A-Level Results in England and Wales were released to students and the wider public today, indicating a rise in both the number of A-grades and the number of overall passes. Now, no doubt this will be claimed by some as a fall in standards, and by others as a major achievement. There will be the traditional claim by the clueless that a 97.5% pass rate is somehow problematic, and the bizarre idea that A-levels should ‘mean the same thing’ as the old ones (what on earth does it mean to say that the A-levels my dad took in 1968, that I took in 2003 and my brother took in 2009 should be the same?).

Now, I’m no defender of the A-level and the associated university application system. I’m at my parents’ house at the moment, where my brother has just recieved his results, and my dad, who is an admissions tutor, has had one of the most stressful weeks of his life (universities find out the relevant results on Sunday so they can begin a feverish process of accepting, rejecting, and touting for spare places). The system is ridiculously designed, seemingly to  cause maximum anguish for all involved, and to create a wierd air of uncertainty, making both student and institution unsure of everything up until only a few weeks before term begins.  There is also no point in denying the growth of a culture of teaching to the exam, and of dodging teaching certain kinds of skills (such as essay writing). But, it’s important to celebrate these results for what they are: The result of the hard work of a generation of young people and teachers. Schools minister Ian Wright that “The bottom line is that post-16 education is no longer the preserve of the elite and privileged few – more students than ever before are carrying on studying until 18.” The situation is much more complex, but to the extent that it is true this too ought to be celebrated.

It is important to defend this as a good thing because a real cloud hangs over these results, and that is the brutal reality that this could be the last year of improved access to post-16 education. Already the government is asking Universities to cap or cut its student numbers, and there are major cuts already on the horizon in the Further Education Sector. This report from the University and Colleges Union makes sobering reading. There are nearly 6000 jobs currently under threat in the Higher and Further Education Sector, and this is before the cuts across the public sector that Labour and the Tories seem to be trying to out do each other with. There have already been some significant battles, for example at Doncaster College, where 300 jobs were under threat, and these are surely a taste of things to come.

During the depths of recession in the 80s there was actually a marked growth in the further education sector, with investment in things like the Youth Training Scheme to address chronic unemployment. Early signs are that no such programme is on the cards for this recession, and in fact cuts are the proposed remedy. It’s against this background that it is important that we defend the value of widening access to education. There are major fights to come in the education sector, and unless we defend this principle we will fight them with one hand behind our back.

Eastern Europe is a land of myths and legends. I don’t mean the sorts of myths that the guide books harp on about, like how Duke Gediminas founded Vilnius after being told to in a dream in the 1320s. Rather I mean the myths of the twentieth century, the successive narratives and histories that have been imposed upon the region, through revolution, Fascism, Stalinism and finally the new nationalisms.

Duke Gediminas

Lithuania’s history is fairly typical of these countries. An independent Duchy for centuries, it was briefly conquered by Sweden, merged with Poland, and by the mid 19^th Century was incorporated into the Russian Empire. Following the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty it became occupied by Germany, and in 1918 became an independent state following the end of the first World War. Throughout the 20s and 30s it quarrelled with Poland over control of Vilnius, before in 1940 it became the victim of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and the Red Army rolled in. In 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and the German Army marched quickly through it, into Russia. In 1944 the victorious Red Army marched back in. In 1945 Lithuania became the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR), and was incorporated into the the USSR. In 1991, in the death throes of the Soviet Union, Lithuania, and the other Baltic States, became independent again.

Throughout this period many different myths were created. The myth of the Workers’ State and the fabulous development it promised, the myth of the proud ethnic Lithuanians against the degenerate Jews and Gypsies or the cunning Russian occupiers, the myth of the salvation of the free market from state planned paralysis, and many others. But what is of particular interest, and particular concern, is the creation of the post 1991 national myth. If the stories the country’s museums tell is anything to go by, there is a deeply problematic story being told.

Memorial to Victims of 'Communism, Collaborators and the Red Army'

The ‘Museum of Genocide Victims’ in Vilnius is a clear example of it. This is a museum housed in a former KGB building, which offers an account of the history of the period 1940-91 which is as exaggerated as it is incomplete. For a start you would expect something called the ‘Museum of Genocide Victims’ to have something to say about Genocide; but there is nothing. The museum’s story begins in 1939, has a brief gap from 41-44, and starts again in 1944. During this period, 300,000 Lithuanians, 200,000 of them Jews, were executed by death squads or in camps. This accounted for 94% of Lithuania’s Jewish population. These figures are acknowledged, but despite the fact that they dwarf the numbers imprisoned, executed or deported by the KGB the story of the holocaust in that country is not told.

Instead there is room after room dedicated to telling the story of the repression under the USSR. Now, there was genuine repression under this regime. There was suppression of the national culture and religion, and intrusion into all sorts of aspects of people’s lives. However this begins to border on the ridiculous. The KGB had prisons! They recorded people’s conversations! They were organised hierarchically! The level of hysteria around the sorts of operations actually carried out by almost all security services creates a lot of heat but very little light on the real history.

Possibly the most objectionable bit is the section dedicated to celebrating the national resistance to the Soviet Occupation in the years immediately after the war. Again, I should stress, the creation of the LSSR and its incorporation into the USSR was not a glorious democratic process. It was a combination of sham elections and military occupation, and the people of Lithuania had every right to resist it. However, as the exhibition admits entirely without comment, most of these national heroes of the resistance had only a year earlier been fighting on the Nazi side. Much of the Lithuanian army, that took up arms against the Soviets as they invaded, had been happily collaborating with the Nazis as they executed hundreds of thousands. As you walk round you get a queasy feeling as the museum informs you that the literature of these national heroes emphasised ‘national culture and spirit’. It’s pretty clear that whilst many brave people joined this resistance, its core was fascist.

A more uplifting section is dedicated to the popular uprising which eventually won independence from the USSR. This was a genuine popular movement, including an extraordinary demonstration where people held hands from Vilnius to Tallin (602km). But it seems that those who ended up in power after these demonstrations set about creating a national myth based on anti-Russian hysteria and a blind spot for fascism. As we see fascist parties on the rise across the region, this kind of national myth can’t help.

Guest post by Jon Small

The latest character from Sacha Baron Cohen’s entourage of grotesques to hit the big screen is Brüno, the gay-as-a-lamp-post presenter of Austria’s number one fashion show, Funkyzeit. Brüno began life as a minor character in Baron Cohen’s television shows for Paramount Comedy and Channel 4’s Da Ali G Show. As with the Borat film in 2006, Brüno’s transition from the small to the big screen has given Baron Cohen and his team of writers (including The Day Today’s Peter Baynham) an opportunity to widen and deepen the character’s satirical reach from the absurd skits and fake interviews which characterise the TV appearances to a sustained assault on good taste and mediocrity wherever they are found.

Borat is a tough act to follow, and some elements of Brüno will seem remarkably familiar. This film’s “plot” also centres on a peculiar foreigner who travels to the USA, engaging on a somewhat pointless quest. The film has the same story arc as Borat, and we even find some of the same scenes repeated almost verbatim, such as when Brüno, abandoned by his only friend, finds himself destitute and alone and has a sudden moment of self revelation: he must become straight! The plot is of course merely incidental, it’s simply an excuse to string together a series of carefully edited encounters with minor celebrities, PR gurus and ordinary people. Brüno’s faux-naivety acts as a tool to expose the prejudices and mediocrity of mainstream America.

The targets for Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire in Brüno are varied. Starting off in Brüno’s native environment of high fashion, the opening of the film reprises the TV series’ attacks on that absurdly shallow and self-important world. But a satire directed entirely against catwalk fashionistas would be thin indeed, and this was one of the limitations of Brüno’s character in Da Ali G Show: the fashion world is self-parodying and is in little need of even more comedic absurdity than can already be seen in haute couture and the journalism industry that surrounds it. Thankfully, then, after a faux pas involving a velcro suit, Brüno is sacked from his role as presenter of Funkyzeit and travels to America to seek global fame. Cue a series of encounters with members of the fame industry in LA: Brüno meets a high-power celebrity agent and two clueless valley-girl PR consultants. These can’t string together a coherent sentence and try to decide which would be the best cause to adopt in order for a newcomer to make a name for himself: “global warming is big these days,” “oh, fantastisch!”

Along with vapid celebrity culture, Brüno also tackles politics. He briefly travels to Israel and attempts to solve the Palestine question, in a parody of empty-headed celebrity meddling in the world of “issues”. Brüno brings together a former Mossad agent and a Palestinian politician, making huge advances towards peace in the Middle East by getting them to agree that hummus is actually a good thing. Sacha Baron Cohen even manages to interview a (genuine) member of the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade terrorist organisation, telling him that “King Osama looks like a dirty wizard,” demonstrating not only his own bravado but the dexterous verbal wit that marks the script’s intelligent humour. Most of the film’s subjects are either unsuspecting or actively hostile, and Brüno’s raison d’etre is to be abused and thrown out, which Baron Cohen pulls off with fearless disregard for his personal safety.

Half the fun is trying to guess which of the situations Brüno finds himself in are set ups and which are genuine unscripted encounters. As with Borat, there is a mix of both: it is part carefully-written and skilfully executed physical comedy and planned improvisation, and part genuinely dangerous and edgy media pranksterism. The interview with ex-Presidential candidate Ron Paul that turns into an attempt to make a celebrity sex tape is the latter, with an obviously shocked and flustered Paul storming out, declaring that the man is “as queer as blazes.” (Brüno apparently thought he was RuPaul, an easy mistake to make.) There is of course an element of cruelty in Sacha Baron Cohen’s pranks, but most of the people he chooses as the butt of his jokes are putting themselves in the public spotlight, or worse, declaring themselves authorities on their chosen subject. As such, puncturing their self-regard is fair game.

Those few subjects who respond with humour and largesse come off well, though Brüno keeps on pushing until he gets a response. One aspect of Borat which made me slightly uneasy was the inclusion of so many ordinary people who, while hilariously stupid, were nonetheless unsuspecting, and revealed nothing more than their own stupidity. The satire in Brüno is more sharply focused, with more minor celebrities and self-declared experts being lampooned. Those ‘ordinary’ members of the public who become the target of Baron Cohen’s penetrating derision in this film often turn out to be genuinely nasty pieces of work rather than simply dim.

The Alabama hunters with whom Brüno spends a night in order to overcome his gayness respond at first with strained good humour and some great comebacks, but when confronted by a fully nude Sacha Baron Cohen in the middle of the night (and Sacha is an impressively large man), they are pushed beyond breaking point. The satire is not consistently focused though, and some elements descend into what appears to be simply baiting for the sake of response. The studio audience of Richard Bey’s chat show may be homophobic and crass, but showing them Brüno’s adopted African baby being photographed with a swarm of bees or present at a gay orgy seems to be an attempt simply to enrage with no purpose other than to provoke an emotive reaction. What impresses about Sacha Baron Cohen’s humour is that it is consistently at the edge of what is acceptable, it is never comfortable, predictable or safe: this kind of comedy has to be dangerous, it has to make you cringe. Sometimes this film misses its target, but more often than not it hits it squarely between the eyes.

Criticisms of Baron Cohen’s approach are levelled quickly and loudly by those on all sides who miss the point he is trying to make. When Borat came out we were earnestly warned about the dangers of stereotyping and belittling the population of Kazakhstan, Borat’s home country. But anyone who regards the surreal representation of Borat’s village with its cast of clinically insane misfits and inbreds, and its annual “Running of the Jew” parade as a belittling stereotype has fallen right into the bear trap set by the satirist. Stereotypes have to be at least partly accurate, and this one is so absurd that to be offended by it demonstrates your own prejudice. The characters of Ali G, Borat and Brüno act as magnifying mirrors to the minds and personalities of those they interview, and of those who watch. Your response to these creations reveals your own assumptions, and we’re all tricked into revealing more about ourselves than we think. That’s where the genius of these characters lies, and it is the mark of successful and incisive satire. Brüno has quickly attracted the criticism that Baron Cohen’s creation presents a harmful gay stereotype: an image of mindless camp tastelessness. But it is precisely this lampoon which acts as possibly the sharpest tool of the film’s satire, revealing unthinking and viscerally prejudiced responses and attitudes towards homosexuality. What some seem happy to take as being broadly representative of homosexuality is in fact simply representative of crass stupidity, regardless of sexual orientation. Sacha Baron Cohen has a knack of pinpointing the small-minded assumptions of those who think they’re being politically correct.

Those who criticise this film for its supposed detraction of homosexuality utterly miss the point. Brüno uses his flamboyant and shameless gayness to reveal what are often aggressively homophobic responses from his interviewees. The deep south Christian “gay converters” and the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates Fags” picket line are prime targets for Sacha Baron Cohen’s attack on prejudice, small mindedness and ignorance. Brüno telling the rather effete gay converter that he has “blow job lips” and becoming physically entangled with the God Hates Fags brigade while in flagrante, dressed in full bondage gear are not only hilarious but important and damning social criticism. At its best this film is true satire: an attempt to puncture and deride stupidity and prejudice. By confronting these bigots with their own worst nightmare Baron Cohen sometimes reveals the intriguing dichotomy at the heart of homophobia: the audience for the cage fight at the end of the film are eager to shout so loudly about their heterosexuality that you wonder exactly what they’re trying to hide. Brüno’s beautifully choreographed fight with his personal assistant turns into a tender scene of homosexual intimacy right before the eyes of the baying crowd, and he is confronted by an aggressive mob of individuals who can’t decide whether to cry or do him physical harm. The best comedy challenges and disrupts expectations, and this film is full of surprises and shocking absurdity; quite an achievement after Borat, which this film matches or betters. This is barbed satire with no tolerance for prejudice and ignorance. It’s a joy to watch because while the satire is pitiless, Baron Cohen’s insightful, intelligent and generous humanism always shines through. It’s funny as hell, too.

I spent last weekend where I spend the first weekend of every July, at the annual Marxism Festival, hosted by the SWP. Unfortunately, as ever, due to my various commitments (most notably organising the free creche), I didn’t get to see many of what I’m told were highlights. Nevertheless here are a few of my thoughts on the event overall.

Firstly, it was very visibly the biggest for some time. You always have to be wary of this claim, since it tends to be made every year, but as someone who has been to every Marxism except one for the past 7 years (and also who’s seen some of the figures), it really did feel like the biggest I’d been to. It was also very, very young, with large numbers of college and university students who had travelled from around the country. For example, I met two young women who had travelled down from Gloucester solely on the basis of picking up a flyer on a day trip to Bristol, and on the last day found myself discussing the class nature of the Soviet Union with a college student from the depths of rural Cheshire, who had made his own way. That large numbers of young people are being drawn to radical politics, whether they get organised or not can only be a good thing.

For me there were a few major highlights: Getting to see Norman Strike, whose fantastic diary of the Miner’s Strike has now been published by Bookmarks, was an entertaining privilege. Adam Tooze and Chris Bambery engaged in a fascinating debate on whether Hitler could have won. David Harvey was thought-provoking, if a bit all over the place, and Gary Younge constantly surprises me with how radical he is. I missed the Zizek/Callinicos debate, but am told it was a highlight.

Much of this, and more, is on Youtube just search Marxism 2009, and CDs of every session are available from Bookmarks, and will appear at some point on resistance mp3.

One of the things that always amazes me about Marxism, from the organisational side, is how, despite it involving the efforts and stress of large numbers of people, ususally with no compensation whatsoever, how good-natured everyone is. In many cases the organisig team are helping out from 8:30am-9pm, staying up till 2, sleeping on a community centre floor, and doing it all again. Compared to many of the environments I’ve worked in where far smaller tasks have involved bullying, stress and recrimination as a matter of course there is minimal fuss and general calm. This is a credit to those who help, so for all who read this who helped with Marxism in any way, well done comrades!

Twelve years too late, the leaders of the G8 agreed today to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 2C. An ‘acceptable’  temperature rise that will, according to the latest research, destroy half the rainforest. As some of the largest carbon sinks on Earth, after the oceans, the disappearance of the rainforests will make efforts to contain climate change more difficult than ever. The gloomiest of reports predict that the loss of carbon sinks due to rising temperatures will create a runaway greenhouse effect.

Even without a 2C rise in temperatures, over 13,000 sq km of sea ice in the Antarctic Peninsula have been lost over the last 50 years, leading to rising sea levels that are already adversely affecting communities in low lying parts of the world. And whilst disappearing ice means too much water in Bangladesh, in Bolivia, where millions of people source their drinking water from Andean glaciers, it means not enough. This year saw the disappearance of the Chacaltaya glacier. The last piece of Bolivia’s famous ski resort sits in the freezer of hydrologist Edson Ramirez. For Ramirez, Chacaltaya’s disappearance is a warning of worse things to come as the retreat of the glaciers that supply La Paz and the burgeoning population of El Alto means that from this year onwards “demand for water will be progressively greater than supply.”

The G8′s agreement is, of course, a step forward. But considering the world has spent eight years limping behind George W. Bush, a step forward is not very far. The Obama administration is to be commended for finally bringing America out of the 20th Century so that progress on climate change can be made on a global level. And, if kept, the agreement by G8 nations to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 is indeed an historic one. But it is not history we should be looking to. It’s the future. And I can’t help thinking, this is much too little, much too late.

Join the call for a strong climate change treaty…

There are times I wonder why I do it. Standing for hours in the queue at a remote train station in the depths of rural Somerset hauling what feels like the unfortunate result of an unseemly encounter between Jabba the Hutt and Dibley’s eponymous vicar on my back. Waking up to the sound of thunder and pouring rain, unzipping my tent and squelching through the mud to long-drop bogs of eternal stench that have made few advances since the Middle Ages. Crawling back to my tent at 7am, partied out and hoping to get a few hours kip only to be roasted (barely) alive in my little canvas oven by a resurgent sun. This year was my seventh Glastonbury in a row and there are times I wonder why I do it. But those times are few and far between.

When Neil Young hit the Pyramid stage on Friday night with Hey Hey, My My opening a set crammed with classics, I knew exactly why I was still rocking in the free world. He was fat, balding and anything but young, but despite his refusal to burn out like so many of his generation, his performance showed he was far from fading away. Singing along to the greatest hits of this great artist, I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime gig. Closing with a Beatles cover, Young summed up the spirit of this year’s festival.

This really was a year for legends and, for me, probably the best line-up I’ve seen in seven years. Shielding my eyes from the sun in a crowd filled with as many young people as ageing hippies, I watched David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash crooning their classics and could have been at Woodstock. I have to admit, I’ve never followed Bruce Springsteen that closely, but by every objective measure, he gave a truly awe inspiring performance. A more charismatic, energetic and gifted presence would be hard to imagine, and I’ve seen a hell of a lot of bands grace that big Pyramid over the years. The crowd were clearly disappointed Springsteen chose to leave Born in the USA off the setlist (as apparently he often does) even after two-and-a-half hours and two encores, but I was more than happy with a close on my personal favourite – Dancing in the Dark.

Between singing along to Status Quo and skanking to Madness, there were plenty of fresher faces at this year’s festival. Listening to Lily Allen is a bit like watching Big Brother. It’s a guilty pleasure. You want to hate her. You want to find her mind numbingly shallow. But there’s a part of you that thinks she’s kind of fun. I’ve done some work on series two and three of Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show, which contains a sketch of Lily Allen doing something utterly irrelevant. It’s pretty close to the truth, but, sad to say, I couldn’t help enjoying myself. Dizzee Rascal going bonkers, however, left me fairly numb. I’m not one of those people who grumble about rappers at Glastonbury. I think it was great that Jay Zed headlined last year. It’s wonderful to have that kind of variety at the festival. Something for everyone. I didn’t like his music, so I went to see Massive Attack instead. That was my choice, and by the same token, it was my choice to walk out on Dizzee Rascal in search of some good old skool hippy tunes. Innit. Bruv.

They were gloriously represented by Roger McGuinn – de facto leader of my favourite 60’s psychedelic folk-rock group, The Byrds – and his jingly jangly twelve string guitar. Listening to all those Bob Dylan songs wonderfully recreated in Beatles-era pop sounds mixed in with the best of The Byrds’ own back pages, I didn’t have to feel guilty I was missing the first half of Blur. I arrived at the Pyramid stage just in time to see Jimmy the Mod/Kevin from EastEnders take the mic from Damon Albarn to tell us all about what is known as PARK LIFE! Blur closed a fantastic festival in fantastic style. Six years sitting on the shelf didn’t seem to dent their energy as they belted out their greatest hits. And perhaps that was the real spirit of this year’s festival. Glastonbury’s greatest hits! There’ll always be old timers who complain it ain’t what it used to be. That Glastonbury is now a pit of commercialised Babylonian capitalism. Certainly I object to paying £3.70 for a pint of beer or close to six quid for a veggie burger with some soya shit that’s almost, but not quite, entirely unlike cheese. And the emergence of t-shirts by the last day saying ‘I was at Glastonbury when Michael Jackson died’ was frankly baffling. But wandering round the Green Fields, listening to punk poets and lefty speakers, looking at visions of the future in solar powered showers and stinking heaps of compost, joining the fires and the bongos at the Stone Circle at night, I know exactly why I do it. And why I’ll do it all again next year.

It’s not all bad news for the left on June 4th. Coverage of European Parliament elections tends to be dominated by stories of far-right and Europhobic gains. However, if the latest polls are to be believed, it looks like the Green Party may stand to be the real winners in the coming elections.

A poll to be published the day before the European elections suggests the battle for third place will be between the Green Party, the LibDems and UKIP.

In the new poll, conducted by ComRes (1), the Greens have overtaken the  LibDems for the first time since 1989. The poll suggests the Greens may be about to match their historic 1989 Euro-election vote of 15%. The poll shows support for the different parties as follows:

Conservative: 24%
Labour: 22%
UKIP: 17%
Green: 15%
Lib Dems: 14%
BNP 2%

If the poll proves accurate, the Greens will probably win seats in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, West Midlands, East Midlands, South West and Eastern regions plus Scotland, as well as holding existing seats in London and the South East. The Greens may scoop up a second seat in the South East, with Brighton councillor Keith Taylor joining party leader Caroline Lucas who was first elected in 1999.

Last Sunday’s Telegraph/ICM poll showed the Greens on 11%, ahead of UKIP nationally for the first time in the campaign. The Sunday Telegraph suggested that “the resurgent Greens” might win eight seats. This ComRes poll suggests that that number may be an underestimate.

1. Commissioned by the Green Party. Fieldwork carried out 29-31 May 2009.
Sample size 1,005 GB adults, polled by telephone.