YOUTUBE - Graeme Dunstan on Trial for Disarming Helicopter Gunship, Rockhampton, Australia

by Ciaron - Gisuesppe Conlon House, London Catholic Worker Tue Aug 20, 2013 02:32

NOW BLOGGED London solidarity, OZ High Commission, bureaucrat, security & a busload of Galatasary fans & elsewhere
http://wp.me/p1rtyw-1Li

On the Secret to Life & Solidarity
***35 TH ANNIVERSARY NOTE. 35 tears ago today Mark Palmer, my brother Sean and I were bashed by
Queensland police in a cell of the Brisbane City watch house. Along with Mark's son Culley, Jim Dowling (who
I was bashed and arrested along with Graeme's recently deceased co-defendant Bryan Law R.I.P. in the March
of that year), Sean & Mark have now deployed to Rockhampton, Queensland to stand with Graeme Dunstan on
trial for disabling a helicoper gunship during the offensive 2011 Talisman Saber Joint U.S./OZ military exercise.

Bryan, Jim, Mark, Sean, I & many others were arrested & bashed through 1977-79 as civil liberties were suspended
in Queensland in response to the growing anti-uranium (mining & export) movement. They were exporting uranium
through Brisbane to (the U.S. client Shah of) ) Iran. Now they want us to go to war with Iran because they have uranium.
Go figure? Once again our only crime was we were ahead of our time, as is 71 year old Graeme today facing court in
Rockhampton & probable prison.

The night we were bashed I was 19, I remember it clearly. Sean already had sustained a broken nose on the street.
He had been arrested by the corrupt cop who had bashed me in March of that year when I linked arms with
Jim Dowling for the first time. I remember the cops appearing at the door of the holding cell & one saying
"Which one do you want?" , then suddenly rushing the smaller Mark Palmer. The cops bashing Mark possessed similar
courage to those U.S. helicopter gunship pilots who mowed down the unarmed 11 and the father in the Collateral Murder
vid from 1.5 miles away. These are the people who bullied, humiliated and tortured Bradley Manning & thousands of
others in these long years of war. I have faith, that like me, they are redeemable. My godson was the speartip of these home
invasions & state kidnappings in Iraq, he now does great work with Veterans for Peace in the U.K http://tinyurl.com/lm9hel8 .

There is a souvenir of that day, besides my brother's broken nose. The English punk band "The Stranglers were playing
U of Q that night & wrote a song of the bizarre scenes they had witnessed during their visit to Queensland.
It made made the English Top 40
"Nuclear Device"
http://tinyurl.com/mu7nt2

Something more significant remains from that night, & that year, to celebrate. That Jim, Sean, Mark are in Rockhampton
(and Bryan sadly died there preparing for this trial) with Graeme who now faces the court as the sole defendant is a beautiful thang.
Woody Guthrie said "The secret to life is showing up!" At Pentecost it is revealed that the secret is "hanging in there" together
in solidarity with each other & the victims of these wars & killing machines. We have hung in there over the last 35 years.
I feel privileged to do what I can for Graeme, (Bradley, Julian, Edward now Glenn & Sarah) & this beloved community from
12,000 miles away. People who refuses to avert their gaze and close their ears to the screams of the victims of U.S. &
Australian military helicopter gunships.