On the Nature of Things | Forum

Can someone give me a link to the transfer of power in the 70s that Carbizene was claiming was something of a CIA coup?

Mail & Guardian | Case of missing PM to be reopened

In the fevered cold war climate this simply fuelled the conspiracy theories and provided Australians with their own home-grown version of the John F Kennedy assassination intrigue.

Holt had been prime minister for 22 months when he disappeared, prompting claims that he may have committed suicide because of political pressures, or run off with a mistress.

In 1983, a former Australian naval officer, Ronald Titcombe, persuaded the British novelist Anthony Grey that Holt had been a Chinese spy since the early 1930s.

He claimed that Holt, fearing detection by Australian intelligence officers, had sought political asylum in a Chinese midget submarine waiting off Portsea, near Melbourne.

Holt's widow, the fashion designer Zara Holt, dismissed this conspiracy theory several years later when she said: "Harry? Chinese submarine? He didn't even like Chinese cooking."

Others believed the CIA killed Holt because they thought he was about to take Australia out of Vietnam, given the strong opposition to the war by many Australians.

The CIA theory was equally fanciful, given that Holt had pledged during a visit to the White House in 1966 to go "all the way with LBJ", referring to the then American president, Lyndon Johnson.

Conspiracy theory stuff.

yeh, troubled man taking a swim he didnt come back from is the less hyperbolic understanding of holt... however i dont think thats the one carbizene was on about.

the other big event from the same era that also has cia conspiracies is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gough_Whitlam who is the first and only australian leader to be removed from power via our constitutional links to the british monarchy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Austr ... nal_crisis

alas, its hardly conspiracy and external meddling when its explicitly part of the consitution.

he was a precursor to obama/rudd "i haz a vision for a new socialist paradise" and he overreached badly and completely burned all his political credit, his true believers got all conspiracy laden but everyone else just breathed a sigh of relief.

if you want to believe in cia conspiracy you need to ignore alot of facts on the ground, namely that he was politcally dead from local gridlock and it was the queen of england that sacked him

no doubting the cia and american diplomats where involved as much as they could, manipulating and pushing their agenda but thats called foreign affairs and happens every day of every year.

Well, not the queen, but her appointed Governor General, an Aussie chosen on the recommendation of the Australian government,and a former member of the same (Labour) party as Whitlam.

This drawing of a kangaroo, on a Portuguese prayer book, probably from late 16th century, may prove that the Portuguese had already been to Australia before its "official" discovery by the Dutch. Would Australia be more like Brazil if the Portuguese had actually colonized it? And where would Britain have then sent its convicts? To Canada?...

kangaroos are also found in the islands to the north of australia like new guinea and parts of eastern indonesia so it doesnt mean anything in particular, this drawing looks more like one of those hunched over a tree branch than the big grass eating ones on the mainland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree-kangaroo



the australian ones have a different look.





wouldnt surprise me if the evidence for european "discovery" of australia is mixed and messy for a long time, they are continuously finding new shipwrecks up north and its not very far from south east asia, the portugese are as likely as any of the other colonial powers of the time.

the asians had been landing in the north for a long time previous to any of the european expansions.

as for the convicts, yawn, time for a new joke mayhaps.