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January 18, 2023 by Nukewatch 4 Comments

John’s Jail Updates – RELEASED!

John LaForge at an anti-war rally during work release 3 days before his final release from prison for nuclear weapons actions in Germany.

Nukewatch’s John LaForge was released from Glasmoor Prison in Hamburg, Germany on February 28, 2023 as planned after completing his 50-day sentence for his part in actions aimed at removing US nuclear weapons from Germany. Learn more about the campaign to remove US nuclear weapons from Germany HERE.

Read John’s letter after being released HERE.


John LaForge entering Billwerder prison in Germany on January 10, 2023 (Photo by Marion Küpker)
Read John’s first letter from jail January 15.
February 22, 2023

John was able to celebrate his birthday in prison, with a balloon and all. He shared herring with his cellmates and received many birthday wishes in the mail which were much appreciated.

February 14, 2023

John is doing well. He has 2 weeks left of incarceration. You can still send mail since it has only been taking 7-8 days to reach him from the U.S., especially since his birthday will be coming up February 22.  He is still being released on weekends making it all more tolerable.


January 30, 2023

Today the German group Nonviolent Action Abolish Nuclear Weapons sent an open letter to the German Constitutional Court (signed by 77 people) to demand the acceptance of John’s constitutional complaint to review the illegality under international law of the US nuclear bombs stationed in Germany.

Read the press release.

Read the letter of support from retired judge Bernd Hahnfeld, board member of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms


January 28, 2023

John emailed the Nukewatch office during his first full 32-hour ‘work release’ day outside the Glasmoor prison camp. He went to the Cotton Club for a wonderful Jazz concert with friends.

He wrote to make sure we were doing our work spell-checking and proofreading. He mentioned that a friend had recently come across a letter he had written February 14, 1983, from solitary confinement in Leavenworth Federal Correctional Institution! He wrote, “after 40 years of this, I don’t have anything to prove any more. It’s like my friend Jeff always says: ‘You have to start young if you’re going to stick it out.'”

John is able to make daily phone calls out within Germany, so we know he is doing well. From now on every weekend John will be allowed to leave every Friday at 3pm and has to be back in prison on Sunday afternoon. His release date is February 28 so you still have time to write him a letter at the address above.

 

January 24, 2023

At the Nukewatch office we received a poem for John from Sharon Cody a Nukewatch supporter.

I hope you like this little spoof-
A tribute to my favorite goof:
Enjoy your 50-day vacation
But keep alive your dedication
To the cause we both desire-
That Earth avoids a full-on fire
Caused by dropping bombs galore,
Thus ending life forevermore.

January 22, 2023

Hooray! John LaForge was given an unexpected 10-hour furlough today from the JVA Glasmoor Prison and was able to participate in the Nuclear Ban Treaty festivities at the Hamburg City Hall.

Out of Jail for a Day Celebrating the 2nd Anniversary of the Nuclear Ban Treaty!
Photo by Hinrich Schultze

January 21, 2023

John welcomed his first visitors in prison today, his wife Marion Küpker (also spokewoman for the campaign “Büchel is everywhere! Nuclear-weapons free now!”) and brother-in-law Gerrit Küpker, where they found him in good condition. He will sit in the prison a little over one month longer. He is happily receiving about 15 letters each day and looks forward to receiving more mail.

A voice recording of John was played at the European Regional Meeting of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (watch for a future upload of the video). In the recording he praised the passing of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons(TPNW) and condemned the international law breaking by the United States and Germany in their nuclear-sharing agreement that violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Nuremburg Principles, and the TPNW.

January 18, 2023

John already received very early mailings from Canada and the US. He is in good condition and shares a cell with two men at the new prison where he has a shower room that is always available. They also have their own refrigerator and can make their own tea and coffee throughout the day. His nickname in prison is “Greenpeace.”

January 17, 2023

Today John was moved to a halfway prison “Glasmoor.” His new address is: John LaForge, JVA Glasmoor, Am Glasmoor 99, 22852 Norderstedt, Germany. He will also receive the mail going to the former prison, but this always takes extra time.

He was able to make a phone call out today. In this new prison he finally received all his books and vitamin and mineral supplements that he took in with his personal luggage.

January 10, 2023

A vigil with 24 people accompanied John to prison today. He was also allowed to call out of the prison a few hours after entering to say he was fine and that he will be sent in a halfway prison next week, which is in northern Hamburg and much nicer: big garden and free movement in the garden until midnight…

Filed Under: Direct Action, Nuclear Weapons, On The Bright Side, US Bombs Out of Germany

January 18, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

American Activist Enters German Prison for Protesting U.S. Nuclear Weapons Based There

Right before John enters the prison (Photo by Marion Küpker)

Amidst heightened nuclear tension between NATO and Russia in Europe, U.S. peace activist John LaForge entered a German prison on January 10, 2023 to serve jail time there for protests against U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiled at Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base, 80 miles southeast of Cologne. LaForge entered JVA Billwerder in Hamburg as the first American ever imprisoned for a nuclear weapons protest in Germany.

24 people attended a vigil outside prison before John began his sentence (Photo by Marion Küpker)
The 66-year-old Minnesota native and co-director of Nukewatch, the Wisconsin-based advocacy and action group, was convicted of trespass in Cochem District Court for joining in two “go-in” actions at the German airbase in 2018. One of the actions involved entering the base and climbing atop a bunker that likely housed some of the approximately twenty U.S. B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs stationed there.
Germany’s Regional Court in Koblenz affirmed his conviction and lowered the penalty from €1,500 to €600 ($619) or 50 “daily rates”, which translates to 50 days incarceration. LaForge has refused to pay* and has appealed the convictions to Germany’s Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, the country’s highest, which has not yet ruled in the case.
John speaks outside of the prison before the start of his sentence (Photo by Marion Küpker)

In the appeal, LaForge argues that both the District Court in Cochem and the Regional Court in Koblenz erred by refusing to consider his defense of “crime prevention,” thereby violating his right to present a defense.

Before entering prison, LaForge said: “U.S. and German Air Force plans and preparations, currently ongoing, to use the nuclear weapons stationed here in Germany are a criminal conspiracy to commit massacres with radiation and firestorms. The court authorities in this case have prosecuted the wrong suspects.”

Both courts ruled against hearing from expert witnesses who had volunteered to explain the international treaties that prohibit any planning for mass destruction. In addition, the appeal argues, Germany’s stationing of the U.S. nuclear weapons is a violation of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which explicitly forbids any transfer of nuclear weapons between countries that are parties to the treaty, including both the U.S. and Germany.

Prison address

(note that it takes two weeks for mail to arrive from the U.S.)

JVA Glasmoor

Am Glasmoor 99

22852 Norderstedt

Germany

Filed Under: Direct Action, Nuclear Weapons, On The Bright Side

January 15, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Misinformed ‘Small’ Talk About Nuclear Weapons

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
By John LaForge

Gideon Rachman claimed October 31 in a Financial Times column that, “… senior US officials point out that the smallest tactical nuclear weapons might kill hundreds of people, rather than thousands — and devastate and irradiate just a few square miles.”

Rachman’s use of the phrases “might kill hundreds” and “just a few square miles” is outrageous in its callous or ignorant trivialization of what would occur inside the kill zone.

The crude “small” atomic bomb the United States used to smash and burn Hiroshima was a 15-kiloton device which incinerated over four square miles and “turned into powder and ash the flesh and bones of 140,000 men, women and children,” as historian Howard Zinn noted in The Bomb (City Lights Books 2010). In Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell reported that the bomb’s detonation resulted in “killing 100,000 people immediately, and fatally injuring at least 50,000 others.”

Today, the “smallest” US nuclear weapons are the B61 gravity bombs deployed in Europe, which have a maximum explosive force of between 50 and 170 kilotons, and as such are between 3.3 and 11.3 times more devastating than the US Hiroshima bomb. There are 2.9 million people in Kyiv, and one 170-kiloton US B61 could potentially kill 1.5 million of them and burn 40 square miles with firestorm.

The creation of firestorm or mass fire — simultaneous combustion of many fires over a large area, causing a great volume of air to heat, rise, and suck in large amounts of fresh air from the periphery at hurricane speeds — is the unique contribution that nuclear weapons make to humankind’s mechanized, poisoned warfare. In Whole World on Fire (Cornell Univ. Press 2004), Dr. Lynn Eden details how and why the US government vastly underestimates the destructiveness of nuclear weapons by failing to consider damage from firestorms. At Hiroshima, Eden recounts, “The fire covered an area of roughly 4.4 square miles and burned with great intensity for more than six hours.”

Rachman and his unnamed “senior officials” vastly understate the grotesque incendiary force of so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons. They either misunderstand, are uninformed, or lie outright about its effects, and they cynically imply that the deliberate use of uncontrollable, indiscriminate destruction of civilian populations using fire and radiation is a “military tactic.”

Richard Rhodes, in The Making of the Atomic Bomb reports, “People exposed within half a mile of the Little Boy [Hiroshima] fireball were seared to bundles of smoking black char in a fraction of a second as their internal organs boiled away…. The small black bundles now stuck to the streets and bridges and sidewalks of Hiroshima numbered in the thousands.” In The Bomb, Zinn notes that of 1,780 nurses in Hiroshima, 1,654 were killed or so badly injured that they could not work.

CNN reported on September 26 that nuclear weapons called “tactical” have “explosive yields of 10 to 100 kilotons of dynamite, [and] are also called ‘low yield.’” But Pentagon boss General Jim Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee in 2018, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a ‘tactical nuclear weapon.’ Any nuclear weapon used anytime is a strategic game-changer.”

Reuters reported on October 17, “These 12-ft B61 nuclear bombs, with different yields of 0.3 to 170 kilotons, are deployed at six air bases across Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, and The Netherlands.” These “forward deployed” US H-bombs are so provocative and destabilizing that hundreds of European and US dissidents, including Members of the European Parliament and this reporter, have committed acts of civil resistance against air bases hosting them.

Whether conscious or subconscious, the chronic dread of impending catastrophe caused by the manufactured and ceaseless threat to “go nuclear” — known as deterrence — was described in all its homicidal absurdity by the coldblooded Winston Churchill in 1955. He said about our governments’ nonstop readiness to commit massacres with nuclear weapons: “Safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.”

By trivializing the effects of today’s nuclear weapons, Rachman, his unnamed senior officials, and his editors at The Financial Times, demonstrate that, unlike Churchill, they either lie about what they know or know nothing at all about the established facts of thermonuclear explosions. Such misinformed or intentional minimization weakens the near universal stigma of criminality that adheres to the Bomb, and increases the possibility that Hiroshima could be repeated. Such horrifying nuclear “small” talk sanitizes and routinizes military schemes for meaningless, genocidal violence — as if such a thing could be tactical.

–Financial Times; Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Reuters Oct. 17, 2022;  CNN Sept. 26, 2022; Defense News Feb. 6, 2018

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter, US Bombs Out of Germany

December 28, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Background info’ on US B61 Nuclear Bombs in Europe, and Nonviolent Resistance to Them

Background info’ on U.S. B61s bombs in Europe, and nonviolent resistance, from John LaForge, Nukewatch staff

“Why Not Pay Fines Imposed for Actions Against Nuclear Threats?” Dec. 16, 2022,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/16/why-not-pay-fine-imposed-for-actions-against-nuclear-threats/

“Horrifying ‘Small’ talk about Nuclear Weapons,” Nov. 7, 2022, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/11/07/horrifying-small-talk-about-nuclear-weapons/

“No One Is Paying Attention to Your Protests”, July 15, 2022, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/15/no-one-is-paying-attention-to-your-protests/\

“Reducing Tensions, Building Trust, De-Escalating,” April 29, 2022, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/29/reducing-tensions-building-trust-de-escalating/

“US and NATO Nuclear Lunacy Still Raving,” Dec. 24, 2021, https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/24/us-and-nato-nuclear-lunacy-still-raving/

“Novel Appeal Filed with the European Court of Human Rights in Nuclear Weapons Protest Case,” Nov. 15, 2021, https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/15/novel-appeal-filed-with-the-european-court-of-human-rights-in-nuclear-weapons-protest-case/

“US Peace Activists in Germany Join Call for Withdrawal of US Nuclear Weapons,” July 16, 2021, https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/07/16/us-peace-activists-in-germany-join-call-for-withdrawal-of-us-nuclear-weapons/

“Germany: US Nuclear Weapons Shamed in Nationwide Debate,” Sep. 18, 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/18/germany-us-nuclear-weapons-shamed-in-nationwide-debate/

“US Air Force Veteran Could Face ‘20 Days for 20 Bombs’ — for Protest Against US H-Bombs Stationed in Germany,” August 7, 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/07/usaf-vet-could-face-20-days-for-20-bombs-for-protest-against-us-h-bombs-stationed-in-germany/

“Gerd Büntzly, Crime Fighter,” January 25, 2019, https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/25/gerd-buntzly-crime-fighter/

“The Eye of a Tornado,” July 27, 2018, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/the-eye-of-a-tornado/

“18 Protesters Cut into German Air Base to Protest US Nuclear Weapons Deployment,” July 20, 2018, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/20/103839/

“What Kind of Nuclear Attack Would be Legal?” Dec. 7, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/07/what-kind-of-nuclear-attack-would-be-legal-2/

 

“Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Abolitionists While US Conducts Nuclear War Games,” Oct. 27, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/27/nobel-peace-prize-goes-to-abolitionists-while-us-conducts-nuclear-war-games/

“Top German Politicians Want US Nuclear Weapons Out,” Sept. 9, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/15/top-german-politicians-want-us-nuclear-weapons-out-did-anti-nuclear-actions-propel-issue-into-national-elections/

“Activists Challenge US Nukes in Germany; Occupy Bunker Deep Inside Nuclear Weapons Base,” July 21, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/21/activists-challenge-us-nukes-in-germany-occupy-bunker-deep-inside-nuclear-weapons-base/

“Wild Turkey with H-Bombs: Failed Coup Brings Calls for Denuclearization,” CounterPunch, July 28, 2016

“Undeterred: Amid Terror Attacks in Europe, US H-bombs Still Deployed There,” CounterPunch, June 17, 2016

“Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: Made in the USA,” CounterPunch, May 27, 2015

“US Defies Conference on Nuclear Weapons Effects & Abolition,” Dec. 15, 2014

“German ‘Bomb Sharing’ Confronted with Defiant ‘Instruments of Disarmament’,” Aug. 9, 2013

 

 

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Direct Action, Nuclear Weapons, US Bombs Out of Germany, War

December 18, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Why Not Pay Fine Imposed for Actions Against Nuclear Threats?

By John LaForge

I’ve been sentenced to a 50-day jail term in Germany for refusing to pay fines imposed for trespass convictions after two “go-in” actions against nuclear weapons threats. The actions were two uninvited entries into Germany’s Büchel Air Base where up to 20 US hydrogen bombs are stationed under a policy called “nuclear sharing.” The sentence will begin January 10 at the Billwerder prison in Hamburg.

I’ve appealed the convictions to the Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest, which has yet to issue a decision. The appeal complains that expert witnesses in international law — who were prepared to validate my defense of “crime prevention” — were not allowed testify, effectively eliminating my right to present a defense.

My refusal to pay the fine 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 fine implies I’m guilty of some sort of offense or misconduct. Further, agreeing to pay has the appearance of an apology or remorse on my part when none is warranted. I believe any nonviolent action against preparations to commit mass destruction with nuclear weapons is 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.

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, as Dr. King said. 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 routinely practiced under nuclear sharing and nuclear 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. I hope never to pay respect to governments that declare that its ratified treaties are the “supreme law” but then proceed to wantonly violate them.

The latest and best condemnations of the threat to use nuclear weapons are found in the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice. The NPT is particularly key to my case, because its Articles I and II explicitly prohibit any transfer whatsoever of nuclear weapons from one country to another. Confirmation of this prohibition is Article 31 of the 1969 Vienna Convention or “The Law of Treaties,” which states that “A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty…”

It can never be a crime to interfere with the deployment, rehearsals for use, or the threatened use of nuclear weapons, or to resist the U.S. and German 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 our famously “credible” 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 mandate 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. This argument is a sham, akin to organized crime’s collusion with police authorities who are paid off to overlook criminal conduct, rewarded for protecting it with political and judicial winks and nods that deny the obvious.

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 any 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. Otherwise the courts are cynically corrupt 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, paraphrasing Thoreau, with such a government that is the nuclear terror’s government also.

— 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.
C/O JVA Billwerder Prison & Correctional Facility
Dweerlandweg 100
22113 Hamburg, Germany

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Direct Action, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter, US Bombs Out of Germany, War, Weekly Column

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