Talisman Saber - whore games

This year, visitors heading north to watch the annual whale migration along Australia’s northeastern seaboard may be forgiven for thinking they have stumbled into a remake of Apocalypse Now.

Australian yachtsman Brad Stephenson and his family had a studio audition last year. A helicopter, hovering only 20 metres above his deck, menaced he and his family as they took shelter from an approaching storm in Shoalwater Bay. When he managed to look away from the machine gun facing him and his terrified children, he saw a sign saying “Military Live Firing - Get Out”.

He was forced to turn and sail back into the dangerous seas. After local press coverage, the Australian Defence Force offered an apology, saying they didn’t know the sea was rising - an implausible excuse as weather is vital in military manoeuvres, and the ADF have excellent access  to meteorological information systems.

After a media kerfuffle, Colonel Bill Byrne, reassured the family that being terrified of armed troops on board the chopper was not necessary as, after all, it is standard practice for troops to have their weapons on their laps and to have machine guns fixed to the fuselage, even when confronting civilians in distress.

Welcome to Shoalwater Bay on Australia’s tropical coast, close to Rockhampton and gateway to the magnificent fringing reefs and islands of Australia’s north. The bay could be the poster child for a tropical holiday campaign, with its azure waters, secluded “let’s go in the nuddie” beaches, and proximity to the famed Great Barrier Reef.

Instead it is the stage set for the wild world of Talisman Saber, said to be an integral part of that great commercial venture, the War on Terrorism. While the civilised nations of the world have biennial film festivals and music spectaculars, Australia has biennial war simulations: but at over $60 million, it is hard to see what sort of show the tax payer will get.

Between May and June of this year some 12,000 Australian, 14-15,000 US and various Singaporean troops, will converge on this pristine wilderness region, home to endangered marine species like the dugong, and literally bomb the hell out if it.

Vice Admiral Archie Clemens the Commander of the US 7th Fleet, recently told Global Security that “One of the greatest thing that we lost in the Philippines (after huge public pressure to oust US bases) were bombing ranges to train. You have to have places to bomb, you have to have places to shoot live weapons. Places to fly planes over that make noise, places you can really test … your capabilities. I think Australia in the future is going to be the place … ”

He and the Australian government had agreed on an extension to the Lancelin Training Area, West Australia, and its use by the US. While the Admiral sounds alarmingly like Dennis the Menace, the agreement shows that prime defence real estate is just another commodity to be traded for favours and patronage.

Promises, promises

The nearby town of Yepoon will be inundated by ground forces and noise. But Department of Defence promises that drowning a town in khaki is good for local business are not borne out by actuality. The US forces bring all their supplies including the stuff that passes for US beer. Local businesses note that in the past only a marginal increase has been noticed as most service people on R and R tend to be shipped to Sydney or Brisbane to reduce their density.

Steve Bishopric a local businessperson and activist fervently opposed to Talisman Saber, only noticed a 0.5 per cent improvement during the 2005 exercises, which in no way offsets the atmospheric rise in testosterone.

My own experiences with US bases in Asia leads me to believe, however, that some businesses will do very well. Free lancing drug dealers and hookers will be in the pink. The police and casualty departments will rake in lots of overtime dealing with the odd drunken soldier who ploughs into a tree during R and R, or picks a fight with Aboriginal Australians - US forces not being noted for their cultural sensitivities. They may even get some prime time “just like on the telly” drama if, like happened in East Timor, a drone happens to get out of control.

Admiral Clemens failed to mention that while his boys were bombing the Philippines, flying and making noise, they killed a few locals. In court in response to evidence that Negrito people had been shot during strafing practice, the pilot in question said “I didn’t know they were people your Honour; I thought they were pigs or dogs”.

I was in Manila to witness the evidence of a man who couldn’t count legs, or couldn’t match patterns, but was given control of a multimillion dollar plane.

As I sat on the verandah of Yepoon’s 60’s style resort Rydges, in April this year, I imagined the famous Apocalypse scene of helicopters rising from the sea fog and dropping shells on the beach scattering honeymooners and golfers as they passed overhead. Later back in Brisbane I watched a video loop at the State Gallery that reminded me of a time when Australians and Americans were the terrorists, bombing and strafing Vietnamese civilians. Chickens coming home.

Further afield

While in June thousands of Australians will converge in Rockhampton for a weekend of protest, little public protest is likely to be heard at the small town of Timber Creek next to the Bradshaw Training Field 600km southwest of Darwin, and adjacent to the sublime Cambridge Gulf. I used to fly over this area of tertiary shield - among the oldest rocks in the world - when going home to Indonesia. And maybe that is the point. The bay adjoining this testing field looks directly at Timor and would be an ideal place to launch weapons at Asia in general, and Indonesia and China in particular.

Purchased from Indigenous peoples in 1996, it was littered with geologists and palaentologists searching for clues that could explain the earth’s origins. If they return, they may get the sneak preview of its end. Our tribute to the ancient landscape will be to build two airfields, one on the escarpment and one below. The construction work will be undertaken by the US Army and Engineers Research and Development Center of Missouri at a cost of about US$2.5 million.

That should put the wind up all the endangered birds that make the area famous in global birding circles. Bradshaw is a significantly fragile monsoonal habitat with a fantastic mangrove fringed bay, which provide tsunami storm surge mitigation as well as homes for the marine creatures we like to eat.

In your next life pray that you will come back as the Department of Defence’s Real Estate Agent. The ADD controls more land than any other government instrumentality, and within that portfolio, in excess of 200 places with recognised significant heritage value. It is estimated that they own or have control over 15 per cent of Australia’s land mass including Shoalwater Bay bordering the Great Barrier Reef.

Other holdings are in the World Heritage Wet Tropics. As principle government landholder, Defence appears to be taking the lead in recognising and responding to its heritage obligations under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC). But there is that little detail. Live fire tends to, ahem, kill things.

Under successive ministers, or maybe in spite of them, Defence are said to have a strong working relationship with the Federal Department of Environment. Regular meetings between heritage officials from both organisations manage the sites. Defence reported rescuing endangered eastern bristlebirds, and moving them to the feral free Defence holding in Beecroft where they are by all accounts breeding.

So, with all these assurances, one wonders why the Department of Defence has been made exempt from standard environmental impact processes. The New Zealand engineering company Maunsells compiled the ADF Public Environmental Report containing no Terms of Reference and excluding chemical/fuel and social/health issues.

The US military, like eager puppies, are keen to show that they understand “the Australian people’s attachment to their land” and natural environment. During a planning meeting for the 2005 exercises, ADF’s Colonel Mike Goodyer was reported as telling US troops that “If … the area is treated disrespectfully, the Australian people will take their fight to the gates of the military bases”. The American Forces Information Service bulletin also reported Leanne Sommers, a senior adviser to the Queensland Government, telling the US forces that Shoalwater is regarded as national treasure and that a new center specifically for environmental training will be completed prior to the 2007 exercises. One might ponder what would happen if the public wanted to also attend military training at the new training centre or volunteered to perform their own audits?

While most environmentalists are concerned about live fire; of broader concern is damage caused by fuels, wheels and metal treads killing fragile plants holding the very friable soils together which sustain coastal ecosystems. Despite their pious claims, the ADF was called into line in East Timor by the UN’s Environment Office for careless fuel and camp disposal. Out of public scrutiny, how will they perform?

And how accountable will the US be in case of breach - say a misguided weapon killing a pod of whales, fish kill due to turbidity, the insidious effects of spilling high grade contaminants and fuels onto already fragile and suffering reefs? The US is eager to dodge any form of international accountability and is ambiguous when it comes to defining its accountability in its agreements to use bases in Australia.

Reports indicate many of the ground exercises will be performed using “greener” high tech simulators, tracking using sensors and lasers mounted into helmets. All troops will be equipped with this Cubic technology and results will be sent in real time to processing centers in Hawaii, Florida, Virginia and Australia.

This is part of the “interoperability” being developed, implying that the ADF will become vassals of the US forces. Jerry Dinkel of the manufacturer, Cubic, landed a US$45.6 million contract to supply the ADF with the simulation equipment (add that to the US$60 million). Cubic also won a smaller contract to install the training instrumentation in the new urban warfare training center built at Shoalwater.

Cubic follows in the profitable tracks of US companies like Raytheon Australia (makers of DU bearing ordnance) and L-3 Communications, in netting lucrative Australian contracts.

These deals rarely make the news, maybe only one paragraph on page four. The increasingly mushroom-like demos are not consulted as to whether they want affordable health care, better public transport or expendable war technology. The “By the People For the People” sort of gets lost. Even the once profitable ADI (Australian Defence Industries) is now in the hands of the French. Merde! But only after reassurances from the US. War simulations are very profitable for overseas companies.

The ANZUS treaty is trotted out to defend Australia’s obsequiousness. This insubstantial document states quite clearly the US and Australia shall leap to the aid of the other if there is conflict in the Pacific. It was invoked after 9-11. New York is hardly on the Pacific Rim, unless the tectonic plates of California collapsed while I was in the shower.

The tragedy is that the Labour Party will undoubtedly in the new phallo-babble, continue to be “hard on terrorism”. They will not question the future of the Quatermass style structure at Pine Gap.

Kevin Rudd is a foreign policy conservative, pro US, and has no creative alternatives. So for those of us who think that there are better things to do with one’s tax profits than blow things up and run around dressed as side salads, who do we choose in the next election?

Howard may crow about choosing who comes to our shores, but what about the rest of us? The fact is when it comes to defence, any pretence of democracy falls over and fascism comes quietly looming out of the dust. How do you like your fascism sir? Lightly done? Very well sir

We have seen what happens to US allies. If one gets into bed with elephants one has to expect to be crushed or at the least have a few fractures. Iraq is a most recent example. Obviously Australia, like the others, believes that its relationship with the US is different. It might be if there was some reciprocity, but one doubts if the US administration would be happy to host Australian bases. After all, the competence of Australian forces might show up the US Big Tech but Small Brain mismatch. Besides many US “proving ranges” as they are called, are now so contaminated, that even the US Park service will not take them back.

Despite all the expense and destruction of exquisitely precious habitats, the US and Australia by default, will still “lose” the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and, if they are dumb and imperial enough to do it, any war in Iran. They could take a leaf out of Ashoka’s book and declare peace and acceptance, but his approach did not turn a buckaroo.

Visitors awed by the graceful arcing and social interweaving of migrating whales might be somewhat alarmed to hear sonic booms of jet fighters, feel the shock waves from exploding ordnance and know that this is all being done to keep them safe from terrorists. No doubt the whales and other forms of marine life may see the ADF and their US allies as eco terrorists, but we don’t know that, as no doubt the Defence force audits don’t include interviews with whales.