54: The Time The CIA Coup'd Australia | Red Thread
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so

Hello, it's Red Thread Time. I am your host, Jackson. I'm still here, joined by Isaiah again. And today, this episode, we brought with us another special guest. He's returned once again. Friendly Geordies. Hello, Friendly Geordies. Welcome back to the episode, to the show. Oh, yeah.

Thank you for having me back, fellas. Great. No, it's so nice. This is your first time really meeting Isaiah. He wasn't here in the episode that you were on. No, he wasn't. So we've got kind of a crew together. Yeah, do you want to fight over that initially? Yeah.

The fact that he wasn't on that. Look, I have to say, look, nothing against you, Jordy. You're a great guy and all that. I just have to say I liked it when it was Americans were the majority in here. We got to pick on the dude from the penal colony. Now I'm the minority, and that's never happened to me before, so I'm scared. This is cool. I'm a big fan of this.

This is time for revenge. I might have to act up. I might have to do something regrettable. We'll find out. He's going to drop an Australian slur. Oh, they do. I'm positive. Actually, I've got a list right now. But you were doing an intro or something. Did it mean to cut you off there?

No, no, no. We weren't doing it. We're just heading into it. Jordan's joining us for this week's episode. So I messaged him and I asked, you know, you're into conspiracies and stuff. Give me a good conspiracy for this week's episode. And he came back with a humdinger, something that ties into the Australian-American rivalry as well. The only time really that one of our prime ministers...

which is like our leaders, has been ousted by the CIA. Yeah, so a very interesting case. Couldn't think of anyone better than Friendly Geordie's being here as well as you, Isaiah, so that you can push back and have the unfortunate position of needing to defend the CIA for the first time in your life. Or Isaiah just gloating. That's the other one you can do. Yeah, true. I do have to say on the downside...

it it's the cia but on the upside it is killing australians so it's like yeah it's a very glass half full kind of moment for me i don't know i think it over i also don't appreciate this sort of olive branch you've presented by like luring me into the australian mindset by like incorporating the cia into one it feels very manipulative i feel manipulated right now

I had to. I had to give you the position to defend. Otherwise, it's just going to be two Australians bitching about America. When I looked up Australian slurs, it just gives me slurs that you guys have for other people. And that's not what I want. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of those. Yeah. You guys get creative. Some of these I'm like trying to sound out of my head like what?

Yeah. A lot of the words that we have are inherently stupid and funny and you can make fun of them like ciggies and, you know, Maccas and things like that. But there is a dark side to Australian slang that only people over here really know about. What is a Macca?

A Mac is like our word for McDonald's. Yeah, Macca's. I thought you were saying that's a slur. I'm like, what group of people is that a slur for? Well, it might be, I don't know, a slur against Ronald McDonald for all I know, but it's just what we use for McDonald's. Whenever we want to go to McDonald's, we say, let's go to Macca's.

But yeah, this one, this one's a big case, very instrumental in Australian history. Not something that's taught though in school because it's embarrassing as fuck. And also probably they don't want people to know about how overrun by American influence we were. What in particular do you love about this case? Because you know a lot about this case, obviously, Jordan, you've laid the groundwork really. You're the progenitor of it. You created it basically. Yeah.

Thank you. What about it draws you into it? You know what I like about it? What? I like the fact that if you truly understand this and you truly kind of like envelop it, you really do understand Australia's position in the world and it kind of takes away all of the allure and the...

I don't know, just the idea that there's sort of this international community that all works together. It's just like it's the same thing that's always been the same. Oh, that's super naive. Look, we're all friends and we all get along and every country loves each other and all the allies are close friends. Oh, yeah, but there's the axis in allies. There's just, I don't know, China versus America now and everybody's on one of those sides or something like that. But the reality is really that...

There's still an empire. It's just that the Americans are much better at hiding their empire than previous empires. And frankly, you know what I think as well at the end of it? I don't really have a problem with that either. I just like knowing what the score is, you know? Like it's kind of weird. Like it's like back in imperial China days.

if they were just to Korea saying, no, no, no, we're on equal footing. It's like, but we're not, you know? Yeah. We're clearly not. Is it?

It's okay that we're not. Just be upfront about it. Just be upfront about it. Own it, yeah. Yeah, and so I also like it because there's always things that people always whinge about with Australian prime ministers saying, oh, they signed up to AUKUS or why don't we get money for our resources or something. And the answer is really it's kind of like when people used to get angry at mayors because Australia entered the Iraq war or something. It's like this isn't their jurisdiction. Way above their pay grade, right? It's above it, you know?

That's what I like about it. The other thing that I really like about it as well is I'm fairly good friends. No American will know who this guy is, but Kevin Rudd, he's currently our ambassador to you guys, but he was a prime minister. And I remember once talking to him and saying, the CIA outed you and he thought I was a nut.

And I said, well, they did it to Whitlam. It's the same thing that happened to him. And then he was just like, whatever. And then you convinced him? Yeah. You convinced him that the CIA- No, he went and looked it up. And then he was just like, oh my God, everything I learned at school was a lie. And that was our prime minister. Yeah.

This is how secret this history is. No one knows. This is a true conspiracy to the highest degree because we're really breaking it open. Well, you have in the past. You've talked about it. But this is a conspiracy that's not really commonly talked about in Australia or the world. But it is one where there's a lot of evidence backing up just how...

America was in early Australian politics in the 70s and how easily they orchestrated basically a coup d'etat on us essentially like they got rid of our democratically elected leader in favour of someone their puppet basically someone who was able to push their agenda through easily it's pretty wild so

So I'll provide a little brief here for the non-Americans in our audience. Oh, sorry, the non-Australians in our audience. So it was 1972 and the Liberal Party had been in office for over 20 years when a man named Gough Whitlam, that's a very important name that you'll need to remember, he was elected, voted in with different fresh ideas,

ideas of wanting to bring social reform to the Australian people, and he enacted a number of powerful bills during his time in office, including, but certainly not limited to, establishing Medibank, known as Medicare, which is kind of like, what's the equivalent? It's Obamacare in America, right? Well, you guys do have Medicare, don't you, Isaiah? Um...

Sorry, I was just looking at this list. You guys have a lot to say about Aboriginal people. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You could talk about that for days. The one I did find is Skippy is a slur for Australian people, but that one is way too lighthearted. That's the only one I can find. Yeah, that's friendly. I don't know. I'm pretty offended by Skippy. No, I don't mind that one. Skippy was sick. I feel like this is reverse psychology. Did you?

Yeah, you can call me Skippy. Did you like it? Yeah, it was fine. It was good. It's good. Good fun. We don't even have Skippy peanut butter. Maybe it's because it is a slur. You guys are eating our slur.

That'd be really funny if they didn't carry it because they're like, ew. To answer your question, yeah, there was Obamacare, which was like an attempt at kind of like a public healthcare system. Honestly, I'm too dumb on it to talk about it. Most...

To my understanding, most of the public subsidized health care in the U.S. is very slow or they look for every excuse they can not to cover you. So people have a lot of problems with it. Most effective health care is private. You have to pay for it in the U.S., yeah.

We still have private healthcare over here, but it's, yeah, you've got a very extensive public healthcare system. Yeah, or you get it, most people get it through their work. Like, it'll be included in benefits. Yeah, work benefits. That's where most people I know get it. Like, I have healthcare because my wife is a vet and works at a laboratory, and through her, her and her spouse, aka me, have healthcare. So...

Just in case some experimental disease comes home with her. Yes, Greg. She brings back the super HPV and I die immediately. You're covered, baby. Well, I don't know if I'd like to be treated by a vet. I assume there's a difference between a vet camp and a nurse. No, they're really good at...

uh everything vet i'm not just saying this because my wife's one not just repping um obviously like there's higher levels of like oversight and you know your patients can't complain as much when you're a vet but whereas doctors have to memorize all the things with one system and like biology physiology tract vets have to memorize like a dozen uh yeah so it does create it's way harder to be a vet

Yeah, vets are way more expensive. Imagine having to treat a budgie and a horse. Yeah, and a goldfish and a hermit crab. Yeah, what the hell? I'll say this. Back home, there's a vet. She's real cool. Anytime one of my friends gets hurt, they just drive to her house and she fixes it, whatever it is. We were out at the range and one of the guys was standing too close to a target and he got shot and the shrapnel came back and hit him in the leg. So we went to the vet and she patched it up. So...

So that scene in John Wick where he goes get like healed up in the veterinary clinic. Yeah. It's pretty accurate. You could do that. Yes. That's correct. That's your public health. I mean, you've got it. You've got to know one. I don't think you can show up to like a public vet clinic. I feel like take this out. Yeah. Yeah. It has to be like a friend of a friend kind of thing. But yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, vet benefits. Yeah. Yeah, so Medicare was a national healthcare scheme that provided a wide range of free healthcare. So that was created by Gough Whitlam, hey, Jordan? Well... Like it was pushed through? The predecessor Medibank was, and then that was greatly expanded out by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, which were the next Labor prime ministers after it. Right.

But yeah, he set the foundations of it. But he was in for two years, so he didn't have time. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty massive gains for two years. He abolished the death penalty, established the family court to assist in resolving family matters and issues. He got rid of university fees and he passed laws such as the Aboriginal Lands Right Act. So he actually might have got rid of the Skippy Slug.

maybe he banned most of the slurs on that list Isaiah yeah he was also medibanked getting rid of slurs at the start of the ball yeah a real shaker mover

He passed those laws to support Aboriginal Australians adapt to the rapidly changing world. I'll tell you something else that isn't on that list that really should be. And this is the thing that angers me to no end when people say there's no difference between the two major parties, because I think this is huge. That was the guy that put forward, no, everyone in this country should have access to a flushing toilet.

You believe that? No way. Until then. Yeah, we were like India until Gough Whitlam came in. It was just like, we wanted sewerage. Most of Western Sydney, Brisbane, huge chunks of Melbourne, Perth.

didn't have sewerage. If you were in a poor neighborhood, you shat in the streets. Like it was Calcutta. No fucking way. In the seventies, in the seventies, he was the one that built national sewerage across the entire country. It's got to be one of the biggest, that's more important to public health than Medicare. I'll tell you that right now. Um,

How did the other party tackle that? Were they like, no, shitting in toilets is bad for you. We don't want to push that agenda. They used to laugh at him. The Liberals used to laugh at him and say, that's a local council issue. And it was like, yeah, if you came from a rich suburb, yeah, they would have built public sewage for you. But if you came from a poor suburb, the council didn't have enough money for it.

So he ran on the platform of every man deserves a shitter. Everyone deserves a shitter. I guess we didn't know a day where people say like, oh, the Labour Party's like the same as the Liberals or whatever, because it's like, dude, you would literally be walking around in your own shit if it wasn't for them. Literally. So yeah, that was huge. Yeah. I can't imagine a world without toilets. Isn't it strange? It's a third world stuff. Yeah. So how could the CIA possibly hate these things? CIA anti-toilet? More likely than you think. Well...

It's possible that they really hated Whitlam because to this day, Whitlam is the only prime minister who has been dismissed from office. Until I heard about this story, I didn't even know this was a possibility. That's how little I knew about how Australian politics worked.

Yeah, I didn't know that they could just be dismissed. I thought they had to run their sentence, basically, or be outed by their own party. But no, there's someone who sits above them and decides pretty unilaterally if they are allowed to continue governing, which is a terrifying thought. If his ideas were so great, though, why would this be the case? And how are the CIA possibly slash definitely involved? Let's get into it. And it's not just the CIA, right? There are a lot of other interests involved in

in wanting him gone, not just the CIA, but it's fun when it's just the CIA. Yes, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So a quick look into Australian politics, probably important for people to understand how politics in Australia kind of works before we get into the more conspiratorial elements. Would you like to take this Jordan, since you're the expert?

Okay. Australia is both a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. This means that King Charles III is the head of the state, and the monarchy is represented by someone called the Governor-General, but Australian citizens. So, Isaiah, I think in your system, the President is the Governor-General and the Prime Minister. Yeah, he's like an all-encompassing...

power, right? Yeah. The president, uh, is, uh, chief in command, uh, everything except for executive orders, everything the president does is supposed to be filtered through like house and like a Senate and it gets like push forward or he has to have like final approval and stuff. It's not supposed to be just like the, at the, um,

flip of a hat and can do whatever they want uh but then there's like um executive orders which kind of do do that and then executive orders get reviewed after their action yeah the idea is like well sometimes things need to be done quicker right um so you should have the executive power to be able to do that in times where it's necessary correct yeah that's the idea behind it but sometimes he's kind of just like he's presiding over the process more or less

Ideally, yes. In theory, correct. Yeah, really, it's sort of like your president is our King Charles III, but he gets way more involved. Yeah, but they don't want to use the terminology king because of the whole... Yeah, that's almost what they are. I mean, King Charles technically can do those executive orders, but he just doesn't, you know? Yeah, you come under review for stuff and there's like...

If a president acts too far out of line, there's like the House and the Senate and stuff like that can review him. There could be impeachments, which is effectively like a trial for the president. Yeah, yeah. There's other systems around it where they're not like...

sole controller, but sometimes it can seem that way. And those were born from, obviously, when the UK and the US went through their breakup, and they were like, we need a better system, instead of one old dude, one dude born of incest over in England, controlling literally everything, being able to do whatever he wants. So,

president was the thing that they determined was the best path forward. Whereas we still have a president is just a governor general that no one knows about who just hides the shadows basically with a knife ready to stab who we democratically elect in the back whenever they feel like it. Hands out an Australian of the Year award. Back to the shadows. Ready. Ready to bounce. The parliament composes of democratically elected representatives

from the executive branch of the Australian government and they're people making decisions about the future of the country. There are dozens of political parties that are registered with the Australian Electoral Commission to participate in national elections. That happen every three years and many further minor ones that operate more on state or territory levels.

But also, like America, we are basically a two-party system. There are two big parties who battle it out every time. There's the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. In terms of political ideologies, the Labor Party is centre-left while the Liberal Party is centre-right. Yeah, and there's a bunch of other minor parties, but again, they just kind of exist to draw votes away from these two major parties, essentially.

and form different coalitions and stuff, depending on how many get voted in. But regardless, all you really need to know is that the Liberals and the Labor Party are the main parties and have been since forever, right? They've been around forever. They've reformed several different times, but it's always been them, basically. Well, the Labor Party's always been around since before Federation. The Liberal Party has its, but she's got a new hat now.

Every 60 years or something. It changes brand when the brand becomes too toxic. She goes in for plastic surgery and she comes out a new woman. Yeah, that's what happens. It's kind of happening now, yeah. But I think the big going forward, it is kind of important to remember for the Americans listening that your version of the president is sort of...

It's two people here. It's two people here is probably the best way to put it. And the Governor-General is sort of the representative of the King and...

as a result informs the king about happenings that are going on in australia and he does have the power to dismiss the prime minister and absolve parliament just on his own just on his own there's no kind of like i don't think there's any like i think he has to have a legal basis for and get the opinions from other legal experts in the country at the time again this has only happened once right

In terms of Prime Minister being ousted, I'm pretty sure there was a New South Wales Premier that was also ousted at one point. But in terms of Prime Minister, this is the only time that it's ever happened. So it was kind of like precedent defining. But yeah, so it can just happen unilaterally, basically, right? Pretty much, yeah. It's crazy, man. It's scary.

So let's skip ahead to who was Gough Whitlam, because we need to know about the man if we need, if we were going to find out why he was, you know, kicked out. Now that you know, Australian politics and we've set the stage, you need to know about the man at the center of the story. Gough Whitlam, our 21st prime minister. Now who was Gough Whitlam?

Born in 1916, Edward Goff Whitlam grew up within the suburb of Kew in Melbourne. Whitlam's father, Fred Whitlam, was a Commonwealth Crown solicitor. When he was two, the family moved to Sydney as Fred had accepted a promotion where they lived for nine years until Fred got another promotion which moved the family again, this time to the nation's capital of Canberra, opened in 1927. God, I love Americans saying Australian names. It's so cute.

Okay. I like Canberra. I like it. Yeah, Canberra. That's silly. It sounds like us. It sounds convict-y, doesn't it? Canberra. It sounds made up. It is. No, Isaiah is pronouncing it correctly. We're not. It is Canberra. That's how it should be said. Look at it. Look at the spelling. But anyway, go on. Hold on. One second. All right. Let's see. All right.

So I'm playing very loud banjo music into the mic that they can hear. So we can now read properly and they'll be drowned out by the silence of a banjo. So born in 1960, Edward Goff Whitlam grew up within the... Okay, I'll quit. What the fuck is happening? That's insane.

I played banjo music on the mic that you guys could hear me through and then began reading into the other microphone. What we could hear was like robotic banjo music. It just sounded like a robot breakdancing. I was so confused.

When he was two, the family moved to Sydney as Fred had accepted a promotion where they lived for nine years until Fred got another promotion, which moved the family again, this time to the nation's capital of Canberra, opened in 1927. Nice. Perfect. After school, Whitlam went to St. Paul's College at the University of Sydney, where he earned a Bachelor's of Arts degree. He remained, however, going on to study a Bachelor of Law.

This was interpreted by the Second World War, with Whitlam pulling his last year of studies on hold to enlist in the Army, Sydney University Regiment, and also volunteered and then entered in the Royal Australian Air Force, eventually reaching the rank of flight lieutenant. It was during these years that he met Margaret Elaine Dovey, who would become his wife.

But Lamasso started to engage in political activities while in the army, aligning with the Labor Party and handing out pamphlets and such in favor of them in the upcoming 1943 election. He was discharged from the Air Force in 1945 and went on to finish his Bachelor of Law and was admitted into the New South Wales Federal Bar in 1947 and worked as a barrister.

So is there anything interesting from his early life that sets him apart from other politicians, Jordan? Well, something that is very, it was always very strange about Whitlam was you listen to his upbringing. I mean, look, his dad was a crown solicitor. So that's, I don't even know what the American equivalent of that, but being part of the King's council is as high as you can get.

Everything about his childhood. He came from a very affluent family then. Very affluent, very well connected, very well to do. Had their own toilet. Had their own toilet.

Their own throne, if you will. Which is about the pinnacle of society in Australia. If you have a toilet, you've made it. At the time, it was up there. We went to a fancy school and he joined the Workers' Party and it was always very strange when he was in Parliament because the entire Liberal Party was always shocked because that is pure breed stock for joining the Liberal Party. And he didn't.

And so that was always something that set him apart from virtually everybody else in Parliament. And it really did show that he was quite a, and he definitely was, you can listen to any speech that he ever makes, extremely witty, incredible performer like all barristers are. Barristers are incredible in a court case. Yes. And he was, as a result of that,

uh, quite a weapon for the labor party because the labor party back then, especially was just a bunch of ex union officials, which means that they were mostly just tram drivers and former bus drivers and things. And, you know, they, their heart was in the right place, but they really didn't understand. They didn't know how to maneuver the political kind of machinations as well as the liberals did. No way. No, not a chance. And so he kind of gave them the arsonry that they needed to kind of claw back power. Um,

He was very charismatic and a very creative thinker as well. And I think that that really shows in his upbringing. But yeah, that's all I got to add for that. Okay. So Johnny to the top. He's meteoric rise. But before we go into that, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors.

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It's just a great product that leads to nutritional health for yourself. So I highly recommend checking it out. Thank you, AG1, for helping out the show. And thank you for watching this slot. Thank you. So Whitlam made multiple attempts to get into and begin a career with the Labor Party, but it took him a few years. He came from a privileged background, as Jordan just described, and many called him a silver tail. No clue what that means. I guess just like a rich snob, basically, and out of touch. Yeah. What would that mean? Silver tail?

No clue. Yeah, no, I think that's probably what it means. Because that's what you call, like, mainly Sea Eagle supporters. That's such an Australian reference. He persisted, however, and after a few unsuccessful runs for things like council, local council, Whitlam won a majority vote for the federal seat of Wiriwa, which is a hard word to pronounce, Wiriwa.

Wee Wee Wah, becoming their representative in Parliament. Whitlam became a member of the Australian 20th Parliament on 17th of February 1953, and his maiden speech was a month later, speaking on the supply bill. The speech was filled with foreshadowing showcasing Whitlam's extended vision for reform and a strong critique of the current government. His speech was actually interrupted by a man named John McEwan, who would later become Australia's 18th Prime Minister. Did they all just know each other at the time? Every Prime Minister was like friends or something?

Yeah, of course. How do they all know each other? Oh, I guess because it's a politician's speech. They're all in parliament hanging out together. Yeah, yeah. It's all a big club and we're not a part of it. This was a big no-no as it is a courtesy that Maiden's speeches are heard in complete silence. Whitlam kept his composure and responded with, quote, I thought that the Minister for Commerce and Agriculture had returned to the more congenial climate of Disraeli's day. I recollect that Disraeli said on the occasion of his Maiden's speech, quote, this is a quote within a quote,

The time will come when you shall hear me. Perhaps I should say the time will come when you may interrupt me. So there's an example of that 1950s wit that Jordan's talking about. What a fucking nerd. Benjamin Disraeli was a prime minister of the United Kingdom in the 1870s. Man, whenever I hear witty quotes from the 50s, all I can think about is how nerdy it is. It's such a verbose way of laying down a dig. Just sum it up.

I'm glad we don't use those kinds of long flowery speeches anymore. It's cool to read, but yeah, annoying.

Benjamin Disraeli was a prime minister of the United Kingdom in the 1870s and he's made a speech decades ago. He was heckled and laughed at. I still think the Americans have us beat with that kind of stuff though. Just in general, like speeches and stuff and how kind of vitriolic or impactful or dramatic they are. Like I always remember the time that George Bush Jr. got a shoe thrown at him at one of his speeches and that stuff. It's always way more entertaining. I don't know if I would call that a good point.

Why? Having shoes thrown at you during speeches. Well, not good for him, sure. It's probably bad. We've got you guys beat for presidents getting shot or shot at, but I don't know if that'd necessarily be a good thing. True, but it's a high school.

Yeah, it feels like way more American politics in general feel way more impactful. Like no one knows anything about what we're talking about right now. None of this has ever been reported or talked about. It has never been reported ever, not even once. Well, you know what I mean. There's probably like a new burger getting released in the US or something took precedence. Yeah.

More bigger, better things to move on to. Yeah, they've got their own king problems to deal with. Are we going to call it Burger King? I've seen more drama in local council meetings in America than anything in our federal elections. Dude, I've been to those council meetings. I'll tell you what. When we were starting up the ARP, the little non-profit for the floods that happened over North Carolina, dude, it's like...

It's like the Hatfields and McCoys with some of those people. It's wild. Yeah. I always see videos from them. It's never boring. I'd go to those things if I was in America constantly because it's entertaining. Whereas over here...

It's going to be so boring going to local council meetings in Australia. Because there's nothing to fucking talk about. There's no giant discussions being made or anything. No, there are. You just don't do anything about it. You're the only group of people I know in the world that will allow both giant spiders and birds to run you out of cities for a couple months out of the year. And you're all just like, oh yeah, everything's fine. I don't know what accent that was, but you get the point. It was good enough.

Jordan, rebuttal? Defend me. Defend my Australian honour. Look, I'll say this. I think they do have us beat with local council, but I think regardless of whether you go in the Anglosphere, you will always be entertained. And this is a little tip for anybody out there. If they've got an afternoon to kill and they're bored, you never have an excuse because there's a little thing called local court.

And that is the best use of your time ever. That is better than watching Jerry Springer. You know, like that is hilarious. I was about to swear. I'm not going to, but yeah,

I made an entire YouTube series out of it. It did extremely well. I still do it to this day. I still sit in court all day and every single case is either – you know what the symbol should be? It shouldn't be the blind lady justice statue. It should be – you know that drama statue of just like a sad –

Mask and a happy mask. Oh, right. Yeah, that should be caught. That should be caught. Every case is either tragic or hilarious It's free as well. You could just walk in there right sit down and it's free. You're right. I've been to lunch I was gonna say you don't need to watch like local Drama television series or anything, you know, like the reality shows or anything. You can just go to court. It's easy. Yeah

A court is always great. Local council, definitely the US has its beat. I don't think there's anybody in a tri-corner hat with a bill screaming about their freedom being taken away in our councils. No, because our freedom's already been taken away. Our freedom's been taken away already by the minister, I mean, the governor general or whatever his name is. Also, I think it's just kind of a thing of being a convict colony.

You don't really. As Isaiah always lets me know. Penal colony moment. Yeah, we lay down and take it. That's our spirit. Our spirit's already been broken. It's definitely at our roots, yeah. Yeah.

So over the years, Whitlam proved himself to be an articulate and intelligent member of parliament. He took stances on topics like recognizing China and its entry to the United Nations, which was in line with the views of the Labor Party, but was seen as a very radical stance at the time due to the looming Cold War. So this already would have pushed tensions with the US into pretty astronomical heights if someone pretty high up in the parliament was talking about recognizing China at the time.

There was a bit of turmoil within the Labor Party at the time, which led to the third split of the party in 1955, and the reason for this was based around their views regarding communism. Those who were anti-communism went on to form the Democratic Labor Party, which itself was dissolved in 1978 and then refounded again in the same year. There were questions and rumors on if Whitlam truly believed in the ideologies of the Labor Party, and many expected him to be an undercover liberal, like he was saying. He continued and pursued through consistently reiterating his beliefs that aligned with the party, and

And so he was just like a mainstay and kind of built himself up over decades within the party. Whitlam became a member of Dr. Herbert Everett's shadow cabinet in 1959. And the shadow cabinet is the opposition's group of senior figures. So it's basically like the party that loses gets to form their own kind of, you know, bench, right? That's how it works. Bench of ministers.

Yeah, they have like an alternative minister and pretty much their job is after the government comes in and announces something on ABC Radio National, ABC Radio National will then interview the shadow cabinet member and then they'll just shit on it for the next 10 minutes. And that's democracy in a nutshell. So they're just, it's the losers club, basically. They're just there to be pointed at and laughed at.

You lost an election, losers. That's going to suck. It's really not much to do. After Abbott reigned the following year, Whitlam won the position of deputy leader, and this gave him a bit more freedom and allowed him to start to restructure the party while Abbott led. It was in 1963, and the Labor Party's decision-making body was making an important decision on if the United States, and this is important, if the United States could build a military communications base in Western Australia.

Right.

This photo, which included predominant important figures in the Labor Party waiting outside for the decision of the others, was used to push the idea that unelected party officials actually controlled Labor's policies.

Of course, this was like striking gold for the liberals and the prime minister at the time, Robert Menzies, used the image to attack and discredit the Labour Party, saying that they had no leadership or structure. And it worked because Menzies then called an election and they pretty much decimated the Labour. It's funny how one article could just kind of determine the fate of an election like this. Like you just take a picture of a few guys back of their heads and claim that like they're the ones making the decisions of this party.

Yeah, like that Dukakis moment in the US. Yeah. You know, I still to this day don't get it. What was the whole point? It was just a picture of Michael Dukakis in a tank. And then for some reason, because he was in a tank, he was weak on defense or something. And that's how he lost the election. Isaiah, do you know? Who? Who are you talking about?

Okay, yeah, it's old stuff, but it's just like apparently Reagan just ran this massive campaign against his Democratic opponent, and it was just the...

their opposition leader or whatever you call it in a tank and because like the helmet on his head looked weird because he had a little nerdy head everyone was just like look at him he shouldn't be in a tank that's a very American political smear campaign I think yeah look at this guy he's weak never thrown a football in his life this idiot doesn't even know how to wear the helmet right stupid how do you expect to know where to put the tanks if you can't wear the helmet idiot throw up

I really don't think that wearing a tank helmet is a qualifying factor of being a president. I don't know. It doesn't matter what the truth is. It matters what you can get people to subconsciously think. Yes. Package them to believe. Yeah, you could just throw it out there and be like, he doesn't know how tanks work. You just make it up. And then people will be in the voting booth like, I mean, I don't want to vote for the guy who doesn't know how tanks work.

That's a pretty important part of running a country. He needs to know how to run a tank. What will I tell the kids? I don't know, a tank's work? Yeah. I'm scared of the fate of our country. I don't think our Prime Minister knows how to drive a tank. That's why all modern campaigns are who can fling the most mud. When you get in there, you're like...

Do they even talk about policy anymore? Or is it all just like... No, I have no idea what... I mean, I'm sure they do, but that's not the parts that get circulated through. It's always just like, they said this about this. Like, no one actually cares. Because at this point, it's like red team, blue team. Everyone knows the basics. Yeah, it's like a sports game. It's like a sports team, yeah. Everyone just wears their jersey and that's it.

American politics is particularly devoid of policy. I've always noticed that. Anytime you ever watch the news in America, it is exactly what Isaiah is saying. In Australia, they still do

about policy in the news. Which is why no one listens, by the way. Exactly. People only listen to American politics. I feel like that hypothetically that it was mostly that way, but then I feel like the 2016 election had a huge culture shift where it just became a spectacle. It pushed it even further. Yes. And now no one even brings it up.

Well, I think that's why most people say that Donald Trump was a symptom of a prevailing illness that was already there, kind of. Yeah, because I feel like, I mean, I was young, but I feel like during the Obama-Romney election, there was still a high level of like, well, where do you stand on this policy? Well, that's not as progressive as this on this policy and stuff.

Then it just became like, I think you should be dead. I think we should kill you in the rocks, actually. And everyone's like, ooh. And that became what politics is. I think it's tied to social media. It has to be, because everything's so quick and bitey on social media. It's all culture war stuff now. That's all it is. Yeah.

Yep, so pro tip for the next president or whatever, learn how to drive a tank. That should be the top of your policy. And just get super jacked as well. Yeah, I was going to say, get super jacked. Just like hang out of the tank with your shirt off and your abs rippling or something. That's enough. Like who's going to call you a bitch then? No one. So dumb.

Whitlam... I know, it's so frustrating. Whitlam became the Labour Party leader in April 1967 as Arthur Colwell had retired the year before, most likely due to the poor election results. Whitlam had spent years mulling over policies and reforms and now he was able to put his modern plans into action. What was he pushing for? More power for elected politicians and decision-making outcomes or...

ordinary members within the party having the ability to have their say in policies and less controlled by paid party officials who he believed had too much influence. So he was just like a super progressive dude for the time, right? Just broadly speaking, very progressive. Yeah, no, he was the great reformer. Definitely. His wing of the Labour Party. That's another reason why he would eventually meet his demise because he just pushed it way too far.

He went too far, too quick. He pissed way too many people off way too quickly. Yeah, if you push too hard. It's impressive when you do, but there's a limit to what you're able to achieve. I mean, you're going to do good at your job, but you're not going to do too good at your job, right? Yes. You've got to be reasonable about this. Yeah. So when the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, our 17th Prime Minister, disappeared at sea while swimming in 1967...

Which is a conspiracy in itself. Yeah, that's another conspiracy. One of our prime ministers just disappeared at sea and we never saw him again. Never recovered a body, never anything. The conspiracy behind that, by the way, Isaiah, if you didn't know, is that Chinese submarines kidnapped him in the ocean and took him away. Yeah, and I don't know what, like just forced him to teach at an English school or something. How would you even...

Do that so the submarine would have to surface yes, and then they'd be like hey you stop and then just be like a really slow chase and then they They like they like slut they set down then like slide off the side of the submarine And someone has to get a ladder and they have to like pull it up with him. Oh

Maybe do submarines when they're underwater, can they like utilize netting maybe somehow like fishing nets? Maybe they call it that way. When you're underwater in a pressurized tube, you cannot utilize netting. What if they like attach nets to the side? Do you think it's the Batmobile? They don't have like grapple hooks. They shoot a grappling hook out of them. I don't know. Take it in a video game. Why can't the conspiracy just be that a boat kidnapped him?

So much more sense. Or like two fishing trawler ships with a fat 16-kilometer net. Scooch. I hope there's someone in like British government... British. In Australian government listening to this who's like, the boats! We never thought about the boats! Get all the files back out. Look again. Push it out now. Push out that lie. No, I think...

There's also like UFO theories. Oddly enough, no one seems to want to talk about the fact that a lot of people die swimming in the ocean. No, no. Just from drowning. Of course not. That would be too simple. Yeah, if you're lame, if you don't have fun with it.

Yeah, I want to have fun with it. That's why I said UFOs. You know what, Jackson? You're right. It's submarines with net guns that fly out of the jump. It's better. So yeah, Harold Holt disappeared, kind of left the position of prime minister open in his disappearance. So a man named John Gorton became prime minister. And during these years, Whitlam was active in his travels going to Vietnam and Papua New Guinea, which is an island chain, basically, north of Australia, very close in proximity, and

At the time, Australia was involved in the Vietnam War, supporting America and South Vietnam against North Vietnam. Howard Holt was liberal and pro-war and had introduced conscription back in 1964, which the Labor Party and the population heavily disagreed with. Whitlam heavily believed Australia should not be involved in the war and pushed for withdrawal of Australian troops, which created a lot of tension with a little-known country by the name of the United States, even though Whitlam wasn't even in power. Woo-hoo!

Yeah, shout out to America and their wars that they like to drag other countries into. Shout out. This one's for you, King. Over in Papua New Guinea, Whitlam supported the growing pressure for Papua New Guinea to go independent as they were still currently controlled by Australia. The process at the time was incredibly slow and Whitlam was pushing to accelerate the process and he met with local leaders in Papua New Guinea to discuss the issue.

These were for the time extremely, and I can't understate this, extremely progressive ideals, which America didn't love.

He also took an important trip to China in 1971, a big political movement at the time, as many Western countries, including Australia, did not recognize the People's Republic of China and abstained from any level of diplomacy or trade with the country. Whitlam wanted to open up relations with China, believing in its importance for trade and diplomacy, as well as to just kind of like remove us from the American dependency, right? Like we needed trade partners within our region so that we didn't have to suckle

at the teat of America. Well, it was even sillier back in 1971. It would have been a lot of trade with Britain still.

True. That was the weird thing. They had that weird Commonwealth protectorate. So we were just shipping sheep over to the fucking other side of the planet. Yeah, most of our resources were going to other countries. Well, for most of our time, like we were basically just a colony that existed to ship other resources to these kingdoms of, you know, America and Britain. And we didn't really leave much for ourselves. Yes.

Which, when everyone always says, there's a big, the thing we learn at school all the time is the reason that Whitlam was dismissed is because, pretty much just to instill the propaganda in everyone's mind that the Labor Party's terrible with the economy. They constantly push the point that, oh, Whitlam just, you know, he couldn't get supply of the, I don't know, the 1974 bill through for the budget or whatever, right? Yeah.

Yeah, he couldn't clear the budget, so government couldn't run or whatever is what they claim. Couldn't clear the budget. Even though they were the ones that were basically forcing the issue by not going along with these budget bills and stuff like that, like they were dragging their feet. Blocking it. Really, Isaiah, it's kind of the equivalent of, I know that the Republicans every six months or so try and just block...

the debt ceiling or whatever it is in the United States and just say, no, we're not going to pay bills anymore. And everyone just freaks out. And then they go, oh, actually, surprise, we've changed it. Oh, yeah. That happens a lot. So that same thing about like, we're going to do this and then there's panic and then they don't do that. So that is what happens with every single thing I think they've ever said ever. Yeah.

That's politics, baby. Yeah. But the thing is, if you really look at it, if you really look at it in terms of the economy, Gough Whitlam set Australia up for its incredible wealth that it has today. He was the first to reduce tariffs in this country, which is very important for a country like Australia. And then the other thing was setting up trade deals with China and Vietnam, for Christ's sakes, like how much has that been worth over the years? Trillions of dollars?

This is what our economy is based off of. And this is how forward thinking he was. He was doing it before the Americans found it acceptable, because then I think a couple of years later, Nixon decided, oh, actually, yeah, we should start trading with the United States. Well, I think, yeah, he visited, Nixon visited China the following year, just days after Whitlam left. There you go. There you go. Sorry, continue though.

No, it's good. So the 1972 election was looming in the Labour Party campaign with the slogan, It's Time. Basically, they utilized free university education, the ending of conscription, free healthcare, indigenous land right. We already went over all the good stuff that they kind of packaged up to kind of, you know, build momentum with the public. A lot of people wanted this kind of change because the liberals had been kind of in power for a

23 years at this point. So people were getting tired of the economic downturn and all of the lack of progress, really, politically. So they wanted a change and they chose Goss Whitlam to kind of take that change. Whitlam won the election with the popular vote, 3.2 million, obtaining 67 seats and 49.5% of votes.

With the opposition Liberal Country Coalition keeping 58 seats but losing 41.8% of votes. Whitlam had the majority in the House of Representatives but did not control the Senate.

Okay, so Gough Whitlam became the president. Sorry, Americanism. Okay, so Gough Whitlam became the Prime Minister of Australia in December of 1972 until he was sacked in 75. The official reasoning of his dismissal came down to a few important points. Number one, the block supply bill.

Liberal Party controlled the Senate and they refused to pass the Labor Budget Supply Bill, which was critical for the government to fund its operations. This was then used to discredit Whitlam, with them claiming he was unable to govern effectively and unable to secure funding, ultimately creating a situation where the government could not perform their constitutional duties.

This was argued by Australian barrister and judge John Kerr, who was the governor general at the time of Whitlam's dismissal. So that's what you were talking about then, Jordan, right? Like the block supply bill that the Liberal Party blocked?

Yeah, I really that angers me so much that the conditioning is so heavy in this country that the coalition are obviously better economic managers. And then they turn around and do things like that, which is really, really scary. Like if you if you are just blocking budget supply, that is shutting down the government.

It's kind of an act of terrorism, really. If you, yeah, I mean, it sucks, but what angers me about it is that they then use that as rationale, their own blocking of government operating as rationale to, like, out the Prime Minister and then take control again. Isn't it scummy to sit there and say, look, you can't run the economy, and it's like, yes, because you are actively destroying it. LAUGHTER

It's like blaming a guy getting punched for getting punched, basically. And the guy punching him, blaming him for it. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go on, though. No, you're good. Number two, political stability. Kerr also said that dismissing Whitlam was important to restoring political stability within Australia and the deadlock between the government and state as above would be resolved with the removal of the Whitlam-shaped wedge between them.

Care believes that appointing the opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser, as caretaker prime minister would help to resolve this issue quickly, effectively putting the Liberal Party, who had lost the election, back in power. That's so funny. They weren't even elected. This guy unilaterally again decides, you know what, the guy that you elected, he's out, and due to that, I'm giving power to the other people. That you didn't elect. Yeah.

Yeah, that you didn't elect. Incredible, isn't it? Like, at least give it to, like, a deputy in the, you know, the Labour Party or something, instead of giving it to the other guys who had lost the election. Oh, my God. That angers me so much. It's horrible, isn't it? It's a really dark moment of our history. Yeah. Yeah. On the loans affair. Do what? Oh, the loans affair. Sorry, sorry. Finish this, Isaiah, but I have an incredible little tidbit about this, but do continue. Okay.

So the loans affair allegations at the time, there were hard economic challenges, including inflation and unemployment that Whitlam's government was facing, though not the finger pointing reason to his dismissal. It did not help the perception of labor and Whitlam turning to a mishandling of the economy.

There was controversy over the loans affair and how the Whitlam government sought funds from overseas for various social programs and infrastructure projects. There were allegations of secrecy and possible failing to adhere to government protocols, as well as the funds being poorly managed and the possible use of middlemen and the smell of corruption and misappropriated funds. Oh no. We need an Australian version of Doge to investigate this from 60 years ago. Yeah.

Who are these middlemen? Dig this, boys. So that loan's a fair thing. This is really quite central. It was a way of spinning the main reason that we'll get to, obviously why Whittle was dismissed, which was the fact that he wanted to nationalise our mines instead of them being owned by a bunch of British and American corporations, right?

So that's what that money was going towards because they sought to get money from our Treasury and because our Treasury, like everything else, it had the Liberals in for the last 23 years. So it was just stacked with their guys. So they were endlessly unhelpful to the Labor Party and...

The same thing that always happens now. A major point of government that nobody really ever thinks about is the fact that the main point of getting in for your party is to just stay in for as long as you can, is to stack the bureaucracy with people that are friendly to your agenda. Because once you're out of government, it still takes you like a decade to get your guys in so they can sit there and just block you on a bureaucratic level the whole time, right? So anyway, that was all happening.

They wanted money for these mines that they wanted to nationalise. So the treasurer, who was even more of a loose unit than Gough Whitlam, Jim Cairn, that guy just turned out to be this weird cult hippie after he left Parliament. LAUGHTER

Wait, what do you mean by cult hippie? He like formed an actual cult? No, you know what he did? You know what he did? He spent the rest of his life after politics and getting disillusioned with it. He spent the rest of his life sitting around those sort of Saturday night markets. I don't know if you have the equivalent of that in the United States, Isaiah, but it's like farmers markets. Is that where like, are farmers markets for farmers or is there a bunch of

People that go to Burning Man and shit there. Well, it depends on what part of the country you're in, but a farmer's market is a direct from a producer to consumer market typically. So it's like the actual farm selling their meat or vegetables and stuff.

I was gonna say it's more like local markets, basically, as opposed to buying it from stores and actual manufacturers. Yeah, it's typically just individuals. It's like Farmer Joe selling to me. So that sounds the same as Saturday markets. Saturday markets, it's kind of similar, yeah, but it's always at those Saturday markets there'll be a bunch of people selling hacky sacks and...

tie-dyed shirts. Oh, sure. There's always people selling candles or like their own stuff that they made at home. It's like Etsy. It's an open marketplace. People will show up to sell stuff. Yeah, pretty much. Real life Etsy. He used to just sit there trying to sell his own book as a former treasurer, like one of those weirdo eccentric hippies sitting in one of those markets selling books about

how the next phase of human spiritualism is about to unfurl. And he just wrote a bunch of very strange books about human actualization after he left parliament. Have you read any of his books? I want to, but they're very hard to find. Because he only wrote like one copy, one manuscript. Yeah, I mean, Penguin isn't publishing these books. You've got to go to a farmer's market. Yeah.

Maybe that's where I'm going wrong. I just hate those markets so much. I can't do it. You got to go into the trenches if you want that bike. You got to find the guy who still has it. I might have to, honestly, because I am interested. What does he even mean by the next phase of spiritualism? Well, everyone who says that means something different. They've got their own cult spin on self-actualization. Don't they? So what was his? Yeah.

It could be like the Heaven's Gate thing where a UFO will come along and pick you up following Hayley's comment. There's a million different ways that he could have gone. It is weird that a government official basically turned to that life afterwards. It was strange. He was always a bit... Both Whitlam and him, but him especially was kind of off the deep end. But he was also...

a visionary economist as well uh definitely at his right points has been you know nationalizing the mines would have made us even richer than opening up trade relations with china and that was his baby so he refused to accept that the treasury wasn't doing it and so he said all right fuck you guys then i'm going to this pakistani bank a pakistani bank in pakistan in pakistan

And I'm going to ask them to secure a loan for the Australian government. Outrageous. It's very outside the box stuff. I still think if he was able to pass that, that would have been definitely worth the net benefit of getting a loan off of something that would have been dodgier than going to quick loans or something. Why Pakistan? Is that the only person we could get loans from at the time? Here's the thing. Here's the thing.

The guy that I do my podcast with, the Friendly Geordies podcast, Ali, he is a Pakistani immigrant to this country. He only came in 2012.

And randomly when I was talking about this one day, the guy that ran that bank, there was a bunch of ads about it back in the day because they used to run those ads in the next one. It'd be like, can you really trust this man that does deals with the Pakistanis? And then there'd be a guy with a snake charmer being like, and then they'd have Jim Khan come out of the wicker basket like he was a cobra floating off to Pakistan. Yeah.

It's pretty good. I like that. It's a good one. Isn't it great? It's a good ad. It's a good ad. But anyway, that was his uncle. The guy that ran that bank was my podcast buddy's uncle. His uncle was the snake? The snake guy. The snake charmer. That was him. This is all connected. Isn't it?

I was asking him why the hell was that the case? And he was just saying that out of nowhere, that guy became one of the most important bankers on earth in the 70s. I had no idea about that, again, because I'm reading it from Australia and it was like, oh, it's some dodgy Pakistani, just, you know, the lowest of the low kind of loans. He actually had...

He was a really, really huge banker. I think he owned the sixth biggest bank at the time, and it just kind of sprung up overnight. And then everyone was wondering why that was, and then it turned out it was because he was just a massive money launderer for organized crime. Okay, there we go. That's always the answer. How else do you just become the biggest bank in the world? Obviously illegal, yeah. Obviously illegal. But the point is, look,

They had the money for the loan. That's the bottom line of it. And again, that guy, because it's the same sort of thing. He had this sort of can't beat him, join him mentality. That banker was a rabid communist in Pakistan. And then at some point just clicked in his head, oh, well, if you can't beat him, join him and became a banker. And that's how it all went down. Isn't that phenomenal?

Anyway, sorry. Wow, that is such a random offshoot. Yeah. That went very deep. All right, so please go on. Yeah, so John Kerr, being the Governor General and as such the legal representative of our owners, the monarchy...

Had the legal and complete authority at any time to dismiss the Prime Minister if he thought it was in the best interest of the country as this position, unelected and chosen by the monarchy in the United Kingdom, was a position that sat at the head of the country above the Prime Minister. And so, for the first time in Australian history, he did. This decision obviously did not go over well.

Really, the beliefs held on Whitlam's dismissal are rooted in a complex web of geological interests. I imagine that's a geopolitical interest, not geological as in like the people who were studying rocks were really interested in. I mean, it actually is geological interest in the sense that like the mining companies like...

You know, I'm going to disagree with you. I'm going to say there were some guys who were looking at quartz rocks who were like, this is going to get out of hand. I'm really worried. Some geologists that, you know, petitioned John Kerr to dismiss him. Please reconsider. I'm begging you. Domestic politics and economic factors like the mining industry and resource taxation policies under Whitlam's government.

Don't forget, this was in the 1970s and the Cold War was not over. Whitlam was steering Australia to be more independent while also seeking to engage with nations like China, which was alarming to countries like the US and also other Australian politicians who had existing interest with countries and groups that Whitlam was now moving away from.

You don't strike where the money's being made. You don't strike people's pockets. And most importantly, you do not talk to someone that isn't the United States. So don't forget it. Yeah.

It's so funny to me to think about how Australia is now in the storied books, the same kind of bucket as South America, where America orchestrated coups and stuff over there. We're in that same bucket now because they did it to us as well. Oh, yeah.

kind of political maneuvering. Let's look at the Australian mining industry because many believe that's what played a big role in Whitlam's dismissal. If you Google how much the Australians mining, the Australians, yes, mining industry is worth, you will get $455 billion. Insane.

But it is mostly over 80% owned by foreign entities, meaning most of the profits from Australia's resources leave the country. The mining industry does love to say that they pay their weight in tax, but did you know that teachers actually pay double the tax of oil and gas companies? Even student loan debt pays more tax than these global mining companies. Funny how that works out. Yeah.

The mining industry has been a hot topic for a long time, and many politicians have tried to rally against them, but all have ultimately lost. Remember when we mentioned John Gordon, the man who became prime minister after Harold Holt disappeared in the Pacific Ocean? He created something...

He created something called the Australian Industry Development Corporation, which essentially would allow Australian companies to create mines and such without intervention from overseas control in an effort to keep the money in Australia, where it could be used to better develop the country and support the people that generated the wealth. This did not end well for Gordon, who's ultimately cued by his own

Let me retry that. This did not end well for Gorton, who was ultimately cued by his own party, the liberals, where there was a vote of no confidence in Gorton as a leader, which landed in a 33 to 33 tie, leading Gorton to stepping down and being replaced with William McMahon, who immediately destroyed Gorton's ideas.

These decisions and these political movements and party coups have a history of being influenced by outside sources and, in this case, the people who had the most to lose were these global mining companies predominantly owned and operated by foreign powers. And now, Whitlam was coming in, spreading the same ideas they had just successfully extinguished.

Yeah, I'll take this next part. So Whitlam also began to look inwards to a place in the center of Australia near Alice Springs called Pine Gap. Have you heard of Pine Gap, Isaiah? I have not. It's probably like our most famous place in Australia, really, other than like Sydney and Melbourne, like actual cities. You've been there, Jordan, haven't you? You've actually been in there. Yes. Yeah.

I mean, you can't say that legally, can you? No, I can't say it legally. Look, we did a video with Boy Boy where we spent four days going to Alice Springs. It was a tough trip. It's like trying to get to that Jurassic Park island. Middle of Australia. Yeah, it's so tough. You get there, we drove up to Pine Gap, and then we were immediately stopped by federal police who said, go home, and then we did, and that was the video. And then you...

Wasn't there something to do with they followed you on the plane as well? Oh yeah, they said don't show any of this footage. Footage of what? The desert? The fence? I don't know. It's quite, Isaiah, just so you know, it's quite Area 51-y.

Pine Gap. There's that one. And then we've got another military base of the Americans in West Australia, which is more about nuclear testing, I think. But Pine Gap is mostly about spying on the Chinese, mostly, I can gather. But no one knows. No one knows really what they're doing in there. No. I mean, there's radar and stuff like that, like giant antennas and stuff. So obviously, the official, I think, explanation for Pine Gap is that it's a joint satellite communication and signals intelligence surveillance base.

Apparently owned by both Australia and the United States, but we really know who owns the leash there. The location, pretty much in the dead center of Australia, is extraordinarily strategically valuable as it controls the American spy satellites passing countries like China, North Korea, Russia, and the Middle East. And it is also too remote, because it's in the middle of a giant country, too remote to be impacted by spy ships trying to intercept the signals.

So obviously it's in an ally country as well. So this is like massively strategically important to America and has been for decades.

We know from leaked documents that Pine Gap was used during events such as the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and it even helped America find Al-Qaeda and Taliban soldiers. So yeah, it's very instrumental. The area around Pine Gap is strictly prohibited and most of the people operating at Pine Gap are American citizens who fly into the nearby Alice Springs Airport to work. So it's basically like a little American cult compound, basically, like a compound of only Americans working

Whitlam, our own prime minister, wanted more transparency on what was happening at Pine Gap, and even he had no answers on whether it was being used for things like nuclear warplanes. So this is how he died. Got it. All right, continue. Yeah, this is how the CIA gets involved. I was kind of sitting here like, when does the CIA start caring about it? Okay, got it. Now you understand. The talking to China thing, I was like, eh, but there were a bunch of people that talked to China and didn't die, but now I'm putting two and two together. Continue.

So yeah, the United States is operating covertly on Australian soil without sharing information or cooperating with the very leader of Australia. They left him in the dark, basically. So tensions between Whitlam and the US were evidently on edge, fueled as well by Whitlam removing Australian troops from Vietnam, which was also, they didn't appreciate that. Whitlam ordered a raid on

on his own Australian security intelligence organization, our own security organization, intelligence agency, in 1973 as their government, so the Whitlam government, believed that the agency was hiding information and working too closely with the CIA and MI5 instead of with Australian leaders. So our own intelligence agency was so compromised by American interests that they weren't like...

cooperating with the prime minister, the democratically elected leader of our country. That's fucking insane. That's pretty cool. That's so insane how powerful you guys are. It's a proud tradition of ASIO. Has been since its very inception. It's always been a...

puppet of the CIA in the United States, which I'd imagine most intelligence agencies would be. Yeah, they've got to be. Probably even the MI5 would be as well. Yeah, why wouldn't... I mean, if you're the American intelligence agencies, why wouldn't you infiltrate every one of those agencies? What happened is during World War II, the United States put together the...

The greatest like intelligence agents in the world made up of like defectors from Japan and Germany and, you know, Britain, Australia, like the greatest minds in the world and assembled them into the OSS in order to beat the Axis powers. And then when the war... What's the OSS?

uh the uh it became the cia it was originally the oss the uh office of secret services operation secret services wherever the o was for um and after the war ended every other country in the world was like okay we don't have to keep the war thing going and the united states saw russia and knew that they were going to be a problem for american ideals or whatever i was like what if we don't

get rid of this whole OSS thing. So they reworked it into like American interest as the CIA and continued bankrolling and like putting probes into every country they were already involved with during World War II, which was all of them. Yes. So every intelligence organization in the world that came after World War II was a direct offshoot of the CIA. So they're not going to pull up stakes at any point. So.

Yeah, no, the DNA is thoroughly, as I was pointing out, it's really...

ingrained in there. They go on trips together. They have exchange programs. It's kind of just like spy school or something. They all share intelligence with one another. It's very deep roots between the two of them. The security organizations share information with each other, but as soon as the Australian government itself asks for that information, it's no.

That's ours. That's American information. Yes. And you know what? I've read a couple of books recently that have been very interesting about secret intelligence agencies across the world. One of them was making the case, and I kind of do believe it. I'd like to get your opinion on this, Isaiah, as well. During the Cold War, they were making the argument that the KGB and the CIA were

had more links and goodwill towards each other than they did with, say, their own governments. So the KGB would share more with the CIA than it would with the Kremlin. And the CIA would share more with the KGB than they would with Washington. And

And they, and it's basically making the argument that ever since Venus sort of created the first intelligence agency back in, I don't know, 1500s or whatever, really it's making the argument that secret intelligence agencies really do run the world. Like if you- Yeah, the Illuminati never died idea. Yeah. Is that what that is?

Yeah, the Illuminati was the one in France in, I think, 1600s. Yeah, or 1590, something like that. That's what the original Illuminati was. It was a group of, like, free thinkers, quote unquote, to...

discuss the way that like politics and like government should behave. But it died around like late 1600s, I think. But the idea is that never died. It just the same people just moved into other organizations, you know, reform into different groups. Yeah, it would make sense. I'm not as familiar with the KGB, but I know the CIA historically has operated on their own accord. That was one of Kennedy's biggest problems with them.

Uh, another person who famously nothing bad happened to him while he was in office. Uh, JFK had said that the CIA is a rogue, like described it as like a monster, almost like it's a rogue machine that keeps trying to eat pieces. He said, if, uh, pieces of the government, he said, uh, if it was up to him, he would, uh, I believe the quote is shattered the CIA into a thousand pieces and cast them into the wind. Uh,

So I wouldn't be surprised if like this group of people who quote unquote knew better was talking to other people who quote unquote knew better. And while the United States and Russia were having their like, you know, public squabbles, they were shaking hands behind the scenes. I could definitely see that.

but the government's also kind of want these organizations to act independently from the government for like things like plausible deniability right well it depends that um what so the way they'll do that is they will hire contractors or people detached and typically the person working the job doesn't know that their checks are being written by the cia right

It's like, that's why a proxy war tends to be right. It's like the CIA gets a government embassy in another area to contract local security teams who pay local freedom fighters. So the check passes through four different hands until eventually you're funding like private militaries and militias in random regions of the world in order to change local economies or governments to whatever you want them to be. You just pull strings far enough away that they can't see who's pulling them. That's the whole idea. Yeah.

Yeah, makes sense. The point of this is that basically these intelligence agencies operate independently from the governments though, and they do seem to share a lot of information with one another, but not with their respective governments. More so in the case of ACO, which is Australia's security intelligence organization. They've got a long history of playing second fiddle to the CIA and American interests as opposed to our own political parties and such.

The raid was led by Attorney General Lionel Murphy and police raided the Melbourne headquarters of Australia's own security organisation and seized secret files. The US and UK were not happy about this, fearing Whitlam would demand full transparency in covert operations, including those at Pine Gap. It's undeniable that foreign interests had completely infested Australia and were operating independently without the input from the Australian people and government.

Do you want to continue from here, Isaiah? Sure. So, Whitlam wanted the ASIO to cut ties with the CIA, but they refused, indicating that Australia's own security agencies were more loyal to the US than their own. This led to Whitman creating the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security, which would look into the ASIO and reveal findings and make recommendations.

The lease for Pine Gap was actually expiring December 1975. There's a deep worry from America that Whitlam would not renew it, forcing America to lose their Pacific advantage.

Whitlam once said, quote, the Australian government takes the attitude that there should not be foreign military bases, stations, installations in Australia. We honor agreements covering existing stations. We do not favor the extension or prolongation of any of those existing ones. Well, that's it. That's more than enough. Bye-bye. Yeah. Yep. That's it. That's basically saying, no, we won't help you anymore. Yeah.

And they were already loading their rifles with bullets now during that conversation.

The relationship between America and Whitlam was undeniably rocky. In the later half of 1975, Whitlam discovered that the previous CIA head of PyGap, Richard Stallings, knew about the CIA having involvement in Australian politics naturally. Whitlam went to the Department of Foreign Affairs and asked for a list of all CIA officials in Australia within the past 10 years. This was all information that he was entitled to have. And when he read over the list, he was shocked to find one name that did not appear on the list.

Richard Stallings. Whitlam went to the Department of Defense and spoke to the Secretary of Defense, Arthur Tange, about this discovery. Tange admitted to Whitlam what Stallings' true role was. In actuality, he worked for the CIA's Covert Action Division.

This was extremely shocking as the purpose of the covert action division was to gather intelligence, spread propaganda, and sometimes covertly influence political events in other countries. In Stalin's case, his role meant he was involved in shaping political narratives and influencing political outcomes in Australia. This was undeniable proof that a foreign intelligence agency was indeed conspiring and meddling in Australia's political affair, and this time, it wasn't just the monarchy.

A senior CIA official named Ted Shackley sent a strongly worded telex message to the ASIO about this previously shown to be a government body that was already compromised by the Americans demanding a satisfactory explanation on Whitlam's comments about the CIA in Australia. Oh, uh...

Ted Shackley went so far as declaring they would cut off the US intelligence relationship with Australia entirely if they didn't receive a satisfactory explanation, a threat that stretched further than just a disconnection of an intelligence relationship truthfully. Yeah, so this was like that was the official threat, but it was much deeper than that. Like they were talking about just destroying the entire relationship between Australia and America in general, like trade partnerships and shit like that. Probably that was like the implicit threat.

I mean, if I was in Whitlam's case, I would be terrified of being assassinated. Not just those kinds of threats. This is stuff that the CIA has absolutely killed other people for. Constantly. I would be terrified. They've shot people over less.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think they would have stopped just because Australia is an ally. If it went far enough, I think they would have killed him. So it's probably a good thing for Whitlam that he was just outed by, you know, a political process. What do you think, Jordan? Do you think he would have died if he pushed this any further? Yeah, but I think that back in the 70s, you probably wouldn't know.

What do you mean? Well, it's just now we're just so privy to, I don't know, your Wikipedias and one of your other trusted sources of news, Twitch streamers. We just know a lot more than they do. And the reason that I think this is because just before Whitlam died, when he was nearly 100 years old, somebody came to his nursing home and put this evidence in front of him.

He'd never seen it before, and he honestly thought that the reason that he was outed is just because the Governor General was a cunt, really. That was his view of the world. And then somebody kind of presented all this evidence to him, and he just started crying. And then he died. He died of a broken heart? I think so. And age. A combo. That's so sad. Why would you do that to this old man? Like, his last dying days, you go and tell him the true reason why he was outed. Yeah.

It's me. Just let him die in peace. I think he just was completely oblivious to how much power the CIA had. And there was also, it's the same thing as Rudd thinking that the CIA had no involvement with his outing. I think that if you grew up during the Cold War, the propaganda would have been so strong that

That America is looking out for your interests and they keep protecting you from Russia and China. Right, yeah. And so that would have just permeated through your mind. You couldn't fathom a friend would stab you in the back. I think so. I think that's what happened. Because he seemed to be completely oblivious to this when he was asked about it later in his life. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. So...

Now back to the mining industry for a moment, an industry that holds tremendous power over the Australian government due to its economic dependency on the industry. Whitlam knew that the mining industry, most of its money was dominated by overseas foreign companies, and he wanted to increase the tax output by the industry and regulate mining profits to hopefully reduce the overwhelming foreign control over Australia's precious resources. You can imagine the mining industry was not too happy about all of this.

Whitlam believed that Australia's natural resources should benefit Australians, not foreign companies. Whitlam established the Petroleum and Minerals Authority in 1973, a government body designed to control and regulate mineral and oil extraction, and not all too different from the previously discussed Australian Industry Development Corporation that had already claimed the career of one prime minister. You don't mess with the mining companies and you don't mess with the CIA. Why?

The two things you don't mess with, it's career suicide in Australia. So the PMA was to reduce foreign control over Australia's national resources, ensure profit stayed in Australia and strengthen Australia's independence. The foreign-owned mining companies did not like this and felt attacked.

and they retaliated immediately against Whitlam. They increased their lobbying efforts to sway public opinion and influence politicians. They formed alliances with the Liberal and National parties and supported their campaigns against the Labor government, campaigns that heightened fears against Whitlam and the PMA. The US, who were already established, didn't have the best view of Whitlam and had links to Australia's mining industry through their massive mining giants.

Now, we come back to John Kerr, the Governor General who ultimately dismissed Whitlam. It turns out, I'm sure this is just a coincidence, that he was a buddy-buddy with the top mining executives who saw him as an ally during these times. Kerr also had times with pro-US organisations like the Australian Association for Cultural... I love that name. The Australian Association for Cultural Freedom. Fuck me. I forgot about that.

That is one of these little proxies that the CIA sets up within political bubbles like Canberra. Yeah, that Isaiah was talking about. Yeah, like the proxies. They're not attached to it, but they're clearly funding it and running it. Clearly funding it, clearly running it, and it becomes sort of this boys club where if you are part of it, you're sort of recognized by the US establishment as being, to quote them, I don't know if you've got this coming down later on, but we have on record the

U.S. ambassador at the time calling Kerr, our man Kerr. So once you are part of one of these organizations, it's kind of you saying, I'm cool with the order.

Yes, exactly. Yes, which turned out to be founded, funded by the CIA. He would also meet frequently with US intelligence figures and was seen as someone who would prioritise and protect American interests. Kerr was, if we can use Chess as an analogy, the all-important queen in Australia, and he was the figurehead and piece of the actual queen who was the rightful owner of Australia with his ability to almost independently choose who rules over Australia in the form of queen of Australia. Wouldn't he be the...

Bishop then? No, the bishop sucks in- well it doesn't suck in chess but the queen gets to move anywhere. Queen gets to do everything he wants in chess. Okay, so the king is the queen. The king's the queen. What? In this chess analogy. Well no, Kerr's the queen because he's like controlling who lives and dies basically, politically. Yeah, that's what I'm saying but Queen Elizabeth is the king. Is that what we're saying? Jesus Christ, alright. Ignore the chess analogy. We're never using chess as an analogy again. Remove that.

All right, you get the gist. He's an important piece. Someone's a king and queen. With his ability to almost independently choose to rule over Australia in the form of a government, he had all of the power the mining and American interests needed to perform their eventual coup, and they could do so without needing to even step from the shadows. Okay, let's just wrap this up here. Who do you think was more instrumental in his downfall, the mining companies or the CIA?

I think that the mining companies pretty much it's the same corporate governmental nexus that is the power base of the United States. And I think that generally there's been a rule in empire since pre-Roman times, pre-Athenian times. It's always been that you have provinces, the provinces have a governor, the governor basically can do whatever they like.

The two exceptions seem to be throughout history that the emperor seems to be able to control resources,

and they get to control foreign policy. So when they go to war, how many troops they bring in, that's all on them. There's obviously going to be different levels of emperor, but really when it comes, you know, the emperor really just wants natural resources and they want to be able to contain their enemies. That's pretty much it. And so other than that, governors seem to be able to control, like, which is how I see prime ministers of Australia now. This is why I think it's very important to know this stuff. So you know the limits of the office, right?

I think prime ministers mostly deal with domestic affairs. As in, the Americans don't really care how our healthcare system runs. They don't care how, you know, what our education standards are. They don't care about basic economic management. They don't care about environmental policy. That's all within the realm of Australians. Yeah, just stuff that pertains to us, basically. Stuff that pertains to us. But, yeah.

To keep the US empire going, what do they need? They need a continual supply of minerals and they need a continual supply of Australia's geostrategic position, really, in the wider context of where we are. Because it's a very strange, unique beast. It's us and New Zealand, but who cares about them? They're just another Tasmania, really. Other than that, we are sort of this strange anglosphere body in a sea of Asia.

And so geostrategically, we're very important to the Americans and anyone messing with that is of grave concern to them. And I think, honestly, the resources are just as much of a part of this tale as Whitlam sort of trying to flex his muscles and say that Australia is its own sovereign nation and will make its own decisions. I think that those two things are

absolutely intertwined. Well, yeah, I don't think it's a, it's absolutely not a coincidence that the first prime minister of Australia who started to push for a more independent Australia was ousted within two years of his, like, you know, his rule, basically, his tenure as prime minister. Like, as soon as one started to, like, push for more independence from Australia,

in these mining companies, he was immediately outed. I don't know. It's not even a conspiracy in my eyes. Well, obviously, they conspired against him, so it is a conspiracy, but it's not like a far-fetched conspiracy that you could really write off. This one, honestly, I think that there is more...

strong evidence towards it than even the JFK assassination, as in I am absolutely convinced about the Gough Whitlam one. And any time anybody ever makes a counter-argument against it, it just sounds so elementary school to me. It sounds very...

The CIA would never do that. He couldn't get the supply bill through the Senate and so the Governor-General had to step in because we can't have the supply bill block. It seems so silly in comparison to this theory. It just doesn't seem plausible.

Well, to follow up on that, after Whitlam was dismissed from his role as Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party was chosen by the Attorney General, not the Attorney General, but John Kerr, to take over the role. And he immediately slashed levies on the coal and oil production industries, accelerated tax write-offs, and renewed Pine Gap's extensions.

So everything went ahead perfectly fine Extended the powers of ASIO Built up an Australian Federal Police Force Really entrenched Started to really entrench the deep state Into Australia Oh no not the deep state If only we had a picture of him Driving a tank incorrectly or something And then maybe we'd be able to Push him down Yeah

And in more recent years, in case you want to know if this still happens, Jordan's friend, Kevin Rudd, one of our other ex-prime ministers, and his resource super profits tax in 2010 came about where we wanted to tax the mining companies more.

This would increase the tax rate on mining companies over a certain threshold. And no surprise, instant backlash, criticism and lobbying against Rudd led to a decline in his popularity. And he was immediately replaced, which is a nice way of saying cooed by his own party in the form of Julia Gillard in that same year. So it happened again to kind of, to a certain degree.

It keeps happening. Don't mess with, you know, rocks and security like you said. Well, we have it on WikiLeaks as well. We have it on WikiLeaks, members of the Labor Party, because then this has started to happen. Then after this whole affair, the CIA realized, oh, the Labor Party actually can gain government in this country, so we've got to start infiltrating it. So there is an element of that. This is standard playbook of the CIA throughout the world. They have infiltrations into any party that can gain government.

just in case this kind of stuff happens, which they then utilized under Kevin Rudd. And that just makes the coup a lot cleaner because it looks like an internal dispute. Yeah, it looks like an internal dispute and people can kind of downplay it that way. They need to have, again, plausible deniability. There needs to be a packageable explanation for their coups in the public eyes and it looks cleaner when it comes from inside the building, basically. Yes. And also, Kevin Rudd, very similar to Whitlam,

wanted us to have a more sane, peaceful trading policy with China, because obviously they're our biggest trade partner. And obviously the Americans are constantly trying to contain China. And so this was when Obama's policy of pivot to Asia was coming about, when they realized why the hell were we wasting our time in Iraq

That little detour for 10 years for no reason. We should have just been focusing this whole time on this sleeping giant that is awakening in the Pacific. And so they started moving towards China and wanted a much more aggressive policy of containment towards them. And Rudd was just like, this is not in Australia's interests.

immediately, obviously. Outed. Outed. And so what are the two things that Gillard implemented as soon as she got in? Got rid of the mining tax effectively, just kept it as some fig leaf thing, and then signed up immediately to pivot to Asia. Yay. So there you go. Thank you. It's history repeating itself. Thank you, American overlords. Thank you, Isaiah. Your country. You're very welcome. Of course. Helps us out greatly. Of course. Happy to.

We bow to you, Alish. Never forget it. No, it is pretty funny. It is good, though, that Gough Whitlam at least was able to live to 100 so that he would be able to be told about how he was outed by the CIA. He was probably crying because he was thankful that he wasn't shot in the head. First of all, that's probably why he was crying. He got off pretty lucky. Yeah, very fucking lucky.

Like, it could have happened. What do you think? Okay, let's wrap up overall. Isaiah, what do you think? Are you...

surprised by this did you you know find anything particularly i'm surprised he's not dead that's what you mean yeah yeah he should learn he should learn his lesson he kept running his mouth no i'm kidding um i mean that's how that but you you can win but you can only win so much because if you upset the established order the established order gets mad at you yeah the tale is old as time so is democracy just a lie

Is it just a blanket we wrap ourselves in to feel safe and secure? It depends on how you look at it. Does some stuff change based on who wins? Sure. Does it change everything? No. Because there's ultimately a framework that cannot be touched by a vote. But it changes some stuff, sure. It changes...

You know, some personal life and like healthcare and stuff like that. Sure. Like it's not that it changes nothing. It's just that it doesn't change everything. Yeah. I honestly, this is something that I wish that you could, this is something that I'm endlessly passionate about, which is the fact that like, yeah, you can't change everything, but that doesn't necessarily mean that elections aren't extremely important.

and influential on your life. And I think that the thing that a lot of people get when they listen to this is they sit there and they say, oh, well, democracy is just a wasted experiment. What does it all mean, man? And they get all doomer-y about it for years. Yeah, at their farmers' markets. At their farmers' markets and they sit there and get exactly that, get into actualisation or whatever. LAUGHTER

You know, I really just think that you shouldn't take this lesson from it. I think Isaiah has a very healthy outlook on this stuff, which is you should just know the limits of power and you should understand that as reality. I really don't like people that have these silly views, for instance. It's a very...

For instance, in Australia, the minor parties like the Greens and the Independents are constantly saying, did you know that we don't get as much for our resources as Norway does? This is because the major parties are bought by mining industries. And it's just like, no, you're just an idiot. Or you're just opportunistically taking votes off of the parties that actually do make decisions. So you can

maintain your shitty little Senate seat and your fucking $200,000 a year. Like, you know that this is the reality. And I think that everyone should understand what this reality is and kind of just respect that that is reality, you know? Yeah, no sense living in denial, but also no need to be doomer about it. And I think there is...

There's probably a path forward. You just gotta, instead of aiming to be prime minister or president, maybe just aim to get on the board of a mining company, maybe, and make the moves there. Could work. Yeah. Really could. Infiltrate the other guys because they have no problem infiltrating us like the CIA did and shit like that. They'll be happy to infiltrate us. Why don't we have any inside agents on the other side? Let's get into the CIA and operate from within. Because your accents are too strong. We know it immediately. Yeah.

Fair, fair. That's a good point. No, mate, I'm from Massachusetts. No, no, we're from the South. South Australia. I mean, Australia is SOUTHER than America, so... Fair.

All right. Thanks. That's going to do it for this Red Thread. Thank you very much. A bit of a more political and niche topic. So I hope you guys got something from it. Yeah, I mean, the last two episodes have been pretty dark and heavy, so I felt like it was a much needed reprieve from talking about child murder and things like that. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

Friendly Geordie's channel is Friendly Geordie's on YouTube as well as Jordan Shank's for his self-help stuff where you can go learn about self-actualization from the man himself. Holy fuck, I have to Jim Kahn, aren't I? Jesus. Yeah. You're probably reading directly from that manuscript you found at the farmer's market. I really got to read those manuscripts. You really do. That's good content. You need to do a live reading of it, yeah. You need to hunt it down. Actually, that's a pretty good idea, doing like a documentary trying to track down those books though.

Not bad, eh? Yeah. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye, guys. Don't talk bad about the CIA. You've been warned. Bye.