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Massive arms buildup

In 2007 Australia is undergoing a massive military buildup – ALL of which is designed to complement U.S. forces and work under U.S. command, fighting wars in third countries.  The land warfare component of Talisman Sabre involves a city built around a walled square.  Mecca maybe?

We’ve also made significant accommodation to U.S. needs with bombing ranges, exercise areas, and rest & recreation for U.S. troops.

Since 2002 and the adoption of "the Bush Doctrine", U.S. military policy has been to attack any country in which a security "threat" "might" be forming.  Iraq was the first war to arise out of the Bush Doctrine.  There are others waiting in the wings (Iran, Syria, North Korea).  U.S. military spending is way out of control.

The new US/Aus satellite base on Navy land outside Geraldton, West Australia, will facilitate capacities such as the "Warfighter Information Network Tactical (WIN-T)" which will enable units in the field to access a real-time picture of battle fields and "enemy" units from satellite transmissions. This high-tech warfare is, like Pine Gap, a one way ticket to automatic complicity in any act of aggressive war launched by the USA anywhere in the world – whether we like it or not.  (I don’t like it)!

It’s clear the corrupt lying Howard government is not going to end, or even limit Australian collusion in U.S. warmongering.  It’s clear the corrupt lying Labor opposition will reduce participation in Iraq in a symbolic way, but will not limit the operation of the U.S. "alliance" and will continue to meet the U.S. demand for bases, and for routine participation in future wars.

What to do?

In our Pine Gap trial, the Commonwealth is working hard to prevent us from discovering documents, or mentioning anything related to the function of the Pine Gap Terrorist Base.  They challenge and oppose our every attempt to discover documents and question key witnesses about the policies or operations of Pine Gap as a "defence" base.

The prosecution’s aim is to argue that what the terror base does is irrelevant, and all that matters is our physical presence on a specific piece of land at a particular time established by the Commonwealth Police present.  Nothing else has relevance.

On 21 March, at a pre-trial hearing on our application for discovery of Defence Department documents, there were six lawyers, including a QC and more junior Counsel) for the prosecution (the Crown) and the government (the Commonwealth).  We are up against it.

We need to "prove" that our beliefs about what Pine Gap does are "reasonable".  

Their line is that we defendants don’t really "know" anything about Pine Gap – because it’s secret.  The Commonwealth asserts that we can’t even use Parliamentary reports to show our sources of knowledge (Parliamentary Reports, they say, are privileged).  Thus everything we say is mere "rumour", and can’t be used in evidence.

Our immediate and major goal on 29 May is to get information before the jury, and before the various publics) that sets out the nature and function of Pine Gap as an instrument of illegal aggressive war.  Our task is to expose truth and let people make their own decisions.

As Christians we believe in miracles and God’s grace.  We’ll need them.

The grass-roots resistance

Nevertheless our action is proving effective so far in engaging public attention and creating resistance to Pine Gap.  The heavy legal penalties which are likely to be imposed against us will, we hope, amplify our action’s effect.

We know there’s significant attention in nonviolence circles about our action, mainly in Australia, but in places around the world.  This is the most fertile field for alliance development and mutual support in waging resistance.

We also intend to reach out beyond the nonviolent committed and bring new people to calm, purposeful and effective nonviolence.  Various communities and congregations of faith have been responsive and productive.

And, of course, we have a program of media stories and coverage which we hope will extend well beyond Alice Springs and generate some national and international attention.  The amorphous "public" is, of course the least likely source of new revolutionaries – but then again everyone has to start somewhere.  Converts to the cause are worth their weight in broadband.

So in Alice Springs in May/June this year we’re running a parallel political program of information, protest and direct action outside the Court.

For those who come to Alice Springs, the nonviolence training will focus on foundation work for the formation and operation of small, autonomous affinity groups which undertake interventionary work against the U.S. war-fighting system.

Intervention contains an element of physical disruption to the war machine.  In December 2005 we forced Pine Gap to "lock down" for four hours.  In later months the government was forced to conduct a security assessment of Pine Gap and improve their security at a cost of millions (so they say – we’ll find out).  We have driven up costs and made operations more difficult.  

We are few in number and small in resources, and we constitute an efficient and effective means of addressing war and the emerging security/terrorist state.

To promote further actions of this nature we’ll be working hard at diversity, mutual respect, cooperation, fun, spirit, miracles, and a relaxed but determined revolutionary zeal to manifest Peace on Earth in the ways that are available.

Around the world

As we do this work, we take comfort and strength from the many thousands of people around the world who, just like us, are building resistance to war.  The Pit Stop Plowshares and the Derry 9 in Ireland, Lt Ehren Watada in Seattle, and Father John Dear in Albuquerque  – and so it goes.

Come along and join in the fun.

New work by Kai Rothkamm and Markus Loebrich show that low level ionising radiation may be more likley to cause cancer than previously thought.

Until now the response ofthe human body to radiation has been based on studies of people at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl, who were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation. The effects of low levels of radiation has been calculated by extrapolating thedata from those studies.
The new work indicates that the body responds quite differently to low levels of radiation, and that response means that the way DNA is repaired is more likely to cause mutation of cells possibly leading to cancer.

Details of how the body heals breaks to both strands of DNA in a cell are available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair#Double-strand_breaks and http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/full/10/5/361
The new research which indicates that low levels of radiation my lead to higher than predicted rates of cancer is available  at

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=154297&blobtype=pdf 

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