The above-pictured (as of 2014) JDFPG top secret global military, intelligence and surveillance base is said to be used by agencies including the CIA, DOD, NSA, NRO and others as a military and intelligence base believed to be used in a range of operations including but not limited to real-time DOD combat operations in diverse regions, signals intelligence, mass surveillance including of all civilian internet and telephone communications, detecting nuclear missile launches, satellite communications and control, missile including space-based defense, as well as surveillance and military applications among many other missions said to include targeting nuclear weapons and real-time drone strike kills plus a multitude of functions critical to real-time military combat operations in many active U.S. theaters in the Middle East and elsewhere in none of which areas has the United States declared war, as well as other military and intelligence operations in space. About 800 persons are thought to be stationed at JDFPG including Australians now stationed at the base as well after a public outcry but with the United States (possibly the CIA) always having been firmly in control of JFBPG and its operations.
About 600 Americans are thought to live in Alice Springs. The town of Alice Springs is generally best known to most of the worldwide public who are even aware of its existence for its proximity to the remote outback tourist destination Ayers Rock. That rock should not be confused with the rock known from the book and movie and subsequent television mini-series "Picnic at Hanging Rock" about a day outing of Australian schoolgirls and their teacher gone horribly awry resulting in their disappearance on Valentine's Day 1900 in Hanging Rock, Victoria. That refers to a different Australian rock.
Unlike the events depicted in "Picnic at Hanging Rock" those detailed here concerning JDFPG are true and now known far and wide reportedly to the expected consternation of the United States due to Australia's insistence on the trial and "uncompromising prosecution of the protesters" that "have put a spotlight on the facility that the United States would prefer remain in the shadows." That preference of the United States was not accommodated by Australian authorities despite having been an apparently valid concern as the trials of the six pacifist Catholic antiwar trespassers at Alice Springs now has generated at least one front page New York Times article calling new and renewed attention to JDFPG including worldwide circulation of some base information and fairly detailed photographs of the facility (although further site construction is said now to be underway). This vast information and photographic worldwide public distribution concerning JDFPG presumably would have been impossible to accomplish even had it been the unlikely objective of the one trespassing pacifist Catholic antiwar protester also convicted of "possessing a photographic device."
In two separate incidents a few days apart in September 2016 first five Catholic "peace pilgrim" protesters were arrested together in a peace protest perimeter trespass with another later arrested making his own second peace protest perimeter trespass a few days later. The first five protesters arrested were tried together with the second single protester then tried separately in back-to-back trials attracting a modest group of antiwar protesters to the remote Alice Springs court location. The first five represented themselves at trial where Judge John Reeves denied them their argument that they were "acting in the defense of others." All six were convicted of entering a prohibited area which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. The penalty for possessing a photographic device of which one was convicted was not specified in the New York Times article linked to below.
One peace activist defendant John Dowling of the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement who appeared at his trial barefoot said he had been arrested once previously for trespassing at the facility in 2005 and that his conviction had been overturned on appeal. Similarly in a brief review of protests at the facility in the relevant Wikipedia article linked to below it appears that in at least one past protest where other protesters were arrested and convicted of trespassing at the facility as to which prosecutors later appealed protesters' sentences of the mere assessment of relatively modest fines as inadequate punishment prompted the unintended result that the appellate court in that case instead overturned all protesters' convictions finding that the trial court had not permitted the protesters to raise allowable arguments at trial.
Interested readers can go for more information about the circumstances of the six protesters just tried at Alice Springs to the New York Times article linked to below. Readers further interested also can go to the Wikipedia entry linked to below for more information about the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG) . Readers can go for additional information about the "Five Eyes" military intelligence alliance which includes both the United States and Australia as well as Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to that Wikipedia entry also linked to below.
o https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/australia/pine-gap-spy-base-protests.html
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes: Five Eyes (FVEY) Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United Sates is a military and intelligence alliance of these five countries with a shared common law inheritance which Five Eyes with facilities in each of the member countries among other things continuously conduct coordinated comprehensive global surveillance of all the world including without limitation satellite and communications (SIGINT) such as internet and telephone mass surveillance covering all countries and citizens of the world as well as military intelligence which can be used for example for military targeting including U.S. drone assassinations in countries with which the United States is not at war.
As to civilian surveillance in particular Five Eyes members including the United States participate and operate advancing the dubious, untested and unpersuasive in fact facially preposterous legal argument not known to be validated anywhere by any proper judicial entity with legitimate jurisdiction that by targeting surveillance of one another's citizens and then trading that surveillance intelligence as to one another's citizens with each other that the Five Eyes cleverly legally are circumventing each of their own countries' domestic spying, surveillance and all other related laws, regulations and policies without limitation.
This "legal theory" purporting to justify evasion of the rule of law on its face appears to contravene any legitimate legal tradition and to be advanced solely in a bad faith lack of belief in its ability to withstand proper legal scrutiny but rather to be left untested merely to provide unpersuasive cover for activities which in all likelihood include those that are illegal without limitation under domestic and international laws and signatory treaties and conventions as well as in the United States under the U.S. Constitution and related civil rights statutes.
Copyright 2017 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved
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