Just a note to Henry VIII Australia was not really a colonial oppressor of New Guinea. It was actually mandated to us as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. New Guinea was originally a colony of Germany. We got it as the closest Allied Power. WE were never comfortable running New Guinea because like America we were also colonies of England. As such both powers are not adept at running colonial empires. Actually we were glad to get rid of the place and leave it to its own devices.

"Democratic libertarianism"? Sounds like a good idea. I don't think it could ever work though. Not under capitalism at any rate.

Note to ST George: while Australia was indeed mandated the former German colony of New Guinea after WW1, we already were colonists in the former British colony of British New Guinea from 1904, when it became the Australian external terriory of Papua.

The mandated territory of New Guinea and the external territory were combined into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea after WW2, which was run as an Australian colony until independence was attained peacefully in 1975.

So Trotskyists still sustain their denialist mantra that none of the bloody and odious regimes which have seized power in the name of socialism has ever been the real thing – not in Albania, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe …

The fact that the Vietnamese government doesn’t fit some western ideologue’s socialist ideal makes very little difference to the fact that it is a vile and repressive regime that has impoverished its own citizenry in the name of socialism. Passant’s weaselish qualification that Vietnam’s leaders were “not in any way socialist” does not in any way diminish his obvious admiration of this tyranny.

Likewise, his attempt at moral equivalence between the Soviet and US “empires” serves less to distinguish him from the Stalinist apologists for the former, and more to illustrate his blind and undiscriminating hatred for the latter.

Passant celebrates any perceived victory over the USA, however reactionary, repressive, murderous, misogynist, or plain weird the subsequent regime may be. It is a sorry state of affairs when any supposed leftist anticipates the victory of the Taliban with pleasure.

Nick Cohen is dead right about the moral bankruptcy of parts of the modern left:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Left-Liberals-Lost-Their/dp/0007229690

PNG-I used to live there. The terms colonial oppression etc are in parentheses as an irony but I guess my irony is lost on the readership of this thread. The PNG politicians indeed do talk about past Australian "colonial oppression" from time to time when it suits their purpose, even though they were brought up by the Australian administrators to run the place. A number of Papua New Guineans have told me they wished Australia would come back.Others would hate the idea. One even told me he wished the Japanese had won WW2.

Nicaragua-another example of a vicious right-wing dictator being ovethrown by a populist socialist governmnt and which was in the proceeds of bringing literacy and health-care to people who had been denied such, when the USA-sponsored Contra terrorists moved in to destroy the place through mudering civilians and making it ungovernable. 80 000 dead wasn't it?. When will the neo-fascists who rave about "lefties" simply get down to reading books about the histories of the places they rave about, and then sit down and think about what they have read. But fascists burn books, don't they?

DavidJS “Democratic libertarianism"? Sounds like a good idea. I don't think it could ever work though. Not under capitalism at any rate.”

I can understand how a socialist apologist is so blind as to not see the essential commonality of capitalism and libertarianism.

With a small mind, distorted by the sense of envy for anyone who might work harder and have more than you.

It must be hard, accepting that where others can excel, you are left defending the gridlocked and shackles of socialism, a philosophy determined to ensure no one is allowed to aspire to anything more than that prescribed by the state.

Rhian “Nick Cohen is dead right about the moral bankruptcy of parts of the modern left:”
The bankruptcy is nothing new. Socialism was founded on the bankrupt ideas of the small and envious men and women who know they will always live in the shadow of anyone who is gifted (I could have said “more gifted” but that would presume the dullards of the left had any redeeming qualities in the first place).

Whilst the seven deadly sins include “Invidia” and some folk given to indolence, the politics of the left will be with us. The only chance for humanity is to recognize the nature of socialism and challenge it with the freedoms we take, possibly for granted, like freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to private ownership of property, government for the benefit of all people and other accepted democratic freedoms hold it in check.

It might be a continuing drain on the resources for commonsense but to falter will only result in the sort of despotism identified with Stalin because as Lenin said

“The goal of socialism is Communism”

History shows us that Stalin was the result of communism (along with Mao, Pol Pot Ceausescu, Honecker etc).

Trotsky was a the father of entryism, the process where hardline communists infiltrate the soft politics of socialism for their known bestial ends.

Socialism is weak. It is limp, flabby and vulnerable to entryism; just as a weak or diseased mind is vulnerable to delusion.