Sex and the City II....Brilliantly Demolished by Mark Kermode

I have despised 'Sex and the City' since I first had the misfortune of having seen parts of it when it was on the TV. I note that a second film has been made, and I know that not having seen it I should not participate in slagging it off...Yes I know that I am not part of the target market, but there is an authenticity to Mark Kermode's criticism that suggests to me that I would in all likelihood find myself in complete agreement with him..

That apart I just have to admit that this outpouring by Mark Kermode, is despite his promise NOT to indulge in a rant, is one of the highest class rants I have heard in recent times....and boy that film sounds like it thoroughly deserved it....Yet otherwise reasonably intelligent women will still go and see it....It is one of many aspects of human life that is a complete mystery to me, the older I become,  the more mysterious and puzzling certain aspects of human life and culture become....

Anti-Communism....Or How to Turn Heroes into Villains

Two hundred captive Nazi military banners and standards were chosen out of  thousands , and paraded in front of the people of the USSR during the Great Victory Parade in Red Square in  Moscow on the 24th June 1945...British YCL General Secretary George Waterhouse explains the background behind the decision of the Polish government to ban the dissemination of "communist symbolism" and charts the growing rise of anti-communism across Europe

 "Last month US, French and British troops marched across Moscow's Red Square in a Victory Day parade to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the defeat of fascism in EuropeYet elements within the European Union are currently embarking on an anti-communist crusade that seeks to equate communism with nazi fascism, as part of a much wider offensive against any opposition to the neoliberal agenda.

This gross distortion of history has at its heart a revisionism that attacks the role of communists and socialists while, at the same time, downplaying the crimes of fascism.

Revisionist historians, most notably Niall Ferguson, have claimed that the "blame" for the second world war should be equally shared by the Soviet Union and nazi Germany. Ferguson has stated that Stalin was "as much an aggressor as Hitler." However, attempts to equate communism and fascism hint that the former was worse than the latter.

In history lessons in schools across Britain children are taught a module on the "great dictators" where they study Hitler, Stalin and Fidel Castro. Communism, we are taught, is worse than nazism because, according to figures attained by dubious and ahistorical methodology, it is "responsible" for the deaths of more people.

This outrageous claim has been supported by "historian" Orlando Figes who described the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact as "the licence for the Holocaust." This view of the second world war is complete nonsense. It is a disgraceful insult to the great sacrifices made by the Soviet people, partisans and ordinary people across Europe in pursuit of the defeat of fascism.

How can a conscious genocide carried out along racial lines by death camps be compared to communism?

For all its faults the Soviet Union built an egalitarian society that provided top-quality health, education, cultural activities and employment for all its citizens. The Soviet Union sought to end the violent racism and anti-semitism that traditionally plagued Russian society as well as to bring about the emancipation of women by introducing unparalleled childcare provision and enforcing equ

The socialist camp provided crucial assistance to national liberation and anti-colonialist movements across the globe. The Soviet Union's contribution to this struggle has been recognised by Nelson Mandela among others.

On June 8 the Polish government will implement an amendment to the penal code criminalising the dissemination of "communist symbolism." Anyone who "produces, perpetuates, imports, stores, possesses, presents, carries or sends a printout, a recording or other object" carrying "communist or other totalitarian symbolism" would be punished with up to two years in prison.

Not only would this mean the banning of the international symbol of the communist movement - the hammer and sickle - but also the five-pointed red star, a symbol used by many socialists and social democrats across the world.

From the pronouncements made by government ministers and other right-wing politicians in Poland it is likely that the ban could also extend to other symbols and icons including pictures of Che Guevara and Lenin on T-shirts and posters.

This latest piece of anti-communist repression follows a wave of similar legislation across Europe. Bans on communist symbols have already been implemented in Hungary and Lithuania, while attempts and similar legislation have been pursued in Slovakia and many other countries in eastern Europe.

In 2006 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution that attempted to condemn communism as a "totalitarian" ideology. Speakers denounced the existence of "monuments, street names and other external symbols associated with the history of communism." The PACE resolution also called on all communist and post-communist parties of the Council of Europe member countries "to revise the history of communism and of their own history and unequivocally condemn them."

In 2007 the Czech government outlawed the Communist Youth Union because of its support for public ownership of the means of production. The Czech government has also attempted to outlaw its parent party the Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia - a party with mass popular support that finished second in the 2004 European Parliament elections and continues to be an influential party in the Czech parliament.

In 2009 Moldovan anti-communists organised riots across the country after the Moldovan Communist Party won the election. In the Baltic republics anti-communism is being used in order to rehabilitate nazism. Veterans of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS now parade through the streets of Riga and Estonian parliamentarians have honoured those who served the Third Reich as "fighters for independence."

Most shamefully, Nato and EU member Lithuania opened a war crimes investigation into four Jewish veterans of the country's partisans. Efraim Zuroff, the famous nazi hunter, has stated: "People need to wake up to what is going on. This attempt to create a false symmetry between communism and the nazi genocide is aimed at covering up these countries' participation in mass murder."

There are two elements to this anti-communist offensive by the European Union.

The first and most predominant element is an attempt to whitewash the crimes of capitalism and to silence opposition to the commitment of the European Union to capitalism and imperialism.

It is no accident that this upswing in the rising tide of anti-communism comes at a time when millions of people across Europe are being mobilised in opposition to the swingeing cuts being pursued by the neoliberalist EU to fund the bailout of the banks and financial institutions.

Communists across Europe have assumed a prominent role in this struggle against an intensification of competition, the surge in privatisation, and the ripping up of trade unionist's rights. Those labour movement battles that have seen most success contain a cohort of communists at their heart.

The great anti-communist crusade is inseparable from the European Union's enforcement of austerity measures across the continent. The campaign to outlaw communism also runs hand in hand with the expansion of Nato into eastern Europe. Along with the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq imperialism is conducting repression on a massive scale in the name of "democracy" and "freedom."

This historical revisionism is being used by a rising tide of fascists to justify attacks on immigrants, socialists and communists. Ultimately, these measures act as a catalyst for the full rehabilitation of nazism.

This disgraceful censorship contradicts the "democratic ideals" professed by the European Union.

It is incumbent on all communists, socialists and progressives to oppose this latest move in the anti-communist offensive. "

Dan and Dan...The Daily Mail Song

I spent many years when working in the UK being totally astonished at the amount of people in the UK who seemed to think that the rabid right wing bile pumped out by the right wing middle-class tabloid the Daily Mail was in some sense a reflection of reality.
I was delighted and very tickled by this video that these comics have put together on the subject of the Daily Mail, the two who are apparently both called Dan, seem to have a developed a nice line in that understated humour that can be so devastatingly funny.

Good also to see a couple of new faces who are using Facebook and the internet to good purpose in promoting their humour...I wish them both the very best, one of the funniest things I have seen for a while...here's their sketch on taxation...


You can keep in touch with their video output by logging on to their Youtube channel at
http://www.youtube.com/dananddanfilms
Or their blogpage at http://www.dananddan.com/

Spread the word these guys could go far.....( ha ha) ( or this GUY ;) )

Ireland Requires Political Actions Such as These....

I have always been an admirer of the KKE (The Communist Party of Greece), I encountered the KKE and the KNE when at University in Britain in the early 1980's and was always impressed by their combination of militancy, imaginative political actions, and a sound theoretical grasp of complex political situations.

Far from being cowed by the enormous intimidation being applied to the people of Greece by the forces of international finance capital, they have reacted in a truly heroic and imaginative manner which points the finger of blame squarely at those responsible for the economic collapse since 2008.

In common with here in Ireland, in Greece strenuous attempts are being made to make the ordinary working people pay for the crisis created by the greed of the bankers and property developers. Now it is 'the markets' and 'bond investors' who must be heeded at all costs. Who are these if not the investing arms of the same financial structures which wrought this havoc in the first place.

Here in Ireland, I was depressed to see that Sinn Féin had mounted a nationwide campaign against mass unemployment, which consisted of Sinn Féin activists attending job centres and getting jobless workers to sign post cards of protest to the Government. That deluge of post cards is really going to have the gombeens leading Fianna Fáil and the Green party quaking in their boots...

We need militant and imaginative street based campaigns of the sort undertaken recently by the KKE and depicted in this video. There is no shortage of anger out there but the much commented upon passivity of the Irish public's response has been determined by a complete absence of any imaginative and colourful means to focus that anger. Instead the anger in Ireland is being internalised, with the repetition by the right wing media and the corporate media pundits of the mantra 'We are Where we Are' (WAWWA), which is a bit like the sort of thing yu might say to a toddler that has'nt quite made it in time to the potty...'never mind love ,we' ll clean it up, sure nothing can be done about it now', the subtext of which is that it IS in fact your fault. As psychologists tell us, internalised anger merely prompts depression. This is taking the form here in Ireland of sullen resentment and resignation. Which is precisely the response that our corporate masters would wish for.

Organisations such as Sinn Féin and the Labour Party should be devising ways to channel the anger that exists, or seem increasingly irrelevant as the 'WAWWA' brigade dominate the public discourse here in Ireland. Hats off to Dr Chris Sparks of Sligo IT in the 'Ghost Estates' RTE documentary last night for articulating the sort of sincere anger and exasperation that spokespeople of Sinn Féin and the Labour Party need to be expressing.

Though small this action recently by Eírigi is to be congratulated for its imaginativeness and its militancy, if anyone doubts that it was supported just listen to the car horns hooting as Dublin motorists voiced their approval..


What has happened here in Ireland is the biggest treason ever committed against the people of this country since the Civil War. It demands an adequate political response, Sinn Féin has the organisational capacity, why not mount a national three pronged cross country march of the unemployed from the South, North West and South East along the lines of the Unemployed marches of the 1930s and 1980's in the UK?

Collateral Murder in Iraq-Definitely NOT for the Faint Heated...

The following video was something that I watched with a growing sense of absolute bone chilling horror, I was an opponent of the US invasion of Iraq, but the political stance of opposition is a stance of the intellect. This footage is chilling, and evokes a horror of the heart and the soul, because it is clear that the perpetrators of the murders, clearly are deriving some warped satisfaction at the killings, and also have ceased to see their targets as real people. The process of dehumanization is a prerequisite of atrocity. I wonder if those who see war as a sort of video game should look at this footage, it is the ultimate sick video 'game'.
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack.

The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. For further information please visit the special project website www.collateralmurder.com.

Greek Cops Hospitalize Manolis Glezos WWII Anti-Nazi Veteran

I hope that 87 year old comrade Manolis Glezos is recovering from his ordeal at the hands of the Greek anti-riot police. The veteran hero of the fight against nazi occupation of Greece

(who in 1959 had a Soviet postage stamp issued to commemorate his actions see below)

received a direct spray of tear gas in to his eyes in the recent anti-government austerity protests in Athen. One Greek commentator pithily observed

The point is that Glezos , fell wounded in front of [the Monument of] the Unknown Soldier, struck by a greek employee of the Greek State, at the same time that the Head of [that] State was begging in Germany

On May 30, 1941, he and Apostolos Santas climbed on the Acropolis and tore down the Swastika, which had been there since April 27, 1941, when the Nazi forces had entered Athens. That was the first resistance act that took place in Greece, and probably among the very first ones in Europe. It inspired not only the Greeks, but all subjected people, to resist against the occupation, and established them both as two international anti-Nazi heroes.
The Nazi regime responded by sentencing Glezos and Santas to death in absentia. Glezos was arrested by the German occupation forces on March 24, 1942, and he was subjected to imprisonment and torture. As a result of this treatment, he was gravely affected by tuberculosis. He was arrested on April 21, 1943 by the Italian occupation forces and spent three months in jail. In February 7, 1944 he was arrested again, this time by Greek Nazi collaborators. He spent another seven and a half months in jail, until he finally escaped on September 21 of the same year.

I only hope that Manolis recovers from his ordeal, and sincerely hope that every one of us are able to display such vim and vitality when we reach our 87th year!

Edward Upward's Complete Works Now Available for Electronic Download

I was delighted to see that relatives of the late Marxist writer Edward Upward have put together a superb commemorative website, which provides a definitive source of data and information connected to Edward Upward.

The writer fully acknowledges with gratitude material provided in the piece below derived from the Edward Upward website described. I wrote earlier at the time of Edward death about my connection with him and my great regard for his work HERE

Of particular interest to readers of 'Unrepentant Communist' will be the opportunity to download in its entirety 'the Spiral Ascent' dialectical triad of novels, set in the period of the 1930's, 1940's, and the 1950's and early 1960s. Charting the developments both artistically and politically surrounding the Communist teacher and writer Alan Sebbrill. Picture above the Battle of Cable street, antifascist activity is described in wonderful detail in the first section of the triad, 'In the Thirties'.

You can access the Spiral Ascent and download in its entirety electronically here

Edward Upward was a writer of novels and short stories from the 1920s until into the present century. His literary associates included Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender. Upward's early and late stories often involve a fantastical element, whilst his trilogy of novels The Spiral Ascent recalls the events and atmosphere of his overlapping literary, political and educational worlds. The question of how art should relate to real life and, more specifically, how a socialist can combine artistic creativity with political commitment, is central to his mature work.

Although The Spiral Ascent is not strictly autobiographical, most of the characters and incidents in it are very similar to real-life counterparts, with Alan and Elsie being based on Upward and his wife Hilda, and Richard on Isherwood. One of the obvious divergences from reality is that Alan is a poet in the book rather than a writer of prose.

In the Thirties recounts Alan Sebrill's attempts to write and find love, his personal crisis, and then his involvement in the Communist Party, his job as a teacher and his marriage to Elsie. The opening chapter by the seaside sees the young writers Alan and Richard glorying in language and nature but also deliberately making contact with 'the so-called lower classes'. This may seem strange until the reader realises that they have had the same isolated, privileged upbringing as the 'poshocrats' they despise. Later in the book we find Alan sometimes fighting to suppress some lingering snobbish attitudes, but he doesn't waver in his commitment to the side of the workers.

Later chapters give a vivid picture of the activities of CP members, including opposition to Oswald Mosley's blackshirts and routine leafleting. Upward is not afraid to put the opinions of the time into Alan's mouth without the benefit of hindsight, including those showing his ignorance of the extent of Stalin's crimes. He thus provides a truthful account of the events, atmosphere and his own feelings of the 1930s. This is one of the most notable achievements of the trilogy, and one which is partly a result of Upward retaining his revolutionary politics. Many writers about the period who were on the left in the thirties moved to the right during the Cold War and easily fell into cynicism or opposition to their earlier ideas, whereas Upward is still able to recognize the genuine motivations and positive results of the actions of ordinary CP members despite the effects of Stalinism on the Party. The final chapter closes shortly before the war begins, with comrades on a walk in the country, and includes what is effectively a prose ode to trees, reflecting Upward's own love of the natural world as well as his observational and descriptive powers.

Whereas In the Thirties has Alan and Elsie going along with the Party's condemnation of a dissident member, the subject of The Rotten Elements is their own disagreement with the Party's post-war policy in Britain, which they believe is a reformist betrayal of Leninism. This involves them in a theoretical confrontation with the Party leadership in which their reasoned arguments are arrogantly dismissed. The novel soon begins to take on some of the colouring of a political thriller. There is good cause for paranoia given both the hostility of the Party leadership and state surveillance, although Elsie has a more level-headed reaction to events than Alan, who has a tendency to emphasize the ominous.

Upward's intermittent discussion of religion in the trilogy features strongly in The Rotten Elements, where Alan and Elsie are shown having conversations with their children about Christianity and a Communist ex-minister plays a prominent part. Whilst Alan sometimes compares his attitudes to those of a religious person, he has long been an atheist and does not impute any religious aspect to Marxism itself.

In the final volume of the trilogy, No Home But the Struggle, Alan (like Upward as he was writing) has retired from teaching and is able to write full-time. The narration is now in the first person and the book is full of reminiscences of Alan's childhood and university days, told in a relaxed, Proustian manner. These are interspersed with accounts of Alan and Elsie's political activities in the post-war decades, particularly as members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. But the dominant thread, as throughout The Spiral Ascent, is Alan's ongoing struggle to write poetry which will be both artistically truthful and contribute to the fight for a better world.