>I'm glad to read that no one you know of is holding any serious grudges!
Whitlam asked on the day that we maintain the enthusiasm and THE RAGE. Believe me, I can still splutter with rage about it when riled. But it was easier then, when I believed such obscenities were exceptional and unnecessary to the system.
I don't believe that any more. It's just the world in which I live, and it was probably ever thus. Different manifestations, perhaps, but of the same conflict between levels of the social hierarchy.
If I hadn't learned to accept such outrages, I'd be deeply hurt and indignant about the littlest things, like, for instance, the anguished deaths of a mere few hundred innocent Iraqis for no reason other than some bastards were capable of bringing those deaths about.
And you can't let things like that get you down, can you?
Sigh, Rob.
>
>I believe it was Barkley R. who mentioned the Hapsburgs. My personal taste
>runs
>more towards the super rich European nobility with roots in places like
>Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Have you ever seen the movie Ruggles of Red Gap?
>
>I'd mention Otto von Bismarck and his bankers, but, I don't want to sound like
>a cabalist.
>
>Your email pal,
>Tom L.
>
>
>
>
>
>Rob Schaap wrote:
>
>> G'day Tom.
>>
>> Don't know anything about neutron bombs, but you also ask:
>>
>> >Also, didn't Hitler's gift to America Henry Kissinger play a part in
>> >destroying an Australian Labor Prme Minister and his government in the
>> >early 1970's. Didn't get a lot of press in the USA; maybe an
>> >Australian would like to fill us in on that obscure incident.
>>
>> Still the biggest political/constitutional story since Australian
>> federation. It all happened on Remembrance Day, 11/11/75.
>>
>> Whitlam's social democrat Labor Party had been in power for three years
>> (the first non-tory govt in 23 years, and one not welcomed by many senior
>> bureaucrats). There were lots of reforms to undertake after all that tory
>> inertia, and Whitlam was going through a whole manifesto of 'em. American
>> military bases on Australian soil were not popular with much of the Labor
>> caucus, and Nixon had been demonstrably worried (and, typically, often
>> livid) about this.
>>
>> By Whitlam's account, and that of contemporary American defence dept.
>> lists, the CIA man-on-the-spot throughout the negotiations for and
>> construction of the sites (a Richard Stallings) was a tenant and close
>> friend of the Deputy Leader of the Tory opposition, Doug Anthony.
>> Interestingly, Whitlam had begun asking questions publicly and in the
>> House, about this bloke on 2 November 1975 - nine days before he was
>> removed from office by the governor-general (none of that time-wasting
>> impeachment debate nonsense in good ol' Oz; if HM's representative doesn't
>> like you, he can dismiss you without notice and call out the army if you
>> cut up rough).
>>
>> The governor-general's grounds for kicking out an elected government were
>> to do with an opposition (which by some unbelievably undemocratic antics
>> had secured a majority in the Senate) not passing the government's Supply
>> Bills in the Upper House. Government wasn't out of money yet, but our GG
>> thought he'd best remove the government in case ...
>>
>> The Opposition's formal reason for being so unco-operative was that the
>> government was trying to borrow money privately (from Arab sources) for its
>> infrastructural independence policy. This was unconventional. Whitlam had
>> given in to a Murdoch-driven frenzy of vitriolic loathing and ordered his
>> ministers to stop the whole deal. But a couple didn't stop - they'd been
>> waiting quarter of a century to have a go at this, and nothing was gonna
>> stop 'em. Nothing, that is, but for a series of incriminating private
>> letters that kept finding their way straight into the Opposition's hands.
>> The whole Opposition knew what Whitlam did not. No laws were being broken
>> (by Labor, anyway - someone was, of course, steaming envelopes and passing
>> on private correspondence to third parties), but the unconventional capital
>> programme was definitely upsetting to some establishment interests; US & UK
>> financial houses were watching themselves being sidelined.
>>
>> The Christopher Boyce character in *Falcon and the Snowman* says something
>> about this, but I forget what.
>>
>> Anyway, Whitlam went the way of so many '70s lefties, quasi-lefties and
>> purported lefties (eg. Wilson in the UK, Palme in Sweden, Carter in
>> America, Allende in Chile).
>>
>> Arch-conspiracy theorist David Guyatt (of *Deep Politics* fame
>> http://www.copi.com/articles/Guyatt/circle_of_power.html ) suspects a lot
>> of this destruction of international social democracy (explicitly including
>> Whitlam's government) was done by:
>>
>> 'the "Pinay Cercle", named after its
>> founder Antoine Pinay, Premier of France in 1951. Known more simply as "Le
>> Cercle" it is recognised as a more clandestine sister organisation to the
>> already very secretive Bilderberg Group - a "behind-the-scenes 'invisible'
>> influence" network. Both groups share a familiar membership which includes
>> *Henry Kissinger*, Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockerfeller ... By 1969,
>> Pinay together with Jean Violet, a Lawyer working for the French
>> Intelligence Service SDECE, and Archduke Otto von Habsburg, heir to the
>> Austrian throne, formed
>> Le Cercle, and secretly began recruiting men of influence as members ...
>> Journalist, David Teacher, a keen investigator of Cercle activities
>> observes: "It is becoming more and more apparent that the treatment
>> reserved for Harold Wilson at the hands of the intelligence services was
>> only the U.K end of an international phenomenon. Around 1975 a surprising
>> number of government were targeted by their own (or others') intelligence
>> agencies because of their radical policies."
>>
>> Indeed, for the hard-core, lineage-tracing conspiracy theorists among you,
>> I might add that Whitlam's aide during the whole business was a chap called
>> Richard Butler. Interestingly, the two were assured by Warren Christopher
>> on 27 July 1977 that the President (Carter) had asked him to relay the
>> promise 'that the US Administration would never *AGAIN* interfere in the
>> domestic political processes of Australia ...'
>>
>> That said, Whitlam himself remains cool on the CIA conspiracy explanation -
>> he rightly feels there were plenty of local actors with the clout and
>> motive to ream him in particular and Australian democracy in general. I
>> think he's right on that score, but don't feel we have to jettison a
>> perfectly intriguing conspiracy theory for that ...
>>
>> Nighty-night,
>> Rob.