Pledge visit to the NSA/Australian Catholic Workers to challenge War Games

Friends,

 

Members of the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will make their annual trek to the National Security Agency on Saturday, July 4.  We plan to arrive at 10 AM, and will stay for one hour.  Afterwards, we will enjoy a potluck picnic.  Let me know if you want to join us.  Kagiso, Max

 

Wed., July 1, 2009

 

Australian Catholic Workers to Resist Military Exercise & Af/Pak War

 

Talisman Sabre 09 http://www.defence.gov.au/opEx/exercises/ts09/index.htm

is a biennial exercise that involves 20,000 U.S. & 7,000 Australian

troops, fighter jets and warships which is taking place in July in

central Queensland, Australia.

 

Australian complicity in the U.S. war on the people of Afghanistan and

Pakistan includes the present deployment of 600 Australian (SAS,

Special Ops and infantry) troops in Afghanistan, detention in

Australia of Afghani refugees fleeing the war and daily targeting

information for U.S. bombardment coming from the U.S. N.S.A Pine Gap

near outback Alice Springs.

 

Long time Australian Catholic Worker peace activists Jim Dowling and

Ciaron O'Reilly are preparing to travel to the Talisman Sabre

exercises in central Queensland, Australia to carry out nonviolent

resistance to the war machine they see killing again in Afghanistan.

 

O'Reilly and Dowling first met in custody in 1978 during the

anti-nuclear/civil liberties struggles under the corrupt and

authoritarian Joh Bjelkle Petersen Queensland government. By 1982 they

were living and working at the Catholic Worker community in West End

Brisbane and have since carried out nonviolent resistance together to

nuclear war preparations, the war on East Timor and in the opening

days of the war on Afghanistan.

 

Jim Dowling presently works and lives outside of Brisbane on the Peter

Maurin Catholic Worker farm with his wife Anne and their seven

children. He was one of the Christian Against All Terrorism group that

broke into the secretive U.S. N.S.A. Pine Gap base near Alice Springs

http://www.pinegap6.org/blog2.html to carry out a citizen's inspection

during the recent war on Iraq.

 

Ciaron O'Reilly spent a year in U.S. prisons as one of the ANZUS

Ploughshares convicted of damaging a B52 Bomber in New York on the eve

of George Bush Sr.'s war in 1991. O'Reilly was also part of the

Pitstop Ploughshares arrested in Ireland in 2003 and charged with $2

1/2 million damage to another U.S. war plane en route to George Bush

Jr.'s invasion of Iraq. The group was acquitted of all charges

unanimously by an Irish jury in 2006.

 

O'Reilly stated, "Talisman Sabre is a $250 million exercise in

futility. Talisman Sabre is not a game or an exercise it is a fantasy

- a war theatre with no civilians! Most of those being killed by

American, Australian and Pakistan militaries are innocent civilians,

most fatalities have been women and children. The Af/Pak War is

presently escalating and expanding. These Talisman Sabre exercises are

siginificant preparations for more killing.

 

The Australian involvement in the war on Afghanistan is now eight

years old. U.S. and Pakistani military involvement stretches back over

30 years, from arming and funding the Taliban to now attempting to

destroy their own creation with an expanded war against the Pushtun

people of northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. Ten Australian

troops, hundreds of British and U.S. soldiers and thousands of Afghani

civilians have been killed, millions of Afghanis and Pakistanis have

been made homeless or forced to flee into exile.

 

Talisman Sabre occurs at a time of major escalation in the war under

the Obama and Rudd administrations. The Australian military has a long

history of running off to American wars in Vietnam, Iraq and

Afghanistan that have nothing to do with the defense of Australia. By

killing more civilians, with the hi tech war machine on display at

Talisman Sabre, we will be creating more terrorism and terrorists. It

is important to put our bodies on the line in nonviolent resistance to

this deadly cycle"

 

*Grana, 12, is the sole survivor of a coalition bombing in southern

Helmand province that took her arm and her leg, and killed nine

members of her family: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/jun/25/afghanistan.

 

*Background on Jim Dowling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Dowling

 

*Background on Ciaron O'Reilly

-Enough Rope interview with Andrew Denton

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1666150.htm

-wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciaron_O'Reilly

 

From: Ciaron O’Reilly ciaronx at yahoo.com