In a frightening example of left-on-left violence, Greens party power junkie Greg Barber MLC has axed three long-term Greens party Yarra councillors in an unprecedented power grab within that once hippy now creepy extreme left-wing organisation.
Yarra Councillors Gurm Sekhon, Jenny Farrar and Kathleen Maltzahn were all put to the blade in preselection bloodshed last week with Sekhon and Farrar put in unwinnable positions in their wards and Maltzahn dumped completely.
GREG BARBER MBA MLC WIELDS THE BLADE
The Greens leader Greg Barber is notorious for saying "The Greens are just a brand, it doesn't matter what our policies are or who our candidates are" was the one who made the move, imposing his own candidates at the top of Greens party tickets for the Yarra elections due in November.
One close Greens party observer told the OC this morning "This is a victory for Stalinism over Trotskyism within the Greens. Barber has used his clout and office resources to build his own power-base. All those who opposed him in the past have suddenly become a politically endangered species."
DENIAL IS A RIVER IN EGYPT
While Barber has denied being involved in the massacre, his fingerprints are all over it.
Gurm's replacement, Sam Gaylard (mocking his name would be the height of political incorrectness) works as one of Barber's electorate officers and principal numbers-man. The candidate pole-axing Jenny Farrar is Amanda Stone, a close adviser to Barber who according to the Melbourne Times "worked on Mr Barber's campaign in the 2006 state election."
The candidate with Kathleen Maltzahn's blood on her hands is the Greens party supremo and state co-ordinator Alison Clarke, who is another Barber faction hard-head.
Barber is simply in a different league from all those who oppose him within his naive party. He is obsessed with winning and determined to clear out all those like Gurm Sekhon who have opposed him in the past, even publicly referring to Barber as a "cowboy".
BARBER'S VICTIMS REMAIN SILENT
What would have once been unimaginable, the wholesale clearing out of every Greens party candidate now occurs with barely a whimper of protest from his victims. Darth Barber is happy to exercise power with more brute force than even the most blood-thirsty of Labor numbers-men.
Even more curiously his victims are silent, with even their supporters being too scared to speak out to the OC this morning.
Sekhon compliantly told the puzzled local press, in the style of the re-educated Winston from Orwell's 1984:
"No one gets to play centre half-forward for the whole life. I am and always will be a team player."
Gurm Sekhon is not the OC's cup of tea politically, but clearly is a popular bloke in his community, with a cult level of support in some circles. The other victims of Barber's blade are lower profile but made the mistake of being opposed to the Barber faction.
THE WAYS OF STALIN
They Greens party have evolved in a highly controlled, secretive and Stalinist organisation, despite its hippy left origins. Barber's supporters say that under the old culture, the organisation was disorganised, nearly insolvent a couple of times and incapable of building on the popular support for at least the part of their policies that dealt with environmental protection.
His foes acknowledge the mistakes of the past but wonder how long it will take for Greens party supporters to learn that the organisation they're voting for is not a collective of worthy hippies trying to save the world but a tightly wound, disciplined, exclusive, Stalinist cadre intent on gaining as much power as possible for ultra-left causes while trading on what Greg Barber himself refers to in commercial language of a "brand".
Game on.
since failed candidate 
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