The week long convergence at the gates of the Pine Gap US Military Spy Base south of Alice Springs continues to build, with several actions planned over the coming days leading up to a mass action on Friday at the gates of the facility.
Pine Gap is one of the largest and most important United States war fighting and intelligence bases in the world.  The murder of individuals by US drone-based weapons, outside national and international law, is organised through the signal collection operations of Pine Gap.
US bases on Australia’s soil contribute to the US war fighting strategy. The bases assist the US to perpetrate wars against countries in our region and beyond and help swell the list of Australia’s enemies.
“The deployment of nuclear weapons is still a major threat to populations. The US hold approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons which are presumably aimed and targetted throughout the world at its ‘enemies’. Pine Gap is implicated directly in their deployment. This makes Pine Gap a potential target and implicates Australia in war crimes,” said organiser and member of the Disarm Collective Jacob Grech.
This morning, before dawn, the shift change was met at the gates by a group of protestors.  As numbers swelled, by 7am buses were delayed from entering the facility for a short period.
One of the participants of this morning’s action said: “I am here to draw attention to the threat posed by this US army base to Australian citizens, built on land without permission or agreement from the Arrente nation traditional owners.”
In the lead up to Friday’s action, various actions will be taking place. At 4pm this afternoon an action will take place at the Hutt Road camp.
On Thursday 29th September a community bike ride will leave the Council Lawns in Alice Springs at 8am and ride 30 kilometers to the gates of the Pine Gap Facility, followed by Brunch Not Bombs at the gates at 11am.
“People from all over Australia and the world have gathered here this week to oppose the US war machine’s presence on stolen Aboriginal land” said Mr Grech.  “The convergence has brought together a diverse range of people including members of anti-militarism, peace, faith and environmental groups. While the protestors are committed to non-violence, a diversity of tactics will be used throughout the week in a range of colourful and creative actions aimed at drawing attention to Australia’s complicity in US lead wars and invasions around the world.”
#closepinegap
Media contact: Jacob Grech ph: 0402 246 491

For the second consecutive day, peace activist group Swan Island Peace Convergence (SIPC) are successfully blockading the only road onto the secretive military base at Swan Island in Victoria.

SIPC Members in front of the military base yesterday. Photo: SIPC

 
SIPC has held protests and direct actions at the base every year since 2010. This year the Convergence coincides with related protests at the secret US military intelligence facility at Pine Gap, just outside Alice Springs. There, a number of demonstrators from around Australia are highlighting the facility’s involvement in civilian-killing drone strikes and widespread surveillance of citizens.
 
Margaret Pestorius, a seasoned peace activist and social worker who has traveled from Cairns to Pine Gap for the protests, identifies the US base as an obvious military target which actually puts Australians at greater risk rather than protecting us.
 
Shane Anderson, an organiser of SIPC, believes “It is ridiculous that Australian defence personnel are actively involved in illegal extrajudical killings. That is what’s wrong with Pine Gap: it is Australian participation in drone warfare”.
 
Anderson says the SAS and ASIS members who train on the Swan Island base are deployed in many countries where Australia is not even at war, and that this has contributed to the ongoing destabilisation of the region rather than to the stated aim of bringing peace.
 
SIPC are not the only people who have been trying to raise these concerns. Not long before his death, former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser wrote a book called Dangerous Allies, which argues that it is no longer in Australia’s strategic interest to have a strong military relationship with the US and we would now be better off with a more independent foreign policy.
 
In 2014, four members of SIPC were assaulted by SAS soldiers when they peacefully entered the base with the intention of shedding light on its role in illegal US wars.
 
Sam Quinlan, one of the four, said “They knew we were peaceful protestors who had been there all week, which reveals their conduct as disproportionately violent. Their treatment of us amounted to torture and a breach of human rights laws. This raises grave concerns about the fate of their victims, in less fortunate nations, who don’t have the kind of access to the media and the legal system that we have”.
 
“We want to know what’s being done in our name with our tax dollars, but we’re not told, and I’m not comfortable with that”, says community worker Samara Pitt, also at Swan Island this week. “This country’s aggressive military conduct is still costing innocent lives, so we still need to protest.”
 
Karen, another member of the group, says “We hope people around Australia will see what we’re doing and begin to ask questions about Swan Island and Pine Gap, and more broadly about the nature of our military alliance with the US. If that had been the case in 2003, our troops may not have joined the mess that was the Iraq invasion.”
Advocates are also amplifying calls from other groups, such as the Greens and Australians for War Powers Reform, that the decision to go to war must be debated in the Parliament, particularly in light of lessons from the recent Chilcot report.

Swan Island Peace Convergence 2014. Photo: SIPC
 

ICAN Australia
26 September – 2 October 2016:
A week of activities will expose the role of Pine Gap in war, surveillance and nuclear targeting.
Beginning today, on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, hundreds of people are gathering at the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility, just 20km from Alice Springs, NT.
A protest camp and conference will discuss the role of the highly secretive facility in drone targeting, mass citizen surveillance and in preparations for nuclear war. The facility is the most likely Australian target in the event of a nuclear war involving the US, immediately jeopardizing the 25,000 residents of Alice Springs, and others in the path of radioactive fallout.
“Pine Gap makes critical contributions to planning for nuclear war. In the fragile world of nuclear deterrence, efforts should be directed at total nuclear disarmament,” said Professor Richard Tanter, University of Melbourne.
A UN working group on nuclear disarmament has issued a breakthrough recommendation for the General Assembly to convene a conference in 2017 to negotiate “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. Austrian Foreign Minister Kurz announced last Wednesday that Austria, along with other UN members states, will table a resolution at the General Assembly First Committee in October, seeking a mandate for negotiations to begin next year.
“For 71 years the majority of countries have experienced the injustice and insecurity that nuclear weapons represent,” said Ray Acheson of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a steering group member of ICAN. “With negotiations of a ban treaty on the horizon, we are as close as we have ever been to effectively challenging the continued possession of these weapons of mass destruction.”
“When a treaty banning nuclear weapons is negotiated, Australia will be expected to sign it, as it has signed treaties to outlaw other abhorrent weapons. To enable Australia to sign on, the functions of Pine Gap should exclude preparations for nuclear war. This facility has served to implicate Australia in nuclear aggression and as a prime nuclear target for 50 years too long,” said Gem Romuld, ICAN Australia.
ICAN Australia will be speaking at the IPAN Conference and participating in the protest camp this week.
 
More information:
Disarm protest camp, 26-30 September www.closepinegap.org
Independent and Peaceful Australia Network Conference, 1-2 October www.ipan.org.au
 
For further comment:
Professor Richard Tanter, Nautilus Institute and Melbourne University- 0407 824 336
Gem Romuld, ICAN Australia- 0421 955 066
Image credit: Kristian Laemmle-Ruff
 

Three ‘Quaker Grannies for peace’ have set up breakfast on the road to Pine Gap and are inviting military personnel to sit down with them and negotiate.
Dawn Joyce, Helen Bayes and Peri Coleman this morning before setting up breakfast to share. Photo: Glenn Todd
The grandmothers have set up a table and chairs and prepared tea and croissants in order to engage in dialogue with personnel arriving for work at the base.
‘We are asking Australians whether it is appropriate for a foreign country to be operating a secret facility with no transparency on Australian soil; a base that may well be implicating Australians in wars that our government has not entered into’, says Helen Bayes, longtime Quaker, grandmother of thirteen and founder of the Quaker Grannies.
Pine Gap collects various kinds of data, mined from the Asia Pacific and the Middle East, which is used for drone strikes in nations where Australia is not meant to be at war.
‘Our Quaker peace testimony from 1661 says “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons for any end or under any pretence whatsoever”.’ says Bayes.
Grandmother of five, Dawn Joyce said “This is sovereign indigenous land yet the US claim that all their bases are US soil. I support the claim of the Arrernte people who did not agree to this base being placed on their sacred lands”.
The action is one of a series marking the 50th anniversary of the secret US military facility at Pine Gap. Groups are advocating that it is time for the base to be closed.
Last year the Grannies appeared at the entrance to a military training area at Shoalwater Bay, outside of Rockhampton, during the largest US/Australian joint military exercise in history.

Quaker Grannies last year at Shoalwater Bay. From Left: Dawn Joyce, Jo Valentine, Helen Bayes. Photo: David Bradbury
Professor Richard Tanter from the Nautilus Institute will be present in Alice Springs for the Independent and Peaceful Australian Network (IPAN) Conference (29 September to 2 October).
He points out that from China’s perspective, the US-Australian military alliance is likely to raise the supposition that “Australia is not so much hosting US military bases, but is becoming a virtual American base in its own right”.
Anti-militarism advocates at Pine Gap this week are not the only ones who have been trying to raise these concerns. Malcolm Fraser wrote a book not long before his death called Dangerous Allies, which argues that the time when it was in our strategic interest to have a strong military relationship with the US is over, and that now Australia would be better off with a more independent foreign policy.
Advocates are also amplifying calls from other groups, such as the Greens and Australians for War Powers Reform, that the decision to go to war must be debated in the Parliament, particularly in light of lessons from the recent Chilcot report.
ENDS
Editor’s Notes:
Info & Events:        https://closepinegap.org.au/
Twitter:             @ClosePineGap    #ClosePineGap
Professor Richard Tanter: 0407 824 336
A recent interview with quotes from Richard Tanter
Photos and Video will be available in this Google Drive

Jo Valentine, Dawn Joyce, Helen Bayes. Photo: David Bradbury, 2015.
Background information on the Quaker Grannies for Peace: Transcript of Helen Bayes
Quakerism emerged in the UK in the 1650’s, which was really immediately after terrible civil war, which had caused such enormous suffering and death and environmental destruction. And the turbulence— political turbulence—and the threads towards really the monarchy, the government of England. Before that, the bible had been opened up by translation into English in the King James version so ordinary people who could read, could read the Bible. So people were reading the Bible, they were fascinated by the stories, you know, their own faith was illuminated by the teachings in the Bible, and they’d go to church and they’d hear things being preached which were not, not compatible with the understanding they were getting in their own hearts with what the stories in the Bible were really about. So there was this fracturing of people following the faith into different groups into different perspectives. And the protestant movement of course was part of that, Calvin was part of that.
So the Quakers— there was a real social restlessness about faith. A very strong belief in the reality of life after death, and if after death, you’ve lived a good life, you’d go to heaven and be with God. If you’d lived a bad life, you’d go to hell. The first quakers that wrestling with those ideas, studying the bible very closely, came to understand that a core principle is actually nonviolence. And its right through the old testament, as well as of course Jesus’ teachings. Story after story tell of the damage violence does, that way there is no future in it There is of course a short-term future in it, but in the end the thing that the most important thing is to lay down your sword , is to love peace, to be peaceful, with your neighbours, and with people who are different. And so the earliest Quakers’ first public statement—some of them were being imprisoned for blasphemy, were being beaten up on the street for being blasphemers, and were being thrown out of churches for speaking a different truth to what the preacher was giving. And their first public statement was the statement of the peace testimony: ”we utterly deny all wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons for any purpose whatsoever”. And they got that from the Bible! And so it’s the first principle of our community life. And struggling with the real challenges of trying to live that way. And the later testimonies which kind of became came clear over the next few decades, of the importance of simplicity, the absolute rightness of treating everybody equally. Of being scrupulously truthful. Because all of those things flow from God. They are, they are God’s work in us, they are God’s requirement of us, and there’s no escape from that. So, you know, peace is there right at the core.
Who are the Quaker Grannies for Peace?
Ah. Well there’s three of us, although one will be joining us in the next action we’re going to be involved in at Pine Gap. well, we are all women, at the moment, although inclusively I’m very happy to have men to call themselves quaker grannies for peace [laughs], or they can call themselves quaker grandpas for peace! I share the bonnet around, the 1890’s bonnet to anyone who cares to wear it, so in that sense we are an undefined or an ill-defined grouping. But the actual actions that we have taken, there are a few of us. Jo valentine, who of course was a senator for many years for the nuclear disarmament party and who is very active in the Greens, and a longstanding peace activist. Dawn Joyce in Brisbane, who is a longstanding peace activist too and longstanding Quaker, and myself. And yes, we feel very supported by our Friends, the Quakers of course.

Helen Bayes, in her Melbourne home, showing her vintage 1890’s Quaker bonnet, which she wears today during their action at Pine Gap. Photo: Lucy Allan
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