The Unorthodox Website Blog

It is 20 years since Socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern/Central Europe started to collapse. I have written extensively on this blog and on my other site (see link to The Unorthodox Website) about this, but here I want to look at it from a slightly different angle.

The immediate cause of the collapse of the system was, ironicallly, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’; ‘openness’ and ‘restructuring’. Both came far too late to save Soviet Socialism, and in fact had the opposite effect. The final nail in its coffin was the hard-line coup against Gorbachev’s reforms in August 1991, when already the Soviet ‘empire’ had disintegrated, with the Baltic States leaving the Soviet Union, East Germany reunited with (or some would argue ’annexed’ by) West Germany, and the other Eastern/Central European abandoning Socialism. Even the Yugoslav federation, not part of the Soviet ‘empire’, was starting to break up into warring nation states.

Capitalism and Socialism are two fundamentally opposed political, economic and social systems.

The best comedy is often politically very incorrect, and therefore in this day and age rarely allowed. Think of all the great comedy on TV in the past, and you realize that, when at its funniest, it was poking fun at foreigners, mothers-in-law, women in general, certain ethnic groups or minorities.

Yesterday I saw Sacha Baron Cohen for the very first time (having heard about his Ali G. and Borat characters, but never really seen them). It was his new film ‘Bruno’ which has been panned by the critics, and which is not popular with cinema audiences, but I and the friend I went with thought it was hilarious.

True gays and other groups, such as born-again Christians, were the butt of some very off-color jokes, but this is what made it so funny.

For as long as I can remember I myself have done characterizations to entertain people I know, and they are nearly all what would be considered politically incorrect nowadays.

Republic of Cyprus flag

Turkish Republic of North Cyprus flag

A Greek-Cypriot friend asked if I was going on the demonstration today. I asked: what demonstration? About what?  Apparently this is the annual demonstration against the so-called Turkish invasion of Cyprus, but the friend explained it is mainly to call for adequate compensation for those who lost homes, land and family members in the events of 1974.

I don’t actually buy this argument, as the demo is plainly anti-Turkish. A genuinely impartial demo would be by both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and sympathizers, against continued British imperialist occupation of large parts of the island, and for a settlement including adquate compensation for both Turkish and Greek Cypriots who lost homes, land and family members in what I still believe was a NATO-organized plot to divide Cyprus and overthrow a pro-Soviet Makarios government.

(Click on the Pyongyang buildings pictures to enlarge them)

Flag of the DPRK (North Korea)

Sound like a utopia? According to Wikipedia this is what citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea enjoy. Not by any means the most liberal country in the world, in fact an isolated Stalinist backwater immersed in the personality cult of Kim Jong-Il and his deceased father Kim Il-Sung, President for Eternity. The DPRK is the only country in the world with a dead man as President.

But there are always two sides to every story, and whilst the capitalist West always did emphasize the downsides of Socialist states, the facts are that many citizens of these countries were happy living in a society where they had few worries and were looked after by the State from cradle to grave.

It amuses me when the younger generation think they are so cool because they use texting, IM, email, etc. to send each other messages, using abbreviated language like ‘It wld b gr8 2cu’. A group of people were doing this decades ago, we were called telegraph or telex operators. The technology was virtually the same.

By wireless or lines similar to phone lines we were communicating all around the world instantly, often having two way conversations using abbreviated text similar to that used by those texting today.

Emails and Instant Messages received on computers are simply the old telexes now available to all, instead of only telex operators. The main difference is that telex messages were sent/received on a teleprinter rather than a computer, printed out instantaneously at the sending and receiving stations, which could be in UK and Australia for instance. But certainly by the 1980s telex machines incorporated VDU screens.

As we entered July the weather was hot, and I was off to the annual Wildest Cats In Town rock’n'roll Weekender at Pakefield, Lowestoft on Friday July 3rd. This weekender always clashes with Gay Pride, but for me there is no contest – rock’n'roll always wins. Not all gay men like Kylie Monogue and all the rest of the stuff they put on the Pride stage, nor are we all exhibitionists who like to march thru the streets with the arse hanging out the back of leather chaps shouting out obscenities to shock onlookers, or to outrage the public in some other way. In fact it was these exhibitionists, doing gay men and women no favors at all, which made my life-partner and myself decide to go on no more gay marches long before he died in 1991.