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December 9, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

US Peace Activist to Stand Trial in Germany for Nuclear Weapons Protests

A picture of the John LaForge (and Susan Crane of Redwood City, CA) during go-in action August 6, 2018

HAMBURG – A long-time U.S. peace activist will be tried on two charges of trespassing on Thurs., December 9 in Koblenz Regional Court, Germany on charges stemming from two 2018 protests against US nuclear weapons stationed at Büchel air force base, located in southeastern Germany.

The Koblenz hearing for John LaForge, 65, of Luck, Wisconsin, is an appeal of two May 31, 2021 trespass convictions in Cochem District Court for so-called “go-in” protest actions involving entry into the base during protests on July 15, 2018 and August 6, 2018.

LaForge, a co-director of the nuclear watchdog organization Nukewatch (nukewatchinfo.org) in Wisconsin, helped coordinate delegations of U.S. peace activists to three annual international protests at the nuclear weapons base in 2017, 2018, and 2019. The German base maintains at least 20 US thermonuclear gravity bombs, known as B61-3s and B61-4s, under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force’s 702nd Munitions Support Squadron and the controversial US/NATO program called “nuclear sharing.” Protesters have targeted the site for over 25 years demanding the ouster of the US H-bombs and a halt to their planned replacement.

LaForge has asked the court in Koblenz to hear testimony from three expert witnesses regarding the legal status of the nuclear weapons. If allowed by the court, retired Judge Bernd Hahnfeld, a former board chair of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, would testify regarding the illegality of stationing foreign nuclear weapons in Germany; University of Trier Prof. of Computer Science Karl-Hans Bläsius on the risk of accidental nuclear war; and Univ. of Illinois Professor of Law Francis A. Boyle on his 2002 book, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence.

The legal scholars say the stationing of US nuclear bombs in Germany violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) among others. The NPT prohibits any transfer of nuclear weapons to, or any reception of them from, other countries; and Germany’s reunification treaty, or Final Settlement Treaty, of 1990 renounced the possession of nuclear weapons.

“I participated in these actions because they are the only way to have the outlaw status of nuclear weapons considered by the courts. The public wants these bombs out of Germany. But nuclear weapons’ controllers are anti-democratic and they need a court of law to order them ousted,” LaForge said.

Marion Kuepker of Hamburg, an  anti-nuclear campaigner with Nonviolent Action to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (www.gaaa.org), reports, “In the last two years, about 50 court cases involving dozens of nuclear weapons protesters have taken place in Cochem and Koblenz for nonviolent civil disobedience actions at the Büchel air base.”

Filed Under: Direct Action, US Bombs Out of Germany

October 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The National Radioactive Waste Coalition

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021

Your group is invited to join a newly formed national organization. The National Radioactive Waste Coalition (NRWC) which was officially launched in November 2020 now has forty-one organizations from across the country. Among the members are the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World, Citizens Awareness Network, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, and Nukewatch. See our new website at radioactivewastecoalition.org. (If it isn’t running yet, check back in a few days.)

This new coalition is working to build solidarity and unity across the country among various groups working on nuclear waste issues and others that support this work. The coalition will continue to expand current actions regarding legal, legislative, and regulatory issues while also bringing new people and groups into the movement — especially front-line communities, Indigenous Peoples, younger people, and people of color.

Goals

The main focus of the coalition is to mount a strategic campaign with a multi-pronged approach to involve and mobilize organizations and individuals to achieve the following goals:

  • Halt permanently the Yucca Mountain repository;
  • Stop all consolidated interim storage;
  • Keep high-level radioactive waste as close to its current sites as possible and “harden” the storage so it is as safe as it can be;
  • Reduce the inherent dangers with storage of high-level radioactive waste at decommissioned nuclear reactors and other nuclear sites.
Principles

The National Radioactive Waste Coalition is committed to stopping the production and the reprocessing of radioactive waste. The isolation of radioactive waste is critical for protecting all living things, from the tiniest organisms in the soil and water to all the humans living on our planet. We are committed to working to ensure this isolation is accomplished. We are committed to preventing the unnecessary movement of radioactive waste.

Our goal is to build solidarity through strong collaboration and honoring the needs of local communities.

Our work is grounded in respect for all people, and we reject oppressive decisions, actions, or the creation of sacrifice zones. We commit to ending environmental racism. We will engage many diverse people in both the work of the campaign and the process to find effective approaches to isolate radioactive waste.

We will work together to hold the nuclear industry, government officials, and offices accountable for their actions, for enforcing our laws and treaties – and for keeping us all as safe as possible. We are committed to non-violence as a movement and the equitable distribution of resources to do our work together.

Help increase the strength of the coalition by becoming a working member.

Filed Under: Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

October 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Joins Water Protectors to Honor Treaties, Resist Pipelines

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021
By Kelly Lundeen

In 1854 and 1855, treaties were signed between the Anishinaabe and the United States governing lands where today the Enbridge Inc. tar sands Line 3 pipeline is under construction. Article 11 of the 1854 Treaty says the Indigenous peoples “in the territory hereby ceded, shall have the right to hunt and fish.” 

“My grandfather signed the 1854 Treaty,” says Anishinaabe Water Protector Sherry Couture of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Carrying on the work of her family, she resists Line 3 as a way to honor the treaties. President Biden could do the same by cancelling Line 3 with the stroke of a pen. The US government is in clear violation of the treaties. Enbridge, a Canadian company, has a record of 1,068 spills spewing 7.4 million gallons of oil, and 28 more spills during construction of Line 3 that spilled 13,000 gallons of drilling fluid.

This August, Nukewatch’s Kelly Lundeen and her family spent four days walking in the Treaty People Walk for Water in Minnesota.

Since the line expansion was proposed seven years ago, there has been sustained opposition. In August, a novel lawsuit arguing for the rights of manoomin, or wild rice, was filed by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, several tribal members and lead plaintiff, manoomin itself, against the State of Minnesota in the Tribal Court of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. A case for the rights of nature is a new legal strategy, but not implausible considering it has already faced down its first challenge from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. At least six tribal nations and other countries like Ecuador, Bolivia, and Uganda already have the rights of nature guaranteed in their constitutions or statutes.

In addition to litigation, nonviolent direct action has led to the arrest of over 800 water protectors. In June, Nukewatch organized a local gathering to greet the Wisconsin caravan that participated in the Treaty People Gathering, a massive, nationwide mobilization. In August I joined a walk with my three children, a double stroller, bikes, and roller blades for a 30-mile portion of the 256-mile long Treaty People Walk for Water. On the walk we met Couture, and many other Water Protectors walking up to 20 miles a day through summer heat and wind. 

What started in northern Minnesota with a few dozen walkers, swelled to a flood of 2,000 people at the state capitol on August 25.

The resistance will continue. Couture told Nukewatch that she’d been to all the hearings, including her own tribal government’s, and lived 70 percent of the last four years in camps resisting the pipelines. “I’ve been arrested 15 times,” she said. She and others are beginning a new walk against Enbridge’s Line 5 in northern Wisconsin. Water protectors say reasons for walking are still here: for the Water and to honor the treaties.

For more info., find Treaty People Walk Line 3 on Facebook, or stopline3.org.

Filed Under: Direct Action, Environment, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter

October 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Disarmament Activists Confront US Nukes in Germany During Flooding: “Stop the Nuclear Catastrophe Before it Starts”

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021
By Brian Terrell

On July 21, I was walking in the forests surrounding the German Air Force Base at Büchel in the Eifel region with three Catholic Worker friends, Susan van der Hijden of Amsterdam, Netherlands, Susan Crane of Redwood City, California, and Christiane Danowski of Dortmund, Germany. We were there at the end of an “International Week” of protests against the approximately 20 US nuclear gravity bombs known as B61s kept at the base in a “nuclear sharing” agreement with the United States.

In previous days we had visited the entrance gates to the base with our signs and banners and two days before we participated in a “Digging for Life” action outside the fence, near the other end of the runway, where the German pilots lift off and land their Italian-made PA200 Tornado jet fighters, daily training to drop US nuclear bombs on Russia when the order is given. This day we hiked to the other, less accessible, end of the runway, through a forest of dead and dying trees decimated by recent years of drought, unprecedented heat and a massive bark beetle infestation affected by climate change.

In the clearing near where the runway begins, we noticed a couple of “spotters,” hobbyists who got there before us looking to get dramatic photos of the jets taking off. In their company, while we were scouting and imagining potential future protests at the site, we also knew that some action was imminent.

Beyond the fence that marked the boundary of the base from the forest, there was a high berm of earth that shielded from our view the nearby Tornados warming up their engines for takeoff. We could not see, but we heard the purr of their engines turn to a roar and we felt the earth shake and we saw and then smelled a wall, a miasma, of acrid, black, stinking burnt and unburned jet fuel rising above the berm and over our heads, before the jets screamed off away from us to rehearse for the end of everything.

Outside the fence at the Büchel Air Force Base July 19, 2021, protesters including US citizens Susan Crane and Dennis DuVall, at center, joined a symbolic “Digging for Life” action. Photo by Dietrich Gerstner.

Not far from where these Tornado jets were spewing out more than 13 tons of CO2 per flight hour into the atmosphere, cities and towns in the river valleys were cleaning up from recent rains and floods that left more than 177 dead and hundreds more still missing at the time. In some places the rivers rose to the highest in over 100 years, possibly higher than any seen in the last 1,000 years.

Participation in the annual “International Week” in the Covid-19 pandemic was already hampered by the fact that it was held just days after Germany opened its borders to vaccinated visitors from places like the US, and by July 15, the day after my own arrival by air, many railroads and highways were closed by rising water. We heard harrowing travel stories from those few who were able to join us from various points in Germany. Our numbers were much less than expected and the catastrophe of the floods called us to reassess our plans for the week.

We had planned to have enough people to nonviolently blockade the various gates of the base on Friday, July 16, marking the 76th anniversary of the first atomic bomb detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945, and the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 uranium mine waste spill at Church Rock, New Mexico — the largest accidental release of radioactive materials in US history. We recognized that even with our reduced numbers, such an act of civil resistance would distract police from search and rescue work that many of them were doing in flooded places in the region. Members of our group met with local police and the commander of the base to inform them that instead of a blockade there would be a simple quiet vigil with signs and prayers outside the main gate on July 16; the planned “Digging for Life” action scheduled for three days later would go on.

The original concept of the event was to be a symbolic piece of theater around the base’s new highly armed security fence with surveillance cameras, motion sensors and a deep concrete foundation. The plan that some of us would dig with pink shovels with the impossible aim of making a tunnel under the fortification and get onto and close the runway while others would cheer them on from a picnic in the adjoining meadow, had to be adapted to our reduced numbers and in recognition of the devastation that had been unfolding around us in the preceding days.

The vibrant pink shovels were muted with black paint or tied with black ribbons. Banners with more light-hearted messages written in pastels were left behind and new ones made more in keeping with the moment, in German, white on black, Stop The Next Catastrophe Before It Begins — Abolish Nuclear Weapons!

As the event unfolded, 14 activists from Germany, the US, and the Netherlands were met at the fence by several times that number of civilian and military police, who after an hour arrested four of the most persistent diggers who were soon released without any charges. In light of the $14 million spent on the new fence meant to keep people like us out, the civilian police had better things to do and could easily have ignored our clearly symbolic effort; some in the local press and more in social media blamed us for distracting the police and military from dealing with the aftermath of the floods.

In the midst of their national disaster, only about 1,000 of the 150,000 soldiers in the German military were employed in flood relief and on the day we were digging for life at Büchel, Tornado jets were crisscrossing over our heads, causing police, protesters, soldiers, and members of the press alike to cover our ears from their deafening roar, illustrating what is often ignored and never mentioned in climate negotiations: the huge part that the militaries of the world play in the climate crisis, the US and its allies more than the rest.

Before the digging began at the fence and under the screaming jets, a police detective called my name and with some ceremony served me with papers from the court informing me that I had been accused, convicted and sentenced to a 900 euro fine or 30 days in prison in response to my actions on my last visit to Germany and to Büchel two years ago. It was decided by the court that “through the same act and acting collectively” and “within the scope of the annual meeting and demonstration against nuclear weapons at the airbase of fighter-bomber squadron 33,” I had “gained unlawful access to the military area and its security sector” by cutting holes in the fence. I remember that the military police sergeant who apprehended us was unreasonably upset about the hole we had made, not so much concerned about the weapons of mass destruction that he was guarding nor the violations of the German Constitution and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that they pose. Before leaving Germany, I filed an appeal of my conviction and sentence in the court at Cochem and I hope for the opportunity to argue against the assumed legality of nuclear weapons in a German court.

The United States is preparing to upgrade its current B61 nuclear bombs with the new B61-12, reportedly costing over $20 million each and the German government is looking to soon replace its fleet of Tornados with more sophisticated fighter bombers, both governments spending billions on systems that will significantly lower the threshold of nuclear war and contribute to global warming. There is no solution to the climate crisis and no hope for human life on this planet that does not include disarmament and an end to war.

— Brian Terrell is an Iowa-based peace activist who has spent more than six months in prison for protesting targeted assassinations at US military drone bases. He wrote this report for CommonDreams.

Filed Under: Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter, US Bombs Out of Germany

October 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

US Plowshares Activist Who Climbed Nuclear Weapons Bunkers Tried in Germany for Actions Against ‘Shared’ US H-Bombs

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021

On September 29, 2021, Susan Crane, a Plowshares activist and member of the Catholic Worker community in Redwood City, California, went on trial in District Court in Cochem, Germany, charged with trespass and damage to the fence for go-in actions at the Büchel air base on July 15 and August 6, 2018. Crane’s trial was only the second time that a US resident has been brought to court, even though over two dozen US citizens joined nonviolent “go-in” actions during annual protests in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. (Dennis DuVall formerly of Arizona was tried and convicted in 2019 but is now a German resident.)

Bench trials and appeals hearings are crowding the court calendar in the ongoing campaign of civil resistance against the 20 US nuclear weapons, known as B61 gravity bombs, stationed at base.

In her defense, Crane intended to present oral testimony and written documents, including a declaration by international law expert Anabel Dwyer of Michigan, and a written appeal to the base’s military personnel that was carried by the group on July 15, when 18 people gained entry to the base in broad daylight on a Sunday morning. In prepared testimony provided to Nukewatch, Crane intended to argue that “sharing” of the US thermonuclear B61 gravity bombs with Germany violates the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), among other international laws. We go to press before the trial, but judges in all similar cases in the “Büchel is Everywhere” campaign have ignored appeals to “crime prevention” defenses under international law and found the protesters guilty.

Nukewatch staffer John LaForge was convicted on the same two charges May 31, 2021, in the Cochem District court, and is now scheduled for a December 9 appeal hearing in the city of Koblenz, an appeal that Crane hopes to join as a co-defendant.

In the coming months, more than a dozen nuclear resisters from Germany, The Netherlands and the United States face trials in Cochem or appeal hearings in Koblenz, many on charges stemming from the 18-person July 2018 “go-in.” In one case, Margriet Bos of the Amsterdam Catholic Worker, who was convicted of trespass and property damage for joining the big go-in, has been informed that the fine imposed by the Cochem District Court has been transferred to the Dutch judiciary which will try and collect the $1,289 fine.

 

Filed Under: Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter, US Bombs Out of Germany

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