Tag: Allende

Australia's Shame

Overthrowing Allende: Australia’s special role in destroying a democracy – Pearls and Irritations

Salvador Allende Image source: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional / Wikimedia Commons /licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Chile license.

Australia remains a Colony

Five decades on, some parliamentarians have called for a formal acknowledgement of Canberra’s role in the destruction of a democracy that led to the death and torture of tens of thousands by a brutal military junta. The Greens spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Peace, Senator Jordon Steele-John, stated his party’s position: “50 years on we know Australia was involved, as it worked to support the US national interest. To this day, Australia’s secretive and unaccountable national security apparatus has blocked the release of information and has denied closure for thousands of Chilean-Australians.”

In calling for an apology to the Chilean people, the Greens are also demanding the declassification of any relevant ASIS and ASIO documents that would show support for Pinochet, including implementing “oversight and reform to our intelligence agencies to ensure that this can never happen again.”

Source: Overthrowing Allende: Australia’s special role in destroying a democracy – Pearls and Irritations

History

The Hawke Files and the Birth of the 51st State – » The Australian Independent Media Network

The close relationship between actors in Australian and US intelligence of course goes back prior to the Prime Ministership of Whitlam, as evidenced by Australia’s secret role in the overthrowal of the Allende Government in Chile and the Sukarno Government in Indonesia.

As the war hawks today swirl at the spectre of a Chinese paper tiger, it seems we are locked into a more offensive UK-US alliance structure and a government determined to undermine our rights and welfare at every turn. What a betrayal those days of Hawke now seem to those who long for a country that supports social justice and an independent foreign policy. Surely this is the task of a new Labor Government.

 

Source: The Hawke Files and the Birth of the 51st State – » The Australian Independent Media Network