Australian Humor

Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu
Mon Dec 21 14:59:14 PST 1998


Rob,

OK, mate, if the brits have the brains, then it's all the fault of those bloody pommie bastards and the yanks are just a bunch of fuckwits, :-) Barkley Rosser (been to OZ, I have, mate) On Mon, 21 Dec 1998 15:54:21 +1100 Rob Schaap <rws at comserver.canberra.edu.au> wrote:


> G'day Tom,
>
> >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.
>
>
>

-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu



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