This is a blog for friends and family members to get a wee report of the things ive seen and my personal opinions about them.It is mostly inconsequencial shit barely rescued by a mild seasoning of spellchecker.
Members of the public are welcome , as long as you promise not to get offended.
Kortney was born in Compton and grew up with an inspiring relative who encouraged her hobbies and early interests allowing an active fertile artistic mind to develop.In this series of lectures which are well attended because the students get course credit for simply turning up , a great system to fill out venues , Kortney give a lecture of her early film making development and plans for the future.
An especially interesting project for her future film is a study of crying.It looks to be a very important contribution when it eventually comes out.You can see an emotional preview in the clip below:
This is a very emotionally engaging and draining documentary that one has to watch to see world poverty is not an accident but an enivitable policy driven byproduct of the globalised system driving a long history of capitalism and exploitation of the worlds resources as well as populations.This is an old continuous process which is leaving levels of efficiency which are resulting today in the deaths of 1000 children every hour,every day through either stravation or denial of basic medicines for easily curable conditions.
Following on Eduardo Galeanos brilliantly written history of the european exploitation of South America the director films what should be the most notorious lanmark to the lows of Human Civilisation , the vast Silver Mountain mone at Potosi , which is the scene of emence european wealth ( the amount of silver produced from this mine complex alone resulted in the silver reserves of europe increasing by a factor of 4 from all the reserves aquired and held in Europe for all the centuries before) and monumental Human Suffering ( the number of People to die at this mine is estimated at no less than 8 Million , more than died in the Holocaust and with a Rwanda thrown in for good measure) , all dying not as the result of war or ethnic cleansing , but to the efficient transfer of resources and wealth to Europe.
Even today , the transfer of wealth from the Poor ( South World) to the Rich ( G20)is to the tune of 200 Billion dollars going from the poor to the rich.GATT ; World Bank ;IMF are a membrane which has allowed this type of negative flow to occur as they encourgae poorer countries to open up thier markets to established corporate companies of the G20 thus suffocating domestic cottage industries than could provide wealth for the local communities.On top of that poor countries are made to privatise large vital resouurces such as the utilities and water , as well as give away natural resources at bottom basement rates , in order to qualify for debt and aid which these countries would not need if they had favourable non-subsidised access to the very Western Nations that preach non-tarrif barriers.
In the video below the director gives an interview outlining some of the barriers and disadvantagious processes which the Richer nations impose on the Poor:
And below is an example from Kenya of the practises that dis empower the People on the ground with a mixture of unfair trading practises and using corrupt methods to pay an unscrupulous elite to build large scale projects that are of little value to the sustenance of the local population.
There is no more a cut-throat business than the Human Rights Solidarity scene.If triple crossing and blacklisting is your modus operandi then joining a Human Rights campaign is the choice for you.
Even amongst Human Rights solidarity activist the Glasgow scene is a class above/below the rest , here the activist dont stab you in the back , looking on square in the eyes and stabbing in the neck is the way to function here , if you can bandy the words "unity" and "freespeech" whilst you do it , all the better.
But there are supreme People , individuals and organisations that rise supremely above the cock-fighting ( if you are a male); knitting ( if you are a female)and mud-wrestling to achieve the very best in making Glasgow punch well above the sum of its parts in actively promoting and supporting Universal Human Rights the World Over , making the city a centre for activists throughout the globe persuing and seeking out best practice models to take back to their own communities.
At the Very apex and all that is the very best in promoting the causes of the damned and oppressed in this world is the Glasgow Human Rights Documentary Festival , now in its 7th year.I am very honoured to be associated with this Festival in a latent background capacity.
This Festival is a genuine World Class event which elevates Glasgow to an Internationally renowned position well above the size of the City in a field so noble as the acknowledging and promotion of Justice for all unfairly treated People the world over.
You wont get better bands with the verve and raw blistering energy as Green Day.
One odd observation was Green Day are turning into a Family Band , there were many parents taking their teenage kids.Cant think of a better debut for anyone starting out.
From the very start they were scurrying around keen as you can get to get cracking into the groove.
They were on for two and a half hours , never relenting from the high octane fever pitch heights you can only get from the very best.
Major highlights of a spectacular evening included:
When i come around:
Minority:
And a video included from last night concert ive included as the person who took it was in the same part of a arena as me:
Simple intrigue , if nothing else , made a trip to see a dramatised theatrical adaptation of the classic profound John Steinbeck Novel worth missing a dire display of unimaginative ill-motivated cacophony of over-paid guys being offside on occasion and missing gilt edged chances in between.Watching Celtic is an experience best enjoyed at great distances and preferably well without eyeshot.
The best balanced review of the production is this one from the Telegraph.The production is faithful to the plot , especially the ending , though you always get the impression this Book is not transferable , whilst at the same point giving the productions its due in that there will not be any that will better it.So dont be put off if ever it comes your way.
Ma Joad comes across best , and also confirms a feeling ive had for a while she is a counter-balance to the superficial female character that is portrayed in Cormac MacCarthys " The Road".My view has always been in times of grave crisis it is the Mother that will carry the Family through the toughest of crisis and out into the other side.Though i do find both Books are ones of great hope , somewhat counter to those who fine The Road to be a harrowing tale with a pessimistic ending.
The Barrowlands is a legendary venue in the East End of Glasgow , there is no better place to see your favourite band.One world class popular folk singer , Christy Moore ,has even written a song about it and bands such as Simple Minds and U2 still recall concerts at the venue performed decades ago.I , myself , recall many fine nights seeing the likes of Robert Cray,The Alarm and REM before they became a Stadium band.
The part of town where the venue is located contains some of the oldest continuous institutions in Glasgow , it was the oldest chip shop in the City established 1884 , which was shut and the oldest pub in the city , established 1775 , which was shut , the only place that was open was Bairds bar , the kind of place you do not want to go to even if it is open unless you ascribe to the concept that dingy and under-invested is synonymous with traditional and romantic.Though one should never rubbish anyones livelihood and should have respect for genuine regulars of the pub , it is a place where 9-5 weekday workers who meekly follow the dictates of some corporate lackey suddenly turn up enmasse as posses of plastic paddys and weekend provos.
The members of the band represented a cross section of what one gets from the groups of yesteryear re-forming for todays gigging , one had the bloated look of enjoying the age of sedentary comfort ; another had the emaciated look of one who has the fondness of weed over a healthy diet ; another had the wizened look of a Keith Richards; the lead singer himself had grown older tastefully and of course the drummer was a new face replacing a member that is six foot under.
The Concert itself was very good , Echo have a precise ; economic; controlled manner of intensity which gets the job done with a tautness , no need for histrionics or showboating.The new material is of a very high calibre which sits well with their archive if not giving a new fresh value added to the material , so much so it was ironic as well as instructive the crowd were shouting for new songs from an album which is only released on the night of the gig as much as they were hankering after the sounds of the mid-eighties , a very heartwarming situation which bodes well for the bands future development.
Here is nice laid back version of Killing Moon in the manner played at the concert:
And here is version of a track from the new album:
At the time Florence Nightingale was being made into a legend of the establishment classes in the form of the lady with the lamp , an amazing career running counter to all the points and directions of civilised prevailing values as well as accepted social norms was acted out by an extraordinary character born in the plantation colony of Jamaica in circa 1805.History thereafter brought out the life of Florence Nightingale to the apex of standard historical educational curriculum height of discourse , and covered the story of the half-caste illegitimate child from a colonial outpost who rose to the very top of the public social status only to be submerged by the debris of time from the very point she died in 1881.
Only now is the special place of Mary being given the recognition it deserves , including a set place in the national educational curriculum for all primary schools in England.This lecture by the feminist orientated historical scholar Jane Robinson helped to put the neglected story of a remarkable industrious Woman into the mainstream place it deserves in the UK today.
Jane Robinson has written a biography of the unsung Mary tale of her tremendous will to achieve her goals despite systematic and stinging rejections from society and influential individuals alike.Seacole wrote a Book at the time that is widely regarded as a superbly crafted story effusing the undaunted spirit of a person that refused to be pigeon-holed or blocked by a society that was blatantly racist and well as inherently restrictive to allowing woman to use their talents to contribute to the greater good of collective society.The story is now published within the Penguin 20th classics series.
Below is a newspiece about the campaign to have a statue made in the honour of Mary Seacole on the banks of the Thames facing the Houses of Parliament.
Some Historians of the Marxist persuasion may raise an eyebrow , or go apeshit , whilst others that prefer to look at a situation from the hindsight vantage point of a century or so may look to the experience of Mary in the slightly false prism and light of her being a helpful cog in the very entity that materially and systematically forced up the very ingrained prejudicial attitude which kept her and her community from progressing to the next level , her desire to go and serve for the military in the brutal and callous suppression of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 being a disconcerting example engendering uncomfortable feelings of one victim of imperialism giving aid to the same imperial entity subjugating another set of victims , but the story of Mary Seacole should be seen in the light of an individual surmounting barriers and severe prejudicial discrimination to achieve their particular calling to the very best of their ability in a difficult restrictive age.
Certainly , as a member of a minority community will relate to very tellingly from their own experience , the journey of Mary having to freelance and privately fund her ambitions , usually from her own entrepreneurial schemes in order to achieve goals without the debilitatingly excruciating glass ceilings of a mainstream career is something all minorities in the UK will understand very deeply.Mary Seacoles contribution to where we are today should be understood and appreciated on that level.
And finally a moving tale on the discovery of the only known portrait of Mary which was unearthed at a car boot sale:
Kortney was born in Compton and grew up with an inspiring relative who encouraged her hobbies and early interests allowing an active fertile artistic mind to develop.In this series of lectures which are well attended because the students get course credit for simply turning up , a great system to fill out venues , Kortney give a lecture of her early film making development and plans for the future.
