gough whitlam

Former PM Paul Keating: Australia has never had a truly GREAT Prime Minister

Although we have produced some very good, if not potentially great, Australian Prime Ministers, as Keating indicates, there are two major factors that prohibits Australia from achieving historic greatness. It is the combination of the different national experiences and the self-perception that influences the quality of political leadership. The fact that the United States is […]

Australia: A Laboratory of Empire with Lowkey & Aamer Rahman

In this segment of 'The Watchdog' video podcast, Lowkey is joined by comedian Aamer Rahman to explain how Australia maintains close political ties to the United Kingdom, with British Home Secretary Pritti Patel seeing the country’s offshore migrant detention centers, referred to by some as “concentration camps” as a model for the U.K. to follow.

The Sacking of Gough Whitlam and the Royal Intention Behind the Five Eyes

It is admittedly difficult for some westerners to contemplate how a white Commonwealth prime minister could suffer a coup in our modern times… are not coups usually something reserved for Asiatic, Latin American, or African revolutionary leaders? When one looks upon a list of coups during the Cold War period, that has certainly tended to be the general rule…but like every rule, exceptions are always to be found.

The Forgotten Coup Against ‘The Most Loyal Ally’

The Australian High Court has ruled that correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General of Australia, her viceroy in the former British colony, is no longer “personal” and the property of Buckingham Palace. Why does this matter?
Secret letters written in 1975 by the Queen and her man in Canberra, Sir John Kerr, can now be released by the National Archives. On November 11, 1975, Kerr infamously sacked the reformist government of prime minister Gough Whitlam, and delivered Australia into the hands of the United States.

With Friends Like These (Who Needs Allies?)

[For Australia] it is one thing to remain a good friend, but too close an embrace will lead Americans and others to resurrect the “deputy sheriff” tag. The Americans have always put their own interests first and will continue to do so; we should follow their good example. American interests will not always be the same as Australian and vice versa. The bottom line, however, is the domestic political one. Australians are afraid of the outside world and convinced of their inability to cope with it.

Porkins Policy Radio episode 78 Hugo Turner: Ted Shackley a Life in The CIA

Hugo Turner of Anti-Imperialist-U for an in depth discussion of Ted Shackley and his infamous career in the CIA. We focus on Hugo’s articles chronicling Ted Shackley as well as the Iran Contra Scandal. We begin by taking a look at Shackley’s beginnings in military intelligence recruiting Nazi’s, and his later recruitment into the CIA during the Korean War. Hugo paints us a picture of the man that Shackley would become: obsessively driven and cutthroat. We touch on some of Shackley’s early mentors such as William Harvey who introduced Shackley to the Cuban exile committee.