Taking Woodstock

Yes I know most critics slated this, but it isn't supposed to be about the concert, it's about the build up and (dis)organisation surrounding Woodstock.

If you want to hear the music watch the official film.

Of course it's a fictionalised account of what happened, but it does a pretty good job of showing a freer, more radical and dare I venture braver time.

Nowadays everything is so fucking corporate, sanitised, sterile.

The database society we live in ensures our every transaction is logged for eternity, our preferences recorded, our junk mail chosen appropriately.

I am technically a child of the 60's.

The first half seemed to be in black and white, the second in colour.

Of course as with every decade it had its own hells (Vietnam, racist segregation, oppression)

It also had some of the highest highs of the century in terms of creativity in music art, counter culture and anti-establishment action.

Where are they now?

Opting out

Is it any wonder more and more people are opting out of 'mainstream' life?

Rotten politicians, lining their own pockets; greedy bankers at the bonus trough; religious zealots saying thou shalt not...

Every election seems to produce less and less people bothering to vote and who can blame them?

Every year, the share of viewers attracted to Dennis Potter's cancer channels drops like a stone.

They don't want what marketing scheisters tell them they really must have.

They have enough intelligence to know what's good or bad for them and how to exercise choice.

They are known as anarchists.

And you're looking at one.

Chinese Whispers

Bob forbid you should have an opinion if you happen to live in China.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8489748.stm


In the land of feet binding, thou shalt not have more than one child,
none of that evil democracy searching and so on, the Chinese totalitarians are squeezing every gramme of human rights out of their people.


Nuclear capabilities aside, it is of course money/wealth/greed/trade/control/power which keeps the West cosied up to its friends in the
East


And the governments of the world do,


nothing...