Once considered a wasteland, the vast red desert in Central Australia is a global hub of spiritual tourism. Each day hordes of pilgrims arrive at Alice Springs, equip themselves with 4-wheel drives, swags, maps and emergency rations, then set off to seek renewal. On tracks to remote gorges, sometimes dotted with the detritus of failed cattle stations, tourists in hats with fly-nets file towards the sacred hot spots. During a trek on the rim of Kings Canyon in Watarrka National Park, our path descended beside a string of pools shaded by ancient Cycad palms to an astonishing oasis known as the Garden of Eden. Spinifex pigeons darted and chirped. Elsewhere, as the Toyota bounces across dry riverbeds, rocks up on the bank near the gorge reveal carvings predating the times of Moses, providing survival tips for future generations (likelihood of game, location of sacred waterholes). Such messages are humbling. They re-connect us with antiquity and remind us that the quality of information can make the difference between life and death. Information is also at the heart of modern warfare.
On the flight from Sydney to Alice Springs the desert unfolds for hours beneath the window. On descent it is possible to glimpse a space age compound on the sand backed by the MacDonnell Ranges and distinguished by a clump of enormous white pop art "golf balls". This is Pine Gap, a US military base built on the traditional land of the indigenous Arrernte people, which started life in 1966. Australians were told the facility was to be a weather station. Later the official cover was a "Space Research Centre". Our citizens remained in the dark until 1975, when Prime Minister Whitlam revealed that Pine Gap's boss, Richard Stallings, was an agent of the CIA. Until then, the base was seen as "pretty harmless". CIA fears over the leaking of Pine Gaps' secret activities helped to trigger the murky events that toppled the Whitlam government. Pine Gap's first generation of satellites was designed to monitor Soviet missile developments and for espionage in South East Asia, especially Vietnam, and later to spy on China. Since then, both its mission and capabilities have expanded dramatically. The base is believed to have provided targeting information for Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon.
FRUIT AND CARDBOARD SOAKED IN BLOOD
Pine Gap is one of largest and most sophisticated satellite ground stations in the world. Its 26 antennas suck information from the sky and distribute it to US commanders in the field, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it is used to co-ordinate air strikes. In the 2003 "shock and awe" invasion of Baghdad, Pine Gap's space-based signal intercepts of phone calls made by Iraq's Generals, led directly to the US Air Force strikes against the country's leadership. According to defense expert Richard Tanter, "all decapitation strikes missed their nominal targets, but resulted in the deaths of large numbers of Iraqi civilians". There were over 50 Pine Gap directed strikes in the invasion phase. Of four investigated by Human Rights Watch, 42 civilians were killed and zero soldiers. This averages 13 casualties per strike, which, when multiplied by 50, totals 650 corpses. During this time the Australian media and star commentators were waxing lyrical about the Pentagon's "precision bombing".
Australian anti war campaigner, Donna Mulhearn, was in Baghdad in March 2003 when a missile struck the Al Shuala markets, killing over 60 civilians. Donna took a bus to the site and found "complete devastation with pieces of iron and tin mangled into grotesque shapes. Mashed pieces of fruit and cardboard were soaked in the blood and mud, along with pieces of human flesh". Hundreds were injured and the hospitals lacked anaesthetics.
THE MAN WHO MIGHT HAVE RULED IRAQ
The US military denied responsibility. British journalist Robert Fisk found a serial number on a fragment of the weapon's metal in the rubble, which was traced back to the Raytheon corporation, a provider of space and airborne missile and surveillance systems. Raytheon has sole responsibility for maintenance at Pine Gap. In Al Shuala a grieving Shi-ite asked Mulhearn, "Do your people accept this, the killing of children? Do western people have no honour?"
When she found her way to a bus, her eyes stinging with tears, Donna noticed the bloodstains on her boots. "The sight was shocking and caused my body to shake, then go limp", she recalled. Her first instinct was to "find a corner somewhere in the outskirts of the world and curl up to weep forever", but that was not to be. She found another option - to stand up as a witness to war crimes. It was this decision that would later take Donna Mulhearn to Pine Gap.
Messages from Dreamtime, Missiles from Pine Gap
Shortly after aerial massacre at Al Shuala, the Americans bombed the palatial dwelling of Mudher al-Kharbit, a construction magnate who had been secretly advising officials from the CIA on how to unite Iraq's tribal leaders to rise up against Saddam Hussein. "If that effort had succeeded", reported the New York Times in April this year, "Mr. Kharbit might have become the ruler of Iraq". Instead, the bomb killed more than a dozen of Kharbit's family. The intelligence that led to this air strike was almost certainly provided by Pine Gap, and it was not entirely baseless. For reasons related to tribal obligations, Saddam Hussein was hiding at the Kharbit compound that night, but in a separate villa, and emerged unscathed. As well as wiping out Kharbit's family, the bombing killed 21 other people, including children.
THE MEDIA ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
According to the NY Times, "the fury it aroused has been widely believed to have helped kick-start the insurgency in western Iraq". Another question arises. If the intelligence was accurate about the presence of Saddam Hussein, it is likely the US military was aware of the presence of innocent civilians, including women and children. But who wants to think about that? Probably not the people who work at Pine Gap. If Australia wishes to regain its reputation as a fair minded nation, the government will need to take a closer look at this secretive installation, an integral part of the US National Missile Defense scheme, or Star Wars. It aims to put satellite based weapons in space to shoot down any incoming missiles. New radomes (radar + dome) to accommodate the system have already been installed.
The majority of Pine Gap's 1000 staff are Americans drawn from branches of the US military, including the National Security Agency, Army and Navy Information Operations Command, US Navy and Combined Support Group, Air Intelligence Agency, US Air Force, 704th Military Intelligence Brigade, 743rd Military Intelligence Battalion, Marine Cryptologic Support Command, etc. The base is described as a "joint facility", although key areas are out of bounds to Australians. While visiting US lawmakers are taken on tours of Pine Gap, Federal MP's are denied entry. (Members of Congress have collectively invested up to $US196 million in companies with Defense Department contracts, earning millions since the onset of the Iraq invasion. Until May 2007, Hillary Clinton held holdings in Honeywell, Boeing and - yes - Raytheon). In 2000, the Howard Government rejected calls by Parliament's Joint Committee on Treaties for a classified briefing on its operations. There is no public debate on the role of Pine Gap, despite its unbending support of all US military actions, regardless of legality or morality. As for the media, they're asleep at the wheel.
Richard Neville has been a practicing futurist since 1963, when he launched the countercultural magazine, Oz, which widened the boundaries of free speech on two continents. He has written several books, including Playpower (71), the bio of a global serial killer (79), his sixties memoir, Hippie Hippie Shake (95) and his latest handbook of social change, Footprints of the Future. A social commentator and a professional futurist with a sharp tongue, Richard is based in Australia, where he continues to ?stir the possum?. He recently co-founded a futurist oriented socio-political website: http://www.homepagedaily.com and is a director of the Neville Freeman Agency - http://www.futureshouse.com/
AUFORN Director for the Northern Territory Box 3205 Alice Springs Northern Territory 0871
Phone: 08 89533023
Now 4 years into the UFO research for the NT (although following it for 30 years), I am known as UFORAS. I have given 3 lectures. Radio, TV, papers, phone talks, 6 times each. I send my articles to 5 Magazines in Australia.
I am only 20 klms from Pine Gap, where many sightings and incidents happen, also many pass overs by objects over Alice and Pine Gap. Although the best spot is actualy 12 klms North West of Pine Gap, UFO activity is all over the N/T and keeps me busy.
There are other people into this, but I am the one that gets all the reports. I am in the phone book and I do a bit of field work and follow up stories. My contacts are all over the Northern Territories, and some good ones behind Pine Gap. I believe in sharing the information for a better picture world wide.
Also I have been investigated by Pine Gap, only in my first 3 weeks into my UFO research. Note I did not do any thing, they found me. My area has all the happenings that goes on any where else, from hoaxes to landings to helicopters etc.
Hi Richard, I've posted comments to your stuff here and elsewhere over the years. Thanks for the amazing connections you make, as usual, and the warnings. The murder of innocents by remote control is the crime of our time, and the calling card of the U.S. airforce. As things get worse, so do we. The CIA will be pissed at you - watch your step.
by
tony groening (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 10:58:34 PM
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