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“The freedom of the press still furnishes that check upon government which no constitution has ever been able to provide.” – Chicago Tribune

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Iran war, Pine Gap: Knock, knock, anybody there?

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COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

Pine Gap, 19 km south-west of Alice Springs, would have been a key facility in this deranged proposition by Donald Trump, and it still may be if the two-week ceasefire agreed to this morning fails.

The 800-odd staff of the base, Australian and American, living in our midst, would likely be accused of being war criminals and of genocide.

We’re lucky we don’t appear to be in the range of Iranian missiles, sparing us the fate of Gulf nations with US bases.

Anthony Albanese isn’t quite sure what’s going on but has pledged to try and find out.

The voice of Alice Springs in this cataclysmic period are the three people elected to represent us in Canberra, Senators Malarndirri McCarthy (Labor) and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (CLP, Liberal?), and Marianne Scrymgour (Labor) in the House of Representatives.

Donald Trump is considering killing “a whole civilisation”. In the process of dong so, do you expect that Pine Gap would be involved? If so, what do you think the Australian government should be doing?

These are questions the Alice Springs News put to the three at 9.25am today, with a deadline of 11.30am.

It is now 4.10pm and we’ve had no responses. We’d like to know where they stand. Have they canvassed the views of their constituents? Have constituents approached them? If so, how have they taken these views to the Australian Parliament? To our national leaders?

Thousands of people are being killed by our so-called allies. We are targets, courtesy of Pine Gap. But my follow-up calls had these non-results:

Scrymgour: At 11:39am I rang her office in Canberra and a staffer told me he would get a media officer to ring me. No-one did.

McCarthy: I rang a staffer at 11.47am who told me my email was with an advisor.

Price: Iran war, I rang the Parliament switch, they put me through to her office. I got the message that “no-one can take a call currently”. I sent a text. No answer.