- Known as Pine Gap, the base was presented to the Australian public in 1966 as a space research facility. But in reality, it controls U.S. satellites that guide airstrikes and nuclear weapons. “TURN AROUND NOW,” a road sign near the base warns.
- “There’s not a huge number engaged in nonviolent resistance in the name of their faith, but numbers don’t matter, do they?” he said. “Just follow your conscience, you know?”
Pine Gap is a telemetry site. It's used to maintain contact with polar satellites while they're over the southern hemisphere. There is no effective infrastructure to do anything nefarious out there. This is one reason American involvement has dropped ; the proliferation of space-based relay systems has deprecated its utility. The US has many similar facilities worldwide but the Australians have always had an itch about Pine Gap because it's a visual and geographic reminder that they're our bitch. It's funny. There is more nefariousness at LAAFB, which is off Sepulveda and shares parking with LAX. It was at LAAFB that a 22 year old kid discovered that US espionage was being used to influence Australian elections in favor of the US. But what the Australians protest is US involvement in other countries, not their own.
Interesting about LAAFB. From reading deeper, it sounds like Pine Gap has weapons to prevent nuclear strikes as well as provide information to blow up whatever they want elsewhere. I posted because I'm interested in the people who are doing direct action. More and more activists are recognizing that writing letters and marching is easily ignored. Of course, soon people lying down in front of bulldozers destroying Palestinian houses or kayaking in front of oil rigs drilling in the Arctic will not only get jailed, but bulldozed and drilled themselves. Actually it's already happening https://electronicintifada.net/content/photostory-israeli-bulldozer-driver-murders-american-peace-activist/4449
You misread. There are no weapons of any kind at Pine Gap. There is no reason for any weapons of any kind at Pine Gap. There is no strategic importance to Pine Gap. Pine Gap is a relay station. It's where it is because it has line-of-sight to sky that the US doesn't have line-of-sight to anywhere else, and because it's in an area with little-to-no radio frequency interference. Note that Green Bank, West Virginia has similar advantages. The sole purpose of Pine Gap is to communicate with satellites and to eavesdrop on satellites. As tightbeam communications became common and as the communications network came to rely more on satellite relays than ground relays, Pine Gap became more of a backup than a frontline base. Your title is not the article's title. Pine Gap is unrelated to drone strikes. Drone strikes are carried out from FOBs in and around the Persian Gulf and controlled from Creech AFB in Nevada. Check it out - no Pine Gap. Nobody goes there because it's a pain in the ass to get to and is distant from US telecommunications networks - that's the whole reason it exists. I see where you got your title from: Pine Gap, he added, also “contributes data for C.I.A. drone operations in countries in which the United States is not at war — Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and so forth. It is also critically important in whatever the United States is going to do on the Korean Peninsula.” "Contributes" is one way of putting it. I mean, sure. They provide telemetry to the SDS so that the SDS can provide data links between UAVs and the ground. But Pine Gap is a piece of ECHELON and ECHELON has never been about warfighting. It's always been about spying. And three people playing viola in the middle of the desert because they don't understand what they're looking at is somehow more interesting than the thousands protesting the really shitty policies Australia has about refugees and immigration? I was doing work at Evergreen when Rachel Corrie died. From 1967 to 2004, Israel demolished 14,000 Palestinian homes. Rachel Corrie died in 2003. In 2014 alone, Israel demolished 7,000 homes and damaged 89,000. But hey, she's a white girl so she's got a boat named after her, a tombstone in Tehran and an avenue in Gaza. Let's hear it for "direct action."What that actually means, Professor Tanter said, is that the station is involved in real-time contributions to the United States’ global military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
I posted because I'm interested in the people who are doing direct action.
Thank you again for your comments. I think your last line was sarcastic, right? I'm ambivalent about disruptive actions. I wonder if they are as ineffective as tradition protest. I am familiar with Micah White's book The End of Protest. I've become more aware of direct action since my new bf is very into putting his body in front of anyone building the Kinder Morgan pipeline, just north of you (if you are in Seattle). I have to save up some bail money. http://www.forceofnaturealliance.ca/kinder_morgan_legal_and_direct_actio
I think direct action has its place. the Rachel Corrie thing bugs me; I think she was out there to demonstate her power as a White Girl and the Israelis crushed her because they didn't realize she was a White Girl. Then everyone lost their shit because she was a White Girl and the Israelis doubled down because they weren't about to let the world think that they were going to treat the Palestinians any differently, White Girls or no. And here we are, fifteen years later, and she still stands as a testament to "direct action" because she's a White Girl. It's frickin' Natalee Holloway as martyr. I wish the Kwantlen the best of luck. It might work, it might not. Pine Gap? Protesting Pine Gap for their involvement in Middle East drone strikes is like protesting a dairy for medical testing. Yeah, there are animals. Yeah, they probably aren't being treated great. But there's a dire imprecision there that undermines the message. If you want to protest the warlike United States in Australia, you don't need to go play violin in the outback.