Barbary Slave Book

 

Barbary Slave by Peter Holland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

By chance, I hit up on the printed version of "Barbary Slave", by Peter Holland.

It brought me back to a time in Europe, where their new masters captured over a million white slaves and either used them or sold them off.
The book explores the history of both the slave traders operating out of North Africa and the individuals who are taken as slaves from their villages on the European coastlines, including as far up as England and Ireland.

A very good read.

WARNING:
It involves violence, blood and death. And, it suggests the duties of a slave girl at that time in history.



View all my reviews

Can be purchased from the publisher, here:
https://www.brigand.london/books/barbary-slave

Dangerous Ice for Future Learn course

This a small script that I wrote for the Future Learn course: 
Explore Filmmaking
National Film and Television School

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-filmmaking

Planning a Scene: Short script:

INSIDE IGLOO

Private Jensen is sitting under a cold LED light looking at
a block of ice. He runs his gloved hand across the surface,
which is uneven. There is a bit of moist on the ice,
indicating that the room is warm.

OUTSIDE IGLOO

Captain Hansen is walking through a thin layer of snow
towards an igloo. He is breathing cold. He looks concerned.
The Captain gets down on all four and crawls in through the
opening on the igloo.

INSIDE IGLOO

Over the shoulder of Private Jensen who turns to look at the
opening of the igloo and sees Captain Hansen come crawling
in.

CAPTAIN HANSEN

Why have you not brought me my ice?

PRIVATE JENSEN

I don't know if it is save to give to you?

CAPTAIN HANSEN

But an order is an order!!!

PRIVATE JENSEN

Yes Sir! But we all saw how

Sergeant Olsen lost his mind when

he used the ice.

CAPTAIN HANSEN

I am not Sergeant Olsen, and I am

taking the ice!

INSIDE IGLOO

Captain Hansen picks up the ice and crawls out of the Igloo.

PRIVATE JENSEN

Enjoy your drink Sir. (and whispers

between his lips) It may be your last.

Dangerous Ice Storyboard

Butterflies & people in religious and emotional despair by @1MaxMalik #SUFP #goodread

This the review that was originally posted on the Amazon website, unfortunately they're not allowing me to post the links:

"The Butterfly Hunter" by Max Malik 

This book is beautifully written with many passionate descriptions of the people, their senses, language, food and locations. It takes us across several continents on journey in search of right and wrong, faith and extremist, love and corruption.

Normally I read Sci-fi and pop-crime/action/war thrillers. Despite all the deaths and violence "The Butterfly Hunter" is much more of a political religious romantic story that really digs into the souls and thoughts of the characters and provides an understanding for what drives them and others to the extremes, that we're all faced with in real-live today. We get much more of a vivid insight to the minds of extremist masterminds, than the government agencies who are working against them.

Coming from a very save upbringing in the countryside of my native place of Denmark where there was no pressure to join or follow any faith, if at all. The descriptions and quotes from the Quran was very new to me, and more so the whole ideology surrounding it and how its message was used for making terrorists and peace keepers out of the same mould - and not unlike how most other religeous bible and scriptures are used today.

NO! We are made to, even forced to understand and think about the fine line between practising faith and enforcing terror. It is fascinating to follow the conversion of two people; one a white middle class young woman, and the other; a drug dealer, pimp and bad son into something new. Which I (you) the reader had to decide whether one liked or disliked.

And in the end, extremist or not, it turns out that we're all human.


The book can be found on  Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Butterfly-Hunter-Max-Malik/dp/1908248602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343651232&sr=8-1

Disclosure:

If it had not been for chance meeting with the author Max Malik earlier this year, I would never have had the enjoyment of finding his book. He took part in a series of videos to encourage more dialogue.
You can see some of them here:
How Powerful are British Pakistanis? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f215NrXJI9E
Part of the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office competition: Speaking up for Pakistan: voices from the UK:
http://ukinpakistan.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/working-with-pakistan/SUFP/

A true pulling teeth out survey from #tfl, #aegon & #mayor for London

Hopefully this will help you save alot of time + bring a smile to your face.

An open letter to tfl, the Mayor & Aegon in response to their http://www.tfl-olympic-survey.co.uk/ survey email:

Dear tfl,

There should be a law against these kind of stupidity long-winded surveys – this survey is of an epic Kafkaesque proportion!

Aecom and tfl has wasted time that I’ll never get to see again in my lifetime, and that could have been spent better on watching paint dry or the Olympic torch pass by.

Frankly, every single executive within City-hall, Transport For London and Aecom should be forced to take this survey – it is utter nonsense, and will provide plenty of material for stand-up comedians for centuries to come.

Couldn’t John M. Dionisio and his friends at Aecom (who only has one public account: investor relations – so they clearly don’t know how to use a computer at that firm – or they don’t want employees to use email…), could they not just have asked:
What route are you taking on a daily basis?
Will it change because of the Olympics?
And have we done enough to help you get through London?

If there ever was a reason not to ever take a tfl survey again, then this is a good one!!!
Shame on you for wasting other peoples time!

Have a nice weekend & I am actually looking forward to a fabulous Olympic experience!

All the Best
Mads

@BBCPanorama: Murdoch's @NDS_Group alledgedly hacked @ITV

From the outset please note that I have not as of yet watched the BBC One Panorama programme: Murdoch's TV Pirates, Broadcast on Monday the 26 March 2012

According to the BBC News website the premise is that a Murdoch firm used the Thoic hacker site to target pay-TV rival http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17494723

ITV Digital's former chief technical officer, Simon Dore, told the programme that piracy was "the killer blow for the business, there is no question".
"The business had its issues aside from the piracy... but those issues I believe would have been solvable by careful and good management. The real killer, the hole beneath the water line, was the piracy. We couldn't recover from that."

My comment to that is: If you make a turd, then you get a turd!

ITV/On-Digital had really bad programming and no service for customers. In all likelihood it actually added viewers to News Corporation's programme platforms:

At the time I was living in Central London, and in my opinion On-Digital would not honour their commitment to installing a receiver on our flat, because I was on the 4th floor. I.e. any building above basement level would not be honoured, or so it felt at the time. So from the outset, I could not even watch the service.

However, ultimately it came down to bad programming, including spending over £300 Million on lower-division football. At the time it was amazing that the Digital service provider would be so stupid to think that a sport, that is only watched by 40% of the population, which again only prefers to watch the "high-value" matches on the SKY platform, would actually return any kind of value to the ITV shareholders. If that money instead had been used on entertainment and drama, the story could have been a very different one...

It goes without saying, that if NDS has acted in a criminal way to ultimately cheat English stake- & shareholders of the hit companies of the demise of ITV Digital, then those shareholders will have a Multi Million Pound claim against News Corporation.

However, one has to be careful not to jump on the current Murdoch bashing bandwagon. As much as one might not like their riches, one also has to accept that as a large Corporation it has employed a number of individuals who were either misguided in loyalty or lacked judgement - either way, it is OK to say "No" if you think that you are being asked to commit a criminal offence...

There is more excellent information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITV_Digital Where if you read the small print, you'll see that this is not the first time that NDS is accused of wrong-doing other broadcasters in Europe.

Update to @UKTesco opening a Faith store with @Dreams_Beds

A quick update to my blog from the 22nd of February about a new store with a Tesco branded theme. Since my post, the FAITH store in Watney market (yet to open) has now removed the Tesco dots and replased them with a Dreams Bed slash instead:

A true coming to gether of different brands, if ever there was one...

@UKTesco opening a new Branded store in Watney market

Why a Blog? Well it gives me the opportunity to express opinions that I couldn't possible fit into the length of a Tweet. Please allow me to apologise now, because I will still be displaying a number of dis-connected thoughts, that if read in a straight line will not be of interest to readers looking for specific topic related bloggers. On the other hand, I hope that my use of Tags will make it easier to search through.

Advertising or not to do advertising: It is no secret that I in early December 2011 went to the High Court and declared myself bankrupt (There will be much more on this subject later). I'm getting married in August and I have got a new full-time job, which both I am really enjoying - so everything is very well. However, the reality is that as a creative content provider I and more importantly, my employer has to rely more and more on sponsored content and display advertising. Hence why I'm trying it out, but not expecting great results from my small little blog :-)

Back to the headline for this blog. Note the Twitter inclusion? Yes, I do want to spread the word of every blog posted, and even better if I can have fun whilst doing it. Take a look at the following two pictures, and tell me where a brand misuse starts and stops? One of them is a new "branded" shop opening around the corner from a Tesco. One could mistakenly have thought that Tesco were moving their business into a higher circle of trading:

It reminds me of the Sony (R), who apparently managed to trademark the letters by making the "S" slightly taller than the other three letters, and thereby turning it into a distinct logo - that's the story I was told.

Quiz time. Personally I always get into trouble with certain Tesco stores just because of their rubbish service and management - last time I left the basket full of products on floor and used the exit, not passing "GO" - the last one included talking with the supervisor at Monument, who had clearly been promoted due to incompetence rather than being good at the job.

However, I do not agree with the beating that Tesco has received over using people on benefits, so here is a quiz:
In doing unpaid work experience, what's the difference between Tesco and The Guardian?
In all likelihood that at the Guardian, you get to make coffee for the boss, where-as at Tesco, you get to stack it...