Ciaron O'Reilly on Life, Prisons, Religion and Julian Assange

Episode 1 • 21st September 2023 • IFVG Evergreen • Trevor Bell

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We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.

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We need to learn stuff about the world.

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We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking and entertaining

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review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.

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We need to sit back and listen.

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To the iron pest and the velvet

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glove.

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Ciaron, thanks for agreeing to do this interview.

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Um, by way of background for the people listening, uh, we actually

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went to the same high school together.

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I was about four years after you, and I remember seeing you walking the, the

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playground, tall, lanky, big mop of hair.

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Even in those days, you were already protesting as a high school student.

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You were sort of in the media.

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and things at that time you're known as a protester.

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Yeah, well my last year at high school was when the Queensland government suspended

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civil liberties, so, and um, that just happened to be converging with a large

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anti nuclear movement throughout Western Europe and North America, and the response

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to that in Australia was an anti uranium.

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mining and export movement.

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So we began blockading the wharf when I was at high school and then Bioka

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Peterson suspended all street marches and gatherings of three or more people and

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handing out leaflets and all that stuff.

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So, um, My initial arrest at school, there were 418 of us arrested, uh,

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including, um, the lead guitarist of the Saints and, um, Ed Cooper and the

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lead guitarist of the Go Betweens, Grant McLennan, and a lot of other good people.

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You're in good company.

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And you were still at high school when you

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got arrested for the first time.

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Yeah, well, yeah, I, um...

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You know, just where we're here doing this interview, um, is where I grew

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up and we literally share a back fence with the military, uh, it's now called

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Gallipoli Barracks, and the Aboriginal word Anogra, uh, it's a suburb.

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And, um, so, you know, the sound of gunfire and helicopters going over the

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house, it was, um, part of growing up during the Vietnam War here in the 60s

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and 70s, so that was quite an audio backdrop, and a lot of the kids at my

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primary school, parents would have been in the military at that stage, and,

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um, And then also my father was very much an Irish Republican Socialist,

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I guess, and a very good singer.

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So, we were brought up with a lot of rebel songs and

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then...

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So, around the dinner table when you were growing up, was he quite strong

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on advocating for the sort of causes that you ended up getting involved in?

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Well, his father was a member of the IRA and, um, arrested during...

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The War of Independence, uh, and accused of killing a British soldier and then

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released with the treaty, and then during the Civil War in Ireland, he

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had to do a run at a Canada, and he got picked up crossing the Canadian border.

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And he ended up in jail in Auburn in New York, that I kind

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of ended up in 70 years later.

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Um, before being deported back to Ireland and Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.

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Um, so that was a very celebrated legacy in the family.

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Yeah.

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And my father was raised by his maternal grandparents who were big fans of

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James Connolly, who was not only an Irish Republican, but a socialist.

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And um, so, you know, when I was about eight or nine years of age, uh, the

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war in the north of Ireland kicked off again, um, following the repression

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of the civil rights movement and provisional IRA developed, et cetera.

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So, um, it was...

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Quite an intense, you know, what was happening in Belfast and Derry were

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more present to us than what was happening in Vietnam, which ironically

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was happening from behind our house.

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And um, my mother had three uncles who went through the base

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behind our house to World War I.

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One who was at Gallipoli, um, one who came back quite PTSD and lived for another

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40 years without contact in the family.

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Uh, so there's kind of a rich kind of history.

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And then we're going to school in the valley, which was a

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red light district at St.

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James, located there, Christian Brothers School.

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And then a lot of the police corruption was very overt in the

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valley with the prostitution and the gambling, which is now quite legal.

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But back then it was a source of, um, Police corruption

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and, and organized crime.

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So you are a bit of a product of your environment and your

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culture from your early days.

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It was, because most people, you know, I would have at least been

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terrified at the prospect of being arrested as, as a, as a teenager.

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So, you know, I look at it and think, well, you were quite brave and courageous

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and fearless to be prepared to do that.

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But I guess you were mixing in a circle, or you had family stories that made that

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a bit more commonplace than most people?

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Yeah,

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I guess I always viewed political activism in Queensland as a body

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contact sport, you know, and I'd grown up playing a lot of soccer,

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football, so I was used to body contact.

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But um, it was quite brutal.

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Uh, a Queensland police force and quite amateurish.

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Um, I was beaten up my first week at university and framed with assault.

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And the guy who beat me up was John Frederick Johnson of the Consorting Squad.

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And, you know, the Consorting Squad were a squad supposed to

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consort with criminals and...

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And he eventually got three years...

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He got sentenced to three years in prison by the end of that year.

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Um...

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And, and he beat you up, like he arrested you and beat you

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up, or he just found you in a...

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He beat me up,

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then he arrested me.

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I mean, on other occasions I've been arrested, then beaten up in the wash

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house, but this time it was on TV footage and everything, and um, and yeah, and

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then they charge, but when they beat you up, they usually charge you with assault

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to justify if any footage has been caught as a response, and I was very skinny, um.

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Kid, as you remember.

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And, uh, so yeah, that, that, uh, was, yeah, I was only 17 when that happened,

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so.

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Mm.

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So, just, um, just reading from the Wikipedia page on you here, um,

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yes, you took part in the, uh, civil rights protests against the Premier,

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Joe Bidjoy Peterson, in the 80s.

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And you came into contact with the Catholic Worker movement, and you

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subsequently founded Brisbane's West End Catholic Worker community.

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Yeah, we founded the Catholic Worker and West End in 1982, and prior

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to that, a group of us who were at Griffith University were developing

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an interest in the fusion, um, of Christianity, anarchism and pacifism.

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And I guess at that point we were...

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Quite influenced by an academic out there, Brian Laver, who had been like, one of the

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student leaders of the 1960s in Australia.

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And he was a libertarian socialist and had a radical critique of Marxism.

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Um, and then, during that period, we stumped, you know, we thought

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that we'd, uh, come up with this.

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Uh, intersection between Christianity, anarchism, and pacifism.

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Then we heard about Leo Tolstoy, read him.

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Then we stumbled across Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement

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that was actually putting this philosophy into practice since

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the 1930s in the United States.

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So we wrote to them, different communities over there, started swapping newsletters,

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and then we thought, oh, we'll open a house for Aboriginal street kids.

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And we'd had contact with, uh, there was a radical nun on the West End who

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was raising four Aboriginal children.

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And, um, I had contact with her, Cass Dawson, since I was at high school,

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and it just became very obvious that Aboriginal people were living in

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a parallel universe in Queensland.

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Until I was 8, it was illegal for an Aboriginal to vote in an election.

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Until I was 13, it was illegal to cohabitate with a Native

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under the Vagrancy Act.

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And, um, so it became...

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And my father had always drummed into us, you know, what's happened

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to the Aboriginal people in Australia, what's happened to

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the Irish in Ireland, and, um...

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Yeah.

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which a lot of Irish...

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Don't make that connection can be quite racist, you know?

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You know, I've never heard the connection myself until

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just now go colonized people.

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We've been colonized 800 years.

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So, you know, the term paddywagon is like nigga wagon.

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It's like bandwagon.

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It's an innately racist term, , but it's so mainstream.

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Even the left in Australia use the term paddywagon, you know, so, yes.

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Yep.

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So, um, So, let me see here, um, you were looking to address youth homelessness

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among the Aboriginal community, and you described the Catholic Worker Movement

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as comprised of three practices, um, in order to constitute a life of

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integrity, according to this Wikipedia page anyway, correct me if it's wrong,

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um, one is living in intentional community, the second is practicing the

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works of mercy, and the third is non violent prophetic witness, so, um, And

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you aim to enact this through living in community with the poor, uh, prison

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visitation and direct action against war.

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So in your early days, you sort of came up with that philosophy of life as what

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your guiding principles were going to be?

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Yeah,

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I guess, yeah, I would probably say prophetic resistance and, um...

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And, and looking, you know, at the early church before it got co

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opted by the Roman Empire as these kind of autonomous, relatively

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autonomous, utopian communities.

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And, um, and then also discovering the contemporary people who are

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still alive at that point, Dorothy Day and the two radical priests,

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Philip and Daniel Berrigan.

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Who led the draft board raid movement of the 1960s during the

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Vietnam War in the United States.

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So, they were kind of role models for us and um, so we began living

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off the grid together in West End.

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Our living out of baking bread, making candles and soap and um, homemade

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beer, and um, then inviting into that community, well primarily it was

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Aboriginal street kids, but we also had a few people released from Bogger

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Road as well, and um, and we would, we ourselves would, would be put into

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Bogger Road for like, being arrested for free speech, um, violations and, uh,

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blockading nuclear warships and stuff.

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So, and when they put us in Bogle Road, they put us in with the lifers

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and the heavies to scare us, but we eventually got on quite well with

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them and, um, we helped start, uh, the radio show on 4 Triple Z Prisoners

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Program that's still going, I think.

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Right.

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So...

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That was a lot of good interaction with the prison scene,

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and um...

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So, if you're entering, so Boggo Road, dear listener, if you're not familiar

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with Brisbane, was sort of a notorious old style prison, and um, it has a reputation

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that it was very rough, and, and, but you're, really the hardcore prisoners,

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are you saying, treated you not too badly?

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Is that what you're saying?

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Um...

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So, usually the chaotic factor in any prison is young people proving themselves,

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you know, people who are established or serious criminals, they just want to get

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out of that environment back to whatever.

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Anyway, um, so the chaotic factor is usually young people and, uh,

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And Bogger Road was largely staffed, there was a lot of ex British

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military, uh, with crews there.

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And a lot of them had done, a substantial number of them had done tours of

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Northern Ireland and the British Army, so they didn't like my name for a start.

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And um, yeah, so there was a lot of interesting interactions and uh, I was

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actually in there in 88 when the guys were on the roof, uh, which led to the

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Kennedy Inquiry that closed the jail.

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So we were able to do a lot of solidarity work and, uh, we were

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kind of well respected by people, um, who were active inside the jail.

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So you

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took this as an opportunity.

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to do more of the work that you were aiming to do anyway.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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It's just another

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environment.

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Yeah, it was quite funny in 88, um, we're, after the guys were on the

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roof, we were back in and we're in the maximum security area in the

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old jail that's still standing.

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And this guy we knew is now dead now, Gary Gray, that he'd been on the roof and,

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um, They came up, approached us about, they were planning an escape, you know,

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and they, they'd managed to saw through the bars in their own cells and get into

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one guy's cell, which was near the wall.

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And they asked if we would help them with this escape.

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So me and this other Catholic worker, we said, Oh, can you give us five minutes?

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I'm all trapped in this small yard.

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And I said, yeah.

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So I went over and said, look, went back to him and said, look, if you

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can commit to non violence, we know you're not pacifists, they're like

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armed robbers and So the length of your escape attempt, then we'll help you, and

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they're like, yeah, we'll be non violent.

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So, okay, okay.

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So we told them where our car was and where they could hide out and come up

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as soon as we were released and give them some money and clothing and stuff.

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And, uh, we stayed up selling the rosary for a safe escape.

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And, and, but we, about three in the morning we heard screams and they were

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getting bashed and they got caught.

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Right.

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So, uh, that was interesting extension of the X mas, you know,

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and, uh, Preach liberty to the captives and all that kind of stuff.

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So,

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so, um, Joby, Jockey Peterson, um, your time in Boggo Road,

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uh, you know, Brisbane, a bit too small for you at that point.

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You were ready to spread your wings and head to America to look around and

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see the rest of the world.

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Yeah, well, I felt, you know, in an old Catholic term, it was a vocation

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that I wanted to do this for life.

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And I really felt in some ways I was leading the group.

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And Brisbane, I was the youngest, I was only 22, 23.

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So I felt the need to go and live with some elders and, and

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get advice about how do you make this a lifelong thing, you know?

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So, um, initially I went over, and 87, I also had wanted to do a plowshares

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action in the United States, because I saw that as the central empire

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in the world, um, and that, um,

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So you went to the States in about late 80s, 89?

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I went for 87 and, um, I was, uh, visited a number of communities.

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I was in a plowshares group preparing to do an action.

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And then, um, I came back, uh, a romance was falling apart.

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So I kind of came back suddenly here.

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And then 88, which was a bicentenary, which is when the guys were on the roof of

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the jail and the nuclear warship visits.

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And then I, that's when I got my last haircut, I think, in Bogger Road there.

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And then I went back in 89, um, with Moana Cole, who I'd met here.

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And, uh, we visited a number of communities and worked with

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communities, and then we...

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We're part of a ploughshares process that went for about 11

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months.

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Yep, so any initial, can you remember any initial things that struck you

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on the difference when you moved to America with the communities?

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So the, from the poor, you know, Aboriginal communities you're dealing

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with in West End to the, to the poor.

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Black and, I guess, Hispanic communities you might have

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been dealing with in America?

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Yeah,

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I think, well, a couple of differences about America.

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America is probably the only, for what it's worth, church

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going part of the First World.

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Western Europe is largely post belief.

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You know, there's about a million practicing Anglicans in England

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who are mostly English and a million practicing Roman Catholics

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who are mostly not English.

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And then there's probably more, more practicing Muslims and

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Christians in England now and stuff.

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Um, so it's a big, you know, when you speak with language of faith

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in America, you're still in the mainstream, where you have to speak

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that way here on the left or whatever.

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You see, you know, you've kind of marginalized quite quickly.

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So that was interesting.

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The intent's different.

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Differences between poverty and wealth in the States is mind blowing.

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Yeah, the inequality.

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Yeah, and the lack of health care.

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And the AIDS thing was just really kicking off in a big way

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then, and the crack epidemic.

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And it's just a much bigger scene than Brisbane, you know, and uh, as is London.

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Yeah,

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so you were mentored or you're seeking some mentoring from Daniel

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Berrigan and Philip, who are they?

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Yeah, I'd met

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Daniel in Melbourne, um, Daniel.

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He joined the Jesuits at 16.

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He was quite a celebrated poet in the 1950s.

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He was part of the Kennedy circle, President Kennedy, and his

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brother Philip had gone to war.

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He was in the Battle of the Bulge, killed a lot of people in his late teens and

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saw a lot of death and he came back and joined the He actually, when he came back,

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he went to college at GI Bill, and he shared a room with John Cusack's father

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for three years thereafter, and that's how John Cusack's kind of connected with us.

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And, um, so...

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What advice did they have for you, because you were

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looking for advice Josephite order, which was working with black Americans, and

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he was influenced in Louisiana by Martin Luther King's movement, and then they...

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Then brought that kind of experience to the anti war movement and they broke into

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a draft board, nine Catholics, called the Catonsville Nine, and um, it was a kind of

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iconic photograph from the Vietnam period of them burning draft cards with homemade

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napalm on the front page of Time magazine.

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So it was that significant, quite centrally placed in the 50 million

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Catholics in the United States.

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And then the FBI had a meeting in Nixon and they effectively marginalized

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them in a very similar way that Julian Assange has gone from front page of Time

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magazine to, you know, rarely being seen.

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Um, so they, they were the first ones who really introduced me to the scripture.

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Um,

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And they were part of Ploughshares,

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was it?

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They, well, following the resistance of the Vietnam War, which was largely

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breaking into draft boards and destroying draft files, uh, in the late 70s

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and 80s, they began to beat swords into Ploughshares, literally break

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into companies that are developing nuclear weapons systems and military

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bases, and with hammers, disable.

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Those

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weapon systems.

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Yep.

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So, Plowshares is a reference to the biblical prophecy of Isaiah, Chapter 2.

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And Micah, Chapter 4.

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Yep.

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Which says, They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and

Speaker: 00:18:47

their spears into pruning hooks.

Speaker: 00:18:49

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither

Speaker: 00:18:53

shall they learn war any more.

Speaker: 00:18:55

So, taking swords and converting into weapons.

Speaker: 00:18:58

Agricultural Implements Plowshares movement.

Speaker: 00:19:02

That's correct, yeah.

Speaker: 00:19:03

And so you, you became a member of the ANZUS plowshares.

Speaker: 00:19:08

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:19:08

sewage plowshares.

Speaker: 00:19:10

It's like each Catholic working community is autonomous.

Speaker: 00:19:13

So four of us, uh, grouped together, two Americans, Moana, who's from

Speaker: 00:19:17

New Zealand, and myself, and we just called ourselves the ANZUS Plowshares.

Speaker: 00:19:22

And we prepared to break into a B 52 bomber base as America was gearing

Speaker: 00:19:26

up to bombing Iraq in the late 1990s.

Speaker: 00:19:33

So you became aware of the bombers that were out there?

Speaker: 00:19:36

Griffis Air Force Base?

Speaker: 00:19:37

Yeah, there

Speaker: 00:19:38

had been a plowshares action earlier there when they were being made nuclear

Speaker: 00:19:41

capable in the late 80s, and we knew some of the people involved with that, and

Speaker: 00:19:45

we also had, uh, Peter DeMott now, he's passed away, he was a Vietnam veteran,

Speaker: 00:19:50

his, his job I think was guarding B 52s in Vietnam, but uh, he had access

Speaker: 00:19:55

to the base, uh, being a veteran.

Speaker: 00:19:57

Ah, right.

Speaker: 00:19:58

So we had a lot of intel and, uh...

Speaker: 00:20:00

Okay, because as I'm reading about your exploits there, I'm

Speaker: 00:20:03

thinking, how did you pull this off?

Speaker: 00:20:05

I mean, you would normally consider these things to be, you know, so unsecured.

Speaker: 00:20:09

Impenetrable.

Speaker: 00:20:10

Yes.

Speaker: 00:20:11

So that's, you know, what we say is, the actions show the weapons aren't

Speaker: 00:20:15

secure and they don't secure us.

Speaker: 00:20:16

And, um, yeah, so, You know, other groups have got even more hardened

Speaker: 00:20:22

sites and, uh, yeah, we just did our homework, said our prayers.

Speaker: 00:20:26

We did surveillance of the base, we'd stay out overnight outside the base and time

Speaker: 00:20:30

security vehicles and stuff like that.

Speaker: 00:20:33

But it was high risk that we could have been shot.

Speaker: 00:20:36

So, for those who don't know, um, after cutting through several fences, Bill

Speaker: 00:20:40

and Sue entered a deadly force area and hammered and poured blood on a KC 135, a

Speaker: 00:20:46

refuelling plane, and then proceeded to hammer and pour blood on the engine of a

Speaker: 00:20:50

nearby cruise missile armed B 52 bombers, or bomber that could be used in Iraq,

Speaker: 00:20:56

and then somewhere else, simultaneously, You and Cole, is that, is that Moana?

Speaker: 00:21:00

Moana, Cole, yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:02

Entered the base at the opposite end of the runway and made a sign of

Speaker: 00:21:05

the cross with blood on the runway.

Speaker: 00:21:07

Spray painted, love your enemies, Jesus Christ.

Speaker: 00:21:10

Um, and you hammered upon the railway, chipping at two sections,

Speaker: 00:21:15

one being nearly five feet in diameter, before you were detained.

Speaker: 00:21:19

Yes.

Speaker: 00:21:19

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:19

So a month before we had broken in, but we couldn't get to the B 52.

Speaker: 00:21:23

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:23

And we broke out and kind of went on the run for a month, and then we went back

Speaker: 00:21:26

on New Year's Day, which was a good day.

Speaker: 00:21:28

Time to do it.

Speaker: 00:21:30

And, uh, which was about 14 days before the war was launched.

Speaker: 00:21:34

And, uh, this time we decided rather than going collectively, we'd split up.

Speaker: 00:21:38

Give yourself two different options.

Speaker: 00:21:40

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:40

And so you must have been there quite a while.

Speaker: 00:21:42

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:21:43

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:44

Like Bill and Sue were arrested, I think, within four or five

Speaker: 00:21:47

minutes after doing the disabling.

Speaker: 00:21:48

And we were out there for an hour.

Speaker: 00:21:51

Like, um, it was dawn.

Speaker: 00:21:53

It was winter.

Speaker: 00:21:54

It's heavy snow.

Speaker: 00:21:55

And we could see security vehicles whizzing around the perimeter road.

Speaker: 00:21:59

So when we saw them, we'd put our hammers down so they wouldn't

Speaker: 00:22:02

think they were firearms.

Speaker: 00:22:04

Held up a banner, but they just kept going and they were like detaining

Speaker: 00:22:07

joggers jogging past the base.

Speaker: 00:22:09

Then eventually, the daily, the air traffic controller of the base drives

Speaker: 00:22:13

up checking for debris, basically.

Speaker: 00:22:15

And, um, and that's when we were discovered.

Speaker: 00:22:19

We invited him to join us, but he wasn't up for

Speaker: 00:22:21

it really.

Speaker: 00:22:21

And so you got about 12 months in

Speaker: 00:22:23

prison for that?

Speaker: 00:22:24

Yeah, so there was a debate between the Air Force and the Prosecution Department.

Speaker: 00:22:30

The Air Force one was charged with sabotage and two of our people were

Speaker: 00:22:34

sentenced to 18 years for sabotage.

Speaker: 00:22:36

I think about five received sentences of eight years.

Speaker: 00:22:40

And the Prosecution Department...

Speaker: 00:22:42

I think they thought the war wasn't going to go as well for the United States as

Speaker: 00:22:45

it did, and thought by the time we came to trial there'd be anti war feeling.

Speaker: 00:22:50

And also they had prosecuted the previous Plowshares group at that base on sabotage,

Speaker: 00:22:55

and they had successfully argued that the B 52 isn't innately offensive, not a

Speaker: 00:23:00

defensive weapon, so sabotage is about.

Speaker: 00:23:02

affecting the national defense.

Speaker: 00:23:04

Right.

Speaker: 00:23:04

And B 52s, well, the opening shots of the first Gulf War were eight B 52s took

Speaker: 00:23:08

off from Louisiana, flew the longest combat mission ever flown, fired 35

Speaker: 00:23:13

air launched cruise missiles at high priority targets, and flew back and

Speaker: 00:23:16

refueled four times, where KC 135s.

Speaker: 00:23:19

And then B 52s went to drop 30 percent of everything that was

Speaker: 00:23:23

dropped in the first Gulf War.

Speaker: 00:23:25

Um, that was equivalent to eight Hiroshima's and the B 52's from our base,

Speaker: 00:23:30

the ones that were still operative, were moved to England and they bombed daily.

Speaker: 00:23:34

Napalm, fuel explosives, cluster bombs.

Speaker: 00:23:37

So, um, but ours didn't fly for, for that whole period, in the

Speaker: 00:23:42

garage or whatever.

Speaker: 00:23:43

Yep.

Speaker: 00:23:43

And so prison in America, you'd been to prison in Australia on many occasions.

Speaker: 00:23:48

Was there any?

Speaker: 00:23:50

Differences or how did that?

Speaker: 00:23:52

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:23:53

I guess we were assuming we'd get three to five years.

Speaker: 00:23:55

So we've got one year.

Speaker: 00:23:57

It was quite a pleasant surprise.

Speaker: 00:23:58

And then also assumed that I'd be doing my time in a penitentiary

Speaker: 00:24:02

in the northeast and playing bocce ball with them after or whatever.

Speaker: 00:24:06

But, um, they put.

Speaker: 00:24:08

Put me on Conair, and they flew me to Oklahoma, which is the central hub.

Speaker: 00:24:13

So Conair goes out northwest, northeast loops, southwest, southeast, brings

Speaker: 00:24:17

people to this penitentiary in Oklahoma, and then designates you.

Speaker: 00:24:22

So from there, they flew me to El Paso on the Mexican border, and then they shipped

Speaker: 00:24:27

me Uh, about eight hours, I think, into the outback to a little place called

Speaker: 00:24:31

Paikos, which was a county jail, and there were 24 of us in a cage, and six

Speaker: 00:24:37

cages welded together, and 16 hours a day, those six cage doors were open, so I was

Speaker: 00:24:42

effectively in a room of, you know, 140 men, and I was the only, uh, white boy in

Speaker: 00:24:48

the jail for most of the time, uh, so it was 500 Mexicans and 50 of us who weren't

Speaker: 00:24:55

Mexican, including about 25 Africans and Jamaicans and a few Filipinos.

Speaker: 00:25:00

And, and was there a reason why they shipped you all the way over there?

Speaker: 00:25:05

They generally have a policy in the States called diesel therapy, which is...

Speaker: 00:25:09

to keep political prisoners on the move or geographically isolated.

Speaker: 00:25:12

Yep.

Speaker: 00:25:13

And, um, they achieved that.

Speaker: 00:25:15

Like, all my connects were really in the northeast.

Speaker: 00:25:18

Yep.

Speaker: 00:25:20

Uh, west coast a little bit.

Speaker: 00:25:21

But, uh, yeah, I didn't know anyone in Texas.

Speaker: 00:25:23

Right.

Speaker: 00:25:24

I didn't get visited for three months.

Speaker: 00:25:26

And then, um...

Speaker: 00:25:27

And did, so you...

Speaker: 00:25:29

Again, it's so courageous to, to be prepared to do that exercise thinking

Speaker: 00:25:35

you're going to get three to five years.

Speaker: 00:25:36

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:25:37

it's a sense...

Speaker: 00:25:39

I remember I was, like, handcuffed.

Speaker: 00:25:41

They were taking me in my first quarter, for instance, here in New York.

Speaker: 00:25:44

And the television crew were there, and they shoved this mic in front of

Speaker: 00:25:46

my face and said, Are you prepared to go to jail to stop this war?

Speaker: 00:25:50

And I'm, like, handcuffed, and I said, Well, I guess I haven't

Speaker: 00:25:52

got any choice now, you know?

Speaker: 00:25:54

So it was just, like...

Speaker: 00:25:56

You know, and a sense of abandonment.

Speaker: 00:25:58

And, um, there's footage of me on YouTube being interviewed from the jail in Texas.

Speaker: 00:26:03

And I, you know, I haven't been drinking.

Speaker: 00:26:04

I've been exercising every day.

Speaker: 00:26:06

I look, I look quite healthy.

Speaker: 00:26:07

And, but it was a pretty stressful environment.

Speaker: 00:26:10

Um hmm.

Speaker: 00:26:12

Uh, you know, some really real brutality, uh,

Speaker: 00:26:15

there.

Speaker: 00:26:15

And were you a victim of that or were you just an observer?

Speaker: 00:26:18

Ah,

Speaker: 00:26:20

Initially, no one would eat with me.

Speaker: 00:26:22

It's really interesting.

Speaker: 00:26:24

Um, so I ended up eating with about ten transsexual prostitutes.

Speaker: 00:26:27

So I used to have breakfast with them.

Speaker: 00:26:29

And, um...

Speaker: 00:26:31

People are quite willing to do other stuff with them, but not eat

Speaker: 00:26:33

with them, which, when you look at scripture, it's quite interesting who

Speaker: 00:26:37

you're allowed to eat with, who Jesus eats with, and the kind of laws he's

Speaker: 00:26:40

breaking there, or cultural codes.

Speaker: 00:26:42

Um, you know, I was on the only African soccer team in the jail.

Speaker: 00:26:46

There were about seven Mexican teams, one African team.

Speaker: 00:26:49

So whenever we played, there'd be like 400 Mexican screaming racists, as you said.

Speaker: 00:26:54

So it was very atmospheric.

Speaker: 00:26:55

Um, and you know, there were times when...

Speaker: 00:26:58

They just ethnically cleansed the wing of any black people by just bashing them.

Speaker: 00:27:03

And as soon as something like that would kick off, the guards would

Speaker: 00:27:05

disappear and they wouldn't be back for like 45 minutes, you know.

Speaker: 00:27:11

Yep, and they didn't care about your politics and what you'd done, like, did

Speaker: 00:27:15

they see that as, were they supportive or they didn't care, or they were

Speaker: 00:27:18

against you?

Speaker: 00:27:19

A lot of the guards were ex military or presently serving in the National

Speaker: 00:27:22

Guard and were initially hostile.

Speaker: 00:27:24

Yep.

Speaker: 00:27:25

And then, um, I was popular amongst the Muslim population, and people were like

Speaker: 00:27:32

introducing me, oh, this is the guy who's hijacked a plane or blew up a plane,

Speaker: 00:27:35

I'm like, oh, whatever works for you.

Speaker: 00:27:38

You know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:27:39

Um.

Speaker: 00:27:41

So, I was getting, what saved me, literally saved my ass, was um, how

Speaker: 00:27:45

much support correspondence I got.

Speaker: 00:27:47

So after the first few weeks, the mail, I, I think I received like 2, 000 letters.

Speaker: 00:27:52

Oh, wow.

Speaker: 00:27:53

And I became quite a celebrity, especially amongst stamp collectors in the jail.

Speaker: 00:27:58

And um, that helped me, playing football helped me, soccer, and um,

Speaker: 00:28:03

then I started, I'd go to mass and I'd be the only non Mexican at mass.

Speaker: 00:28:11

I played, uh, I wrote, I started writing letters in English to

Speaker: 00:28:14

people's lawyers and girlfriends, and that made me quite useful.

Speaker: 00:28:17

Right.

Speaker: 00:28:17

So I just built up my base from there and, and, yeah, I was probably in

Speaker: 00:28:23

about five physical altercations.

Speaker: 00:28:25

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:28:25

Which is quite a lot for a pacifist.

Speaker: 00:28:27

Yes.

Speaker: 00:28:28

But when you're backed into a corner, that's all you can do, I guess.

Speaker: 00:28:32

So you got out of there and it's some, somehow you ended up, um.

Speaker: 00:28:37

Uh, in London or in, in the UK, did you come back to Australia

Speaker: 00:28:41

and then off to the UK?

Speaker: 00:28:42

Yeah, I

Speaker: 00:28:42

got, eventually, essentially yesterday was the anniversary of the date I was

Speaker: 00:28:46

supposed to get out, June 15th, and before that they, they transferred me to

Speaker: 00:28:50

a penitentiary in Louisiana where they had two federal courts and they charged

Speaker: 00:28:56

me with being guilty of a crime of moral turpitude and overstaying a visa.

Speaker: 00:28:59

And put 50, 000 bail on me, and, um, I'd never heard the word

Speaker: 00:29:04

turpentry before, had no clue what it was, you know, and, um, so...

Speaker: 00:29:10

I was there for another six weeks after my release date and

Speaker: 00:29:13

then people raised the 50, 000.

Speaker: 00:29:15

Casey Kasem, do you know Casey Kasem?

Speaker: 00:29:18

He's the voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo and he's quite a big DJ, America's Top 40.

Speaker: 00:29:23

He put 20, 000 in and different people put money in and Moana had 25, 000.

Speaker: 00:29:28

She was up in a jail in Pennsylvania.

Speaker: 00:29:32

So eventually we, we got bailed.

Speaker: 00:29:34

I'm assuming you can't go back to

Speaker: 00:29:36

America?

Speaker: 00:29:37

No, well, in the bail application.

Speaker: 00:29:39

The Air Force said it was a national security threat to the United

Speaker: 00:29:42

States, which was very flattering but hardly anything to do with reality.

Speaker: 00:29:46

And uh, being, if you're convicted of a crime of moral turpitude,

Speaker: 00:29:50

that's what they got Charlie Chaplin on, to keep him out of the States,

Speaker: 00:29:54

so they eventually dropped that.

Speaker: 00:29:56

And um, I had my deportation hearing actually, where Julian's going to be

Speaker: 00:30:01

brought to in Alexandria, Virginia, which is very CIA dominated, uh,

Speaker: 00:30:06

with Langley there and stuff.

Speaker: 00:30:07

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:30:08

And just leading up to my deportation hearing.

Speaker: 00:30:11

Uh, the World Trade Center bombing happened, uh, Waco happened, and

Speaker: 00:30:15

half of them were Australians and Kiwis and English, non Americans.

Speaker: 00:30:20

And then two CIA were shot at Langley by an Al Qaeda

Speaker: 00:30:23

operative, um, leading up to...

Speaker: 00:30:26

So it was a bad atmosphere to have a deportation hearing, where Moana had one

Speaker: 00:30:31

five months earlier and she got a plea bargain where they didn't deport her.

Speaker: 00:30:35

Oh, right.

Speaker: 00:30:35

And she left

Speaker: 00:30:36

voluntarily.

Speaker: 00:30:37

Yep.

Speaker: 00:30:38

So, um, you, you, you make your way to the UK.

Speaker: 00:30:41

Did, did you have a passport?

Speaker: 00:30:43

Like, you're a dual citizen to get, did they, they were happy to have you?

Speaker: 00:30:45

Okay,

Speaker: 00:30:46

so I got deported back here.

Speaker: 00:30:47

Yes.

Speaker: 00:30:48

And the Christian Brothers gave me a job teaching truance out at Logan.

Speaker: 00:30:51

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:30:51

And then, I went to New Zealand, uh, helped start a Catholic Worker there in

Speaker: 00:30:55

Christchurch with Moana, then came back here and we started a Greg Shackleton

Speaker: 00:31:00

house at St Mary's in South Brisbane, and that was focused on East Timor before

Speaker: 00:31:05

it became mainstream popular, really.

Speaker: 00:31:08

And, uh, named after the Queensland journalist who was killed at Balibo,

Speaker: 00:31:11

Greg Shackleton, and we brought his widow Shirley up to, to open it.

Speaker: 00:31:16

And we did a lot of good activism around that.

Speaker: 00:31:18

And then, and...

Speaker: 00:31:20

At the beginning of 96, four women broke into a British aerospace

Speaker: 00:31:23

facility in Lancashire in England, and I knew one of them.

Speaker: 00:31:27

And ironically, there's such respect for private property in America,

Speaker: 00:31:31

if not for human life, that when we got out of jail, they gave us our

Speaker: 00:31:34

hammers back and our bolt cutters.

Speaker: 00:31:37

And we sent them off to England, and they were used twice, three times there.

Speaker: 00:31:41

And they kept getting them back, and then we used the

Speaker: 00:31:44

same hammer in Ireland in 2003.

Speaker: 00:31:47

So where's that hammer now?

Speaker: 00:31:49

It's in a, it's in a hammer, a pacifist dump in Kilkenny, I think, it's still,

Speaker: 00:31:56

they haven't been put beyond use.

Speaker: 00:31:57

Okay.

Speaker: 00:31:57

They're still out there.

Speaker: 00:31:58

All right, haven't been lost.

Speaker: 00:31:59

No, no, no.

Speaker: 00:32:00

Obviously got historical.

Speaker: 00:32:01

No, an artist friend of mine used them for a few art projects and stuff, yeah.

Speaker: 00:32:06

But one of them's done quite a few million dollars worth of disarmament, yeah.

Speaker: 00:32:10

Wow.

Speaker: 00:32:11

So in 96, I went to organize around these women's trial in

Speaker: 00:32:14

Liverpool and they were acquitted.

Speaker: 00:32:16

It's the first time a plough shares group.

Speaker: 00:32:18

Had ever been found.

Speaker: 00:32:19

Now guilty.

Speaker: 00:32:20

The lawyer in that case was Gareth Purist heard, freed the Guilford

Speaker: 00:32:23

four on the Birmingham six.

Speaker: 00:32:25

She's Emma Thompson, placed her in the name of the father.

Speaker: 00:32:28

She's now defending Julian Assange.

Speaker: 00:32:30

Yep.

Speaker: 00:32:30

She's about 18 now.

Speaker: 00:32:31

Gareth and John Pilger gave evidence in that case.

Speaker: 00:32:35

Jose Rumors ter, that it becomes President Prime Minister.

Speaker: 00:32:38

His Timor gave evidence and the local Scouses in Liverpool mobilized.

Speaker: 00:32:43

There's a lot of really good solidarity.

Speaker: 00:32:45

So, we end up forming a community and these East Timorese that

Speaker: 00:32:48

occupied embassies in Jakarta, who'd been given safe passage

Speaker: 00:32:52

to Portugal, came and joined us.

Speaker: 00:32:55

We kept breaking into BAE every three or four months and BAE

Speaker: 00:32:58

took me to the High Court.

Speaker: 00:32:59

They also put a spy in our group for three

Speaker: 00:33:01

years.

Speaker: 00:33:02

Right.

Speaker: 00:33:03

Did you expect to have a spy put in

Speaker: 00:33:05

the group?

Speaker: 00:33:06

Well, as soon as the women were acquitted, the Lancashire Special Branch approached

Speaker: 00:33:09

a former policewoman to infiltrate us, and she went to the Guardian, got

Speaker: 00:33:13

wired up, went to a second meeting with Special Branch, and exposed it.

Speaker: 00:33:17

And then we were pretty stupid not to expect them to try again.

Speaker: 00:33:21

And this time, BAE approached a private security firm, uh, who'd

Speaker: 00:33:26

already had infiltrated the campaign against the arms trade, including

Speaker: 00:33:29

that of a guy who was a full time...

Speaker: 00:33:32

paid worker and he was working for this security group and they got this guy who

Speaker: 00:33:37

went under the name Alan Fossey but who you'll learn is Sergeant Alistair who

Speaker: 00:33:41

used to be in 14 Company and they're the ones who did the spying and targeting

Speaker: 00:33:46

for the SAS in Northern Ireland.

Speaker: 00:33:48

So he was in and around our group for three years and that was eventually

Speaker: 00:33:51

exposed by the Sunday Times.

Speaker: 00:33:53

Right,

Speaker: 00:33:54

must have been a shock for you when you found out.

Speaker: 00:33:55

Well,

Speaker: 00:33:57

I didn't like him.

Speaker: 00:33:58

And I, I had a kind of intuitive feeling, but I was saying that's, you know, I

Speaker: 00:34:02

was, I was raised kind of, I don't know, anti English, but definitely sceptical

Speaker: 00:34:06

of them, so I was kind of telling myself, no, that's just your prejudice against

Speaker: 00:34:09

English and stuff, and I should have went with my gut feeling, really, you know.

Speaker: 00:34:14

Anyway.

Speaker: 00:34:15

So, you were...

Speaker: 00:34:15

Because he would be feeling...

Speaker: 00:34:17

The dangerous thing was he would have been feeding intel back to the

Speaker: 00:34:21

Indonesian embassy in London, putting people's lives in danger and his team

Speaker: 00:34:25

of the guys who were active in England.

Speaker: 00:34:28

So subsequent to that, did you in your activities then

Speaker: 00:34:32

have to be mindful of spies?

Speaker: 00:34:35

Did you change your practices thinking?

Speaker: 00:34:39

Could be a spy amongst your crew.

Speaker: 00:34:41

Yeah, in retrospect it's 2020 vision, so even in the late 70s, most, the

Speaker: 00:34:47

anarchists used to gather at Planet Press in the Valley, and now we learn that

Speaker: 00:34:51

Dan Van Blakham, who ran that press, was recruited by Don Lane into the Special

Speaker: 00:34:56

Branch, as a Special Branch informant in the late 1960s, initially portrayed

Speaker: 00:35:00

the Nazi party, and then later he turned his attention to the anarchists.

Speaker: 00:35:05

So, we were infiltrated pretty early on, and then, in Dublin I think we

Speaker: 00:35:11

were infiltrated, and I think we were infiltrated in London as well, so,

Speaker: 00:35:15

anyway.

Speaker: 00:35:16

It's pretty hard to, it's pretty hard to sort of know what to do.

Speaker: 00:35:23

What do you do?

Speaker: 00:35:23

You've got a group of a handful of people, or dozens, and if you're

Speaker: 00:35:28

going to organise something, it's, it'd be difficult to try and...

Speaker: 00:35:32

Well, if you're doing, if you're doing anything high risk, it's

Speaker: 00:35:35

got to be on a need to know basis.

Speaker: 00:35:37

So I've been in environments where I sense something big is going to

Speaker: 00:35:40

happen, but I'm not involved in it, so I don't need to know, so I don't ask.

Speaker: 00:35:45

If someone doesn't need to know, you don't tell them, because that

Speaker: 00:35:49

makes them vulnerable to conspiracy charges, so you have to be quite

Speaker: 00:35:54

disciplined about that, and uh,

Speaker: 00:35:57

yeah.

Speaker: 00:35:58

So, you had an, um...

Speaker: 00:36:00

There's Northwood Headquarters in Northwood, Hertfordshire, it was

Speaker: 00:36:04

sprayed some red paint on a sign, got arrested for that, and...

Speaker: 00:36:08

Yeah, so we,

Speaker: 00:36:09

we had two Catholic, we started a Catholic Worker House in Haringey, Giuseppe

Speaker: 00:36:14

Conlin House in 2010, and there's also a Catholic Worker Farm at Hertfordshire.

Speaker: 00:36:19

And also out there is Northwood Headquarters, and that's a NATO

Speaker: 00:36:23

base, and it's also where they ran the Falklands War from.

Speaker: 00:36:27

It's a very, very significant base and like the mainstream anti war movement run

Speaker: 00:36:33

by the Trotskyist groups and the Labour Party never took people out there, you

Speaker: 00:36:37

know, they had people marching in their tens of thousands up and down empty

Speaker: 00:36:39

streets in London, but we focused on resistance there and that was the place

Speaker: 00:36:46

to go, you know, and, and, you know, these groups infiltrated the highest levels as

Speaker: 00:36:50

well, they've stopped the war coalition in London, our anti war movement.

Speaker: 00:36:55

And, uh, they basically steered people into these dead end protest channels

Speaker: 00:37:01

and, um, yeah, the movement never significantly moved from protest to

Speaker: 00:37:07

resistance in Ireland or England, really.

Speaker: 00:37:09

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:09

Um, so, yeah, we were arrested out there.

Speaker: 00:37:11

We were raided by the counter terrorist squad at the farm.

Speaker: 00:37:14

Um.

Speaker: 00:37:17

I think I was, I was detained six times in two years under

Speaker: 00:37:21

counter terrorist legislation.

Speaker: 00:37:24

Dublin, Belfast, London, and,

Speaker: 00:37:27

uh, And did you think to yourself at the time, gee, we've been unlucky

Speaker: 00:37:31

to be caught this many times?

Speaker: 00:37:32

How

Speaker: 00:37:32

did we end up?

Speaker: 00:37:33

Did you ever think?

Speaker: 00:37:34

No, they're, they've got unlimited resources.

Speaker: 00:37:36

And especially what we did in Ireland just totally embarrassed them.

Speaker: 00:37:39

And they spent millions and millions of Euros on us in Ireland.

Speaker: 00:37:43

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:43

And, uh.

Speaker: 00:37:45

So, so maybe talk about what happened in Ireland with the Pit Stop plough shares.

Speaker: 00:37:48

Okay.

Speaker: 00:37:48

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:49

Um, or the Pistol

Speaker: 00:37:51

Flash, yes, Pistol Flash, at Shannon Airport.

Speaker: 00:37:53

Okay, so, after doing the, the last thing with the T Marie stuff, I did about a 10

Speaker: 00:38:00

week vigil outside the Indonesian Embassy in London as they were leading up to

Speaker: 00:38:04

voting for independence there and stuff.

Speaker: 00:38:06

And then I came back and we did the action at Jabalooka, where we

Speaker: 00:38:10

disabled uranium mine equipment and so I ended up in jail in Darwin.

Speaker: 00:38:14

And um, Um, went back, went to, moved to Ireland in 2002 and the Americans

Speaker: 00:38:22

had already started bombing Afghanistan and Dan Berrigan was visiting and Dan's

Speaker: 00:38:28

quite well known in Ireland when Bobby Sands was dying he requested to meet

Speaker: 00:38:32

the Berrigans, they flew over but the Brits wouldn't let them in to visit him.

Speaker: 00:38:36

Um, So we had an event and 2, 000 people turned up to it.

Speaker: 00:38:41

We only had room for 1, 000, people away.

Speaker: 00:38:44

And that was in mid 2002.

Speaker: 00:38:46

And then, quite rapidly at the end of that year, five of us got together.

Speaker: 00:38:52

Eight days before the action, two people had never met the other two.

Speaker: 00:38:56

Whereas in America, we were...

Speaker: 00:38:58

Marlana and I were processed for 11 months, every second weekend we were taken

Speaker: 00:39:02

to a secret location for preparation, and different people came in, left

Speaker: 00:39:06

the group, and then in the August of that year, Bill and Sue joined, and we

Speaker: 00:39:10

closed the group, we were ready to act then, and it was another six months

Speaker: 00:39:13

before we did, but we were meeting every two weeks in a very disciplined way.

Speaker: 00:39:17

This one was kind of thrown together, and We broke into Shannon Airport, which

Speaker: 00:39:22

was a civilian airport on the West Coast that had been rapidly militarized to

Speaker: 00:39:26

refuel for American troop movements.

Speaker: 00:39:28

And, um, we were able to disable a US Navy warplane that was en

Speaker: 00:39:34

route to Iraq, and we turned it around and sent it back to Texas.

Speaker: 00:39:37

So, we were arrested, um, denied bail initially.

Speaker: 00:39:42

So I was in Limerick Prison for about a month, and then when I was, took bail.

Speaker: 00:39:48

Uh, because we were being misrepresented, like the mainstream media was saying

Speaker: 00:39:52

a police officer was assaulted during the action, and obviously I was being

Speaker: 00:39:58

my size, that was the likely suspect.

Speaker: 00:40:00

And then, you know, when we went to trial, three times we went to trial.

Speaker: 00:40:04

Two years later, that police officer got up and said that I had comforted

Speaker: 00:40:07

him while he was having a stress attack.

Speaker: 00:40:09

But, you know, on the front page of the Irish Times, it was

Speaker: 00:40:11

that I had assaulted the police.

Speaker: 00:40:12

You know, it's bullshit.

Speaker: 00:40:14

And also, it's, the other lie they said is we cost the Irish taxpayer,

Speaker: 00:40:19

we charged them two and a half million dollars criminal damage, and

Speaker: 00:40:22

the Irish taxpayer was going to pick up that bill, which was bullshit.

Speaker: 00:40:26

Um, and, uh, So I had to come out and like explain the action, uh,

Speaker: 00:40:32

so I was going around giving talks in different places, and the other

Speaker: 00:40:36

people finally all came out, and um, the bail conditions were quite harsh.

Speaker: 00:40:42

I had to sign on every day at a specific police station, Pier

Speaker: 00:40:45

Street, near Trinity College there.

Speaker: 00:40:47

And I wasn't allowed into County Clare, where the airport was, and

Speaker: 00:40:51

also banned from two mile radius U.

Speaker: 00:40:53

Embassy in Dublin.

Speaker: 00:40:55

So it was very restrictive of our conditions, and in that period I

Speaker: 00:40:58

was working in a homeless shelter for chronic alcoholics in Dublin.

Speaker: 00:41:05

So there were three trials, the first two were aborted, so, um, the first one, let

Speaker: 00:41:13

Judge, Judge O'Donnell agreed with defense counsel arguments that his adjudication

Speaker: 00:41:17

was tainted with a perception of bias.

Speaker: 00:41:21

Yeah, he was so keen to jail us that he pulled the trigger too early.

Speaker: 00:41:25

So he, we had two of the top, two barristers in Ireland who...

Speaker: 00:41:30

Volunteer their services, you know, agree with their action, basically.

Speaker: 00:41:34

And a very good gin, Javaris, a very good solicitor.

Speaker: 00:41:39

Uh, but we later learned that this was his first criminal trial, actually.

Speaker: 00:41:42

He didn't tell us that, but it was very, very good.

Speaker: 00:41:44

It came all the way from Cork.

Speaker: 00:41:47

We had a very good legal team.

Speaker: 00:41:49

So I guess we kind of gifted our liberty.

Speaker: 00:41:51

And these people gifted their legal skills and other people,

Speaker: 00:41:54

musicians were doing stuff for us and

Speaker: 00:41:56

people driving us around.

Speaker: 00:41:57

So in his comments or directions he made it clear he was biased.

Speaker: 00:42:01

They

Speaker: 00:42:01

say, yeah, so they, outside tried to introduce a witness

Speaker: 00:42:05

and he ruled out a defamation.

Speaker: 00:42:06

It's our defense without hearing defense arguments, because

Speaker: 00:42:10

they're that keen to knock us off.

Speaker: 00:42:13

So, but he had the presence of mind, he said, he'll think about this over the

Speaker: 00:42:16

weekend, and he came back and um, he, he ruled, like we disabled the plane and

Speaker: 00:42:26

then we formed a circle and prayed, and he said that we weren't serious about

Speaker: 00:42:30

disabling the plane because we stopped.

Speaker: 00:42:32

Right.

Speaker: 00:42:32

And we said, obviously he doesn't believe in the efficacy of prayer, but um, he, he

Speaker: 00:42:39

had the presence of mind to say the media couldn't report on, on what had happened.

Speaker: 00:42:43

And uh, so six months later we went back to trial.

Speaker: 00:42:45

Yes.

Speaker: 00:42:46

And it went for 11 days and we had a kind of apparition on the

Speaker: 00:42:50

11th day that this judge was a personal friend of George Bush.

Speaker: 00:42:54

How did you find that out?

Speaker: 00:42:55

Well, we put it down to an angelic apparition, I can't really say.

Speaker: 00:42:59

Anyway, so, um, so we're in this meeting and we're like, you know, should we

Speaker: 00:43:05

go back and confront him with this?

Speaker: 00:43:06

And I'm like, what's the negatives?

Speaker: 00:43:07

And they said, well, you know, he might sentence heavier.

Speaker: 00:43:11

And we all looked at each other and said, yeah, let's go and get him.

Speaker: 00:43:13

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:43:14

So we went back into court and he.

Speaker: 00:43:16

He fled the court in such a panic that he forgot to put a media ban.

Speaker: 00:43:21

So the next day, the next day, there's photos of him and George Bush.

Speaker: 00:43:25

Now, right at the beginning of that trial, when they're picking the

Speaker: 00:43:27

jury, he was saying that if there's any perception of bias, you should

Speaker: 00:43:30

recluse, you know, stand down.

Speaker: 00:43:32

And a woman had already been chosen, got up and said, Look, I just recalled

Speaker: 00:43:35

my daughter's an airline stewardess and might look that I'm prejudiced.

Speaker: 00:43:38

And our barristers got up and said, I want to thank you on your integrity.

Speaker: 00:43:42

And the judge said, I too want to thank you on your integrity.

Speaker: 00:43:45

Well, this guy had no integrity.

Speaker: 00:43:46

He'd attended the first inauguration of George Bush.

Speaker: 00:43:49

You know, he'd been invited to both inaugurations.

Speaker: 00:43:51

So then we went to trial a third time and, um, we ran out of the fence

Speaker: 00:43:56

and we were unanimously acquitted.

Speaker: 00:43:58

Yes.

Speaker: 00:43:59

So Judge Miriam Anderson had agreed on day nine.

Speaker: 00:44:04

Um, so, um, acquitted because, uh, the jury feels you honestly believe

Speaker: 00:44:11

that you were acting to save lives and property in Iraq and Ireland.

Speaker: 00:44:16

And the disarmament action was reasonable, taking into consideration all of the

Speaker: 00:44:20

circumstances.

Speaker: 00:44:21

Yeah, so we had a reasonably held belief, which is subjective,

Speaker: 00:44:25

that in the circumstances we understood them to be subjective.

Speaker: 00:44:29

That by damaging property, Shane Airport Island would trigger a chain of events

Speaker: 00:44:35

that would preserve life in Iraq.

Speaker: 00:44:36

Yes.

Speaker: 00:44:36

And we called this expert witness, who was a former RF Wing Commander,

Speaker: 00:44:42

who came out from England.

Speaker: 00:44:43

And he talked about logistics, you know, and, uh, and that helps.

Speaker: 00:44:49

And we also had U.

Speaker: 00:44:51

military veterans, you know, including guys who killed people at

Speaker: 00:44:54

a checkpoint and stuff, uh, testified of the brutal nature of the war.

Speaker: 00:44:58

And we had Dennis Halliday, who's the U.

Speaker: 00:45:00

Speaker: 00:45:01

guy running the All for Food program.

Speaker: 00:45:03

He resigned denouncing the sanctions as genocidal.

Speaker: 00:45:06

The Irish Quaker guy, he testified with Cathy Kelly who was there

Speaker: 00:45:10

under the bombing in Baghdad.

Speaker: 00:45:12

So the jury ended up hearing a lot of good evidence.

Speaker: 00:45:14

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:45:15

And it took them four and a half hours to decide.

Speaker: 00:45:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 00:45:19

So, when, when after four and a half hours they said the jury's ready, you must have

Speaker: 00:45:22

felt confident.

Speaker: 00:45:24

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:45:25

Well, I'm like my mother, I'm a natural pessimist.

Speaker: 00:45:28

And I was packed, cleared my social cover with that, and I was

Speaker: 00:45:31

told I was going to get at least three years, uh, in my history.

Speaker: 00:45:35

When you were doing the action, did you have any idea that this possible defence

Speaker: 00:45:39

was there that you might be able to use?

Speaker: 00:45:43

Um, I don't know.

Speaker: 00:45:47

I think Damien, Damien was young, he'd never been arrested before, he's

Speaker: 00:45:50

a seminarian, he was in our group.

Speaker: 00:45:53

And he's a lot brighter than me, and I don't know if he had looked at that.

Speaker: 00:45:59

Right.

Speaker: 00:45:59

I hadn't.

Speaker: 00:46:00

I'd really...

Speaker: 00:46:02

Because you went into it expecting, again, to go to jail for three to four years.

Speaker: 00:46:06

Yeah, I also assumed, like, in New York we defended ourselves.

Speaker: 00:46:09

We had co counsel that advised us, um, and I thought at least

Speaker: 00:46:13

some of us would defend ourselves.

Speaker: 00:46:14

But the group...

Speaker: 00:46:16

There were two, two Irish born people who had never been arrested before,

Speaker: 00:46:20

done these kind of things and then the Scottish woman, the American woman had

Speaker: 00:46:24

done actions before, but not, not facing this much amount of time, so in the, in

Speaker: 00:46:30

the end, I had, I deferred to the group.

Speaker: 00:46:33

That, um, would all be represented, yeah.

Speaker: 00:46:36

And they did a very good job, the legal team, so, I thought, well, I've

Speaker: 00:46:40

done the action now, they can run a trial, if someone wants to write a

Speaker: 00:46:43

song, they can write a song about it.

Speaker: 00:46:44

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:46:44

You know, so, you know.

Speaker: 00:46:46

And then we got a lot of support about, first trial, about 50 Catholic Worker

Speaker: 00:46:50

Plowshares people came from the States.

Speaker: 00:46:52

Yep.

Speaker: 00:46:52

So it was a big reunion, hadn't seen these people in 10 years and stuff.

Speaker: 00:46:55

Yep.

Speaker: 00:46:55

And, um, Yeah, it was, and then, uh, yeah, it was great.

Speaker: 00:46:59

Now,

Speaker: 00:47:00

these days, you're living in Brisbane.

Speaker: 00:47:02

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:47:03

And you're playing soccer with refugees.

Speaker: 00:47:06

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:47:06

Because, we had to work around that for this interview.

Speaker: 00:47:09

What else are you doing

Speaker: 00:47:10

here?

Speaker: 00:47:11

Well, I came back two years ago because my mother's developing dementia,

Speaker: 00:47:15

and she can't really be left alone.

Speaker: 00:47:17

So, the last, the previous ten years, you know, helped start

Speaker: 00:47:21

this Catholic Worker House.

Speaker: 00:47:24

Uh, housing about 22 homeless refugees in London.

Speaker: 00:47:28

And, um, and then I met Julian late 2010.

Speaker: 00:47:33

So it was Julian and Chelsea Manning were my big focuses.

Speaker: 00:47:37

And I hooked up with Chelsea Manning's family in Wales and we did a lot of good

Speaker: 00:47:42

solidarity work, especially Dublin Wales.

Speaker: 00:47:44

And, and you know, where Julian used to visit him in the embassy

Speaker: 00:47:48

and I had a God, I, I've got a godson who was in the British s a

Speaker: 00:47:51

s, who became a Catholic pacifist.

Speaker: 00:47:53

So for a while we were Julian security, getting him into court, out of court,

Speaker: 00:47:57

kind of running the scenes outside the court scene, scenes at the High

Speaker: 00:48:02

Court, and then outside the embassy and inside the embassy visiting him.

Speaker: 00:48:06

And then at the beginning of 2018, I was asked to, I was, I went back

Speaker: 00:48:12

to Ireland and I was asked to keep a presence up outside the embassy because

Speaker: 00:48:16

I think from March 2018 when they turned the internet off on Julian, they

Speaker: 00:48:20

felt that it could happen at any time.

Speaker: 00:48:22

And then November.

Speaker: 00:48:23

2018, it was getting really bad, but they were pretty much live streaming to the

Speaker: 00:48:29

CIA and back to Ecuador, and the local cops were live streaming outside, uh, the

Speaker: 00:48:35

special branch was visibly there, outside, um, and they asked me to move, to be 24 7,

Speaker: 00:48:42

so I, I took up residence on the street.

Speaker: 00:48:45

Right.

Speaker: 00:48:46

And it was like English winter, you know?

Speaker: 00:48:48

And then the royal family of Qatar turned up, they owned the building, and

Speaker: 00:48:52

Harrods, the building's real name was in.

Speaker: 00:48:56

And so, you know, there's just heaps of security and eventually these three

Speaker: 00:49:01

guys, the Belgian guy, the German guy...

Speaker: 00:49:08

They walk into a

Speaker: 00:49:08

bar.

Speaker: 00:49:09

They walk into a bar, yeah.

Speaker: 00:49:10

Sounds

Speaker: 00:49:10

like the start of a joke.

Speaker: 00:49:11

And they're all very skilled, manually skilled.

Speaker: 00:49:13

And they, these Belgian guys, just went around these worksites, got

Speaker: 00:49:17

all this wood and built me like a coffin with wheels and handles.

Speaker: 00:49:21

And, um, so I could sleep in this...

Speaker: 00:49:24

Coffin box, really.

Speaker: 00:49:26

And so I was sleeping on Hans Crescent.

Speaker: 00:49:27

This is like the wealthiest part of London, full of Saudi princes,

Speaker: 00:49:30

Russian oligarchs, football managers and players and stuff.

Speaker: 00:49:34

And, and then all of a sudden there's 18 princesses there, you know.

Speaker: 00:49:37

And, um, so I end up getting fed by the Royal Family for a while.

Speaker: 00:49:41

Um.

Speaker: 00:49:43

Yeah, so anyway, I was getting harassed.

Speaker: 00:49:45

They were threatening to get rid of me with an ASBO.

Speaker: 00:49:47

And, uh, I thought, oh, they've got an ASBO for Hans Crescent.

Speaker: 00:49:51

They haven't got one for this dead end lane under Julian's bedroom.

Speaker: 00:49:54

An ASBO?

Speaker: 00:49:55

Antisocial Behavioural...

Speaker: 00:49:57

And, uh, which they needed very little evidence from.

Speaker: 00:50:01

So, the night they raided me, I got up, emptied my box.

Speaker: 00:50:05

A special branch light directly opposite.

Speaker: 00:50:07

And, and I wheeled it down to the dead end between Julian's window.

Speaker: 00:50:12

And this other building that goes down seven floors where all the Harrods

Speaker: 00:50:16

trucks warehousing would happen, that 11 loading ramps down there.

Speaker: 00:50:20

So the last 15 metres of this lane was kind of a dead zone, no one used it, and

Speaker: 00:50:25

I just stopped, you know, pulled up there.

Speaker: 00:50:28

But there was just heaps of security, those Harrods had their own security, then

Speaker: 00:50:32

there was Special Branch, then there's the local Plod, and then there was SO18, and

Speaker: 00:50:37

then there's Ecuadoran security, and then the Royal Family had their own security.

Speaker: 00:50:42

So, it was just layers and layers of security, and a lot of the time, I had

Speaker: 00:50:46

a small group of people who were like, supporting me, uh, but a lot of the time

Speaker: 00:50:50

I was just there by myself, you know.

Speaker: 00:50:52

Right.

Speaker: 00:50:52

And uh, and in this lane there were 23 cameras, so it

Speaker: 00:50:56

was very...

Speaker: 00:50:57

And you were there for the purpose of, of what?

Speaker: 00:51:01

Well I knew Julian and, and you know, um, and we were friends and like, he,

Speaker: 00:51:06

he likes me, like he, I think he kind of finds me pretty humorous, and um...

Speaker: 00:51:11

Because I'm not techy at all, all this stuff goes over my head.

Speaker: 00:51:14

So he could look out the window and he'd see a friendly face, you know,

Speaker: 00:51:17

and then they weren't allowing anyone there after 5pm, so he's by himself.

Speaker: 00:51:22

from 5 p.

Speaker: 00:51:22

Speaker: 00:51:23

through till 9 a.

Speaker: 00:51:24

in the morning and, um, you know, they were suspecting they'd be raided and

Speaker: 00:51:30

that I was supposed to give an alert or something and, uh, I was also doing

Speaker: 00:51:34

counter surveillance like, um, I began recruiting people around the area to

Speaker: 00:51:41

help and then also working out where Special Branch were and, and stuff

Speaker: 00:51:46

and feeding that back into Julian.

Speaker: 00:51:48

Right.

Speaker: 00:51:49

Yep.

Speaker: 00:51:49

So, we're recording

Speaker: 00:51:50

this on the...

Speaker: 00:51:51

I was going through the embassy's trash as well.

Speaker: 00:51:53

I'm kind of trying to find anything relevant.

Speaker: 00:51:55

Right.

Speaker: 00:51:56

Yep.

Speaker: 00:51:56

Yep.

Speaker: 00:51:57

Um, we're recording on the 16th of June.

Speaker: 00:51:59

Uh, we've recently had a new government in Australia, a Labor government.

Speaker: 00:52:04

So, there's a, I don't know, in the circles I frequent, a sort of

Speaker: 00:52:09

a, a bit of an optimism that maybe the Albanese government will...

Speaker: 00:52:14

The working in the background to hopefully get something done in Julian's favour.

Speaker: 00:52:18

What's your feelings or thoughts on his prospects?

Speaker: 00:52:24

I think, you know, I think the national security state would have

Speaker: 00:52:30

even stopped Trump parting him.

Speaker: 00:52:33

I Snowden.

Speaker: 00:52:33

Um.

Speaker: 00:52:34

And Pompeo, I think, is a driving force to crucify Julian.

Speaker: 00:52:39

I think the Americans must feel that damaged him enough physically and

Speaker: 00:52:42

mentally now that he won't ever have the capacity he had in 2010, you know.

Speaker: 00:52:47

And, uh, If the Hill was a popular figure in Australia, which I can't

Speaker: 00:52:52

see any evidence that he is, um, the Americans would let him go, saying,

Speaker: 00:52:56

because they need Australia in terms of their strategy to encircle China.

Speaker: 00:53:00

Um, the Labor Party people, except for Julian Hill and some backbenchers,

Speaker: 00:53:06

but the heavyweights, they never say anything off principle.

Speaker: 00:53:09

They don't talk about free speech.

Speaker: 00:53:10

Barnaby Joyce actually talks about, not that I'm a fan, but free speech, national

Speaker: 00:53:15

sovereignty, he's Australian, and Bob Carr, now that he's retired, you know,

Speaker: 00:53:21

talks about these principles, but the only thing you get out of Barnaby, uh,

Speaker: 00:53:25

Albanese and Penny Wong is, it's gone on too long, which is a bit like, I'm

Speaker: 00:53:30

bored, it's gone on too long, and maybe...

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You know, maybe there's something happening in the background, but

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in the foreground, you need a lot of noise and interventions.

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And, uh, and it's very hard since back in Brisbane, I don't even know where to stand

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with a sign in this town, really, you know, where the context would make sense.

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So, um, so, you know, the most.

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You know, I've accompanied Julian's dad on speaking gigs and stuff for Nimbin

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and there's more in here, and I've, um, I've done a bit of solo vigilling, um,

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but, uh, you know, like I confronted Boris Johnson in Dublin by myself, and I

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confronted Alexander Downer in London on the street as well, so those opportunities

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don't seem to arise here that much.

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No.

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Yep.

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So you sound a bit pessimistic really still.

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You're not...

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I'm naturally

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pessimistic.

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Um.

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Mm.

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And I told that to Julian, you know, I remember saying to Julian, I don't, I

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don't think your feet are ever going to touch the pavement again, given that it

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was carried from the Jembassy to the, to the, yeah, it's prophetic so far.

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And um, You know, I was very pessimistic about his fate, really, and they did

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such a job, especially in England, on character assassination, and the

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lazy, cowardly response to the plot of Julian Assange is some cynical

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quip, but if you look at it closely...

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You'll see that what they've done is, and the Guardian's worst culprit,

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is to weaponize his disability, his asperges against him, and somehow

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present him as an arrogant arsehole, which I know him personally is not.

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And uh...

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It's, uh, it's a slow motion crucifixion and it's, it's tragic,

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uh, and, uh, and yeah, he's done a lot better than I thought he would

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in jail, uh, that he hasn't died.

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Um, like I ended up, I lived on, once he was taken, I then moved to Belmarsh

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Prison and I had a set up on the traffic island at the front of Belmarsh

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Prison for about six weeks and then the Labor Council, Woolwich Labor Council.

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Not only took my stuff, they actually cut down the little trees I used to hang

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a banner between, like a little scorched earth, like through a wood chip, you

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know.

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You must be quite adept at living rough

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on the streets.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, you soften up pretty quickly, don't you,

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get used to things and stuff, but um.

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Yeah, that was pretty wild.

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Yeah, um, so given the circles you mix in and the circles he mixes

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in, it just, you naturally came across each other at some point.

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Is that what happened?

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Yeah, I mean, at the moment, as you're saying, I don't

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get out of this house much.

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I go, I try and go to church in the soup kitchen, South Brisbane on a Sunday.

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I try and play soccer with the refugees on a Tuesday afternoon.

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I try and go to the pub once a week with a Welsh mate.

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And, but most time I've you know, pretty much stuck in the house with my mum.

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Um, I knew he was in real trouble in the end of 2010.

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I was at his first court appearance and I thought that really, you know,

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people will be distancing themselves, you know, very quickly from him.

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And um, and I had to think for 24 hours, you know, do I risk what

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credibility I have, um, supporting him and I decided to do that.

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Yep.

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And, uh.

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And, uh, it's just the people, it's like two million people marched

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against the war that he opposed.

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Two million people in London marched against that war.

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And there were hardly any English people around the embassy supporting him at all.

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They were mostly South Americans and Australians and Irish and stuff.

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So, you know, you just think where's solidarity gone, you know,

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where's the culture of solidarity?

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Speaking of solidarity then, Chelsea Manning, parts I've read, has been

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incredibly courageous in dealing with the US authorities when they were

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wanting sort of further dirt on Julian or cooperation regarding Julian and Chelsea.

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Said no, she struck me, yes, struck me as somebody very tough, very courageous.

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Yeah, and Yeah, we had a great time with her mother and uncle and aunts and very

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working class Welsh family and Haverford West and the mother's passed away now

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and the uncle's passed away, but yeah, Chelsea Chelsea, Chelsea was tortured,

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you know, I think in Kuwait and in, um, Quantico, and then ended up in a

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military prison and seemed to handle that quite well, I think, as things go.

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But it was looking at, it was doing 35 years, and you, you watch

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Obama's last speech as president.

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He's at a press conference explaining why he hasn't pardoned Manning.

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He was commuting the sentence and at no point does he mention the word Iraq.

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This is a war that he opposed, he voted against as a senator, denounced as a

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stupid war, um, and the only thing you hear from him is, Chelsea's done hard

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time, I mean, we've tortured the person, and, and some other thing, but um.

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Yeah, I don't think Obama, and Chelsea had attempted suicide twice at that

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point, and I don't think Obama wanted that on his liberal record, that death.

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Yeah.

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And Chelsea will never be in a situation to cause that damage to the empire again,

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like, neither will Snowden, you know.

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Yes.

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Where Julian, they perceive, has the capacity.

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It's fascinating,

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Ciaron.

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It's quite a

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life.

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It is fascinating.

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So, um, I'm interested in your combination of religious belief

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and political activism, and you mentioned earlier that one of the

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differences when you went to America was there was an acceptance of Yes.

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Faith and religiosity, whereas in Australia, when you're perhaps dealing

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with left wing groups, when you, when religion is brought up, it's, it's quickly

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dismissed, and I have to confess, I've got, uh, my personal dislike of religions.

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Um, yeah, I've done my intel on you.

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And so,

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I find it...

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Uh, unique that you're able to combine what I find is a distasteful,

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um, practice with something that is a positive practice.

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So if you weren't religious, I mean, you can consider yourself Catholic

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still, you identify as Catholic or spiritual or Catholic, yep.

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So, you know, if, if you didn't have that faith.

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Would all, could you have done all these things anyway?

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Would it have all made sense and have been a life that you could have done

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in the absence of faith and religion?

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Um, I think, uh, it wouldn't have, if God doesn't exist, it doesn't make,

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if God does not exist, this life wouldn't have made much sense, no.

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There's no rational basis for it and, you know, I think we're all...

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Given my background, and um, you know, I was raised anti imperialist, Irish

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Catholic, and Irish Catholic meant being oppressed rather than oppressing, and

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um, and you know, the Christian Brothers were kind of working class, and uh,

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and so I guess culturally, and I was an altar boy for eight years, so, I...

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And the thing about Catholicism is that most of our history we've been illiterate.

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So how things are handed down, it's not through the word,

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which is very Protestant.

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Yes.

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Those traditions of Al Bab and the printing press.

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Yeah.

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So it's all about ambience and costume and the sacrament and

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ritual and movement, art, you know.

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So I'm very comfortable and familiar with that and, um, and the Irish thing

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being more figurative and literal and...

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So, you know, I can immediately relate to Irish Americans and Irish

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in London or Irish in Ireland, like, there's a cultural thing there as well.

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Um, and, you know, I guess the conclusion I reached early was that as soon as

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Christianity, Christian discipleship, uh, compromises on the issues of an

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anarchist orientation toward power and a pacifist orientation toward violence,

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um, it's just been co opted, you know.

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But Everything faces co option.

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Punk Rock, Irish Republicanism, Feminism, Green Party.

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So what's the anarchism aspect of your philosophy?

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So when I think anarchism I think just Chaos without

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organisation or hierarchy, I guess.

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It was

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really funny, I was down in Liverpool in the 90s, this guy came up to me and

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said, I just bought this really big book on anarchism, Demanding the Impossible.

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It's a military helicopter, see?

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Yeah, yeah, it's the

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military passing overhead.

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And he goes, um, he goes, I just bought this big book on anarchism,

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Demanding the Impossible.

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He says, you're on the index!

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It's between Oppenheimer and Orwell.

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Oh, that's, that's great.

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O'Reilly between Oppenheimer.

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Oh, that's good.

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So, I kind of think, you know, a theologian I'm into, written on Mark's

Speaker: 01:03:03

Gospel, Ched Myers, in his second book, he posits that Jesus asked

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questions rather than giving answers.

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He says the only thing he tells us to fend for is to pick up the

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cross, you know, but everything else is like a Zen Koan question.

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Um, So I think both.

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Because anarchism and pacifism are negative definitions, they're much

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better questions than answers.

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So an anarchist should be someone who lives with the question, how do I live

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a life without exploiting anyone, or lording it over anyone, as in scripture.

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And pacifist, how do I live a life without violence, you know.

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And I think those two things are implicit to Christian discipleship, but obviously,

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I thought we had a pretty good run for the first 300 years, and then we get co opted.

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by Constantine and, um, it goes from a very short period of being illegal

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to be a Christian in Rome for being an atheist, because you're not worshipping

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the God, sanctioned gods, uh, to being illegal not to be one, you know,

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and, uh, but in all these traditions.

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There's radical, right, the word radical is Latin for return to the roots.

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There's, you'll still meet radical punk rockers and radical feminists, even

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though those traditions are largely co opted, um, right, and trade unionists.

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And so these things related in the gospel to the temptations of the

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desert of power, wealth, and status.

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And that, you know, we just did a vigil outside the Anzac Day Mass where

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they've got guns in the cathedral.

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Yes, yeah,

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I saw that

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on Facebook.

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You know, there's the bishop, quite comfortable with the governor turning

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up in a Rolls Royce and with the head of the police chief and all these

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securocrats and, you know, and totally uncomfortable with his flock holding a

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banner up, you know, no guns in churches.

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And just thinking, oh well.

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And I think my father was kind of relatively anti clerical.

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See, wouldn't you be better suited in some way with the Protestant world, because in

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the Protestant world, anyone could be a minister, and people work out the faith

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for themselves from the book, and it doesn't have the hierarchy of the Catholic

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Church, so um, wouldn't, wouldn't So, in a sense, that philosophy be more suited

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to anarchism than a Catholic anarchism.

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Yeah, there are.

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Because Catholic's about hierarchy and, and...

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think it's easier to go from a feudal society to an anarchist utopia than

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it is for an industrial society.

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And obviously, Catholicism historically is more related to feudalism, you

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know, and the Protestant work ethic to capitalism, industrialism, and

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the traditions and cultures.

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Um, and there are...

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Look, I'm not saying Christianity has monopoly on anarchist expression, there

Speaker: 01:05:52

are Anabaptists and Quakers, radical Quakers, Richard Nixon was a Quaker,

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but um, and humanists and Buddhists who are anarchists and pacifists and um.

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They asked James Joyce when he left the church, are you going to adopt

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one of the Protestant denominations?

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And he said, I've lost my faith, not my mind.

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But um, yeah, and I have good Protestant, some of my best friends are Protestants.

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And also, they've obviously got the scripture, and we took the

Speaker: 01:06:24

sacraments in a general kind of way.

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I think Pagans and Catholics are the best at organizing demonstrations

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because they've got a sense of, of, um, choreography and ritual.

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So I've done a few workshops with Starhawk.

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Ever heard of Starhawk?

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No.

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She's the only, um, witch denounced by the Vatican in modern times.

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And she was on Matthew Fox's, uh, thing at Berkeley.

Speaker: 01:06:49

Okay.

Speaker: 01:06:49

But she does these workshops day on spirituality and day on activism.

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And, um...

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I think her long term partner is an ex Catholic worker who went

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to jail during the Vietnam War.

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But, uh, the Protestant and the Marxist who, you know, come after

Speaker: 01:07:04

the printing press, their rallies are just speech after speech after speech.

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They've got no sense of choreography or nuance or...

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And, um, they really believe in the spoken word and the, uh...

Speaker: 01:07:17

Of the book.

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So they're partly cultural things, I guess, you know, so I don't go

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recruiting for the Catholic Church.

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Yes.

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And, uh, uh, I don't think the Catholic Church is that big on

Speaker: 01:07:30

recruitment, like, uh, I don't think Jews and Catholics recruit that much.

Speaker: 01:07:33

No.

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Whereas, you know, if you ask someone, Brisbane, what do you associate with

Speaker: 01:07:38

socialists, it would be the same what do you associate with born again Christians

Speaker: 01:07:42

who are trying to convert you, you know, and sell you a newspaper or recruit you.

Speaker: 01:07:46

Yeah, they're more low key for sure.

Speaker: 01:07:48

The traditional churches are more low key than the new muscular

Speaker: 01:07:52

evangelicals coming out of America.

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Yeah, well, that's,

Speaker: 01:07:56

those, that form of Christianity is overtly a part of their foreign

Speaker: 01:08:00

policy, just like the Sauds have their own form of Islam that they wield.

Speaker: 01:08:05

Uh, the Americans have developed this prosperity gospel that fits

Speaker: 01:08:08

into imperialism and capitalism, and the CIA have actually pushed it to

Speaker: 01:08:12

counter liberation of intelligence in South America, not America.

Speaker: 01:08:17

And that's where you find, what you were talking before, people breaking up the

Speaker: 01:08:20

scriptures themselves and lay groups.

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So in Ireland, we would, um, on a Sunday, we'd have a liturgy, mostly without a

Speaker: 01:08:29

priest, and we'd, um, you know, say a few prayers for people, and then we'd read the

Speaker: 01:08:34

scripture and we'd go around a circle and people would give their feedback on it.

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And then we'd break some bread and share some wine, you know, and, and I felt...

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Most comfortable in that atmosphere, and you know, ideally, that's what I'd

Speaker: 01:08:49

be doing on a weekly basis and maybe going to church once a month, just to

Speaker: 01:08:53

keep in contact with the tradition.

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Yep.

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Um, but that hasn't been happening for me for the last couple of

Speaker: 01:08:58

years, so I've just started going to this Mass in a soup kitchen.

Speaker: 01:09:01

Hmm.

Speaker: 01:09:02

Now, you've, you mentioned before about you got some mentorship by

Speaker: 01:09:06

the Berrigans, I think, you were to mentor somebody, a young person

Speaker: 01:09:11

who wanted to change the world...

Speaker: 01:09:14

today, but maybe didn't want to go so far as getting arrested.

Speaker: 01:09:19

What, what,

Speaker: 01:09:20

what's your advice to the young people who want to change the world today?

Speaker: 01:09:27

Yeah, I don't think, yeah, I don't think prison should be entered in too lightly.

Speaker: 01:09:32

And I think there's parts of my personality that are quite...

Speaker: 01:09:36

suited to the environment or that I was robust enough to survive it.

Speaker: 01:09:42

Partly that was, um, Christian Brothers education, but um, You know,

Speaker: 01:09:48

so I wouldn't be looking for, like, plowshares, cannon fodder, um, and

Speaker: 01:09:55

you've really got to be convinced that this is so significant, and for some

Speaker: 01:09:59

young people it is the environment.

Speaker: 01:10:03

You've got to be convinced that waking up every morning in jail

Speaker: 01:10:05

is where you need to be to say a very loud no to what's going on.

Speaker: 01:10:10

There's only going to be a limited number of people with that level of commitment.

Speaker: 01:10:13

Yeah, but even the basic...

Speaker: 01:10:15

The praxis of the Catholic Worker, which is like serving, dash,

Speaker: 01:10:19

solidarity with the poor or the homeless, mixed with prophetic, I'd

Speaker: 01:10:24

say, resistance rather than witness.

Speaker: 01:10:26

Um, so you meet some people who are just into, you know, crying out for peace

Speaker: 01:10:31

and justice and often they get co opted by NGOs and end up part of managing the

Speaker: 01:10:36

empire, or you get some people who are just working with the homeless and they

Speaker: 01:10:41

get kind of co opted by social work, managing the, managing the homeless.

Speaker: 01:10:45

I lived with a Christian Atheist in London for about a year, and um, he,

Speaker: 01:10:50

uh...

Speaker: 01:10:51

So a Christian Atheist, let me guess, did not believe in a divine God, but believed

Speaker: 01:10:55

in the, the ideals of Christ in terms of loving your neighbor and helping the poor.

Speaker: 01:11:02

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:11:02

Is that

Speaker: 01:11:04

a Christian Atheist?

Speaker: 01:11:04

He'd also argue that each political change revolution was preceded by a

Speaker: 01:11:08

religious one, and the obvious one was Protestant Worker Ethic and Capitalism,

Speaker: 01:11:11

but I can't really articulate it.

Speaker: 01:11:15

I'll send you a little video about him, Peter Lumsen his name was, but he used

Speaker: 01:11:20

to volunteer at three soup kitchens, he was kind of retired at that stage,

Speaker: 01:11:23

two Christian ones and a Jewish one.

Speaker: 01:11:25

And what he noticed was that people were willing to volunteer and

Speaker: 01:11:28

work in the kitchen, talk to other volunteers, but very few were willing

Speaker: 01:11:31

to actually eat with the homeless and break bread with the homeless.

Speaker: 01:11:34

And that, he wrote this thing on the Eucharist from an atheist perspective

Speaker: 01:11:37

about this is what Jesus did, you know, and um, it was funny because

Speaker: 01:11:41

that related to my experience in jail, with people willing to.

Speaker: 01:11:44

Have sex with the transsexual prostitutes, but not eat with them, you know?

Speaker: 01:11:48

We're always kind of willing to eat with them, but not have sex with them.

Speaker: 01:11:51

Speaker: 01:11:52

when you go to a soup kitchen, you eat with the...

Speaker: 01:11:55

Well, that's what I did today.

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Like, you know, I looked around and they seemed to have enough staff, so...

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And I told them, if you want me to do anything, I'll do it.

Speaker: 01:12:02

But I just sat there for a couple of hours, chatting to

Speaker: 01:12:05

people.

Speaker: 01:12:06

So, in Australia or in Brisbane today, someone who's homeless

Speaker: 01:12:11

and is at a soup kitchen...

Speaker: 01:12:13

Um, is it because of, I have the impression that mental illness

Speaker: 01:12:19

would be a major factor in that.

Speaker: 01:12:22

Because I, my impression would be that there are programs and

Speaker: 01:12:26

facilities out there for people and I, I sort of hear stories of.

Speaker: 01:12:31

of government workers trying to bring people into housing but the people

Speaker: 01:12:35

wanting to stay on the streets and I feel, is that, am I completely right

Speaker: 01:12:39

or wrong or somewhere in between?

Speaker: 01:12:41

Is mental illness and people's reluctance to come in part

Speaker: 01:12:44

of it?

Speaker: 01:12:44

It's real child abuse and mental illness and...

Speaker: 01:12:46

Like, some of the shelters in the States run by the state were brutal,

Speaker: 01:12:51

you know, worse than prisons really, and that some people would feel more

Speaker: 01:12:55

vulnerable there to being bullied or robbed or whatever, and, um, but the

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place I went to today has obviously got a very disciplined environment

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that people realise that they're entering into a safe space and stuff.

Speaker: 01:13:11

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:13:11

And, um, so yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker: 01:13:17

But, I mean, I've largely been away from Australia a long time and the

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last two years I haven't been out

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that much.

Speaker: 01:13:24

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:13:25

Okay, now just to finish off, Ciaron, and you'll be very generous with your

Speaker: 01:13:28

time, but we're home straight, last bit.

Speaker: 01:13:31

Just in terms of, um, Today's big problems, so, I'll give you a

Speaker: 01:13:38

couple, and I'm interested in how you would rank them, in terms of what

Speaker: 01:13:42

you see as the most important, so.

Speaker: 01:13:44

One would be, sort of, Murdoch and media manipulation of the agenda and truth.

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So, media and information and monopoly control.

Speaker: 01:13:57

Second one might be just the U.

Speaker: 01:13:58

Empire and its control of so many aspects of the world.

Speaker: 01:14:03

Uh, third might be inequality in terms of worldwide inequality.

Speaker: 01:14:09

Climate change, or any other, you know, topic that you might think,

Speaker: 01:14:13

when you think about what the big problems are in the world.

Speaker: 01:14:17

What, what do you see as the prime?

Speaker: 01:14:20

Yeah, I think, I'm trying to remember them all now, but, and obviously

Speaker: 01:14:25

there's been a big change that I haven't been that sensitive to about,

Speaker: 01:14:28

you know, the internet and media.

Speaker: 01:14:31

Um, like I remember in the eighties, a few of us troop down to this migrant resource

Speaker: 01:14:36

center to watch a film about El Salvador.

Speaker: 01:14:38

We'd never heard of El Salvador before really?

Speaker: 01:14:41

And it was this brutal film.

Speaker: 01:14:42

And then we marched off to the pub, you know, about a dozen of us and

Speaker: 01:14:47

like, what are we gonna do about this?

Speaker: 01:14:48

And now we're kind of probably getting more information, but

Speaker: 01:14:51

we receive it totally isolated.

Speaker: 01:14:52

on the internet, on a laptop or a phone, and, you know, back then, you'd watch this

Speaker: 01:14:57

film, you'd turn to the person next to you and go, fuck, that's bad, isn't it?

Speaker: 01:14:59

What are we going to do?

Speaker: 01:15:00

Whereas now you turn, fuck, that's bad, and there's no one there.

Speaker: 01:15:03

And I've really, I've always enjoyed soapbox speaking.

Speaker: 01:15:06

I did a lot of that in Hyde Park, I used to do that in Brisbane.

Speaker: 01:15:09

And, um, where people can interject and you want people to interject

Speaker: 01:15:13

because that gives you time to rest.

Speaker: 01:15:16

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:15:16

And you want debate.

Speaker: 01:15:17

As soon as you get debate, the crowd builds and stuff.

Speaker: 01:15:19

And then things happen in that environment that don't happen in a lecture theatre.

Speaker: 01:15:23

People aren't as passive.

Speaker: 01:15:25

And I remember being in Hyde Park and one guy said, I was in Iraq,

Speaker: 01:15:28

now a total stranger on the other side of the crowd was in Iraq too.

Speaker: 01:15:32

So they peeled off and probably had a really high quality conversation, you

Speaker: 01:15:35

know, so it's not all about the speaker.

Speaker: 01:15:38

And I just think it's such a shame, like, my father used to go to St.

Speaker: 01:15:41

Henry Park there in the 1950s and stuff, and uh, that went through the 1960s, but

Speaker: 01:15:46

the lack of that speaker's corner thing.

Speaker: 01:15:48

Mm hmm.

Speaker: 01:15:49

And...

Speaker: 01:15:52

Yeah, I'm not sure, like this German woman West End recently told me that,

Speaker: 01:15:56

I don't know if it's a German saying, she said, yeah, 10 percent wolves, 10

Speaker: 01:16:00

percent shepherds and 80 percent sheep.

Speaker: 01:16:04

I'm not sure that's accurate, but um, yeah, the media is

Speaker: 01:16:09

so centralised, isn't it?

Speaker: 01:16:10

And um...

Speaker: 01:16:11

Our mutual friend Mario has been banging on about Murdoch's for decades

Speaker: 01:16:16

now.

Speaker: 01:16:16

Yes, yes.

Speaker: 01:16:17

Um, yeah.

Speaker: 01:16:18

Hey Mario.

Speaker: 01:16:19

Like, he's a lot more moderate than I am politically, you know, so we have the same

Speaker: 01:16:24

argument every week for the last 10 years.

Speaker: 01:16:25

And then environmentally it looks, it kind of looks like it's too late

Speaker: 01:16:31

really, but um, it's good that people are pushing back and, but I think in

Speaker: 01:16:39

the last period too, you've got a layer of management which is NGOs, you know,

Speaker: 01:16:45

and they're occupying a space that the Used to occupy, and the left has

Speaker: 01:16:52

collapsed since, probably since the collapse of the Soviet Union, actually.

Speaker: 01:16:55

Yep.

Speaker: 01:16:55

And, um, so...

Speaker: 01:17:00

And then, say, the Catholic Worker's always interacted with the left, and the

Speaker: 01:17:04

1930s it was the working class left, so it was trade unions, the IWW, the 60s it

Speaker: 01:17:09

was an anti imperialist left for Vietnam.

Speaker: 01:17:11

Yep.

Speaker: 01:17:11

Now it's like...

Speaker: 01:17:12

Now

Speaker: 01:17:13

who is it?

Speaker: 01:17:14

Is there anyone...

Speaker: 01:17:14

It's the

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identity politics crowd claiming to be the left, and they're like, you

Speaker: 01:17:18

know, in the 70s our critics used to...

Speaker: 01:17:22

Joke about us saying, you know, land rights for gay whales, you know, and

Speaker: 01:17:25

it's, it's pretty close to that now, you know, so, and that's, that ideology

Speaker: 01:17:30

just comes off the elite campuses in the United States and you see

Speaker: 01:17:34

Australian young people adopt it just like the right wing adopt Trumpism or

Speaker: 01:17:40

whatever, you know, so, you know, even.

Speaker: 01:17:44

You know, how are we just a suburb of the USA, or is there any identity here

Speaker: 01:17:51

that comes out of reflecting on our history, or is it just straight off TV, or

Speaker: 01:17:56

Disney World, or something?

Speaker: 01:17:57

Yeah, so basically the left has disappeared, so the Catholic worker

Speaker: 01:18:01

movement has no left to liaise

Speaker: 01:18:05

with.

Speaker: 01:18:05

No, no, we've got our own problems as a movement, and um, you

Speaker: 01:18:10

know, if we stop doing our own thinking, all we do is tail end.

Speaker: 01:18:14

The latest liberal bash left trend, you know, and, uh, we've lost a

Speaker: 01:18:20

lot of our best intellectuals, you know, the Berrigans and Dorothy Day

Speaker: 01:18:23

and stuff, and, um, so I think the good thing about Peter Morin who

Speaker: 01:18:28

founded our movement was reflection, clarification of thought, keeping to

Speaker: 01:18:32

clarifying, you know, what environment are we in, why do we do what we do.

Speaker: 01:18:37

Yep.

Speaker: 01:18:38

And just to keep revisiting that, and there's, you know, in our culture

Speaker: 01:18:42

there's a lot of stimulation but very little reflection going on.

Speaker: 01:18:46

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:18:46

Very little, you know, we're taught, uh, either explicitly or implicitly

Speaker: 01:18:53

that you shouldn't talk about, you know, news or politics or sex or

Speaker: 01:18:58

religion at the, at the dinner party.

Speaker: 01:19:00

And self censoring, that way.

Speaker: 01:19:02

Yeah.

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And I...

Speaker: 01:19:03

You know, with my podcast, I actually normally start an intro saying this

Speaker: 01:19:07

is a politic, uh, a podcast about news and politics and sex and religion,

Speaker: 01:19:11

all the things you're not supposed to talk about at a dinner party.

Speaker: 01:19:14

When I attend barbecues or dinner parties or whatever and start raising

Speaker: 01:19:18

topics, I find people love it.

Speaker: 01:19:20

Oh, they like it?

Speaker: 01:19:21

Oh yeah, and they get into it and they, if they, you know, disagree,

Speaker: 01:19:27

but they enjoy the whole thing.

Speaker: 01:19:29

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:19:29

And I think people have become...

Speaker: 01:19:31

unskilled at analyzing and thinking about society and what's good and

Speaker: 01:19:38

bad and what we should be doing.

Speaker: 01:19:40

I think, I think we've lost the capacity to, to talk meaningfully about things.

Speaker: 01:19:47

And I'll get into discussions with people and I'll think, boy, I'm like an

Speaker: 01:19:51

A grade tennis player with a beginner here, you have not learnt some really

Speaker: 01:19:55

fundamental things about concepts, ideas, debates, exchanging ideas.

Speaker: 01:20:01

You think you do, but you haven't left first base yet.

Speaker: 01:20:05

So yeah, I think that's a problem.

Speaker: 01:20:07

So anyway, a little podcast like this, with 500 people listening or

Speaker: 01:20:11

whatever, uh, my little contribution to that, so there you go.

Speaker: 01:20:16

Well, Ciaron.

Speaker: 01:20:17

Uh, marvellous conversation, really enjoyed it, and um, at some stage if

Speaker: 01:20:22

anything happens and you want to announce something, um, uh, let us know and we'll

Speaker: 01:20:27

advertise it.

Speaker: 01:20:27

I'll take your email address and I'll flick you a few things, like

Speaker: 01:20:31

the interview from Jarl in Texas and stuff like that, and this

Speaker: 01:20:35

Peter Lumsden guy.

Speaker: 01:20:36

Great.

Speaker: 01:20:37

Alright, terrific.

Speaker: 01:20:38

Thanks Ciaron.

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