February 2007 | Art & Soul
Reviews
FILM/DVD
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
By Robert Greenwald
Robert Greenwald’s latest documentary examines the crimes of private contractors in Iraq, putting all the expected vultures—Halliburton, Blackwater, Titan—under the microscope with an intensity of focus that becomes both the film’s strength and weakness.
As usual, with Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, Greenwald has done a good job of lining up interview subjects: from ordinary citizens to military personnel to former corporate employees and insiders (who are generally, by this point, very much outsiders). Unfortunately, these subjects aren’t integrated with broader analytical voices explaining the connection between the corporate crimes taking place in Iraq and the greater crime of the U.S. invasion. After all, every violent and exploitive act that takes place in Iraq goes all the way back up the line to the Commander in Chief—and has grave consequences for the Iraqi people, not just U.S. citizens.
Nevertheless, the film divulges some staggering facts: Titan’s military contracts total $20,000,000,000. Halliburton charges the government $100 per bag to do a soldier’s laundry. The second-largest single force in Iraq is—big shocker—private security. Then there are the lives lost through sheer malfeasance of private corporations, duly related in the film by loved ones left behind. And the very good question of why taxpayers are subsidizing overblown contracts to corporations to do things the military could, should and used to do on its own—from building camp facilities to interrogating prisoners. The film’s answer: big fat campaign contributions and the cross-pollination of personnel between Washington and Corporate America (Dick Cheney and Halliburton being perhaps the most famous case) keep the grubby wheels in motion. —Adrian Zupp
To view the trailer, visit iraqforsale.org.
Humanity Ascending: A New Way Through Together, Part 1: Our Story
Featuring Barbara Marx Hubbard
After coming to terms with the initial distraction of futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard’s eerily disembodied talking head as she discusses her theories of conscious evolution, this documentary’s stunning images—meant to answer the question Hubbard has pondered since adolescence (what is the good in humankind’s new powers?)—will mesmerize you.
In this 40-minute DVD, the first in a forthcoming series, Hubbard says that nature, through a pattern of crisis after crisis, has kicked life up the evolutionary spiral toward ever-greater complexity and consciousness. Single-celled organisms enjoyed great success until eventual overpopulation and depleted resources threatened their extinction. Once the chlorophyll molecule learned to capture energy from the sun, amoebic disaster was averted and groups of cooperating cells became plants and animals.
With the leap to Homo sapiens (“the one who knows that he knows”), human consciousness was born. And so the pattern repeats: a young species starts out competitive with its own kind, consumes its environment, then encounters limits to growth and a crisis that can’t be resolved with more of the same.
Having arrived at the stage of gobbling up our environment, we can now learn to cooperate, or destroy ourselves. But unlike the previous crises that sparked transformation, this time we can consciously evolve: we can choose to make the next quantum leap. Like the caterpillar that transforms into the butterfly, we carry within us the image—the DNA—of the new creatures we can become. Hubbard aims to hold up the image that will pull us to our future. —Jaye Christensen
To view the trailer, visit barbaramarxhubbard.com
BOOKS
The Kabbalah Book of Sex: And Other Mysteries of the Universe
By Yehuda Berg
(Kabbalah Centre Books)
The Kabbalah Book of Sex sets out to explain the basic principles of Kabbalah, the origin of the universe, the meaning of life, the secret to mind-blowing orgasms and how all that interrelates.
Sound complicated? Not in author and rabbi Yehuda Berg’s hands. This straightforward book is playful and infinitely readable, with short chapters, modern fonts and descriptive graphics throughout. Using testimonials, lists and even rhyming couplets to simplify the lofty concepts, Berg is as accessible as his tone is conversational.
And the concepts themselves are interesting: Sex is, he writes, fundamentally, a spiritual act. When done correctly, it’s the best way to connect with the divine. Therefore, we should take steps to have sex “the right way” (for the purpose of sharing with a partner you care about, avoiding infidelity, bringing the woman to orgasm first, etc.) not because of morality—which Kabbalah has nothing to do with—but in order to make our sex more transcendent.
The book isn’t an explicit how-to sex manual, and, in fact, sometimes feels more like an advertisement for Kabbalah (Look! Kabbalah says you can have sex!) than a book about sex at all. But the book gives practical advice for how to apply Kabbalistic principles to your sex life—from resisting flirting with your secretary to meditating on Hebrew excerpts. While The Kabbalah Book of Sex probably won’t be the be-all-end-all of sex manuals (or even Kabbalah primers), it’s thought-provoking and insightful enough to engage meaningful contemplation and self-discovery. —Molly Freedenberg
Truth Heals
By Deborah King
(Influence Press)
As a child, Deborah King suffered from chronic tonsillitis and teeth grinding; as a teenager she developed illnesses related to her digestive and reproductive organs; as an adult, she fell prey to manic-depression, alcoholism and finally, at age 29, cancer. Her body, she says, “became a creative outlet, a painter’s canvas for the pain I couldn’t speak or express any other way.” That pain and its resulting physical manifestations had its roots in what she calls the “truth that could not be told.” Her book, Truth Heals, postulates that by telling our truth and practicing forgiveness around that truth, we can relieve life-long psychic burdens and cure ourselves of physical ones as well.
King acknowledges that the concept “the truth shall set us free” is not new, but Truth Heals provides a fresh and accessible way of looking at the rather worn cliché. The principle underlying Truth Heals is that everything that happens to us is stored in our body’s seven energy fields. In King’s case, “everything that happened” included being mentally and verbally abused by her mother and sexually abused by her father and her priest. King, a former corporate attorney who now has a Ph.D. in healing science, lays out her cure in seven chapters, one for each of the seven major energy centers in the human body. The text includes selections from King’s journal, mapping her recovery from cancer through energy healing, as well as anecdotes describing the treatment and recovery of her patients. The checklist at the end of each chapter provides a jumping off place for reflecting on what secrets we may be protecting and what price those secrets are extracting in terms of our physical health. —Tricia Cambron
To get a copy, visit truthheals.com.
MUSIC
Nine Horses
Snow Borne Sorrow
(Samadhisound)
Nine Horses arrives in the U.S. fresh from garnering rave reviews across the UK and Europe, including Germany’s prestigious Bestenliste award (closer to a Pulitzer than a Grammy). The band is fronted by Brit legend David Sylvian, a wounded romantic who made the unlikely transition from 1980s pop stardom to respected experimental artist, working with the likes of Robert Fripp. Here, Sylvian joins his brother Steve Jansen, whose jazzy drum work lays a cool Miles Davis/Gil Evans feel to the set. The jazz element is underscored by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s sparse Bill Evans-style piano fills, and the striking playing of a host of star acoustic soloists. To this, Sylvian and Bernd Friedman layer in dreamy electronic and world music flourishes, casting dark yet sumptuously otherworldly shadows across the songs.
The title Snow Borne Sorrow should clue you in to the fact that all is not well in Sylvian’s world. A practicing Buddhist, Sylvian matches each note of grace, love and beauty with one of pain, confusion and horror. On “Atom and Cell,” an immigrant whose home is destroyed is forced into prostitution in the West. Sylvian followers her anguished plea to God (“Where is the Poetry?”) with a recitation of some of our world’s most precious natural treasures. “The Librarian” closes the album on an unabashedly romantic note, recalling the scenes of snowbound lovers hiding from the war in Dr. Zhivago. The song—like the entire album—is one of the finest to be released in the last few years. —Nick Dedina
To get a copy, visit samadhisound.com.
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