Today Australian's remember the sacrifice that thousands of our brave young ancestors made on the battlefield, in the senseless conflicts that have scarred cultures and scorched continents since World War 1.
But today, the 11/11/2011 is also the anniversary of another event that was equal in it's effect on our nation. It marks the day a nation lost it's innocence, when Australian democracy was subverted by a coup detat orchestrated by the CIA that deposed a popularly elected Prime Minister named Edward Gough Whitlam.
Whitlam had many critics but many more admirers and his governments record of reform is a savage indictment on the current state of paralysis our democracy is in. As the ABC's Jonathan Green wrote earlier in the year:
"It was, after all, the Whitlam government ended conscription and withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam, implemented equal pay for women, launched an inquiry into education and funded government and non-government schools on a needs basis, established a separate ministry responsible for Aboriginal affairs, established the single department of defence, withdrew support for South Africa, granted independence to Papua-New Guinea, abolished tertiary education fees and established the Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme, increased pensions, established Medibank, established controls on foreign ownership of Australian resources, passed the Family Law Act establishing no-fault divorce, passed a series of laws banning racial and sexual discrimination, extended maternity leave and benefits for single mothers, sought to democratise the electoral system by introducing one-vote-one-value, implemented wide-ranging reforms of the Labor Party's organisation, initiated Australia's first federal legislation on human rights the environment and heritage, established the Legal Aid Office, established the National Film and Television School, launched construction of National Gallery of Australia, established the Australian Development Assistance Agency, reopened the Australian Embassy in Peking after 24 years, established the Prices Justification Tribunal, revalued the dollar, cut tariffs across the board, established the Trade Practices Commission, established the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, established the Law Reform Commission, established the Australian Film Commission, established the Australia Council, established the Australian Heritage Commission, established the Consumer Affairs Commission, established the Technical and Further Education Commission, implemented a national employment and training program, created Telecom and Australia Post to replace the Postmaster-General's Department, devised the Order of Australia to replace the British Honours system, abolished appeals to the Privy Council, changed the national anthem to Advance Australia Fair and instituted Aboriginal land rights."
Whitlam's socialist version of democracy did not appeal to the masters in Washington at the time, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and arguably two of the most corrupt, evil human beings to have walked the corridors of a Western "democracy" in the last 100 years.
But what incurred the wrath of Kissinger and Nixon wasn't just Whitlam's socialist agenda or his desire to reclaim Australia's vast natural resources and manufacturing sectors from foreign ownership, or the fact he sacked the head of ASIO & ASIS, but the attention he was drawing to the renewal of the lease for the Pine Gap defence facility and giving the impression that his government would not renew them. Former CIA station chief James Jesus Angleton referred to Pine Gap as the "jewel in the counter-intelligence crown". Whitlam also publicly outed Country Party MP Doug Anthony for receiving CIA money and on the 11/11/75 a parliamentary debate was scheduled regarding those facilities.
You can watch an old Channel 10 show on YouTube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JQ7-xvgcHA and the second part http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prV-Yae_5_g.
Distinguished conservative intellectual Owen Harries argued in the ABC Boyer lectures several years ago: "For extended periods of time in Washington, one needs very good peripheral vision to see Australia on the world map.''
Now it seems, that isn't the case. Washington has shown an increasing interest in with announcements to increase spending on their established Australian bases, particularly in Exmouth, Western Australia, which is home to a vital communications system that services the US submarine fleet. By virtue of that fact, it makes it Australia's #2 nuclear target, behind Pine Gap in Alice Springs.
A communications centre is being built in Geraldton and an Air Base in the Northern Territory. Yes that's the reason President Teleprompter Obama is going to Darwin, he's just out inspecting how the global militarisation is coming along for the Pax Americana and making sure that when everyone thinks of the US, they think of his pearly whites and not decades of imperialism and war. It's PR for international relations.
The agenda for President Obama's visit is set to be the "next phase of the alliance" referring to the ANZUS Alliance that has been the bedrock of Australian foreign policy since 1951.
"The next phase of the alliance" is diplomatic speak for 'we are making your country our base for containing Chinese expansion in the region'. But we shouldn't feel special in the region because we're white, Obama recently visited Indonesia to strengthen diplomatic ties, which resulted in an arms deal (just for old times sake) & closer US ties with the Indonesian spy agency Kopassus to contain Chinese influence in the region.
The US & China are in a business relationship that is going bad and an economic cold war is taking place for strategic control of the world's remaining reserves of strategic resources. As our infinite growth economic paradigm collides with finite resources and the laws of nature, the 21st century is going to be a series of proxy resource wars extending all the way to your local IGA when you're fighting your neighbour for the last tin of Sardines (because that's what I'll be going for when the shit gets real).
So predictably, Julia Gillard & Tony Abbott will stand there and have their photos taken shaking President Obama's hand and pretend to talk about the next stage of the alliance in front of the cameras and journalists who are allowed into the press gallery because they won't ask any embarrassing questions. "President Obama, you said you'd close Guantanamo but then you sent more troops to Afghanistan and got rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. Don't you think that's like giving the Father of the Year Award to Josef Fritzl?"
Yeah, yeah he is bringing the troops home from Iraq I hear you say but he fails to mention the thousands of contract workers staying there for Halliburton, Bechtel and private security firms to protect US interests. It's also sobering to remember that the US still has troops in Germany, Japan, Philippines & Samoa. The US government is a bit like AIDS; once you've been infected, bar some radical advancement, you have it for life and while in the West it can be treated to prolong a patients life and reduce the agony, eventually it will kill you.
I wonder if Obama has trouble keeping a straight face with the shit the corporate oligarchy makes him say when they've just killed some Arab guy who didn't like America's schtick? The Gaddafi thing, I mean he was there talking about the youth in Libya rising up against oppression and tyranny, demanding liberty, freedom and democracy and all that shit the Iraqi's got, while in the background the Occupy protestors were getting beaten, maced and shot in the head with tear gas canisters for peacefully protesting. The level of hypocrisy is nothing short of breathtaking and if you can't see how much of a fraud Obama is, how evil the US Government is at the highest levels, how the Republic has been destroyed, then it's either because you're stupid or because you would prefer to enact a defence mechanism and be wilfully blind as to the state of play.
The fact is, the prevailing realist view of foreign policy sees our future security provided by Washington and is fearful of the rise of China and failing some radical change in the current circumstances we will continue to be the 51st state of America.
The fact is, the prevailing realist view of foreign policy sees our future security provided by Washington and is fearful of the rise of China and failing some radical change in the current circumstances we will continue to be the 51st state of America.
But I've digressed, sorry Gough.
In 1982 Ray Martin interviewed Christopher Boyce in a maximum security prison in the US. Most Australian's would have never of heard of him but he was responsible for perhaps the biggest act of espionage in the last century. He was stationed in Australia as a CIA employee in one of their front companies for analysing intelligence.
Here is the transcript of the interview. http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_oz/60min.htm
It provides an insight into his motivations and contains some absolutely startling revelations.
Anyway, I've procrastinated long enough on this, happy reading my fellow hominids.
**For further reading on the Whitlam saga go here: http://newdawnmagazine.com.au/articles/20%20Years%20of%20Cover-Up1.html
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