Reddit reviews The Great Terror: A Reassessment

I was well aware of the history; I was reading the history back when it was news rather than history. I started with the collected speeches of Nikita Khrushchev in 1963. On Trotsky, I am aware of how they purged him as well as how they killed him in Mexico. If you're ever interested in the true nature of Soviet society read Conquest.

My point was meant to be sarcastic. Obviously I worded it badly. My point is that the SEP and its ridiculous proposal is a faded anachronism that has no relevance in modern Australia.

I just got off the phone to a best mate of many years who works for Bluescope in Westernport. He is one of the 1000, so I can fully relate to the personal side of it. But this is only the start. That is one of the few things I concur with in the article, more jobs in heavy manufacturing will go. Possibly not the gloomy prediction of "100,000 set to lose their jobs in the next few months" but that will certainly happen over the longer period. But it is not some evil conspiracy. It is simple economics.

The industrial base of this country has inexorably changed; failure to recognise that inevitable fact is to be crushed by the change. We saw it start long before Newcastle closed, and there is no end in sight.

I don't have a solution apart from the obvious simplistic one of finding our market niches and filling those, but then it's not my job to find the solution. That is up to our corporate and political leaders.

The SEPs solution:

>bringing the steel industry, mining sector, banks and other multi-billion dollar corporations under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class, as the first step toward the establishment of a rationally planned world economy based on satisfying the social needs of the majority, not generating profit and personal wealth for a small minority.

Is simply riduiculous. Anyone who thinks that might work should do what I did in 2006 and drive through Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech and Eastern Germany to see the ruined derelict factories from the glorious Soviet era; or visit Russia, Bosnia and Croatia as I did this year to see the same. In Russia, those I saw that aren't derelict are belching out indescribable pollution that has to be killing the workforce of entire cities.

This mob should not be given any credibility at all.