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Media for US President Obama's visit
to Canberra 25-6 March 2010
Media Release 18 March 2009
Veteran Drone Making workshop
Veteran peace activist, Graeme Dunstan, will be conducting a master class in cardboard sculpting this Saturday 20 March noon to 5 pm at the Tuggernong Arts Centre.
He aims to make up a small fleet of cardboard drones with which to welcome President Obama. He plans to stage a mock drone attack when Obama comes to the Parliament Friday 26 March.
"The drones will be not the least aerodynamic," said Mr Dunstan. "Rather they will be 3D placards, artful shapes to catch the eye and bear a message."
"The workshop is free and open to anyone with an interest in making 3D objects with salvaged cardboard," said Mr Dunstan.Ê
The workshop is being sponsored by Stand Fast, the veterans association opposing the wars and wanting to support our troops and bring them home.
So in particular he is eager to encourage participation by service people and ex-service people who know that the Australian engagement in the US led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is strategic mistake and a moral wrong.
"It will be a make and talk affair," said Graeme. "Meetings and introductions over a work table. Our aim is to build a war resistance movement amongst veterans."
Graeme is a 68 year old Duntroon drop who got radicalised by the student movement to end the Vietnam war during 1965 - 71.
He feels he developed a special relationship with visiting US Presidents when he organised the Welcome LBJ Committee which stopped the motorcade when President Lyndon Baines Johnson came to Sydney in 1966. Graeme was one of the 'bastards' NSW Premier urged LBJ to run over.
Graeme graduated from the UNSW with an honours degree in Industrial Engineering and protest organising skills. He subsequently was a principle organiser of the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival and had an illustrious career in festival organising community arts and community cultural development.
Now an age pensioner nomad, these days Graeme's engineering skills are used to sculpt cardboard and make protest art.
Further Information
www.peacebus.com
Graeme Dunstan 0407 951 688
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Media Release 12 March 2010
Drone attack to welcome Obama to Canberra
When US President Barack Obama comes to Canberra to address the Parliament on 23 March, he will be met by drones: Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary.
An anti war veterans group is making cardboard replicas of the MQ-1 Predator drone to greet him. The MQ-1 is the drone type that is being used by the CIA and USAF in Pakistan and Afghanistan to such terrible effect.
With these the veterans plan to launch a drone attack on the President's motorcade when it goes to the Parliament.
"Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, President Obama is a war criminal and he deserves a war criminal's welcome," said Graeme Dunstan, cardboard artist, long time peace activist and an organiser for Stand Fast, the veterans' group opposing the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Last September when Obama signed off on a CIA drone attack in the Swat Valley, Pakistan, the richest, most industrialised nation with the most sophisticated armaments on earth undertook live testing of new weaponry in an unprovoked attack, in an covert and illegal war, on live targets; defenseless civilians of one the most poorest nations on the earth.
Great terror was unleashed, untold innocents were killed and maimed and 2 million refugees were displaced. In the history of infamous acts, the Swat Valley drone attack rates with the Nazi Condor legion bombing on Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 as an appalling war crime and as an event of terrible forboding.
"We veterans will be gathering to remind President Obama and Australians generally of Obama's war mongering shame," Dunstan said. "In electioneering for office he offered hope. But in office he has set about killing hope. And all across the US Empire."
"Stand Fast veterans are concerned generally at the escalation of war and military spending during the Obama administration so far," said Stand Fast spokesman Hamish Chitts.
"More particularly, we want Obama to know that Australian veterans want Australian service people out of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the sooner the better.
"These wars of Empire were born of lies; they are illegal, unwinnable, unpopular in the US and abroad and they bring home bitter fruit," he said.
Opposition to Obama's wars is now coming from unlikely sources: to wit, Lt Col Oliver North who said in the March issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine. "We can only pray that this commander in chief isn't committing 100,000 young Americans to a mission impossible in the shadows of the Hindu Kush."
A Ôbring your own droneÕ event. To help build the fleet of welcoming drones, Mr Dunstan will be conducting a cardboard sculpting workshop in Canberra in the lead up to the Obama visit. Volunteers welcome. Please call 0407 951 688
Further information
Stand Fast www.stand-fast.webs.com/
Hamish Chitts (spokesperson Stand Fast) 0401 586 923
Graeme Dunstan 0407 951 688
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