B61 Bombs in Europe

October 23, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Democracy Now! Interviews Nukewatch

By John LaForge

Democracy Now! put Nukewatch on the air for the first time on August 10, tying together protest stories from the Netherlands and Germany, with host Amy Goodman announcing: “Ten peace activists were arrested on the runway of [a Dutch] air base in the Netherlands, where 15 U.S. nuclear bombs are stockpiled for NATO’s so-called ‘nuclear sharing’ program. The action came on the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ll speak with John LaForge, co-director of Nukewatch, who just served a 50-day sentence in Germany for protesting U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at an air base there.” In a prompt for the report, LaForge said, “We take the Pentagon’s threatened use of nuclear weapons, known as ‘deterrence,’ very seriously, because, under law, this ongoing, credible, and well-rehearsed readiness to attack people with hydrogen bombs is an international criminal conspiracy to commit massacres using radiation and firestorms.”

Goodman interviewed Susan Crane, the Plowshares activist and Catholic Worker from California, and then asked LaForge to explain the protests.

He said in part, “We argued in trial that the stationing or the transfer of U.S. nuclear weapons to Germany is an unlawful act, a violation of Articles I and II of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. … We argued the case that nuclear weapons, their components and their delivery systems, in Germany and everywhere, are principally just instruments of international criminal activity, repudiated and prohibited, by international law, including and especially the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg judgment and the Nuremberg principles.”

— Democracy Now! online at: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/10/nuclear_protests_netherlands

October 20, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

NATO’s Steadfast Noon, is Ready-Made Doom

A U.S. B61 free-fall gravity bomb inside a bunker alongside a German Tornado fighter jet on Büchel Air Force Base, Germany.

By John La Forge, October 20, 2023

On October 16, during the NATO-supplied, nuclear-armed hot war in Ukraine, the alliance began its annual nuclear attack rehearsal dubbed “Steadfast Noon.” This practice involves air forces from 13 countries, the “exercising” of fighter jets and U.S. B-52s, lasts until October 26, and will be roaring over Italy, Croatia and the eastern Mediterranean — not far from two aircraft carrier battle groups charging toward the war over the Gaza Strip prison break.

A hundred people joined an October 14 protest outside Germany’s Nörvenich Air Base calling for cancellation of the rehearsal, to no avail.

NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg naturally said, “Our exercise will help to ensure the credibility, effectiveness and security of our nuclear deterrent.” This is shrewd, silk tie talk about threatening nuclear attacks, threats barely distinguishable from Russia’s verbal warnings. Mr. Stoltenberg dared to add, “[T]he fundamental purpose of NATO’s nuclear capability is to preserve peace, prevent coercion and deter aggression.”

Aware that this fundamental purpose was disproved and vaporized by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO practices nuclear attacks. Steadfast Noon is a role-play for pilots, a dry run to test classroom preparations made at the German branch of the U.S. Air Force Nuclear College on Ramstein Air Base. According to the AFNC website, the school “is responsible for delivering, sustaining and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters … every day.” Some such air-delivered nuclear weapons are the U.S. “B61” free-fall gravity bombs stationed in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey.

One Nuclear College course named “Theater Nuclear Operation” was described this way (before the page was taken down): “[A] 4.5-day course that provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners for joint operations and targeting.” Another class is said to provide: “proficiency in importing and creating target models, developing attack plans using conventional or nuclear weapons, performing consequence assessment to WMD scenarios.”

If you imagined that nuclear war is unthinkable, this school says its fighter jet pilot students, “will be able to import, edit, and modify target sites”; “calculate probabilistic attacks against predefined targets; [and] “develop attack plans using either conventional or nuclear weapons.”

These B61s are just the U.S. nukes closest to Moscow. Add to these the French, British and U.S. thermonuclear weapons on submarines, long-range missiles, and bombers (totals are approximately 5244 U.S., 225 British, and 290 French).

At the protest in Nörvenich, Ludo De Brabander, from the Belgian peace group Peace Now, spoke of the 10 to 20 B61s stationed at Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium. “These bombs will soon be replaced by new B61-12 nuclear bombs,” he said. “Because of their ‘precision’ and ‘low yield,’ these nuclear weapons are considered ‘operational,’ lowering the threshold for nuclear war. All of this is happening without any official explanation or public debate.”

The concept of suicidal ideation applies to steadfast planning or the actual launch of nuclear weapons attacks. Daniel Ellsberg, in Things That Can and Cannot Be Said (Haymarket Books 2016), said, “[O]our private, top-secret estimates were that we would kill every European, a hundred million Europeans, without a single U.S. or Soviet warhead landing on West Europe. Just from the fallout of the attacks we were planning on Russia and East Europe. One hundred million.”

So Steadfast Noon is not just code language, or public relations. The event is a large-scale, psychological operation intended to teach us to pretend that nuclear attacks can do good. Of course if nuclear firestorms could save lives and end war — as U.S. mythology says of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki — then the Pentagon would have used them on Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. People love to be fooled.

— This was first published at CounterPunch: https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/20/natos-steadfast-noon-is-ready-made-doom/

October 11, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

IN EUROPE: Calling Out the Courts for Ignoring and Protecting Nuclear Threats

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Photo by JL

By John LaForge

HAMBURG, Germany — Between Sept. 22 and 25, the German campaign “Büchel is Everywhere! Nuclear Weapons-Free Now” conducted a pair of rallies and a bicycle protest ride between Karlsruhe, Germany and Strasbourg, France to draw attention to unresolved court cases about anti-nuclear weapons protests and to the threat of nuclear attacks alarmingly highlighted by the NATO-supplied war in Ukraine.

In Germany, 20 nuclear weapons abolitionists have appealed trespass convictions resulting from their protest actions at Büchel Air Force Base, which holds 15-to-20 U.S. nuclear weapons. The country’s highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, has dismissed all 20 of them without comment, simply affirming lower court decisions. From these 20 cases, six activists have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The ECHR considers cases in which defendants have exhausted legal recourse in their EU country but believe trial courts erred or violated rights and freedoms established in the European Convention on Human Rights.

In his 1985 study Humanizing Hell! The Law V. Nuclear Weapons (Hamish Hamilton, London), George Delf presents the legal case against the threatened use of nuclear weapons. In chapter five “The Judge’s Tale,” Delf explains the role of judges and court systems in protecting nuclear weapons establishments by ignoring international legal prohibitions that forbid mass destruction and even the planning of it.

Speaking at rallies outside the high court in Karlsruhe September 22, and again at the gates of the ECHR in Strasbourg September 25, I presented Delf’s critique in abridged form:

Judges here and in the U.S. are afraid of international law. In Germany, the U.S., and elsewhere, when judges have been given the opportunity to enforce laws intended to restrict military violence, they have mostly turned a blind eye to the law, and a deaf ear to those of us who sought its support. Germany’s Constitutional Court has now done so 20 times. So far, the ECHR has ignored six applications alleging that Germany’s judges unlawfully ignored treaties that forbid the nuclear attack planning going on at Büchel.

Our nonviolent actions at Büchel Air Force Base all attempted to interfere with its planning and preparing for indiscriminate mass destruction using U.S. nuclear weapons. Nuremberg law holds that individuals who participate in planning a war “in violation of international treaties” are committing a war crime. The top prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crime trial, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, said, “A basic provision of the [Nuremberg] Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate, or wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so, is a crime.”

Because the nuclear bombs at Büchel can only produce poisoned attacks outlawed by the Hague Conventions of 1907, and because they are known in advance to cause indiscriminate destruction of civilians, massacres, the base is a crime scene and our interventions there are acts of crime prevention.

At trial, it would be reasonable to expect that our reliance on international law would attract the keen interest of judges who are paid handsome salaries to enforce the law.

This has hardly ever happened. Instead, we’ve been met with a mixture of silence and evasion. Over and over again the judges have refused to confront the most important issue ever to face any civilization — its survival or annihilation.

With rare exceptions, judges in Germany, the U.S., France, and Russia — the same four states that enforced the Nuremberg Judgment — all work silently to evade and avoid Nuremberg’s plain logic.

In trial after trial, when the judges have heard us explain the Nuremberg crimes underway at Büchel [and at nuclear weapons installations elsewhere], they have often silently and passively ignored our defense. Or they have actively played their part in the Kabuki dance theater that says international law is not relevant in lower courts, and that testimony on the question from experts in treaty law is unnecessary. Instead of facing the most serious existential threat endangering the world, judges have made much of obeying trespass statutes. These judges have a lot to answer for, since the very essence of the Nuremberg Charter and Judgment is that individuals have international duties that go before any national obligations of obedience imposed by the State.

We have engaged in civil resistance, and we’ve endured trial and imprisonment in avoid collaboration with our governments’ nuclear weapons attack preparations, and to interfere with ongoing criminal acts. People of good will understand that this resistance is a public expression of withdrawing our consent from the government’s most self-destructive wrongdoing.

Our resistance can also raise the consciousness of the larger community and dramatize the seriousness and urgency of the issue. With a globalized war being waged in Ukraine and increasing the threat of nuclear weapons attacks, the issue could not be more urgent.

Our resistance, and the lawful defense of our actions at trial and on appeal give the courts, the public prosecutors, educators, and the media an opportunity to address the gravest of all issues. Sometimes our defiance creates a crisis of conscience among observers who then face a choice of whether or not to collaborate, to stay silent, or to do something for nuclear disarmament.

Nuclear weapons threaten to destroy civilization and much of biological life on earth. Yet a former U.S. administration had the gall to urge countries to withdraw their ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Ray Acheson, director of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom disarmament program, and a key advocate in the establishment of the TPNW, said of the absurd demand which had never before made by any head of state: “It’s incredible that a nuclear-armed state is demanding other countries withdraw from a treaty banning nuclear weapons.” Acheson added, “When a ‘military power’ is this afraid of international law, you know you’ve done it right.” ###

August 15, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

International activists blockade NATO nuclear base in Germany

May be an image of 6 people and text that says 'BAN THE BOMBS CCLIMATE TE COMMUNIT ABOLISH SH NATO ABSCHAFFEN! ABOLI NATO PEACE B61NKES NUKES SARM ARM ILLEGA IMMORAL CK AND THE SAVE THE THENUKES P PLAN OUT THEDO'

L to R: Frits Ter Kuile, Mark Colville, Dennis DuVall, Susan Crane, Brian Terrell. Photo by Theo Kayser

On Monday 14 August, eleven activists (two from the Netherlands, three from Germany, one from Italy, five from the U.S.) blocked an entrance to Büchel Air Force Base in Germany being is used for construction work underway in preparation for the arrival of new U.S. B61-12 hydrogen bombs, and new U.S. F-35 jet fighters which are set to replace the base’s German Tornado fighter jets.

U.S. Air Force veteran Dennis Duvall, 81, wrote in paint on the driveway “Tatort” (crime scene) and “Atombomben” (atom bombs), reminding German speakers that nuclear “deterrence” is a conspiracy to commit war crimes under the Germany’s Basic Law (its constitution) and international treaty law.

The group also pasted Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons to the access road. Articles I and II of the treaty forbid any transfer of nuclear weapons to other countries.

Local police detained the eleven briefly, and recorded their personal identification. After about two hours, the police gave the activists a one-day “ban-&-bar letter” prior to their release.

The five U.S. citizens who were detained are a part of a delegation of ten anti-nuclear activists who earlier protested the stationing of U.S. nuclear weapons at Volkel Air Force Base in The Netherlands.

Acknowledging the anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the group conducted similar protests at the NATO base Volkel in the Netherlands which also hosts U.S. nuclear weapons. The abolitionists blocked the base’s main gate August 7, blocked the run way August 9, and attempted to dig a tunnel under the base’s fence August 10. Twenty-six arrests were made during series the actions at Volkel, and four U.S. citizens were ordered not to visit the European Union for one year.

The group is calling on German society to abolish nuclear weapons and reduce the CO₂ emissions by the armed forces to zero, saying “We have to learn to solve our conflicts in such a way that other people and fellow creatures, large and small, plant and animal, do not suffer.”

The following blocked the construction gate at Büchel: Susan Crane, Brian Terrell, Ellen Grady, Dennis Duvall, and Mark Colville, all from the United States; Judith Samson, Christiane Danowski, and Beate Körsgen, from Germany; Salvatore Vaccaro from Italy; and Sjaak Tensen and Frits ter Kuile from The Netherlands.

— Videotaped statements from some activists here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLetmOQd9kKvCOF5uqkDQxi1z_UrMK148b

— Additional background information at: https://noelhuis.nl/peace-camp-volkel-2023/

August 3, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Wake up Justice! Protest in front of the Federal Constitutional Court

Germany̓s nationwide campaign Büchel is everywhere!Nuclear Weapons-Free Now! — of the parent network Abolish Nuclear Weapons – Start with Us! — invites you to a protest action during the International Week for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

Protest action on Friday, September 22, 2023, in Karlsruhe.

A “Justitia” performance rally is planned in front of the Constitutional Court and in the city center.

Time: Noon to 2:30 p.m.: rally in front of the Federal Constitutional Court and from there walk at 3 p.m. to Stephansplatz, among other places, for flyer distribution until 4 p.m.

Climate-neutral: After the rally, a part of the protesters will ride about 100 km in a bicycle delegation over the weekend to Strasbourg, France. On Monday, September 25, the cyclers will join a rally there at the European Court of Human Rights.

Background:
NATO̓s “nuclear sharing” is practiced at the ari base Büchel. German pilots train to fly and drop U.S. nuclear bombs onto target areas in an “emergency”. NATO operational doctrine also includes a possible first use!

For 30 years, the peace movement has been organizing diverse protests at the gates of the Büchel base. It demands that the approx. 20 U.S. nuclear bombs be withdrawn and that our government accede to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We demand a Europe without nuclear sharing and the observance of international law!

Because of the catastrophic dangers that any use of nuclear weapons entail, and the criminality of nuclear deterrence, peace activists have repeatedly been compelled to resort to civil resistance. There were blockades and also go-in actions. The latter have been prosecuted and the people charged have been convicted and sentenced. Nineteen people have filed Constitutional Court complaints (appeals) over the last 26 years, directly related to civil resistance to the U.S. nuclear weapons at “Fliegerhorst Büchel” in the Eifel. None of the 19 complaints have been accepted for review by the Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest.

All defendants complain that they were denied their “right to a fair trial” under Article 6 of charter of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) because the hearing of exculpatory witnesses was refused by the courts. They were thus denied their “right to a fair hearing” under Article 103 of Germany’s Basic Law. International law stands above national law. Therefore, the designated (international law) experts should have been admitted as witnesses in the court proceedings.

Germany’s Constitutional Court has so far shirked its responsibility to deal with the concerns of the peace movement‘s appeals, without presenting any reasons. Lower court written decisions were merely upheld.

(For 1.5 years we have been waiting for a reply to the first application! In addition, on March 15, 2010, a civil lawsuit for the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Germany by a resident who lives in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear weapons site was rejected.) This is despite the fact that under Articles I and II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Germany is obliged, among other things, not to accept the transfer opf nuclear weapons either directly or indirectly. The unlawful transfer of U.S. nuclear weapons practiced by our government threatens our right to life and physical integrity (See Art. 2 and 3, ECHR). That is why currently four (soon six) nuclear resisters who were rejected by the Constitutional Court have filed complaints with the ECHR.

With our protest we demand a review of the nuclear weapons deployment by the Supreme Courts!

Please register:
for Karlsruhe, also for overnight stays, and separately for the “Peace bike tour nuclear weapons free 2023” and/or the “Protest in Strasbourg”.

Contact:
Do you have questions about the action? Then write an email to our campaign spokesperson Marion Küpker: aktionen@atomwaffenfrei.jetzt.

Do you have questions about the campaign? Then send us an email to: info@atomwaffenfrei.jetzt.

 www.atomwaffenfrei.de
 www.buechel-atombombenfrei.de
 www.facebook.com/atomwaffenfrei.jetzt
 @atomwaffenfrei

We ask you: Support us with a donation!

By direct bank transfer:
Special account at Förderverein Frieden e.V.
DE78 4306 0967 4041 8604 04

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