Nukewatch – Page 69

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Weapons Profiteers are the Winners

By John LaForge

The only winners in the war in Ukraine are weapons manufacturers. This is according to William Hartung and Julia Gledhill for the Quincy Institute in April, Paula Reisdorf writing for CorpWatch in May, Shlomo Ben-Ami for Project Syndicate in September, and Jeremy Scahill for the Intercept in December. The numbers prove it.

Between February and April this year, Hartung and Gledhill note, the US committed to giving approximately $2.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine, bringing the Biden administration spending to more than $3.2 billion and rising, according to Pentagon reports (“How Pentagon Contractors Are Cashing in on the Ukraine Crisis”).

“Weapons companies were already receiving a massive amount of money from the US government before the war in Ukraine began — some $768 billion in 2021. In [May], the US Congress approved a $40 billion spending package for the Ukraine war, with a big chunk going to arms companies,” Reisdorf wrote (“Weapons Makers Profit Handsomely off Ukraine War”). That chunk amounted to $10 billion, with the lion’s share going to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, according to Scahill’s piece, “The War Caucus Always Wins.”

BAE Corp. makes the M-777 howitzer. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon make Javelin anti-tank missiles; Raytheon makes Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Northrop Grumman produces the RQ-4 Global Hawk aircraft which is making surveillance flights over Ukraine.

Scahill reports that some of the latest contracts include: $1.2 billion to Raytheon to produce six National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems in support of the efforts in Ukraine; $431 million for Lockheed to produce M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers to replenish those sent to Kyiv; and a separate $521 million for Lockheed to replace Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems going to Ukraine.

Reisdorf reports that by May Northrop Grumman’s stocks were up by about 16 percent, and shares of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies had increased by 28 and 20 percent respectively by March.

The Wall St. Journal updated the profiteering news November 24, noting that Lockheed shares are up 36 percent since the start of the year, General Dynamics’ are up 22 percent, and Raytheon jumped 12 percent.

Kristen Bayes, a spokesperson for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade in London told Sky News the transfer of weapons to Ukraine is “not problem-free,” and warned, “You might think you’re handing over weapons to people you know and like, but then they get sold on to people you don’t.” Even US Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin, has “acknowledged that some weapons given to Ukraine have also been ending up in the hands of Russians,” Bayes said.

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch 3 Comments

United States to Hurry Transfer of New Nuclear Bombs to Europe

By John LaForge

The United States has sped up the delivery to European NATO bases of its new thermonuclear bomb called the B61-12, Politico reports.

Citing “a US diplomatic cable and two people familiar with the issue,” the outlet reports that the 50-kiloton B61-12 will be flown to six NATO bases in five NATO states in December 2022, rather than the planned springtime delivery.

The individual sources familiar with the upcoming shipment to Europe, who asked not to be named, “confirmed the accelerated time-frame reported in the diplomatic cable,” Politico noted.

Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund, told Politico that the accelerated transfer of the newest version of the B61 — which the Air Force says is more accurate than the bombs it will replace — “could be escalatory. We’ll see.”

Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told Politico in an email that the $10 to $12 billion plan to “swap out older weapons for the upgraded B61-12” has been “underway for years” and “is in no way linked to current events in Ukraine and was not sped up in any way.”

The B61-12 gravity H-bomb will replace two earlier versions, the B61-3s and -4s, about 100 of which are stationed at NATO bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Turkey, Politico confirmed.

B61-12. Photo Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory

The giant US Air Base at Ramstein, Germany is also involved in the program. Ramstein Air Base operates the only branch of the US Air Force’s Defense Nuclear Weapons School outside the United States. The DNWS trains pilots in planning and preparing attacks with nuclear weapons. Other branches are in New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio. A part of the Air Force Nuclear College, the Ramstein-based DNWS is described on its website as being “responsible for delivering, sustaining, and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters … every day,” and, “Programs managed by the directorate include the B61-12 Life Extension Program.”

None of this nuclear attack madness need proceed any further. Oscar Arias proposed last July 19 that as a good-will gesture of de-escalation and trust-building, NATO could — instead of replacing them with more destabilizing bombs — offer to withdraw all its nuclear weapons from NATO bases in Europe in exchange for Russia’s agreeing to begin peace negotiations.

Caitlin Johnstone made the point Oct. 19 in CounterPunch, noting that, “We survived the Cuban Missile Crisis because US President John F. Kennedy secretly acquiesced (Robert Moore wrote “wisely agreed”) to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s demand that the US remove the Jupiter missiles it had placed in Turkey and Italy, which was what provoked Moscow to move nukes to Cuba in the first place.”

— Sources: German-Foreign-Policy, Oct. 31; Defense Post, Oct. 27; Politico, Oct. 26; and Robert Moore, CounterPunch, Oct. 18, 2022

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Why Not Just Pay the Fine for Resisting the B61s?

By John LaForge

My refusal to pay fines imposed for resisting nuclear weapons at Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base raises a lot of questions, principally: Why not avoid prison and just pay?

One reason is because my protest was not wrong or a mistake in any sense, whereas paying the court-imposed penalty implies I’m guilty of some sort of offense or misconduct. Further, paying the fine has the appearance of an apology or remorse on my part when none is warranted. Any nonviolent action against preparations to commit mass destruction with nuclear weapons is honorable. An upsurge of such actions would be in the public interest. Further, my so-called “trespass” was an attempt at crime prevention, or interference with ongoing government criminality, and as such was a civic duty.

A recent test of the new US B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb. Photo by US Air Force.

Refusing to pay fines for nonviolent resistance to nuclear war preparations is, from my position of privilege, also an act of solidarity with the poor, the undocumented, and the outcasts who often don’t have resources or connections enough to purchase their way out of pre-trial detention or incarceration for minor offenses.

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law. The ongoing threat to attack people with nuclear weapons (known as “deterrence”) is prohibited by international law. My go-in actions at Büchel were based on international legal obligations, which in the words of the Nuremberg Principles “bind every citizen just as does ordinary municipal law.” Plans for massacres inherent in nuclear sharing and deterrence policy are prohibited and have been criminalized by the combined obligations — considered as a whole — set out in the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, Principles, and Judgment, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and the US and German federal constitutions.

The NPT in particular explicitly prohibits any transfer whatsoever of nuclear weapons from one state to another. I hope never to pay respect to governments that declare treaties are the “supreme law” but then proceed to wantonly violate them.

It can never be a crime to interfere with the deployment, rehearsals for use, or the threatened use of nuclear weapons, or to resist our governments’ joint plans to commit indiscriminate, uncontrollable mass destruction using firestorms and radiation. No criminal conspiracy of any kind anywhere compares to the level of deliberate public lawbreaking inherent in nuclear weapons threats. Rather than a trespass, my peaceful interference with nuclear attack machinery is justifiable, preventative, precautionary, and lawful.

Court systems in Germany and the US have labored to dismiss this lawful defense of necessity and to ignore their own constitutional command to abide by international treaties. Instead, when courts in both countries have been confronted with the treaty obligations outlined above, they have routinely denied their applicability in protest cases involving nuclear weapons. Courts in Germany have gone so far as to say that because Germany and the US have agreed to “nuclear sharing” the practice is therefore legitimate.

I have presented to the courts in Cochem, Koblenz, and Karlsruhe the facts about nuclear weapons, their effects, the government’s preparations for using them against civilians, and the treaties that forbid all such planning for massacres. By ignoring or denying these facts, the judges are guilty of pretending the criminality of deterrence is lawful, and they are complicit in the self-destructive maintenance of prohibited and suicidal nuclear threats. It is naïve or mentally unbalanced to act as if this charade is not homicidal and suicidal, and to ignore the criminal intent of the governments of Germany and the United States regarding nuclear sharing. I hope to be able to stand up to the courts’ coercion and intimidation, and to refuse to cooperate with such a government that is also the nuclear weapon’s government.

— This statement is in the Winter Nukewatch Quarterly, and ran Dec. 16 2022 at CounterPunch.org.

If you write to John at the prison, remember mail takes two weeks to reach Germany. After January 10 check nukewatchinfo.org or Nukeresister.org for other mail restrictions.
JVA Glasmoor
Am Glasmoor 99
22852 Norderstedt
Germany

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Co-Director to Report to Prison in Germany

Nukewatch staffer and Quarterly co-editor John LaForge has been sentenced to a 50-day jail term in Germany, for refusing to pay fines resulting from trespass convictions for several “go-in” nuclear weapons protests involving uninvited entry into Germany’s Büchel Air Base, where up to 20 US hydrogen bombs are stationed. The sentence will begin January 10 at the Billwerder prison in Hamburg.

LaForge appealed the convictions all the way to the Constitutional Court, which has yet to issue a decision. The appeal complains that expert witnesses — who were prepared to validate LaForge’s defense of “crime prevention” — were not allowed to testify. That decision, LaForge argues, effectively eliminated his right to present a defense.

The trial court in Cochem fined LaForge 1,500 Euros, which the appeal court in Koblenz later reduced to 600 Euros. In the US court system, refusal to pay the court-ordered fines is often ruled to be “contempt of court,” which can be considered a separate offense. Over four decades, LaForge has been jailed in the United States many times in anti-nuclear and anti-war actions.

Billwerder prison houses up to 734 adult male prisoners with relatively short sentences or held on pre-trial detention. It also holds up to 96 female adults or juveniles. Over a dozen German anti-nuclear resisters and one Dutch citizen have been jailed recently for nonviolent actions taken at the controversial NATO “nuclear sharing” base.

John LaForge entering Billwerder prison in Germany on January 10, 2023 (Photo by Marion Küpker)

If you write to John, remember mail takes two weeks to reach Germany.

John LaForge
JVA Glasmoor
Am Glasmoor 99
22852 Norderstedt
Germany

Before entering prison he was joined by other activists that have endured jail time for their anti-nuclear protests in a zoom meeting. Watch it here: John’s Jail Send-Off Zoom Meeting
Nukewatch Talks – an Exclusive

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Who Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize in Ukraine?

By Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold

In what was described as a harsh rebuke of Russia, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, along with Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski and the Russian human rights organization Memorial. While at first glance, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties might sound like a group that is well-deserving of this honor, Ukrainian peace leader Yurii Sheliazhenko wrote a stinging critique.

Sheliazhenko, who heads up the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and is a board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, accused the Center for Civil Liberties of embracing the agendas of such problematic international donors as the US Department of State and the National Endowment for Democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy supports NATO membership for Ukraine; insists that no negotiations with Russia are possible and shames those who seek compromise; wants the West to impose a dangerous no-fly zone; says that only Putin violates human rights in Ukraine; never criticizes the Ukrainian government for suppressing pro-Russian media, parties, and public figures; never criticizes the Ukrainian army for war crimes and human rights violations; and refuses to stand up for the human right, recognized under international law, to conscientious objection to military service.

Supporting conscientious objectors is the role of Sheliazhenko and his organization, the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement. While we hear a lot about Russian war resisters, as Sheliazhenko points out, even inside Ukraine, which is portrayed in Western media as a country entirely united in its war with Russia, there are men who don’t want to fight.

The Ukrainian Pacifist Movement was founded in 2019 when fighting in the separatist-ruled Donbas region was at a peak and Ukraine was forcing its citizens to participate in the civil war. According to Sheliazhenko, Ukrainian men were “being given military summonses off of the streets, out of night clubs and dormitories, or snatched for military service for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public drunkenness, or casual rudeness to police officers.”

To make matters worse, when Russia invaded in February 2022, Ukraine suspended its citizens’ right to conscientious objection and forbade men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country; nevertheless, since February, over 100,000 Ukrainian draft-eligible men managed to flee instead of fight. It’s estimated that several thousand more have been detained while trying to escape.

“The Knotted Gun,” by Carl Fredrik. Photo Credit: Reuters

International human rights law affirms people’s right, due to principled conviction, to refuse to participate in military conflict and conscientious objection has a long and rich history. In 1914 a group of Christians in Europe, hoping to avert the impending war, formed the International Fellowship of Reconciliation to support conscientious objectors. When the US joined WWI, social reformer and women’s rights activist Jane Addams protested. She was harshly criticized at the time but, in 1931, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Russia, hundreds of thousands of young men are refusing to fight. According to a source inside Russia’s Federal Security Service, within three days of Russia’s announcement that it was drafting 300,000 more recruits, 261,000 men fled the country. Those who could, booked flights; others drove, bicycled, or walked across the border.

Belarusians have also joined the exodus. According to estimates by Connection e.V., a European organization that supports conscientious objectors and deserters, an estimated 22,000 draft-eligible Belarusians have fled their country since the war began.

The Russian organization Kovcheg, or The Ark, helps Russians fleeing because of anti-war positions, condemnation of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, and/or persecution they are experiencing in Russia. In Belarus, the organization Nash Dom runs a “NO means NO” campaign to encourage draft-eligible Belarusians not to fight. Despite refusing to fight being a noble and courageous act for peace — the penalty in Russia for refusing the draft is up to ten years in prison and in Ukraine, it is at least up to three years, and likely much higher, with hearings and verdicts closed to the public — neither Kovcheg, Nash Dom nor the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, were announced as Nobel Peace Prize winners yesterday.

The US government nominally supports Russia’s war resisters. On September 27, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared that Russians fleeing Putin’s draft were “welcome” in the US and encouraged them to apply for asylum. But as far back as October 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine, amid tit-for-tat US-Russia tensions, Washington announced it would henceforth only issue visas to Russians through the US Embassy in Warsaw, 750 miles away from Moscow.

To put a further damper on Russian hopes of refuge in the US, on the same day as the White House held its press conference where it encouraged draft-eligible Russians to seek US asylum, the Biden administration announced that it would be continuing into fiscal year 2023 its FY2022 global refugee cap of 125,000.

You would think that those resisting this war would be able to find refuge in European countries, as Americans fleeing the Vietnam war did in Canada. Indeed, when the Ukraine war was in its early stages, European Council President Charles Michel called on Russian soldiers to desert, promising them protection under EU refugee law. But in August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked his Western allies to reject all Russian emigres. Currently, all non-visa travel from Russia to EU countries is suspended.

As Russian men fled after Putin’s draft announcement, Latvia closed its border with Russia and Finland said it was likely going to be tightening its visa policy for Russians.

Had the Nobel Peace Prize awardees been the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian organizations that are supporting war resisters and peacemakers, it would have drawn global attention to the courageous young men taking this stand and perhaps opened more avenues for them to get asylum abroad. It could have also initiated a much-needed conversation about how the US is supplying Ukraine with an endless flow of weapons but not pushing for negotiations to end a war so dangerous that President Biden is warning of “nuclear Armageddon.” It certainly would have been more in line with Alfred Nobel’s desire to bring global recognition to those who have “done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies.”

— Medea Benjamin is co-founder of CODEPINK, and author of several books including War In Ukraine (with Nicolas Davies). Ariel Gold is the national co-director of CODEPINK and manages the group’s Middle East Program.

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