shaped the way we understand music: "Be My Baby," by the Ronettes, "Then He Kissed Me," by the Crystals, and "You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling" by the Righteous Brothers. From his role in creating "Wall of Sound," the dense and layered music production technique that characterized an era, to salvaging the Beatles' "Let It Be" and producing John Lennon and George Harrison’s solo records, no history of pop music can be written without him.
Most of that work, however, took place before his spectacular and bloody fall from grace. After decades of isolation and several incidents involving brandished firearms, Spector was charged (and convicted in 2009) for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Vikram Jayanti's new documentary, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector," however, focuses less on his downfall than on the man's charms and his position in the musical pantheon.
Salon sat down with Jayanti and spoke about Spector's guilt and the reasons for his spectacular decline.
It’s been over a year since Phil Spector went to prison. How do you think people perceive him?
Unfortunately, the general sense out there is that he’s kind of a freak. Stories of him and guns have been running for 30 years. I don’t think in the general public’s mind he’s a big factor; it’s not like Paul McCartney went to jail. But if you stack up his 21 hits in a row, everyone of every age group has been hearing this their whole life and I wanted to remind people what an incredible artistic achievement it was.
Mick Brown’s "Tearing Down the Wall of Sound" discusses that paradox: those sweet pop songs coming from such a damaged soul.
When you’re listening to "River Deep, Mountain High" with that swirling chaos in the background, you begin hearing madness. When I hear "Be My Baby," I hear the Wall of Sound trying to push away the void. The yearning is not innocent, teenage yearning, it’s existential chaos. The man who ended up in the courtroom is the same man who made this hits and that’s sort of an abstract mystery to me.
I think that what a lot of artists do are acts of self-medication, in the chaos, disorder and anguish of the world, the moment you have some control, that you can make something beautiful, for a moment: You’re free. The problem is that if you have pathologies of various sorts, you also use it as an instrument of revenge.
Do you think he lost that ability to get to that moment of creative bliss -- and that contributed to his decline?
I think the music moved on. What’s amazing to me is that the Beatles put him out of business in 1965 and yet four years later he’s producing "Let It Be," so I think it’s incredible that he even had a second act. And it’s a fantastic second act. But I think the world moved on and that's hard for people who have been fantastically successful. I think he retreated into his castle and stopped drinking.
Stopped?
He had been sober for 10 years before the night of the death. As far as I understand it, that was the first day he had fallen off the wagon in 10 years.
What do you think happened that night?
I have to hedge my bets on that. Phil kept saying she killed herself. Leonard Cohen told a friend of mine a story of Phil pulling a gun on him and Leonard said: “Oh, Phil, you pull guns on everyone, you haven’t shot anyone yet. You’re not gonna start now.” I can't see that Phil pulled the trigger, even though he's pulled a gun on people all over the place.
It would seem that he introduced the gun in the proceedings that night.
He told me that whenever he had a date come to the house he let them know that there was a loaded gun in the drawer of every room and if they weren’t comfortable, the chauffeur would take them home. It's a perfect "Hollywood Babylon" story. Old, past his prime, legend producer takes home 40-year-old aging starlet. He popped a Viagra while she was in the bathroom taking off her false eyelashes and underskirt, and then she was dead. None of us were surprised. It was something we all assumed would happen one day. Which is why it was so easy for the court of public opinion to convict him. It just seemed another piece of how he lived.
Have you been in touch with him since he’s been in prison?
No, I’m gearing up to try to see him. I want to go pay my respects. Part of him is bound to hate the film because he's naked on-screen and he's weird. Part of him really ought to love the film. If he's feeling rational, he’s got to see that in many ways, however complicated the film is in its view of him, it's also a love song to his legacy, and that it's probably the best thing that will ever be out there about him in terms of humanizing him and celebrating his genius, and also, frankly, the film leaves the impression that I believe there’s a reasonable doubt. And I can't exonerate him, but I would like it to be 100 percent clear he killed her before I’m willing to believe he's guilty.
How do you feel about creating a "love song" to the legacy of someone many people think is a murderer?
I am going to be criticized for seeming to roll over and let him say anything, but I was interested in finding out what it felt like to be Phil, so to that extent, I let him be Phil. It wasn't my interest to evaluate him; it was literally an act of empathy. That’s something you can do with film that’s hard to do with another medium. You cannot discount the amazing soundtrack he gave a generation. I don’t want his legacy to be completely obscured, so I’m just trying to add to the stuff that's out there, and add a little balance. It doesn't excuse what he’s done or not done, but people are complicated, and life is complicated, I'm interested in the complexity.
Do you think there are still any Phil Spector-like mercurial genius characters working now?
James Cameron has that kind of control freak genius on a vast scale. And a lot of people come out of working with him hating him. But you have to hand it to him. "Avatar" is an act of megalomania, which happens to enrich our culture. And the same thing happened with Phil; he’s in the studio, he’s a megalomaniac and it enriches our culture. And I don’t know Cameron, but why do you have to be a nice guy if after you're dead, people are going to talk about "Avatar" in 100 years? The question is: What’s the difference between the art and the artist, what’s the difference between dancer and dance. And Phil is the most extreme example of that.
Besides offering the songs, what do you think Phil Spector’s legacy is?
He elevated the idea of production. He created the idea that there’s more than just recording a song and putting it out. It’s about how you record it. That's stayed with the business. He pushed pop music to where it could be argued that it was art. And obviously the Beatles took it further, and a whole slew of brilliant people have taken it further. But it was a big shift: It wasn’t disposable anymore.
And the Beatles only pushed it further when they began to utilize the recording studio.
He calls himself a revolutionary, and we do think of the music between Elvis and at least the end of the Beatles as a revolutionary movement, and he was one of the big warriors.
Do you think that sort of revolutionary aspect can exist now? Or that things can still be pushed forward?
I think things come in waves. I believe in music, I look for new artists who give me a sense that my life depends on listening to it. The stuff that picks you up by the neck and swings you around the room. Like the way that there's nothing so profoundly truthful as that moment when you know your lover's "lost that loving feeling." It’s so horribly raw and true. I believe that popular music is the achievement of the human experiment. We've found something that’s not possible for anyone else to make. It goes somewhere that humans can't articulate without music.
And Phil Spector is central to that?
Yeah, for his own contorted reasons.
Justin Sullivan @'Salon'
Twilight Zone / A night in Hebron
The scars speak for themselves: a scorched hole in the middle of his forehead, like a mark of Cain, two more burn holes on his right hand and one on his left arm. The scratches on his face and arm have already healed. That's what remains from the night on which soldiers decided to have a little fun with Salah Rajabi, a student in the 12th grade at the Tareq School in Hebron.
It's not the first time soldiers have beaten him up. There have been no fewer than 12 previous attacks. The most serious of them occurred in 2006, when soldiers broke the boy's shoulder and he was hospitalized. In December 2008, he was arrested with his two brothers on suspicion of stone throwing and released after 10 days. On another occasion he was arrested and released on bail of NIS 1,000. But this was the scariest attack of all, with the burning cigarettes on his flesh, the penknife that cut into his face and a mysterious pill the soldiers made him swallow by force, which frightened him more than anything else.
Another "Clockwork Orange" night in Hebron, in Israeli-controlled Area H2, which has been almost totally abandoned by the Palestinian residents for fear of the settlers and the Israel Defense Forces. Another display of wildness by soldiers, who thought that undercover of darkness they could do as they pleased. The IDF Spokesman made do this week with an appallingly laconic response: "The complaint that was filed with the police will be transmitted to the office of the military advocate general and after it is examined a decision will be made on how to proceed." Whatever.
Rajabi, 19, is trying to complete his matriculation exams. He comes from a poor family of 19 children, from two mothers. Every day after school he goes to his sweets stand, peddling cheap baklava in front of his house. He was there on June 14, too. There was no school that day, because of the exams. In the afternoon he went to his stand and by 10 P.M. he had sold all his wares. He then set out to visit his sister, who, like her husband, is deaf and muteHe is a hefty young man, muscular but shy, his voice soft. His older brother, Kaad, sits next to him, to support him. His sister's home isn't far from where he lives. As he walked up the street, which is partially lit and partially dark, an IDF Jeep, coming from the direction of the stonemasons' industrial zone, suddenly pulled up next to him. The soldier sitting next to the driver opened the door and asked to see his ID card.
The driver recognized him immediately. "Is it you?" he asked. Maybe he's considered a troublemaker, though he has never been convicted of anything. Two other soldiers, who were sitting in the back seat, got out of the Jeep and moved toward him. They pushed him forcefully into the vehicle. Rajabi says he did not resist. He was frightened. They made him sit on the floor of the Jeep, in the back, but did not tie his hands or blindfold him, which is standard procedure in making an arrest.
The soldiers lit cigarettes: four soldiers and four cigarettes in one military Jeep with a Palestinian detainee on the floor, driving through the streets of Hebron, which overnight turned into Marlboro country. The Jeep kept moving, when suddenly one of the soldiers sitting in the back placed the burning cigarette against Rajabi's forehead. While Rajabi was trying to recover from the pain and shock, the soldier sitting next to the driver pulled Rajabi's arm forward and stuck his cigarette twice into the palm of the youth's right hand. Here are the holes. The soldiers cursed him; he's ashamed to repeat what they said. Then the other soldier in the back seat grabbed his left arm and jabbed his burning cigarette deep into it. Here is the hole. Only the driver puffed away tranquilly and did nothing.
Like all games, it's not over till it's over. Now the soldier in the back who was the first to brand Rajabi with a cigarette took out a penknife, one of those with which soldiers pierce the plastic handcuffs of their prisoners, and held it against Rajabi's right cheek. Rajabi was deathly afraid. The soldier cut his cheek across its whole length and then worked on his left arm as well. Not a very deep cut, but blood flowed from his face. He wiped it away with his shirt.
Throughout, the Jeep kept going. They reached a dark, empty lot in the Jebel Juhar area. The driver stopped and turned off the engine. The four soldiers got out and ordered their victim to kneel on the ground. He did as they commanded. They grabbed his head and forced his mouth open, Rajabi relates. One soldier took out a pill and stuffed it into Rajabi's mouth. They held his mouth open until they were certain he had swallowed the bitter pill. Then they threw him to the ground, got into the Jeep and sped off.
Rajabi lay there in the dark, exhausted and in a panic, blood on his face and arm. In a few minutes he pulled himself together, got up and made his way to the home of relatives about 300 meters from the empty lot. It was midnight. He knocked on the door. His shirt was dirty from the ground and stained with his blood. Opening the door in his pajamas, Ahmed Rajabi was appalled to see his distraught relative. He later testified that this was what happened to Musa Abu Hashhash, a fieldworker of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
"What happened to you?" Ahmed asked Salah Rajabi, and he told him how the soldiers had stopped him, burned him with cigarettes, cut him with a knife and forced him to swallow a pill. The two called Kaad, Salah's brother, who lives close by.
At this stage, Rajabi felt himself losing consciousness. He was certain it was because of the pill. Kaad arrived immediately and took his brother to Aliya Hospital in the city. On the way, he relates, his brother passed out. In the hospital his stomach was flushed, but the physicians told Kaad they did not have the equipment to determine what the pill was. When his brother woke up in the morning, Kaad relates, he began to attack everyone in sight in a fit of rage or fear.
Rajabi was injected with a tranquilizer and sent home. Since then he has not taken any more exams or returned to his baklava stand. Last week he filed a complaint with the Hebron police, complaint no. 230003/2010. The IDF, as we saw, is looking into it.
Gideon Levy @'Haaertz'
Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation
By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Indigenous Ecuadoreans Share Oil Spill Experiences with Gulf Coast Communities
Last night, four Indigenous and community leaders from Ecuador arrived in very steamy New Orleans to share their experiences with the long-term impacts of oil pollution with communities dealing with the tragic BP oil spill that continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico.
As the Chevron in Ecuador blog reports:
Four very different people arrived last night in New Orleans on a late flight from Quito, Ecuador. One is a quiet but fierce 71-year-old grandmother with 27 grandchildren. Another is a gentle, soft-spoken man who is a leader of his Indigenous tribe from the Amazon. Another is a serious and sober man who has won worldwide acclaim for his unique work. And the last is another Indigenous man from the Amazon, who is more sharp-tongued than his traveling companion, but shares his good humor and dignified demeanor.
The four Indigenous and community leaders from Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest are on the front-lines of the nearly two-decade struggle to demand oil giant Chevron clean up the massive contaminate the company left behind in their lands. I’ve written profiles of two of them here before; Cofan leader Emergildo Criollo was in the U.S. in early March to help deliver 350,000 letters of support for cleanup in Ecuador to new Chevron CEO John Watson and campesina activist Mariana Jimenez was in Houston just a few weeks ago to speak out at Chevron’s 2010 shareholder meeting.
Continue reading
Much as Big Oil would like us to believe they are all operating within the law and to the benefit of the people, time and time again we are made aware of the enormous sacrifices made by communities around the globe in order to feed the world's obssession with oil and its products. This might be acceptable if there were no serious calamities to speak about, but instead, like broken records the same tune is dished out to our increasingly benumbed aural orifices on the quality of technology utilised by the industry. Unfortunately, there is no quality about these industries' technologies, and the short road for the fast buck is the only road to be travelled, the profits speak for themselves. I will reiterate, management and shareholders must be held accountable for the travesties that have occurred in their search for greater profits. There can be no profits when people are denied their homes, the health of their families and the destruction of their vital environments. It is time for the message to get through, that ecoterrorism as practised by Big Oil is driving the planet to extinction, and full compensation to the people affected and full regeneration of the environments decapitated is essential. To label management and shareholders as just bloody-minded and greedy is too generous, these people are daily murdering people by their actions for a fistfull of dollars, and should be facing court for their deadly, daily malevolence...........beeden
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