to those making insightful contributions re wilfred burchett's career, life and times thank you.

it is also difficult to understand what is wrong with 'working against' the elected government of a country, as appears or is suggested by some in these exchanges. isn't that what oppositions are supposed to do in democracies? and if oppositions are entitled, aren't all residents and citizens so entitled, even those the government (as in menzies) wouldn't allow back into the country? or is opposition/critique allowed only to another political party (which is not the cpa)? particularly if oppositions fail to oppose or critique abuses of human, civil and political rights carried out in the name of government (as too often happens today) then surely we need the voices of others to do so?

incidentally, in being refused a right to return to australia, burchett was almost not alone. women from the union of australian women (uaw) attending a conference seen as 'communist' in the 1950s were initially refused the right of (re)entry to their own country, australia, when they sought to return at conference end. it took a uk judge to say that the women could not be forced by the (then) menzies government to stay in the uk and had a right to return to their home country. when they arrived, every one of them had her passport confiscated by the menzies government. fortunately, upon return, they continued to lobby against the policies of the federal government as they were entitled to do.

why was burchett not so entitled?

Dioxin

The familiar methods of the agitator and unimaginative communist apologist at work.

First denial of facts

Burchett lost the case he pursued.
His treasonous actions were evidenced by multiple prisoners of the North Koreans who held witness against him.
His treason was identified by other spies.
He was a paid troll of the KGB, a terror organization funded by a communist dictatorship and responsible for the repression, among others, their own citizens.

Deflection to what other countries might have done, is totally irrelevant to what Burchett did but brought up by you to excuse his treason.

Daggett

Attack me because I bring words which offend and challenge the lies you choose to support.

your hiss about overseas trade, I doubt, a protectionist state would seem to appease your sense of insecurity but people are free to trade with whoever they wish. After all, it is just not your gas or real estate or property which they are trading with. Your gingoistic envy play is another of the feeble and hackneyed smoke tricks from the politics of mediocrity.

Your not creative, girls, nor is it original, go back and play with your Barbie dolls, you get to control them.

It is Lenin’s useful Idiots doing what Lenin’s useful idiots do best; following the first edict of Marxist Communism

“Tell a lie often enough and it will become the truth” (Lenin)

and the second edict of Marxist-Communism

“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.” (Lenin)

Burchett was a scoundrel among scoundrels

Ending on a Stalinist note “ I believe in one thing only, the power of human will.”

The collapse of the Berlin wall, failure of USSR and its sycophantic puppet states proves that the human will of “democratic capitalists” prevailed over “despotic Marxist-Communists”

In the meant time remember, your dissenting views is tolerated in this “Capitalist Democracy”. If you expressed similar dissent under a "Marxist-Communist" government you would end up where Solzhenitsyn ended up and wrote about in the gulag archipelago.

For the toxic twins - 2

5. Like others, Burchett reported on the use of the Agent Orange in Southeast Asia. I cannot defend that, nor would I try. Similarly, it is a geopolitical reality that America supplied weapons to Saddam Hussein. Perhaps you would like to cite a source for chemical weapons as it appears they came from the then Soviet armoury.

6. Australian's relationship with the United States has been held as the cornerstone of our defence since World War II. It has broad community and bi-partisan support. It is perfectly legitimate to disagree about how far we should follow them but you have a very poor historical understanding of the Cold War if you think Australia could have opted out. Australia was referred to in Kremlin documents and archives as "the strategic hinterland of Asia." They had plans for this country and stooges all too ready to assist them. In the event, governments are elected by majority and until we replace them we are bound by their decisions.

7. You conveniently forget that the CPA was a Stalinist party, established by Bolsheviks from the USSR. It remained so for years and despite being whitewashed by the ABC (yours and mine) Eric Aaron’s memoirs indicate they had a list of people who would be liquidated once in power. It is true that some elements of the Party were critical of Soviet interference in the affairs of neighboring countries. The CPA lost a huge number of members following the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956; more in 1968 and the Socialist Party of Australia was established with Soviet help in the early '70s. The old CPA tried the policy of “communism with a human face.” Disillusionment also manifested itself in Russia where the Communist Party never numbered more than around 10% of the population. Then came Afghanistan where it is proven that KGB special forces stormed the presidential palace and installed a puppet regime. The Americans committed a great error in supporting the mujahedin against the Russians. They should have been left to fight it out.

toxic twins -3

8. Like it or not - you probably don't, the communist system was rotten to the core. Any reasonable history book will show you that they conducted murder on a scale that made Hitler looked a beginner. Apart from 30-odd million killed by famine in a deliberate policy of collectivization, almost an equal number were killed in purges and it is a matter of history that Red Army troops feared NKVD "special troops" behind their lines. Their roaming role was to eliminate anyone taking a backward step. Nikita Khrushchev was one of these so-called "politruks." It's all there in the histories if you care to look: I have an acquaintance who doesn't and claims Stalin was a great man. Using the same rule of thumb, Hitler was probably misunderstood entirely.

9. If you are not sufficiently appalled by the mass murder carried out by the USSR, China and other countries that claimed to be the standard bearers of Marxism-Leninism, then there is a name for you that the good people at Opinion Online would demand that I excise.

10. I too am looking forward to reading the so-called Burchett memoirs: I expect them to be as self-serving and mealy-mouthed as anything from the hand of communist apologetic and KGB agent. If he is a true proud Australian son with whom you wish to associate your name, that probably says more about you than anything I could. Would you expect his father to deny him? It wasn’t just Krotkov that nailed him

Lastly I do not know Dr. Brendon O'Connor. However, I think your sniping at his Fulbright scholarship is fairly typical of the anti-Americanism that he refers to in a number of his other articles. It comes from having an inferiority complex. I expect you could justify studying at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.

For dioxin –How dare you call me racist – those were 350,000 US lives I referred to – the estimation of Japanese casualties without the bomb ran to 4-5 times that many and the price was too heavy in human terms.

Dioxin;
Thanks for the Tom Heenan information. e-copy is available for a fee from Melbourne University Press. I will organise to download a PDF e-file of it. The Anti-Burchett front have become even more irrational, obviously clinging to all the disinformation they can scrape up. Ben Kiernan's work demolishes the accusations quite effectively through thorough research but they are not likely to even read the material but continue to pursue their ill-informed anti-communist diatribe .I cant waste any more time jousting with ill-informed unarmed ratbags

Maracas “obviously clinging to all the disinformation they can scrape up.”

Not at all. I can scrape up a lot more recorded facts but why go for overkill?

Obviously you and the other toxic avenger are not made of the sturdy stuff which saw Burchett lie and deceive his way through life, you have fallen after a couple of posts on this thread.

If you were losing a cricket match, I bet you would storm off in a huff and take the bat with you, lets face it with such a timid abdication from the “battlefield of the wits”, the bat might have been yours but someone else must have brought the balls.

I guess Dioxin has similarly fled.

I read up on dioxin, it has a lot of nasty side effects, I guess we can add skeletal atrophy to them (exposure results in the named sufferer having no spine).

Ah well, perikles, I guess we can chalk this as one up for the forces of light and a down for the apologists and crew of the Evil Empire.