Pine Gap endangers Australia – a likely target for nuclear missiles
Pine Gap: Secretive spy base’s role in drone strikes putting Australia in danger, expert warns http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-23/pine-gaps-actions-could-endanger-australian-security/7872190?section=environment The World Today By Brendan Trembath An expert on Pine Gap has raised concerns about the spy base’s role in supporting drone attacks on suspected terrorists overseas.
Officially called The Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, the site is jointly run by the Australian and United States governments and is one of Australia’s most secret sites. The facility has been in operation since 1970 and is located half-an-hour’s drive south-west of Alice Springs.
Professor Richard Tanter, from the University of Melbourne, says Pine Gap contributes targeting data to American drone operations, including assassinations. “One of Pine Gap’s two key functions is as a control station and a downlink station for signal intelligence satellites 36,000 kilometres up in space,” he said. “They are picking up a very wide array of radio transmissions, including cell phones, satellite phones and so forth. “And that provides the data, both the contents and the geolocation data for targets of interest through the United States military.”
He said Pine Gap was also used for counter-terrorism and wider intelligence programs, as the site was able to contribute data “pretty directly — for example into drone targeting operations.”
Professor Tanter acknowledged that those type of programs were part of the alliance between the US and Australia, and Australia’s interest in the global fight against terrorism
But he said the question was whether it could be considered a good idea on a political level, seeing the potential for creating “further terrorism” if a strike were to go wrong.
“At a legal and moral level do we really want to be involved in operations which are frankly illegal under international law. In countries where we’re not at war, such as Pakistan or Somalia or Yemen, these are simply assassinations.”
“We won’t like it very much when it’s done back to us I suspect.”
Base also a likely target for nuclear missiles Professor Tanter said the site continued to be a “pretty high priority nuclear missile target” in the event of a major conflict between the United States and Russia or China.
“It would be, as they say in the military, a lucrative target of many benefits,” Professor Tanter said . “Secondly it is itself involved in nuclear war planning. I think that’s a totally awful thing for us to contemplate — you can’t use nuclear weapons except in a fairly genocidal way.”The Defence Department said that “the facility makes an important contribution to national security.”
A spokesperson said: “It provides intelligence on priorities such as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and foreign military capability and weapons developments. “It also supports monitoring of compliance with arms control and disarmament agreements, and provides ballistic missile early warning information.”
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of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
Since Fukushima and chernobyl, people have paid closer attention to radiation readings through networks like netc and radnet. Radiation readings are elevated in cities across the united states and japan.
https://netc.com/anim-map.htm
We have heard about multiple nuclear power plants around the world, having trouble in 2016. The effects are cumulative is the air , sea and soil.
In Armenia, there is an old style soviet nuclear power plant that is unshielded. It is similar to the nuclear power plants in the Ukraine. It is the Metsamor reactor. It has been closed recently for repairs. It is a very old and, archaic reactor that uses graphite moderators similar to the first nuclear reactor ever built in 1944 that was part of the Manhattan Project.
The Metsamor reactor is also similar to the windscale reactor that exploded in Great Britain, in the 1950s. Windscale created the worst nuclear accident in British history. Some of the waste from the windscale meltdown waste and much more accumulated waste, since then, is now stored at Sellafield. The waste is not very safely stored . It is in water and plastic containers. There is nuclear waste from Sellafield going into the Irish Sea.
The Metsamor reactor in Armenia has had some leaks recently. Metsamor is currently closed for repair. Metsamor could have contributed to increased readings of radiation, detected in the United states and Europe in 2016.
http://armenianweekly.com/2012/12/07/revisiting-the-metsamor-nuclear-power-plant/
The Zaprovnya power plant, in the Ukraine, is on the border of the Ukraine and Crimea. There are three other old decrepit soviet era reactors, of archaic design adjacent to it.. Zaprovya supplies power to the Russian Crimea. Zaprovnya is a very old style nuclear power plant like Chernobyl and Metsamor.
Zaprovnya had a fire in 2015, with significant emissions detected in Europe. No one knows what the true status of Zaprovnya is, because of the tenuous political and economic situation in the Ukraine now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine
There is an old reactor in Taiwan, that has had a history of fires the past 5 years. It is in Jinshan. It is the oldest nuclear reactor in China. It has had mishaps along with another reactor in Taiwan recently. People in Taiwan want it closed. The second oldest nuclear power plant in Taiwan had a fire and significant emissions in mid-may of 2016. There was a major typhoon in Taiwan a couple of weeks ago. I could not find anything on the status of these two decrepit reactors.
http://m.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/2016/06/02/468075/Cover-up-Leaked.htm
Fukushima daiichi has had its ice wall fail this year. It has been through a major typhoon in the past month. The covering of building 1 at Fukushima is being removed, showing part of the massive devastation at Fukushima. Perhaps the combination of all three of these factors have increased emissions from Fukushima.
We know of the trouble at Indian point, which is right by NewYork City. First the Indian Point reactor by New York City had a transformer fire in 2015. The Indian Point reactor has had ongoing releases of cesium from a storage pool and, tritium from the plant in general this year.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/09/us/new-york-nuclear-plant-fire/index.html
Pilgrim nuclear power plant, by Boston , recently had a hydrogen explosion.
http://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20160919/after-multiple-problems-pilgrim-nuke-plant-back-up-to-full-power
Of course Fukushima is the grandaddy of contamination and emissions in the world now with no end in sight. Ecoreporter says it has contaminated 1/3 of the worlds seas. We have so many npps around the world now. Many of these reactors are archaic old, and decrepit.
I think we should continue to expect higher and higher readings of emissions of radioactively, in major cities in the United States in as more accidents and waste fires occur in the hundreds of nuclear reactors around the world. I think these emissions will continue to rise, around the world, in the 21 st century and beyond if we do not give-up this madness soon.
Until Fukushima, we were brainwashed to ignore things like government reports of radiation emissions. The bomb explosions, nuclear wastes, nuclear powerplant accidents constantly feed more and more radionucleides into the environment and are detectable in the air in cities around the world. The radionucleides they put in the environment , like tritium were not watched as much by the public as they are now.
There were occasional reports of high tritium levels reported in the rivers of Tennessee, for example, on CBS by that came from the nuclear plants in Tennessee in the 70s 80 s 90s. These leaks and the radionucleide pollution were the tip on an iceberg. There were also reports of the nuclear accidents like three mile island. There were reports houses, whole towns build on genotoxic nuclear waste but, many accidents and waste dump problems we’re not reported or not followed-up on.
There are 400 reactors in big powerplants around the world and several hundred nuclear reactors in. Navy vessels around the world now. 100 old nuclear power reactors in the US alone. Deadly Radionuclide’s like cesium 134, tritium, strontium 90, plutonium have been accumulating in the environment for seventy years. It is no wonder radiation monitoring like netc and radnet are recording high nuclear radiation readings in cities all over the United States now.
Thomas Edison warned of nuclear and its deadly progeny years ago. Now we can see netc high readings around the US for ourselves The readings have gotten progressively worse, since the advent of the atomic age 75 years ago.
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