OZ Catholic Workers Hit Roo in Biodiesel Vehicle on the Way to Inspect U.S. Base in Outback!

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Wednesday December 07, 2005 01:01 by Jim

Keep Nonviolent Resistance to the War on the Road!

The Catholic Worker crew in OZ have set off to inspect a U.S. NSA/CIA base Pine Gap, near Alice Springs in the centre of the continent. They are covering the journey of thousands of miles in a van fueled by recycled Fish and Chip oil. Pine Gap plays a significant role in sattelite targetting for U.S. drive by cruise missile attacks and electronic spying. They are being joined by Donna Mulhearn, an Australian peace actvist who was held hostage in Fallujah and witnessed the U.S. destruction of that city.
The crew called into the trial of those arrested in June for blockading Operation Talisman sabre a joint OZ/U.S. military exercise held this past June.

*Hi folks*. We arrived safely in Alice Spring yesterday. Met up with Donna Mulhearn, We ares staying at Campfire in the Heart, a wonderful
place with wonderful people. Tonight we have a public meeting with the locals. After Wednesday we will carry out our inspection of the base for
terrorist activity.

The following is a little information about the trip here. I will write
more later.
Jim

*THE ROAD TO PINE GAP*

*Thursday 1^st December 2005*

Hello friends. Two days ago we left Brisbane and I am now writing this at a rest area between Rockhampton and Mackay.

We arrived in Rockhampton Monday night and went immediately to the Military base for a prayer vigil with the inspiring group of resisters to Operation Talisman Sabre, the joint Aussie/US military exercises which occurred in June. Ten people were arrested for resisting these
exercises and were facing trial the next day.

After the vigil we headed to a local hall for dinner with this group and a bunch of Rocky locals. We watched an inspiring short film of the June
actions, “Dirt Road To Peace”. Made by Robin Taubenfield, “Dirt Road to Peace” is an uplifting and positive record of the resistance and
arrests, and should be useful in building support for a much larger resistance in 2007 when even bigger exercises are planned.

Next morning /Christians Against All Terrorism/ set up our table and display outside the courthouse. It was quite a contrast to leafleting in Brisbane where avoiding contact seems to be the most important thing for most people. Rocky folks seemed much friendlier and the vast majority
took leaflets.

For the resisters court was as unpredictable as ever. The magistrate was quite open to listening. The first six folks had their trial separated
from the other four, and their case went for most of the day.

They presented evidence about their attempts to prevent killing and environmental destruction, citing the massive loss of life the war games
participants had caused in the illegal and immoral wars they were waging in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also highlighted the use of weapons of
mass destruction, cluster bombs, fuel air explosives and especially Depleted Uranium. They pointed out that depleted uranium had quite
possibly been used in the recent exercises which involved firing a wide range of live munitions. In Recent years the US military had been
expelled from a number of countries where they were destroying the environment with live firing and testing of new munitions including
depleted Uranium. Australia has agreed to take up much of the slack imposing little or no limitations on our allies

The only witness for the defence was John Smith, Melbourne founder of the God Squad. John had come up from Melbourne to support Jessica
Morrison, a friend and parishioner in John’s church.

John placed the action of the defendants in the context of other non-violent resisters such as Martin Luther King and Ghandi. At four
o’clock the first trial ended and to many people’s dismay the magistrate reserved her decision until Feb 2006.

The second trial ended very quickly with the defendants agreeing to accept the prosecution evidence and presenting their defence in terms of
their non-violent resistance to evil. Bernie Moloney was threatened with contempt of court twice, but the eventual outcome was a $50 fine for
everyone and no conviction recorded. Rod commented it was quite an incentive to continue the resistance!

The next morning Bryan recorded an interview about our trip with the ABC breakfast presenter. We packed to leave. We left behind Bernie and Bread who had come this far for the Rocky trials and Jessica and Adele climbed aboard for the long haul to Alice. Also on board were 8 new drums of used cooking oil from Chinese retruant. In Alice Springs we will be joined by Donna Mulhearn to complete the inspection team, experts one and all in the horror of terrorism.


*Sat 3^rd Dec.* (17^th anniversary of my marriage to the amazing Anne Rampa)

It was a long hot largely uneventful trip to Townsville where we shown the wonderful hospitality of the amazing Jenny Stirling, devout
Christian and Greens Party member. Early next morning (Friday) we went to a memorial service for Nguyen Tuong Van. Van was tragically executed
by the Singaporean Government later that day for possessing 400g of heroin. Later we took our Pine Gap display to the Townsville Defence
Recruitment Centre. Dressed in our embroidered “Citizens Inspection Team” coats and caps, some of us leafleted while Bryan and Sean went inside to hand over a letter to the Defence Minister responding to his letter to us and once again requesting access to Pine Gap to carry out
our inspection for terrorist activity. Few people passed by, but police and media were very interested. The police requested us to move from the front entrance to the Defence offices so we moved a few metres to the footpath. Two TV stations and the main Townsville paper did interviews and one of them at least let us get a little of our message across.

We then had a short prayer vigil outside Lavarac Barracks home to 7000 soldiers, and headed back to Jenny’s for a BBQ and meeting with a number of friendly local folks. Bryan showed a recent video with graphic report of the Fallujah massacre where the US had used phosphorous bombs against the people, a chemical weapon causing agonising death. Meanwhile I had
filtered some more used cooking oil ready for the next day’s journey. The van has run well apart from a clogged filter, which I had also changed today.

At the same time Terry has gotten quite sick with a bad virus and announced that he will be pulling out of the trip, catching a train back to Cairns the next day.

We arise early as always, say our sad farewells to Terry, Jenny, and Bryan’s wife Margaret and son Joseph, and hit the road again. And here
we are on the hot dry stretch of road between Townsville and Mt Isa. I am writing this on Bryan’s laptop 200 kilometres from Townsville,
happily surprised at my ability to type while driving without getting car sick, something that usually happens if I attempt to read.

*Mon 4^th Dec 2005*

On Saturday we travelled made it to Cloncurry only one hundred miles from Mt Isa. Sadly we hit a large roo not far from there. He died pretty
quickly. We stopped to move him from the road and apologise. The car was unscathed. The episode made us pretty reluctant to do much more night driving.

The next morning all of us went to Mass at the catholic church at Mt Isa. It was quite a moving service partly because the readings and theme
seemed to be written for our “mission”. There was much talk of peace, and the main reading was about John the Baptist going into the desert to
preach about repentance and the coming of the redeemer.

We spoke to a number of the parishioners after mass and handed out a few leaflets. One of these was Bob Katter junior renowned independent MP for the area. Bryan took the opportunity to tell him what we were doing and asked him to investigate if anything happened to us. Bob took Bryn’s
request very seriously and told Bryan to write to him with all our names. He himself was critical of the Iraq war and indicated he wasn’t sure if he did the right thing in voting for the anti-terrorism legislation.

The priest was happy for us to filter our veg oil on the lawn next to the church as there was a power point on the wall there. Unfortunately the Red Rooster who was keeping our oil got sick of it piling up and got rid of 18 drums two days before. They gave us their last two drums. Attempts to get oil elsewhere failed, and we left town with only 50lt
more oil

Sunday night we camped at Barkley Homestead. Our alternator was dead, and we put the battery on a charger. I think the inline heater to heat the straight veg oil was drawing too much power and killed the alternator. We still had enough Biodiesel to get to Alice Springs and not have to buy fuel.

We travelled by day the next day (740 kms), so the battery lasted til Alice. W ill now make more biodiesel to get us home, and just add some
straight veg oil to it on the way.

*SO HERE WE ARE SAFELY IN ALICE SPRINGS THE FIRST HALF OF THE MISSION
ACCOMPLISHED !*


Thanks for support prayers etc.

Love and peace to all.

Jim