On Her Majesty's Secret Service: Kevin 007?

Sixteen months into Kevin Rudd's prime ministership, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood demanded in a Webcast address, "Whom do you serve, Mr Rudd?" The answer, to anyone who has paid even cursory attention to the policies which Rudd has championed domestically, as well as internationally, is the British Empire. The Australian nation developed only thanks to "old" Labor's fight for national banking and industrial protectionism against the "Money Power"— London-centred British finance and free trade—and it is this national heritage which Rudd has betrayed on behalf of the British Empire.

Here's the scorecard. As Prime Minister and Labor Party leader, Rudd has: campaigned for international financier control over Australia's financial system, including in the guise of "independence" for the privately-controlled Reserve Bank; committed Australia to lead the world in the British genocidal crusade on "climate change", condemning us to industrial oblivion and economic ruin; jumped to bail out the banks, and spearheaded the British push to coordinate a global bailout—aka "stimulus"—through the G-20 and International Monetary Fund; and has crusaded for ever more British free trade, in the course of which, as in the U.S. in February, he pronounced that, "Protectionism is intrinsically evil."

So Rudd is obviously an agent of British imperialism. But, a look at his personal background forces one to ask, additionally: is he also formally a British agent, recruited early in his career to Her Majesty's Secret Service? Is he, in fact, "Kevin 007"?

Such recruitment to the intelligence services usually takes place early in one's career, at university or soon after, when a prospective agent shows him or herself to be bright, ambitious, and, just as importantly—unscrupulous; better yet, duplicitous and sadistic by nature.

The New Imperialism

In the last quarter of the 19th Century, as a result of the mass industrialisation and railroad building in the U.S. unleashed by President Abraham Lincoln's victory over the British-sponsored, rural slave-based Confederacy, British imperialism faced a mortal threat. Not only was the industrial might and population of the U.S. exploding, but many other nations were emulating its policies of protection, national banking, and railroad building, the latter of which posed a direct challenge to British maritime control of the world. These included Germany, Japan, and Russia, among others. Not able to face this challenge directly, as through the gunboats and redcoated armies of the past, the British oligarchy typified by Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, et al., founded the Round Table movement, including its Fabian Society sub-division which targeted particularly the rising influence of the working classes, but also industrialism per se. The Round Table adopted the classic Fabian strategy—don't attack a more powerful enemy directly, under one's own flag, but wear him down by cultural and financial subversion, and by manipulating your enemies to fight ruinous wars against each other, like World War I and II. And in place of the naked colonialism of old, the Round Table substituted a policy of "indirect rule", or "self-rule", whereby the "native" ruling elite of their old colonies would be trained at Oxford via Rhodes scholarships, or recruited to pro-British imperial outlooks via the local Oxfords in the colonies, such as Harvard, Yale et al. in the U.S., or Australian National University, Melbourne University, etc. in Australia.

Soon known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), the Round Table set up powerful branches based in the local oligarchies of its "former" (or intended) colonies. Its U.S. subsidiary, for instance, the Council on Foreign Relations, was largely drawn from the major investment houses of Wall Street, most of whom had been set up by the British in the first place, while its Australian division, the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) was comprised of leaders of our corporate and financial elite. The AIIA, in turn, spun off various fronts such as the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, which is merely a collection of Anglophiles in America, meeting with their opposite, also Anglophile associates in Australia.

Moving into the present, Australia's place in British imperial schemes is what it has always been—a British strategic outpost in the Pacific. But, with the rise of China, India, and Asia in general, Australia's role has been upgraded as well. For instance, in 1995, the RIIA issued a policy document entitled, Economic Opportunities for Britain and the Commonwealth, which announced that Australia should be, more than ever before, the British corporate and financial "stepping-stone to Asia". The report chronicled the astonishing amount of British foreign investment in Australia, and listed hundreds of British firms which had already set up their Asian headquarters in Australia, a list which has greatly expanded since. This defined the strategic environment in which the Mandarin-speaking Rudd was recruited into Australia's foreign policy establishment, itself a de facto subsidiary of the RIIA.

Notwithstanding our nominal independence upon Federation in 1901, Australia did not run its own foreign policy until the early 1940s, following Prime Minister John Curtin's December 1941 break with Churchill and the British, to go with America. Until then, the major aspects of our foreign policy were officially run directly from London. Until the Statute of Westminster, a 1931 Act of British Parliament which granted "legislative equality" to Britain's Dominions, was ratified by the Australian Parliament in 1942, Australia's status as a Dominion meant our foreign affairs were handled by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. But even when we assumed formal control of our foreign policy, it was via an apparat which had long been subservient to British interests, which just continued on under a new name, presently the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Typical was the relation of our Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS)—a branch of DFAT—to the British SIS. The notoriously anti-Labor ASIS was formally founded after World War II as a branch of British SIS. No wonder therefore, that investigative reporters Des Ball and Jeffrey Richelson in their 1985 book, The Ties That Bind, reported that, "The relationship between ASIS and the SIS is so close that there has never been any need for written agreements or a formal exchange of liaison personnel." They wrote, "It is thus not surprising that ASIS officers continue to call the London headquarters of the SIS the ‘Head Office' and the Melbourne headquarters of ASIS called itself the ‘Main Office'."

Career Path

That Chinese phase of Rudd's career was to have telling aftereffects. A four-day trip he took to Taiwan in 1999 was paid for by a reportedly corrupt former Taiwanese MP, Chang Yu-huei, who was Minister without portfolio and Secretary-General of the Cabinet in the government of the pro-independence British darling President Chen Shui-bian, who came close to provoking a Taiwan-China war by his escalating actions for Taiwanese "independence". Perhaps Chen and his wife were looking out for their own independence as well, since both have recently been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for taking bribes. In 2005, a foundation associated with one of Chang's companies, the Taiwan Sugar Company, donated $1 million to the Mater Mothers' Hospital in Rudd's Queensland electorate. When Rudd's connection to Chang attracted media attention in July this year, the Taiwanese Embassy released a curious statement claiming that Rudd's trip was "conducive to the enhancement of the in-depth understanding of the importance of the UKAustralia relations". [Emphasis added]

Returning to Rudd's early career, it is in the nature of the spy business that ASIS agents are not trumpeted as such, quite the contrary. But despite their covers, they often have mysterious "gaps" in their curricula vitae. Curiously, former Opposition Leader Mark Latham wrote of Rudd in his tell-all, Latham Diaries: "He's certainly part of the foreign policy establishment, and yes, there are some missing periods in his CV, plus a general mystery about the guy." [emphasis added] In a backhanded way, Rudd biographer Nicholas Stuart reflected the same perceptions, going out of his way to assert that despite Rudd's efforts to "veil his activities" during his time in China, it "appears that Rudd did not hold any position as a spymaster".

Far less circumstantial, is that in 1988 Rudd applied, and was accepted for a key position in London with Australia's peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), reporting on intelligence and strategic matters directly to the Prime Minister.

A Detour?

In 1992, while ostensibly off in the backblocks of Queensland, the head of DFAT, Richard Woolcott, anointed Rudd as his likely successor one day, in recruiting him to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue then being formed. Woolcott recounted, "Phil Scanlan was starting it, and he asked me, ‘Who do you think will be in your position in 20 years' time?' I gave it a bit of thought and said, ‘Well, why don't you invite Kevin Rudd?' He joined up and, of course, that has served him very well…"

When it was decided in 1995 that Rudd should enter Federal Parliament, the path was cleared for him to win Labor Party pre-selection for the federal electorate of Griffith, by a branchstacking campaign so extensive it sparked a nationwide scandal about Labor Party branch-stacking, which was investigated by the ABC's Four Corners. Rudd failed to win Griffith on his first try, in 1996, but he was pushed through in 1998. And fellow Labor MPs who questioned his credentials, or the circumstances of his wife's curious rise to riches in business, were quickly gagged.

His Labor credentials were indeed curious, including as they did, his membership in the neo-conservative Australian-American Leadership Dialogue; his regular attendance at the notorious Mont Pelerin Society front, the Centre for Independent Studies; his support for the Iraq war which Tony Blair had personally launched via his "sexed-up" dossier on Saddam Hussein's non-existent nuclear bomb; and his connections to the British backed pro-independence, rabidly anti-China networks in Taiwan. But all these went unquestioned as Rudd was fast-tracked through the ranks of the party to become the Leader of what he liked to call "Her Majesty's loyal Opposition".

And so, when Labor's defeat of the discredited Coalition government loomed as inevitable in 2007, and Her Majesty wanted to guarantee that the ALP replacement for her faithful servant John Winston Howard wouldn't resort to "old Labor" policies in the face of the economic collapse, she had the perfect candidate.

Mrs. Moneypenny?