Friday, September 18, 2015

Sudden End To Tony Abbott's Awful Australian Premiership

Australia is getting its fourth prime minister in two years Former “Communications” minister Malcolm Trumbull pulled off a intraparty coup, defeating Abbott in a party vote, (Boy, watch out with all those prime ministers, Australia, or you'll end up looking like Italy!) The vote, by “Liberal” Party members of the Australian parliament, went 54-44 against Abbott. (Australian prime ministers are the heads of their parties, not elected by the public.) The “Liberal” Party is a right-wing party.

Turnbull is a former “investment banker” (financial parasite) and lawyer. His not-entirely-flattering nickname is "The Silvertail," an Australian epithet for wealth and privilege. Both Abbott and Turnbull are former Rhodes “scholars,” which is supposed to prove to us they're smart.

Abbott was prone to making outrageous statements, which members of his party worried was hurting the party's standing with the public. He is also a sexist dog, which he either couldn't or wouldn't hide, instead displaying his patriarchal male-domination attitudes publicly. (He is a former Roman Catholic seminarian, which helps explain that. The RC Church is a male-supremacist, authoritarian institution.)

His policy “achievements” included abolishing a newly-established carbon tax in response to global warming, and replacing it with billions of dollars in bribes to polluters to voluntarily reduce emissions- with no penalties. Australia burns coal for energy like there's no tomorrow- which there won't be for many species and a lot of people, as we travel down the road of a planet made hotter by the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.

He also appealed to racist xenophobes by violating international law by his interception of refugees at sea and imprisoning them on a Papuan island, in miserable conditions and sweltering heat, which Papua New Guinea proved willing to do for pay.

Typically of Australian prime ministers, Abbott was an eager lackey of U.S. imperialism. For example, he gleefully insulted Russian premier Vladimir Putin at “summit” meetings of “world leaders” (country bosses) in retaliation for Russia defending its interests in Ukraine. (One example: in October 2014 Abbott threatened to “shirtfront” Putin at an upcoming “summit.” A “shirtfront” is an Australian football move consisting of a shoulder charge into an opponent's chest. Russian officials retorted that Putin is a judo expert. Unfortunately no cage-match between the foes was scheduled, so we're left to speculate, as in fantasy sports, who would win. Maybe someone can make a computer game out of it. There could be other grudge-matches too: Obama vs. Netanyahu, Merkel vs. Tsipras, Maduro vs. Santos- could be exciting! Political junkies who play video games would love it.)

Australia, like Britain, the nation that spawned it, is a loyal toady and accomplice to the U.S., sending troops to U.S. wars in Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is one of the “five eyes” NSA-led global spying and privacy destruction network (comprising electronic spying agencies of the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and hosts major electronic interception hives. Australia also was treated to a CIA coup in 1975 to get rid of a “leftist” who was seen as a threat to all the spying. [1]

For a taste of Abbott's asinine and destructive demagogy, see Five Teenagers Vs. 200 Australian Cops; also Tough-On-Terrorism Tony Abbott Unleashes 800 Australian Police to Arrest Man With Sword. For analyses of his prancings on the “world stage” in support of his U.S. and UK masters' “interests,” see America, the Ingrate Nation, and the obliquely-derogatorily titled Tony Abbott Is An Insufferable Jackass. (Did you catch what I was hinting at there?)


Tony didn't see that knife aimed at his back by his own
former propaganda minister Malcolm Turnbull.


Well, Fuck You too, Tony!

The silver lining: Now Tony will have more free time to
provide people the opportunity to admire his gorgeous body!

1] The Australian PM at the time, Gough Whitlam, had the crazy idea that he was the top authority figure in the country with the power and the right to run it. The Australian, British, and above all U.S. secret police agencies soon proved him wrong- in fact very badly mistaken.

Whitlam refused to allow his personnel to be vetted (thus approved or vetoed by) one of the Australian secret police agencies, the Australian “Security” “Intelligence” Organization (ASIO).

Worse, Whitlam thought he had a right to know what operations the CIA and NSA were running from Australian soil, including the NSA spy center at Pine Gap. This proved intolerable to the fascist secret policemen of the U.S., UK, and Australia, who prompted arranged Whitlam's overthrow. (Read the sourced articles referenced below for the details.) Among the culprits was CIA boss William Colby (who oversaw the murder of around 50,000 Vietnamese when he headed the Phoenix Program), the sinister and vicious CIA criminal Theodore Shackley (who helped engineer the Chilean coup of 1973), MI6 head “Sir” Maurice Oldfield (I don't recognize aristocracy), and U.S. ambassador to Australia Marshall Green, whose qualifications for the job was his role in the 1965 Indonesian coup that overthrew Sukarno, installed the fascist general Suharto, and was followed by the CIA-orchestrated murder of about a million Indonesians- making Green an accomplice in mass murder on a Nazi or Maoist or Stalinist scale. And various Australian reactionaries within that country's power structure were co-conspirators. (MI6 even bugged Australian government cabinet meetings at U.S. behest.)

Victor Marchetti, a CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, said "This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House... a kind of Chile [i.e. coup] was set in motion." Gerald Ford was president at the time, but it would have made no difference who the president was. All U.S. presidents are compulsive imperialists and give the so-called “intelligence community,” the powerful state-within-the-U.S.-state, nearly free rein. Witness Obama, a virtual servant of the NSA, CIA, and FBI. (Or JFK, a guy who jerked on the CIA's leash and paid with his life.)

CIA officer Frank Snepp, who was stationed in Saigon, has revealed that the line laid down inside the CIA was that “the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.”

And Christopher Boyce said that "Whitlam was viewed as an Australian Ho Chi Minh," Boyce worked as an “intelligence” contractor, and was privy to the CIA's infiltration and subversion of Australian politics and society. This so outraged him that he turned against the U.S. by selling “secrets” to the Soviet Union, for which he was publicly demonized as a “traitor” and “spy” and imprisoned for 25 years. A trashy, sensationalized allegedly “non-fiction” book, The Falcon and the Snowman, and the rest of the anti-Boyce propaganda produced, omitted his true motive. (At times the U.S. functions exactly like a totalitarian society.)

The governor-general of Australia, “Sir” John Kerr, a long-time CIA operative, invoking the authority of the Queen of England (!), “fired” Whitlam, who accepted this, instead of telling Kerr “the 'Queen' of England doesn't rule Australia. Australia is a democracy, and I was elected- unlike you, who represent a foreign power [and are an agent of a foreign secret police agency]. Shove off.” I guess then the CIA would have had to arrange his assassination, or a military takeover, branding Whitlam's continuance in office “illegal.”

As the Australian coup demonstrates, the fascists of the Deep States in the so-called “Western democracies” actually run things (as they also proved on Nov. 22, 1963 and Sept. 11, 2001, for example).

See “The CIA's Role In Australia's Coup: RIP Gough Whitlam,” dailykos, Oct. 21, 2014; “When the US Pulled off a Coup in Australia,” Alternet, March 17, 2014; “The British-American coup that ended Australian independence,” Guardian, 23 Oct., 2014; “Boyce still believes CIA dismissed Whitlam,” The Australian, Feb. 18, 2014. (To get past the Australian's paywall, you have to go through the Google search results I linked to.)

Much better and more detailed than the short Australian piece is an Australian television interview with Boyce on SBS, The Falcon Lands, with video and transcript, 18 Feb., 2014. It's an interesting interview and I recommend it. One interesting insight is that the Australian labor unions were (are?) controlled by the CIA, and the head labor “leader,” Bob Hawke, piped up to deny CIA infiltration of the unions, then became prime minister (probably with CIA help). Australia is one of those nations that is sold down the river to the U.S. by indigenous stooges of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. works assiduously to put its foreign lackeys into positions of power in other nations. Boyce describes the studied disinterest of the Australian elite in news of CIA control of their society, which would indicate that U.S. puppets ruled the roost- and still do, judging from the behavior of the just-deposed Abbott. Don't expect Turnbull to be different. People who rise to his level know to play ball with the U.S.- or end up like Whitlam.

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