Comrade Burchett was a party hack

the australian. ^ | January 07, 2006 | Peter Kelly

[tbird5]

FOLLOWING the collapse 16 years ago of the Soviet Union and of the communist world it led, Western communist parties eventually disbanded and former party members and supporters were left high and dry.

The enormous human cost of communism has scarcely registered in Western consciousness, including in Australia.

The estimated victims in each country are mind-boggling: USSR, 20 million deaths; China, 65 million; Vietnam, one million; North Korea, two million; Cambodia, two million; Eastern Europe, one million; Latin America, 150,000; Africa, 1.7 million; Afghanistan, 1.5 million. The international communist movement and parties not in power: about 10,000.

But there is an emerging nostalgia among former party members and supporters, apparent in recent efforts to rehabilitate communism. This is also happening in Australia and is reflected in the enthusiastic and nostalgic reception of a recently published book: Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist: The Autobiography of Wilfred Burchett. Co-editor of this "unabridged" book is son George Burchett.

[Aussie Dasher]

Birdshit was a traitor of the highest order.

If I knew where he is buried, I'd p*ss on his grave. What a low-life POS!

[T.L.Sink]

It appears your statistics come from "The Black Book of Communism" by European scholars which put the 20th total at around 100 million. The awful truth is we'll never know because the numbers are astronomical and periodically revised. For example the recently published "Mao:
The Unknown Story" puts the Chinese losses under Mao at 70 million! The problem with numbers in this magnitude is that people kind of go blank because it's basically incomprehensible on the human level. As Stalin himself once said, "The death of an individual is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic."

[arthurus]

Western communist parties eventually disbanded and former party members and supporters were left high and dry.

Western communist parties eventually disbanded and former party members and supporters were left high and dry reformed as the Environmental Movement..

[denydenydeny]

In Korea, he was paid by the Chinese and was under their control and direction. His job was to manage the Western media for the Chinese. In the Vietnam war, he was employed by the North Vietnamese government....Later, when he was working for, and being paid by, communist governments, he represented and wrote for communist newspapers such as the London Daily Worker and so-called left-wing papers such as the French Ce Soir and L'Humanite. They did not pay him because he was already being paid.

This reminds me that we can look forward to someday knowing who the paymasters of Robert Fisk, Scott Ritter, George Galloway, etc., are.

[purpleland]

"The enormous human cost of communism has scarcely registered in Western consciousness, including in Australia. The estimated victims in each country are mind-boggling: USSR, 20 million deaths; China, 65 million; Vietnam, one million; North Korea, two million; Cambodia, two million; Eastern Europe, one million; Latin America, 150,000; Africa, 1.7 million; Afghanistan, 1.5 million. The international communist movement and parties not in power: about 10,000."

Attention: communist activist antiAmerican Harry Belafonte!

[carumba]

Imagine that you just paid your dues, you get your card and wham no more party. So you think I gotta get my money's worth some way. Hey, I know. I'll be a Cuban. No, wait that is just too harsh. I'll be a whacko environmentalist.

[arthurus]

Environtalism is the ticket because it aims for total government control of everything and is respectable among western cretins intellectuals.