Wilfred Burchett was denied access to his native Australia as a direct result of his reporting 'from the other side'.
The first journalist into Hiroshima against the wishes of the allies resulted in an accurate record of the devastation and carnage wreaked on the civilian population and his subsequent coverage of the Vietnam war earned him exile by a revengeful and spiteful Australian Government who denied him access to Australia to visit his dying father. He did not regain his passport until the election of a Labor Government.
I am not aware that Soviet Union records have now become acceptable as reliable research documents. I vaguely recall that the West did not attach much credence to anything they claimed,citing most statements as Soviet Propaganda.
On the other hand, Burchett reported extensively on the American use in Vietnam of chemical warfare which can be confirmed by evidence of the effects of Agent Orange, not only on defenceless Vietnamese civilians but also upon Australian and American troops.
Evidence is out there in the public record that America also supplied chemical agents for Saddam Hussein to use on defenceless Kurds. I don't know about claims of insect infestation but I would not discount the claim without other independent research.
I am looking forward to reading Burchett's Memoirs. I consider him to be among the top Australian War Correspondents in the old tradition rather than the Imbedded reporters currently utilised to sanitize American atrocities perpetrated on a defenceless population in the name of freedom and introducing 'democracy'.
Perhaps the good Doctor might turn his research skills to writing a history on George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Thanks maracas,

Can't comment on all of the points raised in Brendan O'Connor's article. However, in regard to the biological warfare allegations, let's not forget that at the end of the Second World War, the Americans gave amnesty to all of the members of the sadistic Japanese Unit 731 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) in return for their knowledge of biological weapons. It would have been with the help of this knowledge that the biological weapons said to have been used in Korea by the US would have been manufactured.

Even if we were to discount the allegations of biological warfare, the devastation that the U.S. inflicted upon North Korea with its aerial and naval bombardment was horrific, as Brendan O'Connor, himself, acknowledges. On top of this, a dam vital to North Korea's food production was destroyed resulting in widespread flooding and drownings and crop failure.

Also, it's a fact not widely acknowledged that there is strong circumstantial evidence the South may have actually started the war. with reported fighting some distance north of the border on the day of the outbreak of the war. The fact that the southern army so quickly collapsed and was only saved by the intervention of the US would strongly suggest that there was little popular support for the Southern regime which was, at the time, largely based on pro-Japanese collaborators. Only shortly before the outbreak of the war, a whole battalion of the South Korean Army had defected to the North.

"The evidence is 12 documents from the Soviet archives, including high-level memos between senior officials as well as a memo to Mao. The correspondence to Mao from the Soviet government states that the “accusations against the Americans were fictitious” and recommends that Mao cease “accusing the Americans of using bacteriological weapons in Korean and China”."

I can'y help wondering why the USSR would do this?

Kenny wrote "I can't help wondering why the USSR would do this?"

Brendan O'Connor is suggesting that this he has evidence that those in the know within the Soviet Government, when talking amongst themselves, knew the accusations of biological evidence to be false.

If Jon Halliday, who wrote of the allegation in his book, co-authored with Bruce Cumings, "Korea The Unknown War", now disputes the allegation, then we have to take it seriously. "Korea The Unknown War" was one of a number which demolished the myth that the war was simply an unprovoked act of aggression against a legitimate democratic government in the South. I would suggest that, otherwise, the essential message of the book still stands.

Even without the allegations of biological warfare, the ferocious US aerial and naval bombardment of the Korean peninsula from 1950 until 1953, should be considered one of the great crimes against humanity of the twentieth century.

If the allegations of biological warfare were fraudulent after all, perhaps they shold be viewed as an act of desperation by a society under a murderous assault, in order to win sympathy from the rest of the world in order to end their suffering. The already appalling reality should have been sufficient to do this, but obviously it did not.

I was unaware of this individual so I looked him up briefly.

His biographical notes read like he was, as Lenin would have put it, one of the "Useful Idiots" and that is putting it politiely.

Thank God his life was a failure. He would have sold everyone down the path his KGB masters would have commanded of him.

To be honest, I think the only reason this bloke should be remembered is as a warning to others. Like we have warnings on weedkiller and rat poison.

A couple of quotes from his wikipedia write up

"Burchett also praised the postwar Stalinist purges in Bulgaria, writing that the "Bulgarian conspirators were the left arm of the Hungarian reactionary right arm"."

"In 1975 and 1976 Burchett made a number of dispatches from Cambodia praising the government of Pol Pot."

A "Useful Idiot"?, more like a "festering pool of toxic waste, pollution the earth and corrupting anything which it touches".

A write up for dioxin would contain greater humanity and social acceptability.

Well, at least Col Rouge doesn't have the pink-tinted spectacles worn by the immediate respondents on this blog. Far too many people want to forget the Cold War and the menace of an expansionist USSR. Wilfred Burchett was a secret member of the Communist Party and work hand in glove with KGB disinformation specialists for a long time, slandering and degrading the country of his birth or because like so many, he believes in the idea of Soviets new man "homo Sovieticus." Personally, I have nothing but contempt for those trying to rewrite history with pinkwash -- they've had to field to themselves for too long. Instead of venerating traitors, they should be exposed for what they are or were. It is quite remarkable that those who lionized Burchett in the past would pour scorn on those who fought to defend the country, passing other conflict as "other people's wars."

I'm surprised at the questioning about the archives referred to by Dr. Brendon O'Connor. They were those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and were opened for a brief period during the Yeltsin era. Some can still be found on the Internet. What has been quietly hidden is how the USSR regarded Australia as the "strategic hinterland of Asia," and spent a great deal of time trying to detach us from the ANZUS alliance. We also featured in their war-fighting plans but little is heard on this subject. Those plans were based on a massive first strike, which almost came to fruition in 1984. As George Santyana and others have said, those who do not heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Look carefully at Vladimir Putin and then those who in this country regard what he is doing as perfectly legitimate. He is an unreconstructed Marxist with imperial ambition. Lest we forget.

Perikles;
you handle the truth carelessly:
Wilfred Burchett's political affiliations were no secret to Australian Security Intelligence and he did not slander or degrade his country.He was critical of the Liberal Government as a great number of his fellow countrymen were because of their failure then as they do now to develop an Australian Foreign Policy which is not determined in Washington.I too would like to see us modify our participation in ANZUS...New Zealand does not permit nuclear powered war ships in their ports and did not send troops to Iraq yet maintain an independent policy on some issues.The USA has assigned Australia's role in the pacific as their Deputy Sheriff a task our Government has botched because of it's latent Colonial attitudes.
There are many Australians who are more concerned about where our subservience to the USA is leading us and it's expansionism rather than the Soviet policy of maintaining influence over countries with which they shared borders.
Australian Communists were critical of the USSR's interference in the development of democracy in the bordering countries , particularly the ousting of the Dubchek Government of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact powers.
And don't kid yourself that our soldiers sent to fight in Vietnam were defending Australia. They were doing the same as our soldiers are doing now in Iraq...fighting an illegal war to support the empirical ambitions of expansionist USA.
Wilfred Burchett will always be a proud Australian Son despite the spin of the Rabid Right Wingers like yourself's attempts to rewrite history to suit your own philosophy.

the tone of the comments from the Right in this thread is fairly typical of the level of debate from critics of Burchett. thank you, Maracas, for a rational and sensible contribution, but to those of you who think a Wikipedia entry is a reliable source of information, here's just one of many corrections (those of us who are well informed have given up correcting the nonsense the rabid Right keep posting under the Burchett entry). Wilfred applauded the rise to power of Pol Pot, but immediately it became apparent what was happening in Cambodia he conducted a very public campaign denouncing the Khmer Rouge. this lost him many friends on the Left, and his support of Vietnam in its dispute with China over Cambodia also lost him many political associates in China. so, a simple propagandist? the Right always likes to believe these crass versions of history. for those who like to think a bit, I recommend the Memoirs. for the rest of you, including Mr O'Connor (who frankly should know better than to participate in the Murdoch press's lame campaign against Burchett, which has really just created much more interest in the man), back to Wikipedia-world. If Mr O'Connor is really "researching" with the benefit of a Fulbright, they should be revising their award procedure! Jung Chang's book as an authority on Mao? it's already been widely discredited. and the documents "opened up" by the Russians under Yeltsin are well known to be riddled with false and fabricated material. but of course it serves the purposes of the Right, so they'll just accept them unquestioningly - as another poster commented, why on earth would the Russians send such a message to the Chinese? ridiculous. Oh, and one more thing - despite endless hate-driven attempts by right-wing journalists over a period of some decades, they have all failed to come up with one credible piece of evidence that Wilfred was a member of the Communist Party.

Hi dioxin, maracas,

Looks like I may have been mistaken about Jon Halliday, my apologies. I see a lot of raging controversy on the Web about his biography of Mao, for example.

So, we need to regard very suspiciously Halliday's claims that the stories of the use of biological warfare by the US in Korea were fraudulent.

dioxin, thanks for letting me know about Burchett's public campaign denouncing the Khmer Rouge. I had recalled, years ago, that he spoke favorably of the Khmer Rouge. He had promised in "Grasshoppers and Elephants" to write similar accounts of the liberation of Laos and Cambodia, but, obviously he since learned the ghastly truth about the Khmer Rouge and was not afraid to let people know of that truth.

Ironically, it was the US, together with China, that prolonged the cancerous influence that the Khmer Rouge had over Cambodian society by hampering, with trade sanctions and international isolation, the efforts of the Vietnamese and the pro-Vietnamese Cambodian government to eradicate the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia.

well maracas

What a nice spray. For your information I am not a rabid right-winger - on the contrary I am social democrat/redistributionist and therefore, the class enemy of commie lovers who will never admit to the tyranny of Stalin and the butchery of his malignant regime. I approach history on the basis of evidence and docmentation as Dr O'Connor has done with Wilfred "bird's sh.t."

Communists who openly served the USSR are by any definition traitors. A casual read of some of the biographies of Australian Communist Party members will show that they had death-lists drawn up for the revolution. Too bad I suppose that generically speaking, the Soviets regarded such collaborators as "sh.t-eaters" - their term, not mine.

I makes me sick to the guts that I fought for the best part of my life to defend your right to write ill-informed rubbish on the one hand and keep the current government in power on the other. I notice that rather than address O'Connor's arguments, you have seen fit to attack me - fine - go choke on your own ignorance.

Well Perikles,I would hardly equate your philosophy with that of your namesake. I addressed my response to O'Connors article with a short treatise on Wilfred Burchett. I do not put much credence in O'Connors sources; In fact I think it was a Fulbright scholarship wasted. I would not consider you a social Democrat 'wasting your life keeping the present Government in power' In fact if that has been your goal in life I would agree, you have wasted your life in propping up an undemocratic Right wing regime so if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
You also display ignorance of Australian Communism and its various factional persuasions.

Dioxin “the tone of the comments from the Right in this thread is fairly typical of the level of debate from critics of Burchett.”

That’s the thing about democracies, there is a “right” and there is a “left”. There will always be comments from the centre as well as the “right” to criticize traitors who sold the democratic rights of their fellow Australians out for the easy life of a paid lackey of the KGB. As I said previously, politely put, one of the “Useful Idiots”, in his case a “Bought and Paid For Useful Idiot”.

Burchett was the paid recruit of the extreme left, who counted his “Judas coin” as ordinary people were shot or shipped into gulags for “re-education”.

The problem is, when you get rid of the “right” the “centre of balance” shifts and there is more “right” to be shot or shipped off to gulags. More coin for the traitor to collect on. More victims of Communist butchery and repression.

That’s the difference between us. My set of “right” values prefer to see you display your ignorance through freedom of speech.

Burchett’s and I assume those who would choose to defend him (Dioxin), advocate a recurrence of Stalinist purges for all who dared express a “counter-revolutionary” opinion (The problem is Stalin’s 50 million victims is 2 ½ times the population of Australia).

Therefore, I conclude, Burchett and his defenders, personify hypocrisy in its most malignant form.

The memory of Burchett will eventually be buried. Perhaps his surname could be used as some form of noun. Maybe “Burchett” could become the official Australian translation from the original Norwegian “Quisling”.

Either way, as is in keeping with your views, I see you have chosen a suitably toxic nom-de-plume (how unoriginal).

I heard the only realistic thing one could do with dioxin was to bury it in a deep pit, somewhere well away from any water courses. Burchett was a bought-and-paid-for communist “mole”, doubtless you kindred spirits might well meet up as he borrows between one and another of the lower circles of hell.

thanks, guys, for continuing the measured, intelligent tone of your discourse. i need add no more. you prove my point.

maracas and dioxin - the toxic twins.

By all means let's get to basics.

1. "Wilfred Burchett was denied access to his native Australia as a direct result of his reporting 'from the other side'. True but he was secret member of the ACP until the Russians came into WWII and were suddenly allies: until that time, the Communist Party worked against the duly elected government of this country.

2. The first journalist into Hiroshima against the wishes of the allies resulted in an accurate record of the devastation and carnage wreaked on the civilian population. - Yes and it axiomatic that you are against the use of the bomb. You probably believe like many that the object in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to teach the Russians a lesson. If that is the case, then you have uncritically swallowed Soviet disinformation. I'll wager my study of World War II in which the key factor was the projected casualties involved in taking the Japanese home islands, was of no interest to you because after all they were only Americans and somewhere between 350,000 and half a million of little consequence.

3. By the time he was reporting in Vietnam, he was a fully recruited KGB agent, taking Russian gold and with apartments in two East European capitals. In that capacity, why should he have been allowed to keep his Australian passport? His values were grounded in the triumph of Soviet communism. The coalition government was vengeful: the Whitlam government was permeated by fellow travelers among whom Burchett was a hero.

4. Your ignorance of the validity of the Soviet archives is a pathetic defence. While it is true that Soviet claims, especially economic were regarded as propaganda, the actual documentation itself was verified by CPSU officials after the Party was dissolved in Russia. They stand as bona fide historical documents, attested to by party officials.

More to follow.

Pericles, you continue to show your ignorance and right wing bias, selectively quoting suspect material as fact. You accept O'Connors opinions as fact because he wrote his opinions resulting from his research on a Fulbright Scholarship.

I have read material from a professor at Yale:
Ben Kiernan, an Australian,Together with other academics and Journalists, investigated Burchett's alleged KGB involvement completely discounted the allegations....An extract from the 3rd November 2005 Media Report on Radio National below:

Quote
Stephen Crittenden:(to George Burchett) What responsibility did you feel as an editor this time around, as well as a son, in I guess, testing some of the more controversial issues around your father’s story? The germ warfare story in Korea for example, charges that he was involved in interrogating prisoners who’d obviously been tortured?

George Burchett: I’ve read almost every scrap that’s been written on the subject, including a book that was put together by Ben Kiernan, who’s a Professor History at Yale, it’s not very well known here in Australia. It was written by about 15 academics and journalists who really scrutinised Wilfred’s career, and gave him an absolutely clean slate.

Stephen Crittenden: What does an absolutely clean slate mean?

George Burchett: Meaning that all the stuff about KGB and brainwashing is rubbish. Now about what opinions he expressed, that’s a separate issue, but as far as I’m concerned truth is sacred, opinions are free, and I don’t think anyone ever accused Wilfred of lying or of not telling the truth.

Stephen Crittenden: What about the claim that he was a KGB agent?

George Burchett: Well that’s based on the evidence of a KGB pimp who was paid 100-quid by the police to shut up.

Unquote.

Wilfred Burchett had the correct response for slanderers like You.
Say it in Print and he will sue you. But you are pretty safe now, he is deceased. He requested a proper investigation himself but it never happened. Why ? because the allegations were false.
Read the full Media Report interview and you might correct some of your slanderous assertions

Crawl back into your hole.

I see the apologists are out and about,

Try this for size http://www.brookesnews.com/041201burchett.html

here are extracts (wordcounter!)

"during the Korean war Burchett actively participated in the interrogation of Australian, US and UK POWs by North Korean 'interrogators' who tried to force them into falsely confessing to war crime.

One appalling incident was fully described during the Jack Kane libel trial.

Burchett had decided to sue Kane for an article accusing him of being a Soviet agent.

Kane's defence put Brigadier Phillip Greville, an Australian, on the stand. Greville had been captured and tortured by North Koreans. While on the stand Greville emphatically stated that Burchett was a traitor. This accusation was supported by other Australian, US and UK ex-POWs who had suffered because of Burchett's treason. One ex-POW who had testified for the defense became so emotional that he literally grabbed Burchett's throat, kneeing him in the chest as he dragged him to the ground before being pulled off him. The testimony of these men was utterly damning.

The Jury found in favour of Kane and he was awarded costs against Burchett.

Nevertheless, Burchett had the gall to claim afterwards that he had been vindicated by the trial! A thoroughly dishonest assertion that his supporters laboured to give credence to.

That Burchett was a long-time Soviet agent was revealed by Yuri Krotkov, a KGB defector.

Krotkov stated that Burchett had supplied information to the KGB and that he also worked for Hanoi and Beijing

Krotkov's testimony was confirmed in part by Bui Cong Tuong and Ming Trung, North Vietnamese defectors, "

Read the full article.

I think I know who “Dioxin” is. He has just received a pasting on another thread.

Lies, deflections and deceit are the stock in trade of the “dioxins”/ Burchetts of the world.

I am one who has read the excellent analogies of George Orwell to the insidious and selfish practices of the Communist / Marxist sympathizers.

“1984” shows where Orwell thought communism was going.

Solzenitzen’s writings confirmed it.

Burchett was a loathsome traitor. The world is better off with him dead.

Same for his apologists.

Ah, Perikles... “more to follow”; I can’t wait! Especially with more blinding wit like “toxic twins”! It's amusing how you guys always think anyone who disagrees with you is the victim of propaganda and disinformation. I guess this is because the Americans never use propaganda and disinformation. Gosh, thanks for putting us straight there.
It’s also great how you tell me what I think about everything. It’s “axiomatic...”, it’s “of no interest to [me]...” You’re wrong on both counts, of course. But you clearly state that for you, hundreds of thousands of Japanese deaths are okay as an alternative to American deaths, so you have exposed yourself as a disgraceful racist. Hardly surprising. And Col thinks he knows who I am. Good luck!
History 101 textbooks say you need EVIDENCE to make historical statements - “secret member of the ACP”; evidence? - “fully recruited KGB agent”; evidence? Same old rhetoric you guys have trotted out for decades.
And since when is “working against the duly elected government of the country” a hanging offence? So John Howard's a traitor for “working against” Hawke and Keating? You are ridiculous.
As for the Soviet archives – well of course party officials attested to them when it was convenient. They’re not stupid, you know. I love your faith in the Russian archives when it suits your purposes. But you still don’t seem able to explain why the Russians would send such messages to China then.
As for you, Col, even Robert Manne, one of Burchett’s harshest critics, acknowledges that the trial found that Burchett had been defamed. Costs went against him because the comments were made under the coward’s defence of parliamentary privilege. You guys just don’t care about the facts. It isn’t even worth discussing Krotkov – that one was buried years ago in any intelligent circles.
Maracas, as you’re interested in history rather than hearsay, rigorous work on Burchett was done by Tom Heenan, ten years of research published last year. Read with the Memoirs, his book gives a very full picture of Wilfred.

Those more familiar with Col Rouge's posts to other Online Opinion forums might have good reason to believe that his seemingly sanctimonious self-righteous an blood-curdling denunciations of anyone he chooses to label 'Communist' may have a lot more to do with the fact theat he considers them a threat to his ability to continue to enrich himself at the expense of others than any innate sense of patriotism.

To me, in 2007, 'traitor' is a term more applicible to those who are profiting by cheaply exporting Australia's mineral wealth and jobs, and flogging Australian real estate and citizenship overseas.

Let's not forget the rotten deal that John Howard entered into with the 'Communist' Chinese Government to export our gas at fixed bargain basement prices for 25 years.

Let's also hope that the planned 'free trade' agreement with 'Communist' China ends up the waste paper bin.

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.

yep, it's a huge win for you big tough men of the Right. you've certainly shown me the error of my ways with your razor sharp wit and your cogently argued historical sophistication. i'm signing up pronto for the project for the new american century. no wonder wilfred achieved so little in the face of the brilliance of you guys. you've certainly had a much larger impact on the world stage than he ever did. you just keep on keeping on with triumph after triumph. we have no answers. just wondering exactly what form this huge victory takes in anything other than your tiny minds, though? can you answer this question, as you've failed to answer any of my others? in case you haven't figured it out from the last few postings - WE'VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO

Dioxin " WE'VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO "

Ah, off to draw your dole cheques.