I think Rob meant to send this to the list as a whole, even though his
salutation is for me...
>Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 19:51:17 +1100
>To: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: [PEN-L:1714] Re: Australian unions back protest
>
>G'day Jim,
>
>An old post I dug out in response to a question you asked me the other day
>about the Whitlam dismissal thing.
>
>Hope all's well,
>Rob.
>
>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 ...
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
