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Catholic Workers Arrested Blockading Military's Road to Perdition Resisting Talisman Sabre 09 and

category international | anti-war / imperialism | news report author Thursday July 09, 2009 10:47author by Rachael Report this post to the editors

Australian Catholic Workers, Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly were arrested this morning while blocking a major military access road to the Talisman Sabre 09 exercises being held at Shoalwater, central Queensland, Australia.
Veteran members of the Catholic Worker movement Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly prepare to block a major access road to the Talisman Sabre military exercise
Veteran members of the Catholic Worker movement Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly prepare to block a major access road to the Talisman Sabre military exercise

ACTION DESCRIPTION

Australian Catholic Workers, Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly were arrested this morning while blocking a major military access road to the Talisman Sabre 09 exercises being held at Shoalwater, central Queensland, Australia. Along with seven other anti war activists, the pair blockaded the road for over and hour and a half, and prevented more than a dozen US Army Jeep Troop carriers from entering the area.

The activists raised a signpost to mark the road "Talsiman Sabre 09 - The Road to Perdition". They then knelt in the middle of the road holding signs stating "War is Terror is War" and "Resist the War on Afghanistan" while others present read the names of civilians and troops who have been killed in Afghanistan.
To minimise disruption to local citizens, private vehicles have been allowed access. And for safety, the highway is not blocked.

The pair appeared in court late this morning and are refusing to co-operate with bail conditions while the military exercise continues and will likely be held in custody for the length of the exercise.

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 significant preparations for more killing.

The Australian involvement in the war on Afghanistan is now eight years old. 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.

*JIM DOWLING and CIARON O'REILLY BACKGROUND

-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 to carry out a citizen's inspection during the recent war on Iraq.
-wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Dowling

-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.

-Enough Rope interview with Andrew Denton

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

*PRISON SOLIDARITY SUGGESTIONS

*Solidarity letters and postcards can be sent to Jim Dowling or Ciaron O'Reilly c/- 69 Kurumba St. Kippa-Ring, Q.4021 Australia (mail will be redirected to the jail or watchhouse where they are detained for the length of Talisman Sabre 09)

- If you would like to make a financial donation to this act of nonviolent resistance (we have failed to set up a seperate account), you could send a cheque to "Ciaron O'Reilly" P.O. Box 6376 Fairfield Gardens, Brisbane, Q.4103 AUSTRALIA. This will help us with transport, outreach etc.

*STATEMENT OF FAITH

Blockading the Military's Road to Perdition
Resisting Talsiman Sabre 09 & the Af/Pak War

"Because we want peace with half a heart, half a life and will, the
war making continues. Because the making of war is total - but the making of peace by our cowardice is partial."
Fr. Daniel Berrigan SJ

The $300 million "Talisman Sabre 09" exercise presently taking places in central Queensland/Australia involves 20,000 U.S. and 7,000 Australian troops, aircraft carriers and fighter bombers. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan the large "Strike of the Sword" U.S. military offensive is underway with Australian support.

We come to Talisman Sabre to lock the gates, block the access road to the Shoalwater exercise area and read out loud the names of the dead of the war on Afghanistan - ten Australian, hundreds of U.K./U.S. troops, and thousands of Afghani civilians. We come to nonviolently resist this exercise and the expanding, escalating "Af/Pak War" on the Pushtun, Afghani and Pakistani peoples.

We have come to the Talisman Sabre exercise in Queenland, Australia, during a time when the now Obama led war on the Pushtun people of northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan is wreaking death and destruction. No target is off limits; weddings, funerals, villages, sites of worship, homes and the innocent labelled "collateral damage" have been bombed in this 8 year war. As usual. in modern warfare, the victims are mostly women and children. They die in a flash of an air strike or slowly of untreated wounds. Some will die in years to come from cluster bombs and other unexploded ordianance fired today.

It is a war that has no popular support, yet little visible popular oppostion, in the countries waging it. A war with general disengagement within the countries of the imperial centre from where it is prosecuted and bloody death and destruction on the fringe of empire - this time in the lands of the Pushtun people of northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan.

It remains self evident "That truth is the first casualty of war!" H.W. Johnson
British and U.S. governments now acknowledge that they sold the 2003 invasion of Iraq on a bunch of lies that have since been clearly exposed (Saddam had no WMD!).

We have been sold the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan on another bunch of lies. Australian involvement in this war is now 8 years old - from 600 troops on the ground to providing targetting information from the U.S. NSA Pine Gap base (near Alice Springs) for U.S. bombing raids. One such raid by a B1 Bomber killed over 100 Afghani civilians last month.

The war is now refered to as "Af/Pak" by the Obama administration and Pentagon warlords. It continues to be marketed as a Bush's neverending "War on Terror" This month we witness an American surge in southern Afghanistan and the Pakistani's military offensive in its northern provinces that is creating millions of refugees.

As Peter Ustinov reflected "War is the terrorism of the rich. Terrorism is the war of the poor!" The present policies and actions of Obama and Rudd will create more orphans, more vengeance and more terrorism. There is no military solution in central Asia. To seriously address the issues of terror one would have to address the 30 year role of the Saudi royal family funding, Pakistani military training and U.S. empire building in promoting the wholesale terror of government forces and the retail terror of paramilitary groups employed in the "great game" of empire building in central Asia. Instead of addressing the role of these rich, corrupt and powerful governments and militaries we are asked to keep on killing the poor. In Australia the churches, the academy and the media maintain a house broken silence in the face of this 30 year slaughter and destruction of Afghanistan.

All the powers require from us is our silence and sedation in the face of these great crimes that are being visited on the peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan today. We know that war is terror is war. We refuse to be sedated from the cries of the poor, suffering at the hands of the governnments prosecuting this war. In resisting Talisman Saber and the Af/Pak War, we will break our silence and join in a shared context of jeopardy - with the peoples persecuted under the Af/Pak war, the soldiers trained and deployed to prosecute this war. We will enter this jeopardy in a spirit of nonviolent resistance to Talisman Sabre and the Af/Pak War

We know as Australians, our government generates the lie that our security is only to be found in service to empire. This has been our historic role from the 1800's to the present day - dispatching Australian troops to Aotearoa, Sudan, South Africa, Gallipoli, Malaysia, Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan to service American and British empires. As Christians, we know that our security lies in following the disarmed Christ in practising the acts of mercy, nonviolence and the realisation of peace and justice.
Jim Dowling
Ciaron O'Reilly
July 9th. 2009

Updates and Background
http://talismansabre.wordpress.com/

Related Link: http://talismansabre.wordpress.com/

Veteran members of the Catholic Worker movement Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly blockade military vehicles by kneeling in Nonviolent Resistance to the Talisman Sabre War Games Exercise
Veteran members of the Catholic Worker movement Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly blockade military vehicles by kneeling in Nonviolent Resistance to the Talisman Sabre War Games Exercise

Military vehicles were blocked for over an hour and a half this morning on a major access road to the Talisman Sabre war games exercise area in Shoalwater Bay, QLD
Military vehicles were blocked for over an hour and a half this morning on a major access road to the Talisman Sabre war games exercise area in Shoalwater Bay, QLD

Queensland Police prepare to arrest peace activists Jim Dowling & Ciaron O’ Reilly for blocking military vehicles access to the Talisman Sabre military training facility.
Queensland Police prepare to arrest peace activists Jim Dowling & Ciaron O’ Reilly for blocking military vehicles access to the Talisman Sabre military training facility.

Police arresting Anti-War activists Jim Dowling and Ciaron O’ Reilly for blocking military access to the Talisman Sabre training facility
Police arresting Anti-War activists Jim Dowling and Ciaron O’ Reilly for blocking military access to the Talisman Sabre training facility

author by lulupublication date Thu Jul 09, 2009 17:38author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Well done lads, for bringing attention to the continuing violence in Iraq & Afghanistan. Let us have updates on how Ciaron & Jim get on.

author by simonpublication date Sat Jul 11, 2009 10:23author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I've nothing but admiration for these men taking this principled stand, particularly in the light of Irish arms manufacturers exerting increasing pressure on the government to further relax restrictions here.

The lie of "dual use" technologies, a loophole that allows companies here to manufacture what are effectively weapons components should be further exposed.

This is demonstrated nicely by a military type posting recently on boards.ie, laughing into his sleeve about the lie that is the "dual use" loophole. See attached link.

Related Link: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=60775988&postcount=16
author by more photos -blockade/arrestpublication date Mon Jul 13, 2009 02:42author address author phone Report this post to the editors

more photos - blockade/arrest - Jim & Ciaron
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/07/434257.html

author by 4 inside areapublication date Mon Jul 13, 2009 06:33author address Queensland, Australiaauthor phone Report this post to the editors

**ALSO English Catholic Worker Susan Clarkson sentenced to 28 days for Nonviolen Resistance to War on Afghanistan at Northwood HQ

http://thechristianradical.blogspot.com/2009/07/susan-c....html

Bonhoeffer 4 Press Release
Monday 13 July 2009

Christian Activists enter restricted military area during live-fire exercises

Four nonviolent Christian activists have entered the Shoalwater Bay Training Area this morning to stop the Talisman Saber exercises. Calling themselves the “Bonhoeffer 4” after Kevin Rudd’s favourite theologian, Margaret Pestorius (44, Social Worker, Cairns), Jarrod McKenna (28, School Peace Educator, Perth) Jessica Morrison (33, University lecturer, Melbourne) and Rev. Simon Moyle (32, Baptist Minister, Melbourne) are currently moving towards a live-fire area. They call on the Australian and US forces to cease their involvement in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the undeclared war in Pakistan.

The group has released the following statement:

In his article in the Monthly, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Bonhoeffer “without a doubt, the man I admire most in the history of the twentieth century.” We have taken the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, because he embodied a serious, costly commitment to peacemaking and ending injustice, “a costly grace”. Yet Rudd’s $100 billion long-term military spending plan reveals the Prime Minister has forgotten his hero and is in need of some sisters and brothers to jog his memory.

That is why we will put our own bodies on the line in order to stop the U.S./ Australian Talisman Saber Military Exercises and jam a spoke in the wheel of war. These exercises are implicated in killing and injuring our sisters and brothers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including untold numbers of civilians. This “war without end”, as George Bush put it, has no exit strategy and no end in sight. We will not overcome the violent terrorism of the poor with the violent terrorism of the rich.

Rev. Moyle has been in contact with the Defence Department about our plans for more than 7 months (http://nonviolences tories.wordpress .com) in order to build a relationship of trust and openness. Air Commander Meier has stated in Parliament, “If we know there is an unauthorised person into the Commonwealth land at Shoalwater Bay…the exercise is stopped.” The Defence Department has been notified of our presence on the base. We call on Air Commander Meier to keep his word to the Australian people.

We plan to be inside the area for as long as possible, and are well prepared for a long stay. We have released a red helium balloon from the base.

As Rudd’s hero Bonhoeffer put it, “The church has three possible ways it can act against the State. First, it can ask the State if its actions are legitimate. Second, it can aid the victims of the State action… The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.” With our actions and our lives we plan to do all three.

author by Rachaelpublication date Mon Jul 13, 2009 10:59author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Photo of Bonhoeffer 4

bon4_insidebase.jpg

author by Rachpublication date Tue Jul 14, 2009 10:23author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Press Release
Tuesday 14 July 2009

Bonhoeffer 4 Detained by Military on Shoalwater Training Area

Margaret Pestorius, Jarrod McKenna, Jessica Morrison and Rev. Simon Moyle have been found this afternoon on the Shoalwater Bay military training area after entering the base yesterday. The four are expected to be handed over to the Queensland Police and taken to Rockhampton Police Station.

bon4_webarrest.jpg

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