Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the_Whitlam_dismissal
Like I guess we all just collectively agreed to not talk about this?
Apparently the Queen and the CIA thought Australia was getting a little too progressive in 1975. They were pulling out of Viet Nam and doing things like welcoming refugees from Chile (who were fleeing a different coup engineered by the CIA).
The 50th anniversary of the coup just passed (Nov. 11th), and Consortium News republished an article originally written in 2020:
Gough Whitlam was driven from government on Nov. 11, 1975. When he died six years ago (2014), his achievements were recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. The truth of the coup against him, it was hoped, would be buried with him.
During the Whitlam years, 1972-75, Australia briefly achieved independence and became intolerably progressive.
The last Australian troops were ordered home from their mercenary service to the American assault on Vietnam. Whitlam’s ministers publicly condemned U.S. barbarities as “mass murder” and the crimes of “maniacs.” The Nixon administration was corrupt, said the Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Cairns, and called for a boycott of American trade. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships.
Whitlam moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement and called for a Zone of Peace in the Indian ocean, which the U.S. and Britain opposed. He demanded France cease its nuclear testing in the Pacific. In the U.N., Australia spoke up for the Palestinians. Refugees fleeing the C.I.A.-engineered coup in Chile were welcomed into Australia.
It’s an independent country though.
If people in Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, etc. found out Prince Charles was working with the CIA to interfere with local politics in order to establish more conservative leadership, would they view this as foreign interference? I guess it might depend on the individual, but I have a hard time believing it would be seen as simply an act of tough love from their overbearing mum and her dickhead boyfriend.
I’m talking about technically not individual opinions. That is, it’s not a foreign coup.
Agreed. And even if it wasn’t an independent country, the monarch should not EVER be getting involved in ousting an elected political leader. Including here in the UK, if it came to it (as it could have when Johnson tried to prorogue parliament - that was outrageous, but if the queen had stepped in that would have been much worse IMO)