By ERWIN CHLANDA
It’s a time of major events: Donald Trump has again been elected President of the USA and its biggest foreign spy base Pine Gap features in the movie Twilight Time to be screened in Alice Springs on Saturday.
For decades “the base” has been described as a prime nuclear target. Does that worry the town? Apparently not.
The council’s policy dates back to 1987 and today still states:
“Policy No. 111: Council supports the retention of the Australian / American Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, and acknowledges the importance of this Facility for the defence of Australian territory and for the economic and social benefit of Alice Springs.”
Given Mr Trump doesn’t like wars, is it time to shut down the facility?
“Let’s wait and see if the Trump administration will be able to generate world peace, the way he asserts,” says Twilight Time writer director John Hughes.
His film is about Desmond Ball (1947-2016) (pictured) who was hailed by Jimmy Carter as “the man who saved the world”: He established the fallacy of the doctrine of “limited” nuclear war.
A senior Australian figure at Pine Gap, in conversation with me, off the record, of course, described Mr Ball as a ratbag.
But from 1984 to 1991 the defence analyst led the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.
“He gazed at signals intelligence facilities around the world and worked out what they did and why,” says Mr Hughes in a promotion of the film.
“He trekked deep into the sensitive borderlands of Burma and Thailand, advising persecuted minorities on signals intelligence.”
One of first research interviews Mr Hughes shot was with Alice Springs journalist and author, Kieran Finnane, who was working on what was to become her book Peace Crimes (2020, University of Queensland Press).
Mr Hughes, who will appear at the screening with Ms Finnane, cites an Australian newspaper’s take on how Washington sees Australia: The Top End is a launching pad for attacking China. The Centre provides intel and a place for weapons testing. And the south is useful for manufacturing (submarines).
Will Trump make Australia great again?
That is likely to be in the hands of the Pentagon rather than the White House, says Mr Hughes.
The film will show at Araluen at 7pm on Saturday, November 9.
Thoughtfully composed and well researched movie on the life work of Des Ball. Nearly 100 attended the launch at Araluen and if you missed the occasion a second viewing might be scheduled at the Alice Cinemas. The audience demographic seemed mostly over 40.
Ball’s work, sustained from his anti-war resistance days in the late 1960s as an 18 year-old, needs fuelling / energising from the generation essentially focused on climate change. War and climate issues are linked.
Peace Crimes, Alex Barwick’s ABC podcast and John Hughes’s earlier episode for Compass throw light and open vital questions about Australian acquiescence to USA political and military power.
November 18, Alice Cinemas will screen the aforementioned compelling movie Twilight Time. Given it features the tireless work of activist Des Ball, inevitably Pine Gap, basically gifted to the USA as a surveillance centre, comes under the spotlight.