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On Guam, planned Marine base raises anger, infrastructure concerns

By Blaine Harden Washington Post Foreign Service. Monday, March 22, 2010

HAGATNA, GUAM -- This remote Pacific island is home to U.S. citizens who are fervent supporters of the military, as measured by their record of fighting and dying in America's recent wars.

But they are angry about a major military buildup here, which the government of Guam and many residents say is being grossly underfunded. They fear that the construction of a new Marine Corps base will overwhelm the island's already inadequate water and sewage systems, as well as its port, power grid, hospital, highways and social services.

"Our nation knows how to find us when it comes to war and fighting for war," said Michael W. Cruz, lieutenant governor of Guam and an Army National Guard colonel who recently returned from a four-month tour as a surgeon in Afghanistan. "But when it comes to war preparations -- which is what the military buildup essentially is -- nobody seems to know where Guam is."

The federal government has given powerful reasons to worry to the 180,000 residents of Guam, a balmy tropical island whose military importance derives from its location as by far the closest U.S. territory to China and North Korea. Continued

The Bonhoeffer Peace Collective Activists breach secret military base

Four Christian peace activists have been arrested after entering Swan Island , one of Australia 's most secret military installations near Queenscliff , Victoria , seeking to disrupt the war in  Afghanistan . They went into the base at 6am on 30 th March.

“Both Swan Island and the war on Afghanistan are out of sight, out of mind. It's time to end further suffering of the Afghan people and our soldiers by bringing our troops home,” the group said.

Swan Island is a highly secretive military installation used by the Army's elite Special Air Service ( SAS ) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service ( ASIS ). Swan Island is said to be more secretive than Pine Gap in central Australia.

“In the week before the first Easter, Jesus blockaded the temple and turned the tables inside. Today we are imitating Jesus' disruption”, the group said. “Sometimes you have to get in the way of injustice”. “War can't bring peace, it can only bring further terror, death and poverty,” the group said.

Rev. Simon Moyle (Baptist Minister), Jacob Bolton (Community Worker), Jessica Morrison (University Lecturer) and Simon Reeves (Social Worker) have called themselves the Bonhoeffer Peace Collective after Kevin Rudd's favourite theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also an antiwar activist. (1 April 2010)

War protesters 'switch off' defence satellite dish

Reid Sexton & Dan Oakes. April 1, 2010

Four anti-war protesters claim they tampered with a satellite dish and power supply at a secretive Victorian military base yesterday before being detected and arrested by police.

The activists allegedly broke into the Swan Island defence base, where spies and special police units are believed to receive SAS training, in Port Phillip Bay about 6am.

They will not say how they got over the fence but claim to have spent up to two hours inside before being caught, despite making no attempt to hide. The group of Christian activists called the Bonhoeffer Peace Collective says it split in two after breaching the perimeter.

The first group allegedly went to the centre of the facility.

Protester Jessica Morrison said they opened a switchboard and turned off the two main switches, which security later told her cut power in the area.

They then came across a 10-metre satellite dish, she said, and hit a button marked ''emergency stop''. She said it was not until she and Baptist minister Simon Moyle approached a building with a civilian security guard in it at 8am that police were called. The second group allegedly went to block the base's front gate and unveiled a ''Closed War Out of Order!'' banner. Ms Morrison said the stunt was in protest at war in Afghanistan.

Police yesterday confirmed they arrested four people at Swan Island . All four have been charged with one count of trespassing on Commonwealth property land and will face the Geelong Magistrates Court on May 12. A Defence spokeswoman refused to deny the satellite dish had been switched off, saying only: ''Defence operations are unaffected.''

Waihopi activists acquitted

On March 17 2010 a jury in New Zealand found Sam Land, Adi Leason, and Fr. Peter  Murnane not guilty on nine charges including burglary and wilful damage after just two hours' deliberation.

They had deflated a dome on a spybase in Waihopai on the South Island to stop its use in transmitting information used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They did so in the Ploughshares tradition that seeks to enact the Mican and Isaian prophesies of beating swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.

They pleaded not guilty to the charges, arguing they had done so to prevent greater harm. The jury agreed.

In July 2009 The Australian Government hosted Talisman Sabre

The AABCC has continued the campaign against Talisman Sabre even after it has been concluded. 

During the exercise the media took the attitude that the TS09 was a Central Queensland issue.  This meant not many in the capital cities of Australia heard about the exercise or the protest.  This comes in the context of poor media coverage of military matters in general.  We are asking the ABC and other media outlet to account for their lack of treatment of military and peace issues.  We ask our supporters to use the letter here to send to the media and ask why they ignore 70% of Australians who want less spent on the military.

In the second series of letters we have asked the Queensland Government and Police to explain the use of a tactic which is design to undermine our protest.  By putting up roadblaocks many kilometres from the Shoalwater Training Base, Queensland Police made certain that the media would not travel to place of our protest. 

We sent a letter to the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties about this police practice. 

In a reply to the Queensland Civil Libertarians describe it this way in a letter to the AABCC: The issue you raise is, in my view, most important and it reflects, on the face of it, police tactics that have been the subject of of considrable criticism over the last six to nine months in the UK about similar protests in that country.

In the UK, Police have been using tactics that can generally  be described as minimising demonstration effectiveness by putting up what are effectively large exclusin zones so that a protest in respect of a particular facility attracts minimal media publicitiy because there is no media friendly photographic backdrop to cover a particular activity.

Download .doc files: Letter Anna Bligh Aug 09 ed3; letter complaint to ABC Aug09 ed3; letter to QCCL Aug09 ed3