Antinuclear

Mainstream media carefully ignored important anti -Pine Gap rally and conference

Pine Gap: Important talks but who was listening? Alice Springs News, 6 Oct 16 By ERWIN CHLANDA The anti Pine Gap rally, conference and public forum wrapped up yesterday after four days of being noticed but studiously ignored.

This is surprising because two senators of the Australian Parliament were here demanding that the military base be closed, and at least three academics supported that view at a public forum, including Professor Richard Tanter from Melbourne University.

Making an enquiry about Pine Gap is a journalistic investigation quite unlike most: Usually in Australia you can ask questions and get answers and comment, and you can check your facts with the subject of your investigation. But the base is strictly zip-the-lip. One needs to work with secondary sources, such as the US Congressional record, which fortunately is quite revealing – unlike similar Australian sources.

Rather than rubbing up against characteristic Australian scepticism and democratic spirit, that attitude is spreading. A remarkable circumstance locally was that at the forum held at the Chifley on Friday evening, the sunset gathering atop Anzac Hill on Saturday, and a rally outside the gates to the base yesterday morning – all open to the public – there was no sign of currently serving members of the Legislative Assembly, nor the town council, nor any of the main lobbies for commerce and tourism in town. The leaders of Alice Springs have their head firmly stuck in the sand.

This is a worry considering that Pine Gap could be a nuclear target – increasingly plausible given its escalating role in US military action around the world – and if this were to eventuate, this town would be annihilated. It’s been a well documented discussion point since the mid-seventies……….

Senator Lee Rhiannon (at left,outside Pine Gap) told the crowd of about 80: “US people are welcome here. We want to work with people from around the world. But not where there are bases with such destructive agendas.

“The nuclear war agenda was run out of this place. Now that the drones are being directed from here is something we must inform all Australians.”

The organisers focussed on that transformation of the base, along the way  prying  into the private lives of billions of people under the banner of protection through global surveillance.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam on Friday gave a brilliant and scathing account of the democracy we live in, where matters of life and death are dealt with not by Federal Parliament, but by the executive and a handful officials.

We pressed him further on these issues outside the Pine Gap gates. He said: “Whether it’s defence, any kind of treaty making agreement, any of these large scale instruments that sign us up to large scale obligations, the Parliament doesn’t get a look-in until after the deal is already done.”……….

The way the cops have been dealing with the events was clearly guided by knowledge that media coverage follows arrests on camera. There were none, and consequently there was scarcely any media coverage………. http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2016/10/03/important-talks-but-who-was-listening/

October 7, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Northern Territory, opposition to nuclear