Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Plot to Make Aotearoa Non-Nuclear! (What the Conspiracy!)
27 Plays3 years ago
M tells Josh of a foreign plot in the 80s to turn Aotearoa New Zealand against nukes!
—
Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
Why not support The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy by donating to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/podcastersguidetotheconspiracy
or Podbean crowdfunding? http://www.podbean.com/patron/crowdfund/profile/id/muv5b-79
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Numbering Confusion
00:00:00
Speaker
Episode 333, halfway to hell. Or maybe not. Our numbering system is a bit out of whack again, because technically last week's episode from the can was 333 according to my files. Well, this is less than ideal. This is what, the third or fourth time we've managed to lose track of the numbering of our episodes? Yes, although I like to think that's because we've had to cover up the fact that certain episodes have been removed from the feed due to their salacious content.
00:00:29
Speaker
Like the what the conspiracy episode on Bach's Forbidden Chord or the miniseries we did exposing that not only was David Ike right But Alex Jones is actually Dennis Leary in a bodysuit.
Podcasting Banter
00:00:40
Speaker
Hmm. Plus there was the one on what the conspiracy were you told me about? It was a really recent one. It was a bit
00:00:48
Speaker
You can't get me with that ploy. This week's episode will remain a mystery right up until I pull the mask off your face and push you into the abyss of the mystery of... Love? Your mum. Are we really resurrecting the your mum stick? No. Let this be the end of the your mum gags. Doesn't she just? You know what we haven't said in a while?
00:01:15
Speaker
Well, that's that spent as well. Just like your mum. My mother know your mother. My mother is a saint. In bed. You know, this is precisely why I have imposter syndrome around being an associate professor.
Lockdown Differences Discussion
00:01:40
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:01:49
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Addison in Auckland, New Zealand. They are Dr. M. Denteth in Shuhai, China. One of us is still locked down. The other one isn't. And neither of us know which is which. So frankly, it's a bit of a mystery. Are you locked down? Am I locked out? Nobody knows. Well, I mean, we're both sitting in rooms. But no, I'm still locked down. But it's the lockdowns have been relaxed, which basically just means we can get takeaways
00:02:17
Speaker
and walk down to a cafe and get a coffee. But other than that, we're all still at home. Have you done either of these two things?
Pies in New Zealand vs. America
00:02:25
Speaker
My wife has gone and got herself a coffee and came back with pies, actual bakery pies. And yes, we did have takeaways for lunch today. Got some burgers. Now, non New Zealand residents or listeners, who maybe both won't be aware of just how important the pie is in the culture of our home country. The pie is kind of the ultimate culinary dish for someone who hasn't had it for ages to the point where
00:02:53
Speaker
I am craving pie. I've been out of the country since the middle of June. And what I really want is a pie or a sausage roll. In fact, my body needs it. If I don't have one soon, I think I'm going to die. Yes. And to our American listeners, in New Zealand, a pie is a meat pie or a savoury pie, whereas I believe over there pie is usually a fruit, a sweet pie, unless you say otherwise. So yes, these were steak and cheese pies we got.
00:03:19
Speaker
Unless it's a pizza, because of course in some parts of the US, a pie is a pizza pie. It's very confusing. I mean, frankly, the Americans are abusing language all the time, and frankly, they should stop. What are you going to do? Now, enough talk of pies.
00:03:37
Speaker
I'll just let you sit there and reminisce for a couple more seconds.
Introduction to Conspiracy Theory Episode
00:03:41
Speaker
And then we should move on because it is a What the Conspiracy episode. And yes, I was all ready to say, ha ha, it's episode 333. It's the number of half the beast, forgetting, of course, that we had a filler episode in between our last one from the can. So technically, this isn't episode 333. It just was by my count, but my count is wrong. Anyway, what it is is a What the Conspiracy episode.
00:04:07
Speaker
We still didn't quite sort out which one of us is in the hot seat, because I think of it like Mastermind, where you have the person in the seat, and then there's the host grilling them, and so you're the host, which would mean I'm in the seat, but on the other hand, the person in the seat is being asked questions, and so I will be asking questions, which kind of means you're in the seat, so I think this actually means that the metaphor doesn't work at all, and I should stop talking about who's in the hot seat altogether.
Guessing the Conspiracy
00:04:34
Speaker
Or we make it into a black adder, the second reference, where, you know, at home, Nathaniel sits on a spike. I sit on Nathaniel. Two spikes would be luxury. Be an extravagance. That's all for the show. But the point is, I don't know what's about to happen next. I have no notes. So I'm just going to sit here in my chair and let him regale me with tales of who knows what.
00:04:59
Speaker
Quite frankly. Well, indeed. And there's a twist in the tail this week. But we'll get to that after this sting. It's time to play What the Conspiracy.
00:05:19
Speaker
Okay Joshua, it's the usual preamble that we have to what the conspiracy I need a where, a when and a what statement from you. So let's start with where. Where do you think this tale of conspiracy takes place?
00:05:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, you've had a few sort of Shakespearean kind of old Englishy ones. So I figure you're probably going to stick in the same thing. So I'm going to say the British Isles. OK, so the UK will lock that in. When? When is this going to occur? Or when did this occur?
New Zealand's Anti-Nuclear History
00:05:54
Speaker
Did you just give something away? Is it a conspiracy about the future?
00:05:59
Speaker
No, I'm going to go about, let's say about 250 years ago. Interesting. Very, very interesting. Something.
00:06:12
Speaker
17. I could go 250 years ago. I mean, there's no way to work out. There's no way to work out exactly what year that would have been. Nobody knows. All right. And what kind of conspiracy is it? Well, I mean, I've been wrong about all of the dairy based ones. And then I finally remembered it's because you're vegan. You're not going to do dairy based, dairy based conspiracy theories at all. So I assume this is going to be something about quinoa.
00:06:38
Speaker
Interesting. I mean, actually, if you'd gone with dairy-based, you would have been as close as you could possibly get to a dairy-based conspiracy this time round. So frankly, I'm actually shocked that you didn't get this one. So you're wrong on all counts, obviously. The where, you're not even in the right hemisphere.
00:06:57
Speaker
The when? Well, I mean, we don't actually know when 250 years ago actually was, but it was basically last century rather than two and a half centuries ago. And the what? Well, it's a New Zealand based conspiracy, so dairy has to come into it in some way, shape or form, although
00:07:15
Speaker
actually only just because of the proximity to milk products. So the where is our home nation of Aotearoa, New Zealand. The when is around about 1984, 1985. And the what is a political conspiracy theory about the Soviet infiltration of the Labour Party and the anti-nuclear treaty.
00:07:44
Speaker
Okay, I mean, I haven't heard of this. Well, is it except that you have? Because I was going to say several times for an episode that we should do. And now I'm now doing this as what as what the conspiracy rather than doing it as a mainline episode. Right, yes, I was gonna I haven't heard of this specifically. But it doesn't surprise me in any way that there would have been such conspiracy theories. So hit me hit me with the details. How's it all go down?
00:08:08
Speaker
Alright, so preamble, Joshua, were you aware that the anti-nuclear policies of 1980s New Zealand were the product of a concerted Soviet conspiracy going all the way back to the 1970s? I did not know that,
US-NZ Relations and Nuclear Policy
00:08:24
Speaker
no.
00:08:24
Speaker
All right. Now, before we move on to exactly why that was the case or why it's alleged to be the case, Josh, I mean, you're someone who's very politically literate and knows a lot about the history of your home country. Could you give the listeners the official history of anti-nuclear policies in Aotearoa, New Zealand? So what happened to make us go nuclear free?
00:08:49
Speaker
David Longie had that funny line about smelling plutonium on a guy's breath, and I'm pretty sure that was it. You want to expand on that in some way, shape or form? Do you know who he was talking to? No, he was, yes. So for our listeners who aren't aware,
00:09:07
Speaker
New Zealand has an anti-nuclear policy, that much is not up to debate, and it came about because it wasn't that we wouldn't let nuclear-powered ships into New Zealand, it was that
00:09:22
Speaker
America wouldn't say whether or not their ships or submarines or whatever would neither confirm or deny whether they were nuclear powered and that we said, well, okay, in that case, you're not allowed to come here at all. And the only sort of cultural touchstone that anyone like me remembers is that at one point there was a debate between the then Prime Minister, David Lange. Was he the Prime Minister then or was he just the... He was, yes. Yes, he was. He was actual Prime Minister, yeah.
00:09:49
Speaker
and and some American guy who I assume you're going to tell me the idea to Jerry fell well was Jerry fell well yes crap I didn't even know that um and yeah at one point they David Long he who was known for being a bit of a
00:10:04
Speaker
A bit of a wit, Adlard, at the one point when Falwell was close to him saying something about nuclear power and David Lange quipped, yes, I know, I can smell the plutonium on your breath. And everyone thought that was most hilarious. And it contributed to the total downfall of international relations, as far as I'm aware.
00:10:24
Speaker
Well, yes, it did actually. Well, I mean, it wasn't it wasn't that speech that leads the downfall of international relations, but the anti nuclear policy that was decided by the fourth Labour government really did cause a lot of issues internationally. But we'll get on to that in just a minute. So upon a history of New Zealand's nuclear or anti nuclear policies, there's always been a bit of
00:10:47
Speaker
official opposition towards nuclear weapons in the Pacific. So famously, former Labour Prime Minister Norm Kirk sent naval vessels to Murrow Atoll. He was a prime minister well before David Longay to signify displeasure of French nuclear weapon tests in the Pacific, which is one of those weird things to think that within our living memory,
00:11:11
Speaker
the French were using islands in the Pacific to just randomly test bomb because, well, let's see where this bomb works. So we'll just send it as far away from the Republic as France as possible.
00:11:23
Speaker
We'll put it below the waterline on an island, and then we'll blow the bomb up to see whether it worked. Oh, it did work. Well, now we know that bomb in our arsenal was
Opposition to French Nuclear Tests
00:11:34
Speaker
functional. It's also now no longer useful because it's blown up. We'd better test another bomb just to make sure it worked. And for a long period of time,
00:11:42
Speaker
the Republic of France was just blowing up bombs in the Pacific. And Australia and New Zealand, particularly New Zealand, really didn't like the idea that a sovereign nation from the Northern Hemisphere felt that it would just be appropriate to blow things up in the Pacific. So there were official
00:12:04
Speaker
protest lodged at embassies and consulates. So please stop
Public Opposition to US Warships
00:12:08
Speaker
doing this. And eventually, Norm Kirk went, actually, this is just inappropriate. I'm going to send our vessels to the edge of Muro at Atoll, because there's no way the French are going to test a weapon if there are members of another sovereign nation close by. And lo and behold,
00:12:25
Speaker
that basically led to the French going, we will restrict the tests and we will do them more safely, but they still kept doing them for quite some time. There's also a side story here about what's going on with the Rainbow Warrior and things. We won't go into that, well precisely.
00:12:43
Speaker
But from the perspective of what happened in 1984, when the fourth Labour government was elected, was, as you pointed out, the issue of US warships. So the US would have ships in the Pacific, some of which were nuclear powered, some of which were nuclear capable, which to say they may or may not have contained nuclear weapons on board.
00:13:09
Speaker
People weren't particularly happy with the idea of nuclear material or visible material coming into harbors in Aotearoa, New Zealand. So whenever a US warship basically came into a harbor, there'd be a flotilla of protesters around it and protest in the streets.
00:13:29
Speaker
Rob Muldoon, the Prime Minister before Prime Minister David Lange would actually use nuclear ship visits from the US as a way to kind of both to support because Muldoon and Rob's mob were very much for keeping the status quo. So protesters were really, really good for Rob Muldoon's population.
00:13:52
Speaker
whenever there were protests, it made him more popular amongst a certain class of conservative individual back home. But there was obviously growing opposition to the idea of allowing these ships into our waters. So actually, so Josh, do you remember the announcement of the snap election that led to the arrival of the fourth Labour government?
Muldoon's Snap Election Announcement
00:14:14
Speaker
At the time, no. No, I mean, I was
00:14:17
Speaker
Was it 1984 or was it before that? Was it 1983? Well, yeah, you know, they were elected in 1984 at the end of the year. It was a snap election. So it was very much a few weeks before the election.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, so in 1984, I was eight years old, so I wasn't really paying much attention to it, but it is an important enough event that most New Zealanders have at least heard of it. This was the one that Robert Muldoon infamously announced that he was calling a snap election while visibly drunk on national television.
00:14:53
Speaker
with the line about the reporter said that doesn't give you a lot of time to prepare and he sort of slurred back, doesn't give my opponents much time to prepare either.
00:15:04
Speaker
But yes, I know of it, but at the time I was not aware. So I have a distinct memory of watching Muldoon make that announcement on TV. I was at my grandparents place at the time, and my grandmother saying he's obviously drunk. And yet, like many of those memories that we are certain that we recall directly from childhood,
00:15:26
Speaker
I am increasingly suspicious that I only remember that because I've been told I was at my grandmother's house when the snap election was called, because my mother recalls that event and because I was there. She said, well, you'll remember. You were there at the time. Your grandmother said he's obviously drunk. Well, of course I remember that now, but possibly only because I've been told I remember it rather than actually remembering it myself. That's just a side issue on the weirdness of memory here, although
00:15:57
Speaker
the weirdness of memory is going to be important for this particular story. Now, Josh is also correct. What happened in 1984 was that the labor government said, look, we don't want nuclear ships coming into our ports.
Labour Government's Nuclear-Free Policy
00:16:12
Speaker
We are now a nuclear free nation. So if you are a warship,
00:16:19
Speaker
and you want to dock in one of our harbors, you just have to announce in advance whether you're nuclear capable or not nuclear capable. If you're nuclear capable, you can't come in. If you're not nuclear capable, you are allowed to berth in one of our harbors. And the issue was the US was not willing to make any such declaration as to the status of their ships. They said, no.
00:16:46
Speaker
we want either to be able to dock all military vessels in your berths, or we are not going to visit at all the New Zealand government where we just, you know, our rule is if you're nuclear capable, you can't come in. So just announced in advance, we said, nope, we're not willing to make such a concession. They argued it was from a security perspective that if
00:17:09
Speaker
enemies became aware of which ships were allowed to dock in, say, the white matter, then they would be able to work out which ships are nuclear powered or have a nuclear arsenal on board, and thus they would end up being targets in some kind of attack. So the US was going, no, we're just not willing to give that kind of security information away to our enemies. And because of that,
00:17:33
Speaker
The Australia New Zealand US security alliance known as ANZUS was basically disestablished or at least New Zealand was suspended from the alliance because there was no longer full cooperation between the three powers in the Pacific.
00:17:53
Speaker
famously national the opposition party said that they were going to rescind the anti-nuclear policy that was brought about in 1984 but never did because it turns out that even though this led to a program overseas by our traditional
00:18:11
Speaker
allies, the US and Australia, it has incredible popular support back home. And so national for years said we're going to get rid of it and they never did. And now they've committed to keeping the policy because it's taken to be part of our national character. But there are certain people on the hard right of the political spectrum back home
Soviet Influence Theory
00:18:35
Speaker
who are against the anti-nuclear policy and suspicious as to why we generated it in the first place. And so what we're going to look at here is an article by an Australian freelance journalist called Bernard Moran, and a New Zealand, and I'm going to use the word here generously, conspiracy theorist, by the name of Trevor Loudom,
00:19:03
Speaker
that provides three prongs of evidence that shows that the reason why we went anti-Nuke in 1984 slash 1985, the policy was talked about in 1984, it came into effect in 1985, was due to the Soviets and not due to popular demand.
00:19:25
Speaker
Well, I do like a good prong, so three of them is music to my ears. What's the first avenue of attack here, then, in this conspiracy theory? The first prong is Tony Mary.
00:19:46
Speaker
I don't know who that is. Most people won't. So Tony Neri was a one time leader of the Electrical Workers Union, which was one of the bigger unions back in the 60s and 70s back home.
00:20:01
Speaker
Now, he claimed at a conference, I believe sometime in the 90s, held in Washington, DC, organized by Owen Harries, a former prominent Australian politician and ambassador for the Hoover Institute. Oh, sorry, the AT&T conference was in 1987, is in my notes. So, near is a former union leader,
00:20:25
Speaker
claimed that the Soviet Union, through one of its fronts, the World Federation of Trade Unions, had successfully infiltrated the New Zealand trade union movement and changed its direction. Now, the evidence he put forward at this conference in 1987 is this. In the good old days, the unions used to be incredibly friendly towards US trade unions, but when
00:20:54
Speaker
Jim Knox became the president of the Federation of Labor, which is now known as the New Zealand Council of Trade Union, or the NZCTU. This changed, and there was much more friendliness towards the Soviet bloc than there was to our good old friends in the US of A. Now, we'll talk more about Jim Knox later on.
00:21:17
Speaker
So Neri's going, look, in the old days, we used to be really friendly with US labor, organizers. And then suddenly, we started to become really friendly with Soviet Union organizers. That seems ever so slightly suspicious. He also claimed that the SUP, the Socialist Unity Party, which, and this is a fun fact of New Zealand history, the SUP was one of the last parties
00:21:46
Speaker
to believe that Stalin was right. So New Zealand has the dubious distinction of having a socialist party that up until the mid 80s was convinced that Stalin was not as bad as his critics had made him out to be. So even when Russia was going
00:22:07
Speaker
we think that maybe Stalin wasn't a particularly stand-up guy. New Zealanders who belonged to the SUP would go, no, no, no, no. You can't say a bad thing about Stalin. I mean, it's Stalin. You can't say a bad thing about Stalin, about him. He was great. It did have an impressive mustache. It's true. Do you know who also had an impressive mustache? Mario from Super Mario Brothers? Yes.
00:22:34
Speaker
Well, there you have it. So he claims that the S.U.P. had considerable control over the union movement and the S.U.P. being Stalin affiliated meant that obviously that was a front for Russia at that particular time. And indeed,
00:22:54
Speaker
The authors, Moran and Loudon, relate a story which doesn't actually come from Neri, this is just part of the official record, that in the early 80s there was a ado at the Russian embassy where the
00:23:13
Speaker
World Federation of Trade unions president Jim Knox was in attendance and Jim Knox gave the Russian delegates sheepskin rugs as a gift and the American delegate of the union movement who was there at the same time was simply given a simple cheese board and the authors go look.
00:23:32
Speaker
This just shows you just how much privilege the Russians are getting here. They get sheepskin rugs and the American delegate only gets a cheeseboard. That's ever so slightly suspicious.
00:23:48
Speaker
And they also relate, as Neri relates, that there was during the 60s, 70s and even early 80s, there was a lot of cases of the union movement sending people to Russia to go on leadership training.
00:24:04
Speaker
courses.
Soviet Union Infiltration Claims
00:24:05
Speaker
And indeed, no one disputes that there were MPs right up until the present day, who have admitted that they they went to Russia on such leadership training courses. It was kind of what you did in the union movement at the time. You know, I mean, that, that doesn't surprise me particularly. I mean, so if you're a member of a socialist
00:24:29
Speaker
or socialist-leaning sort of lefty political party, then it doesn't seem surprising at all that they would be more friendly with the Russians than the Americans past a certain point. But I assume this is just the start of it, and they're going to be building upon that idea to say they took it further than we thought. So are you saying the first prong hasn't convinced you of a Soviet conspiracy to change national policy and out-held rule? Are you wanting more evidence?
00:24:59
Speaker
I was promised two more prongs and I will reserve judgement until I've had them. Fine, I'll give you a second prong then. Prepare to be pronged. Alright, the second prong is Oleg Godeschi. So Godeschi was a ranking officer of the KGB who also turned out to be an undercover agent working for MI6. Actually, his story is kind of amazing. So he was stationed in London.
00:25:26
Speaker
ostensibly working for the KGB but had been turned by MI6 fairly early on. So MI6 would simply feed him information they were happy for the Soviets to find out about. Or he would then feed MI6 information the Soviets didn't want anyone to know about. He got recalled back to Moscow. Everyone was convinced that he had been discovered. MI6 said, look, you should just defect. Don't go back.
00:25:54
Speaker
But he went, no, I should go back. I've got I've got family there. Indeed, he had been discovered. He was tortured. He was put into a kind of a fictional office to work there as a engaged investigation. And there was an elaborate exfiltration plan developed to get him out of the out of Russia into the UK. And he's still alive today, living in secret somewhere near Cambridge. And it turns out
00:26:22
Speaker
You know those really awkward poisonings that occurred a few years ago?
00:26:29
Speaker
very close to where he lived. Very close to where he lived. Suspicious. Suspicious is what I was saying. Yes, yes. So, I mean, officially there was an execution order put on him by the Soviets. Technically, the Soviets aren't in charge of Russia anymore, but also technically that execution order has never been rescinded.
00:26:53
Speaker
So it's quite weird. Anyway, he wrote a whole bunch of briefing papers after he defected to the UK. And in those briefing papers, he claimed that the anti-nuclear policies of the 1984 Labour government pleased the KGB at the time. And this led to more socialists in the unions and the Labour Party as a consequence.
00:27:22
Speaker
Right. Well, I mean, again, that's not super surprising. If the labour movements here were more chummy with the Russians, then the Russians would be happy about that.
00:27:35
Speaker
But yes, I guess it is interesting to see that no less than the KGB were taking an interest in the friendliness of it, if the source is above the level. But I assume you've yet another prong to stick me with, which will tie all this together and actually... Sorry, are you saying the two prongs I've given you are not sufficient to make you believe there was a Soviet conspiracy to change the policy of Aotearoa, New Zealand?
KGB Agent Code Names
00:28:02
Speaker
Well, you haven't really brought up a conspiracy as such yet. You've just said that we were friendly with the Russians and the Russians appreciated that, but I assume next is going to be something along the lines of, and so they decided to do something about it.
00:28:15
Speaker
Actually, before we get there, let's play a quick game. So, Oleg had codenames, both with MI6 and the CIA. Now, I want to point out, the CIA did not know his identity, and indeed, it suspected that the CIA trying to find his identity was the reason why Moscow found out about him being a double.
00:28:39
Speaker
agent, but I want to know, can you guess what his MI6 and CIA codenames were? What kind of codename do you think MI6 would have given to a double agent?
00:28:54
Speaker
Oh, something like Spotty's Wood or Whiffling Badger or Chubbington Lee Smith. So his MIS-6 codename was Nocton. N-O-C-T-O-N. Right, not Nocton as a door might be. No, no, just Nocton. What kind of codename do you think the CIA gave the mysterious double agent that the UK had in the KGB?
00:29:23
Speaker
Oh, it'll be, it'll be one of the, one of the weird code names. Like they give their operations like striking freedom or, or, or operation was, was Jade Helm. Yep. Yep. Operation, operation mighty genitals. I'm not, mighty genitals. That's my, that's my pick for his CIA name.
00:29:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, you're pretty close. His CIA code name was Tickle. Right. I mean, it's on the way, I suppose. Yeah, precisely. I just think it's interesting the CIA way. Right. We need to come up with a code name for someone whose IDC we don't know. He seems like a fairly senior KGB officer.
00:30:11
Speaker
working for the British. We need a name that shows that person the right degree of respect in the CIA. His codename will be Tickle. Now that I think of the few spy-type thrillers I've seen, it usually is just a fairly simple, innocuous word, isn't it?
00:30:32
Speaker
It's those wacky military guys with their operations blowing up countries that give it the grand bombastic name. So yes, I was completely on the wrong track.
00:30:42
Speaker
All right, so you want a third prong. Does David Ferrier know about this? No, no. I actually should tell him about the real Tickle King. Yeah, I think you should. Right, prong the third. So as you've kind of intimated, the first two bits of evidential prongness
Dutch Immigrant's Conspiracy Tale
00:31:02
Speaker
It really seems like prologue to the story that's meant to tell us about the actual conspiracy. So, Prong the Third is about a Dutch immigrant to New Zealand called John van de Ven, who the authors claim resembled the mythical tugboat captain. Now, Josh, when you hear the words, mythical tugboat captain, what image comes to mind?
00:31:28
Speaker
I'm assuming a sort of Captain Pugwash or Captain, what's his face from the Tintin books? Oh, Captain Haddock. Captain Haddock, yes. So I mean, but if you were going to give him a physical description, what kind of bill do you think the mythical tugboat captain has? Well, I mean, a stocky build and a big beard and probably a probably a big sort of a southwester, big waterproof clothes that he wears at all times.
00:31:57
Speaker
All right, well, so I mean, they say that he was a stocky, powerfully built man filled with restless energy and relatedly or unrelatedly, he chain-smoked thin cigars. So you're quite close. I mean, when I read the terms mythical tugboat captain, all I could think of was Captain Pugwash.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah, I was never, never, never much got into the old Captain Pugwash. So I don't have a particularly strong, strong memories of him or what he looked like. But it's it's more Captain Haddock, even though I couldn't remember his name is the is the is the association I make. All I can say to that is blistering barnacles.
00:32:40
Speaker
Now van der Veen worked as a tanker driver for mobile and he got into trouble with his union. This is back in the 60s or 70s for driving too fast. So basically he was
00:32:56
Speaker
moving oil or petroleum around the country, he was getting goods from one depot to another too quickly, which was embarrassing to other union members. So the union told him, obviously, look, you need to obey the rules. You need to drive at the set speed that the union says you should rather than being more efficient as you're trying to be.
00:33:18
Speaker
So he decided to get his revenge. He pretended from that point onwards after being chastised for the union for breaking the rules to be sorry and acted like a loyal member of the union, even going so far to hand out SUP leaflets. Now, after a year of this pretense, he was told he had a future in the union. And this is around about the time
00:33:47
Speaker
that he actually found a legitimate grievance at work. He discovered there was a tire safety issue on the tankers that he and the other drivers were driving, which led to a prolonged strike. So he was both being a loyal member of the union and had just managed to get the union into legitimate strike activity.
00:34:11
Speaker
So at this point he joined the SUP and, and I quote directly from their quoting of him, studied Marxist-Leninist theory under a secret member who was later appointed to senior positions in business.
00:34:27
Speaker
He also ran as the S.U.P. candidate in one of the electorates for the general election of 1981, which is the election before the Labour Party came into power. Now, actually, I was only four at the time of the 1981 election, but, Josh, you're a lot older than me, so you must remember the 1981 election. Tell the listeners about what happened back in 1981.
00:34:54
Speaker
I'm a year and a half older than you, so I was only about five. So I'm afraid I have no memory of it whatsoever. I think you're suppressing something there. I think 1981 must have been a terrible time for you. You just don't want to talk about your memories of being on the campaign. True? A trail? Yeah, maybe I've suppressed a lot. Who could say?
00:35:17
Speaker
Around about this time, he contacted the NZ SAS, our intelligence agency, and told them about the fact that he was trying to infiltrate the unions and the concern that there were reds under the bed.
00:35:37
Speaker
He was told by NZSIS to keep in place and he was given a retainer, so he was given some money to keep on the case, and also a handler. He was also given a codename. What kind of codename do you think the NZSIS would give to an agent they had in place, infiltrating Soviet conspiracies?
00:35:59
Speaker
Well, I mean, if I'm picking up a theme so far, it's two syllable words and fairly innocuous ones at that. So I'm going to go with Neville. Joe Martin. It's not too far away. It's also very boring. I mean, it's nothing like it, but it's a boring name, so yeah. Yeah, to my mind, that's the kind of codename that you would quite quickly forget. So what's your codename? Oh, it's...
00:36:24
Speaker
Joe something, uh, Joe Market, Joe Martinet, Joe Marricate, Joe Mama, but I'm sorry, I should have, I should have done.
00:36:37
Speaker
one day we'll have to get the things so both of either of us can do that. And I'll be there with my finger on the button, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, he had a boring code name. A very boring code name of Joe, of Joe Martin. Now between the 29th of October, 1983 through to February the 12th of 1984, he was sent to Moscow to train at the Lenin Institute for higher learning in Prospeit, Leningrassky.
00:37:05
Speaker
And according to him, and here's a damning quote, peace was higher on the agenda. As one tutor told us, we have many clever people in the Soviet Union, but no one has ever been able to come up with a weapon potentially as powerful as the peace movement. Not the peace movement. I know. I mean, what a terrible thing to suggest that peace might be the answer.
00:37:35
Speaker
I'm only alive because of the peace movement. That's how my grandparents met in World War II. So there you go. So you're saying the peace movement leads to rampant sex and the production of children. I'm now of the opinion that maybe the peace movement is a bad idea after all. Yeah, who can say? Well, precisely. I mean, I hope you and Anna aren't engaging in any peaceful activities.
00:37:57
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's in lockdown. It does tend to kind of promote a fair amount of peacefulness and idleness at any rate. You filthy, filthy man. Just peacefully being in bed with your partner every night. I mean, frankly, this is disgusting.
Soviet Strategy in New Zealand
00:38:18
Speaker
This is absolutely disgusting.
00:38:19
Speaker
I don't want to hear about your peaceful relations anymore. Anyway, Van de Ven was told at the course he was on, the course had been condensed, because Yuri Andropov, who was leader of the Soviet Union at the time, had initiated a strategy for taking a social democratic country out of the Western lines by utilizing the correlation of forces provided by the peace movement.
00:38:48
Speaker
And New Zealand was apparently the target because we were small enough to test the idea on. I think that needs a dun dun dun, quite frankly. OK. It feels more proper. OK, so so this Mr. What was his name? Van der Veen? John Van der Veen. Is is reporting back that he went off to Moscow and and the Russians had these plans.
00:39:17
Speaker
So how did things go from there then? Obviously, we did end up backing out of ANZUS and all of that, so if we were to believe this story, their plan worked. How did it work? Well, that's you. You know, I said there were three prongs. I lied. There's a fourth prong.
00:39:37
Speaker
A bonus prong. It's like all my Christmases have come at once. And do you know who that bonus prong belongs to? Is it David Longew? No, it's Dr. Michael Bassett. I know the name. Josh? Well, I won't say Josh. Who is Dr. Michael Bassett? I was going to say I know the name, but I cannot...
00:40:00
Speaker
at the moment, summoned from the recesses of my memory who exactly Michael Bassett was. He was a minister in the 1984 Labour government. Right. And, and relatedly, he was one of the right wing members of the 1984 Labour government. So one of the things which
00:40:22
Speaker
often gets brought up when people talk about the fourth Labour government in Aotearoa, New Zealand, was that the Labour Party at the time was kind of stricken between a left wing and a right wing. And certain policy initiatives that came through from that government ended up going left, such as the anti-nuclear policy, and certain other policies that the Labour government became really famous for, like the neoliberal reforms, were very much of the right wing.
00:40:51
Speaker
And Bassett famously has gone on the record repeatedly because Bassett is also an historian, talking about the fact that David Longie listened to the left-wing part of the party more than he listened to the right-wing part of the party. Bassett tries to make out that this made Longie incredibly weak as a political figure because he wouldn't stick with one side over the other.
00:41:17
Speaker
That might be true, but Bassett's reasoning is basically sour grapes, because Bassett didn't get everything he wanted. In fact, he didn't get everything he wanted. His mind makes Longie weak, as opposed to, well, maybe you just didn't argue your case particularly well.
00:41:35
Speaker
But Bassett enters the story and basically we get a potted history of what happened in the first few years of the 1984 Labor government. So Bassett talks about the fact that Longie wasn't much of a leader and the party was driven by the left and right wing factions at the time.
00:41:54
Speaker
And Bassett basically argues, look, Lange was listening to the wrong part of the party. He was listening to the unionists in the party. The unions, as the authors have intimated, had been infiltrated by the S.U.P. So when Lange was listening to the unionists, he was actually listening to Soviet Russia. Ipso facto, the authors intimate. That must mean that Lange was listening to Andropov.
00:42:24
Speaker
And thus the anti-nuclear policy was in fact the responsibility of the Soviets through their chief cheerleader in the Labour Party at the time.
Helen Clark's Alleged Soviet Influence
00:42:36
Speaker
Can you guess who that chief cheerleader of the Soviets was back in 1984? Oh, was it Helen Clark?
00:42:45
Speaker
you are correct it wasn't Dean Helen Clark according to Michael Bassett because it is one thing that Michael Bassett so one one person who Michael Bassett hates even more than David Lange it's Helen Clark
00:43:00
Speaker
Yes, famously. Former Prime Minister of New Zealand. Now she's still at the UN. She had sort of the number through. No, she's retired now, I believe. Yeah. She's back. She's back in the country. She's retired and trying to make sure that no one ever makes a loud noise near Eden Park.
00:43:20
Speaker
Good, quite frankly. Well, precisely. So yeah, so there we have the story. According to Loudon and Moran, our anti-nuclear policy was orchestrated by the Soviets and the proof is how the socialists swamped the unions and altered the Labour Party after 1984. Right. I mean, it's... Convinced? Well, it's a bit light, really. I mean, there's not what you'd call a smoking gun or anything. It's just...
00:43:51
Speaker
There were unionists, the unionists were taking orders from Russia, the suggestion that the unionists were influencing David Lange, and then a thing happened, which I guess the Russians would have been happy about. So, I mean, you can draw inferences, but I don't think there's any sort of proof positive that the genesis of the anti-nuclear policy came from Moscow.
00:44:15
Speaker
So you're saying you basically just aren't convinced by the four prongs of evidence here? No, no. I have a feeling it would take a good five, maybe even six prongs for me to really get on board with this conspiracy theory. So far, it just seems a little heavier on the innuendo than any actual evidence.
00:44:35
Speaker
Well, let's talk a little bit more about the prongs. So there isn't much information out there about Tony Neri, our first prong. One thing which is interesting, he was accused back in the day of seeing reds under the bed. So he basically got on the wrong side of a lot of union members, including Jim Knox.
00:45:00
Speaker
for the sheer fact that he was suspecting communist conspiracies from the very beginning. He was a big fan of Joe McCarthy and was really concerned that New Zealand was being infiltrated by Soviet spies like the US allegedly was. And of course, we all know how that went down. And what's amusing
00:45:21
Speaker
is that so near is dead and his obituary is available online and even his obituary mentions he was notorious for claiming there were reds under the bed so famously probably not the best source of information about communist conspiracies given that this was someone who saw communist conspiracies everywhere whether they were occurring or not
00:45:49
Speaker
OK, what about what about number two then? What was his name or league? Well, no, no, no. So the other thing I want to note, so I said we'd go back to Jim Knox, who was Tony Neri's opponent. The story that Moran and Loudon tell misses out a really interesting factoid, which was Jim Knox and Tony Neri were in competition.
00:46:17
Speaker
to become the president of the North Island Electrical Trades Union, and Knox decisively defeated Neri in that election. So it's quite possible that Neri in his story about how Knox was basically cozying up to the Ruskies back in the day is basically part of his vendetta of, you bet me in that election, but I'm going to try and win the PR war with time.
00:46:46
Speaker
Right, I'm certainly not seeing any great amount of objectivity then from Mr. Neri here.
00:46:53
Speaker
Now you want to know about the next, so the next, the second prong was our Russian defector. It's probably important to note the Russian defector's evidence in no way actually says anything about a Soviet conspiracy to alter the policy of the fourth labor government. All he says is the KGB liked the fact that we took an anti-nuclear status.
00:47:20
Speaker
That's not evidence of we influenced that particular change. Simply, well, that kind of benefited Russia from a international relations perspective. So the KGB liked it. Yes, exactly. It's not again, it's heavy on the innuendo, not so much on the actual direct evidence.
00:47:43
Speaker
There's another bit which is interesting here.
Neoliberal Reforms in NZ
00:47:46
Speaker
So in the article, Moran and Laldum talk about how there was a massive increase in union membership and a push within the Labour Party to move to the left during the fourth Labour government. And they take that to be infiltration by the Russians trying to change the union movement.
00:48:07
Speaker
What other rationale might there have been to make people decide to join their unions during the fourth Labour government, do you think, Joshua? Well, all of those neoliberal reforms that they brought in that seem to disadvantage the working class. And neoliberal reforms which don't seem particularly congruent with a international communist conspiracy to change the direction of a social democratic country. No, no.
00:48:36
Speaker
Yes, if the Russians were trying to direct the path of New Zealand politics, they certainly missed the tricks when it came to the economic side of things. Yes, now for non New Zealand listeners or people who aren't particularly au fait with 1980s political economics, New Zealand was one of the first countries to engage in widespread neoliberal economic reforms. So we were the ones who basically privatized a whole bunch of public.
00:49:05
Speaker
public assets. We were one of the first Western nations to do this in kind of a large scale on the assumption that everyone else was going to do it. And then it turned out that most other countries engaged in much more moderate neoliberal reforms, which is why we did things like selling off the railway network for a mere measly one New Zealand dollar and the like. So
00:49:30
Speaker
The kind of economic changes that occurred in 1984 and 1985 did not lead to more communism. They led to the country becoming increasingly more capitalistic and actually a lot more like America than, say, the Soviet Union.
00:49:49
Speaker
So that that little bit of history is kind of missing from the story, you would think from the way the authors talk about it. The Soviets were controlling every aspect of our policy due to the infiltration by the SCP into the union movement. And yet the anti nuclear policy is kind of a really, really minor thing compared to the neoliberal reforms the 1984 government actually engaged in.
00:50:16
Speaker
Hmm, okay. So, prong number three then. How about John van der Venn? Blunten the edges of that one as well. Well, there's not much information available about John van der Venn. He has, like many dead people, an obit, but there's really no independent collaboration of anything he says. All we've got is the private correspondence
00:50:45
Speaker
that he and the authors engaged in. And actually, by the time the article is published, around about 2007, Van de Ven is already dead. So we've simply got the words of a dead man who claims that he was engaged in
00:51:02
Speaker
a kind of double agent infiltration of the union movement. But there's no collaboration which allows us to go, oh, actually, we can say that's true. We've simply got the author saying, well, we were told this by John, and we trust John to episode factor, it must be true. Well, I mean, I have to say, I am still unconvinced by this tale.
00:51:27
Speaker
I do not believe that the New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy of the 80s was thrust upon us by the devious Russians.
00:51:38
Speaker
Yeah, and the Michael Bassett prong, a little bit like the Oleg prong, is basically just reports of, well, you know, these things occurred and Oleg says the KGB liked it. Bassett simply says, you know, some of the policy initiatives that the Labour Party engaged in in 1984, 1985,
00:51:57
Speaker
came from the left wing of the party, which I strongly disapprove of. Ipsofacto, they must have been up to no good, but there's no actual evidence put forward by Bassett alleging that there was a Soviet conspiracy behind it. It's simply some of the things we did were a bit left wing and, you know, that was bad. So sorry, how recent was this Moraine Loudon article? 2007, I believe. Right, so nothing else. Yes, March 2007.
Trevor Loudon's Anti-Communist Activities
00:52:27
Speaker
So nothing has come out since that would in any way bolster the case? Not at all. Oh, well. Well, it's a nice story. Maybe. No, no, no, no. Final thing. We should talk about the authors.
00:52:44
Speaker
Yes, yes, perhaps we should. Loudoun's a name that's come up a bit, at least. Yes. So, Boon and Moran, there's actually not much information about him, have they? He's just a freelance chur and lists his precious little information about him online. But Loudoun, Loudoun's kind of a big name in a kind of weird way. So, Trevor Loudoun is a former president of the Act Party. New Zealand's most right wing mainstream political party.
00:53:13
Speaker
Yes, it used to be called the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, which is where you get the word act from. I believe it's no longer an acronym. It's just a word you always spell in capital letters now. And he's also famous for being a member of ZAP or ZAP, which was an offshoot of Scientology, which was heavily reliant on the literature produced by the John Birch Society.
00:53:43
Speaker
What did that stand for? Zenith applied philosophy. Right. I always think it's something to do with Zionists, and it was an anti-Semitic thing, but I don't know that that was its... Well, I mean, the Birches are anti-Semitic, but no, that itself was a weird combination of Scientology mysticism and John Birch society-style conservatism.
00:54:11
Speaker
Right. But let me read you now from Wikipedia and their summary of the political activities of Trevor Loudon. According to Wikipedia, Loudon has been involved in politics in Christchurch for many years, such as the campaign for a Soviet-free New Zealand,
00:54:32
Speaker
a group which published doses of people involved in the anti-nuclear movement, declaring them to be communists and connecting the dots between them and their supposed Soviet masters. Leldon established the campaign for a Soviet-free New Zealand in June 1986 to expose Soviet Marxist subversion in New Zealand.
00:54:52
Speaker
Loudon argued that the New Zealand government should cease all diplomatic and trading relations with the Soviet Union on the grounds that it was a hostile totalitarian dictatorship seeking world dominance. The group advocated a ban on the importing of Soviet nova and lada cars on the grounds that they had been built through slave labour.
00:55:12
Speaker
Other activities carried out by the group included staging protests, collecting information on the Labour Party and left-wing groups, and circulating pamphlets in Christchurch during the 1987 New Zealand general elections, which attacked the fourth Labour government and local Christchurch-based Members of Parliament, Mike Moore and Jeffrey Palmer.
00:55:34
Speaker
Loudoun claimed that New Zealand's Communist parties, particularly the Socialist Unity Party and their front organisations, had infiltrated the Labour Party, trade union movement, National Council of Churches and left-wing groups like the Council of organisations for leaf services overseas, and the anti-apartheid holed all racist tours. Right, so this particular story was very much on-brand for him then, I guess you could say.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yes, now, in subsequent years, Loudoun has been trying to point out that communists have taken over the USA. For many years, he was running a website down in Christchurch exposing commies in the Senate.
00:56:18
Speaker
He now lives in the US where he goes around giving talks about communist infiltration of the USA.
Praise for Infiltration Article
00:56:25
Speaker
And last I heard, he was giving a talk in Boise, as friend of the show Martin Orr pointed out to me in private correspondence. Well, I mean, good for him, I guess. But I mean, he's managed to make a lifestyle out of believing in communist infiltration of all Western nations.
00:56:47
Speaker
Well, good for him, I guess. It doesn't quite sound like the right phrase to use. No, it doesn't really, no. Yeah, no. Oh well. Have we reached the end? Well, I'm getting the impression you're still not convinced. I have to say I'm not convinced by this story. It was an interesting story, but not a convincing story. Yeah. Yeah, it's just time when it came out, I actually penned a critique of this.
00:57:15
Speaker
on my blog back when people had blogs and updated blogs, in part because even though this was published over in Australia, the National Business Review, which is kind of the leading right wing business magazine slash newspaper we had in the country, I don't think the NBR exists anymore. They were praising the virtues of this particular pay.
00:57:40
Speaker
of this particular article, and I was going, there's no argument here. It's all insinuation. There's no evidence whatsoever. It's just the authors have a bee in their bonnet about Russia, and they're just connecting dots that don't even seem to exist.
00:58:00
Speaker
Yep, that's how it sounds to me, quite frankly. So in that case, I believe we can call to close another episode of What the Conspiracy. So next time it'll be my turn, I have an idea.
00:58:14
Speaker
I haven't done much reading about it, so it might turn out to be a terrible idea, but we won't know for another three weeks or so. Well, precisely.
Upcoming Bonus Episode Topics
00:58:23
Speaker
But before we call this to a close completely, we do of course have to talk about this week's bonus episode.
00:58:31
Speaker
which we were going to record in just a moment and which our beloved patrons will then get to listen to, we're going to talk a little bit more about Salvatore Mundi. You bonus patrons got an episode or two devoted to it before we eventually made a public episode about the case because it's an interesting thing to talk about and people are talking about it again. We're also going to bring up
00:58:58
Speaker
The case in the headlines at the moment of Gabby Petito, a woman who went missing in Yellowstone Park and whose body was just found this week and whose fiancé I think he is, a partner at any rate, is currently being sought in relation to her death. We're not going to talk about the case. This is the person who left Yellowstone
00:59:18
Speaker
Sorry, this is the case of the person who left Yellowstone without his partner and just refused to answer any questions about where she had gone. Basically, yes. No, it's an odd case. We're not going to talk exactly about the case, but there has been an interesting little side point that's been brought up by it. A kind of legal point, which is probably not real, but at the same time actually quite fascinating.
00:59:44
Speaker
Interesting. Well, I mean, it's yeah, yes, no, I might as well just just to raise interest. We're going to talk about the Yellowstone Park zone of death.
00:59:58
Speaker
Probably should have called for one of those in advance, yes. So if you'd like to learn about the Yellowstone Park Zone of Death and also hear a bit more about Salvatore Mundi and your patron, well good news, because you don't need to do a single thing. It'll be piped into your ear holes automatically by some sort of syringe as far as is my understanding. If you'd like to be... I actually believe it's a robot.
01:00:20
Speaker
A robot? Okay, well, if you want the podcast bestowing ear robots for yourselves and you're not a patron, you can become one by the simple exponent of going to patreon.com and searching for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. And if you don't, if after all of that, you still don't actually want automated ear robots forcing information into your oral canals and have no desire to be a patron. Well, I mean, that's fine. It takes all kinds.
01:00:50
Speaker
What would the world be like if we were all the same, you know? So, I think I'm done. Are you spent? I am so spent that...
01:01:04
Speaker
I'm an empty wallet. Time to call things to a close, which I will do in the traditional manner by saying goodbye. And I will do it in the traditional Soviet way of letter of stock, my good friend. And
Podcast Contact Information
01:01:18
Speaker
there we go. You've been listening to a podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Ederson and Imdentive. If you'd like to help support us, please find details of our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean. If you'd like to get in contact with us,
01:01:32
Speaker
email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com