Letter to John Dear sj 27 June 11

I’m one of the Pine Gap 4 (Christians Against ALL Terrorism).  We broke into that NSA base in 2005.

Jim Dowling from that group, along with a young man named Culley Palmer, and I acted together as the Jaegerstaetter 3 in July 2009 during exercise Talisman Sabre 09, trespassing into live firing areas of the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area.

Exercise Talisman Sabre 11 begins in two weeks and the regional town of Rockhampton “Beef Capital of Queensland” is swelling with soldiers.  20,000 US troops will take part in Exercise Talisman Sabre, which includes the USS George Washington and its battle group.  USS Essex and its amphibious landing group.  Practicing how to invade yet another country.  10,000 Australian troops will join them, looking for “interoperability”.  The Jaegerstaetter 3 will form again, and together we’ll take powerful nonviolent action for peace and against war.

I am personally committed to a ploughshares action.  My target is a US military helicopter, on the ground at Rockhampton airport.

You can read my recent letter to Catholic Bishop Brian Heenan of Rockhampton here: https://www.cairnspeacebypeace.org/?page_id=1017

That’s on my blog.  The facebook forum we use for the wider campaign is:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_115709255120251

I think we’re following a working model for ploughshares actions by embedding then in the context of a broad coalition of social justice forces, acting autonomously and tolerating diversity.  Practising forgiveness.  We’re also experimenting with a dispersed form of national action, where “cells” of nonviolence groups organise parallel resistance/actions at one of the many nodes of military violence in our country.  The most mature of those is found in Melbourne with the http://swanislandpeace.org/register/ I think you’ve met Simon Moyle and Jessical Morrison who are involved in organising the Swan Island mob.

We’re also loosely connected with the Waihopai Ploughshares  http://ploughshares.org.nz/ who are being sued in the NZ Supreme Court by the GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) (spooks) for “$1.2 million” damage to the Waihopai Spy Base (part of the Echelon network).  They were acquitted by jury of all criminal charges in March 2010.  The Jaegerstaetter 3 all attended the trial and we learned a lot about how to carry out effective action.

I’d appreciate some attention for what’s going on over here in the south west outpost of the US empire.

I think we’re at the cusp of rapid change.  I think almost everything Dr King did and said was pretty spot on.

Cheers

Bryan