Chipping Pine Gap out of the bunker
by Dee McLachlan
May 13, 2015 — Sydney Morning Herald wrote:
“Central Australia’s Pine Gap spy base has taken on a new electronic surveillance role, making it a “multi-purpose mega-intelligence centre,” as Australia and our allies massively increase interception of global satellite communications… Pine Gap is now engaged in foreign satellite intelligence collection as part of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance’s “collect-it-all” surveillance of global internet and telecommunications traffic.”
I then read in the Alice Springs News Online that a secret party is happening this week-end to celebrate Pine Gap turning 50 — according to Donald Trump’s contacts in Moscow.
I called the author and editor in Alice Springs, Erwin Chlanda, and asked where he had sourced the information about the party. He replied (jokingly), “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” They have been following Pine Gap since 1975, and said that although the facility provides revenue for the town, it would probably be the first target to be “taken out” if the US got into a conflict with a foreign power.
Chlanda writes:
“There will be a dinner on Saturday at the Convention Centre and there will be something at the spy base – best guess it will be just outside the gates.
“The local A-list of movers and shakers have been invited the dinner which – according to our sources, well informed as they are, will include Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Local VIPs will include Minister Dale Wakefield and Councillor Jamie de Brenni… ‘Unfortunately the details of this weekend’s event are not available for public release,’… and there will be no media passes.”
In updates, Chlanda announces
Chansey Paech, the Member of Parliament in which Pine Gap operates, did not score an invitation.
(July 25) A Defence spokesperson provided the following statement: “The Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap is proud to commemorate its 50th Anniversary. However, celebrations are restricted to site personnel and invited guests only.”
On July 28, it seems Senator Nigel Scullion’s office raised the issue of media exclusion with Defence Minister Marise Payne’s office, and got nowhere. [Chlanda’s article here]
Politicians and Dual Citizenship
There is all this fuss recently about certain members of parliament being dual citizens.
Last week, two Greens, Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters, stepped down after realising they had ties other nations. Born in Canada to Australian parents, Waters left when she was less than a year old. Unknown to her, the Canadian laws changed after she left, which designated her a Canadian citizen — even though she had rejected Canadian citizenship when she was 21.
And now Nationals Senator Matt Canavan is dual citizen (to Italy). His mum applied for him when he was 25. Yeah? (He is the same Matt Canavan I wrote about on July the 18th. “Australia’s Minister for Resources Needs to be Re-educated”. Maybe we should speak to his mum about 9-11 and get her to re-educate him about what really happened on September 11, 2001.)
What is astonishing is that we don’t want a skerrick of foreign allegiance in our politicians, yet the same politicians are happy to have the US joint base smack bang in the middle of Australia. And Canberra supports the US in their surveillance of us. I am sure my phone call with Chlanda was monitored or recorded.
This whole secret Pine Gap business makes no sense.
If Australians are not allowed to know anything about the secret business of Pine Gap (which is a war centre and data-collection base) it should not be there. You are not allowed to know what’s going on — and you are definitely NOT invited to the party.
May I suggest that y’all Aussies (of the Gumshoe subspecies)
hold a party in St Kilda to celebrate the fact that Her Bossness has created a website (I mean this one here) that has the poor buggers from MSM simply not knowing what to do next.
I can tell them what to do:
Repent and be saved. The end is near!
People should not be despondent about no invite to the Pine Gap party and try being more positive.
Try these clues:
Well, then again why bother?
OOPS.
This is meant to be the second video.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=George+carlin+a+club+you+aint+in+it&view=detail&mid=F068033597A66EAD5A7AF068033597A66EAD5A7A&FORM=VIRE
When the Prime Minister of Australia is not allowed to visit and look at what is really going on at Pine Gap, if the Americans refuse to close it down, the ADF should be ordered to demolish it. Wouldn’t that cause a stir?
There must be many members of the so called intelligence agencies around the World without any intelligence, to carry on these programmes. If it is evil for other countries to act in similar fashion, how come it is right for the West? Even using these facilities to spy on their own people.
The question is: Is Australia (Canberra) allowing a foreign power to watch over Australians? That is bad enough — let alone providing them the land to facilitate it. I’ll provide a saucy comparison.
Would it be ethical and right for a husband to allow his neighbour to come over and film him and his wife having sex — secretly — without the wife’s consent. Well, well. We need not answer.
Do you have a video on the neibourly exchange?
Sorry, I am bored, I await our Nemenis to turn up at the
Informationclearinghouse.info site to deal with the report of the ABC (Australia) program; ” the drum” with Anthony Lowenstein (sp?)
The article at ICH is 27/7 under the headline of journalsts ‘self censoring at NYTs,,,,,,,,’ and elsehere.
Jornalists self censoring! Who would have thought?
Well I suppose so, they have to earn a living spreading out on their backs and know the weight.
Seems that Antony Lowenstein has his knees firmly in place.
I wonder how ABCs Faine’s knees are placed?
Show us your knees Neminis.😃
So Turnbull has asked NSA to film us intimately. Got it.
Just shows how men have become docile to now consider the wife’s expectations, the husband has the right to show on the internet sex with his wife, without her consent, all that is hidden will be revealed? as the married vows say, the wife must submit to male authority, Mohamed and Sharia Law when this becomes law and Common Law becomes a historical redundant theory, a quaint memory of the passing of democracy to the New World Order.
Oh come on, Don.
.
Two brief observations. The first is that Whitlam vowed to close Pine Gap and from that point on his Prime Ministership was doomed and the coup duly happened in 1975 carried out by CIA asset John Kerr.
The second point is that Pine Gap is an essential component in the American drone program and is therefore complicit in the multiple war crimes committed by those drones. In a perfect world we would be holding those war criminals liable, but that notion died after the Tokyo and Nuremberg trials and is reserved for sundry mostly non-white dictators.
I disagree, James, as usual. The notion of holding someone accountable for war crimes has not died out – only the foolish idea of nations holding other nations accountable has died out. I point again to the work of Prof Alfred P Rubin who proved that “the world” does not have a law enforcement authority. Only states do.
Thus, in the case of war crimes committed by the US, Americans can see to its enforcement against their own soldiers or civilians. The War Crimes Act of 1996 (as now codified in 18 USC 2441) begins:
“Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.”
It goes on to specify certain crimes including murder, rape, torture or biological experimentation. As for the item you mention, droning, this might fit under “murder.”
So does not Australia also have a law against murder? If you claim that Aussies are complicit in the droning, thanks to Pine Gap, could not an Australian citizen lay a police complaint, or attempt a private prosecution, against the suspect? Since Pine Gap is in the Northern Territory, could someone lay a complaint in the NT? I don’t know but would be interested to know.
RE: 1993 acts of “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia by Bosnian-Serb forces — the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal to try war criminals of all nationalities.
It seems from a lay persons point of view — the victor (or global “order”) can arrange any trial for any crime at a stroke of a pen and a media press release… So maybe if you don’t side with the “order” then nation rules apply. But—Walk into Alice Springs and pursue a charge against all those complicit at Pine Gap and ask the nation to support that. You’ll probably land up as road kill on the way to Darwin.
So back to my thoughts on law… for me these days (having read the countless transgressions of the law by the law on these here gumshoe pages by Mary (and James), it leaves me in no doubt… that the law and law enforcement are like the north and south poles of the globe — except when it comes to parking tickets and undesirables.