US Bombs Out of Germany

October 15, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Peace Camp Participants Share Some Recollections

Fall Quarterly 2018

The US delegation to Büchel:

CeeCee Anderson, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions and Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), Atlanta, Georgia
Susan Crane, Redwood City California Catholic Worker
Anthony Donovan, New York, NY
Dennis DuVall, Rosstal, Germany (formerly of Prescott, Arizona)
John LaForge, Nukewatch, Luck, Wisconsin
Max Smay, Snake River Alliance, Boise, Idaho
Ann Suellentrop, Physicians for Social Responsibility & ANA, Kansas City, Missouri
Bonnie Urfer, Nukewatch, Luck, Wisconsin
Victor White, Veterans for Peace, Oceanside, California

For the second year in a row, Nukewatch organized a US delegation to the German peace camp outside the Büchel Air Base, in conjunction with Gewaltfreie Aktion Atomwaffen Abschaffen (Nonviolent Action to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) and Marion Küpker, coordinator of the group’s five-month-long series of actions. International Week, July 10-18, was an exciting and rebellious time of discussion, planning, training, blockades, “go-in” actions, and anti-nuclear solidarity. Other internationals came from Italy, Spain, England, The Netherlands, Austria, and even New Zealand. For our part US delegates arrived in camp from New York, Idaho, Wisconsin, California, Georgia, and Missouri. Susan Crane from the Redwood City, CA Catholic Worker came for a month to be part of the camp staff and I did the same for six weeks. Ann Suellentrop of Kansas City got to Germany early and did a speaking tour of seven cities on the subject of resistance to the Kansas City Plant and its production of non-nuclear parts for US nuclear weapons.

A few of the US delegates replied to Nukewatch’s invitation to share a short recollection of their experience of International Week. —JL

In the center of camp, internationals from Germany, the US, the UK and The Netherlands discussed preparations for the large “go-in” action that took place July 15.

Bonnie Urfer

Variety describes my Büchel experience. The camp had color. It had the persistent flapping of bright banners in the wind and I walked through flat jungles of chalk drawings, tents and tie-dyes under blue skies. Women in Black, Men and Women, children and old folks, people as varied as the nations, states, ideologies, habits, enthusiasm, creativity, interests, talents, projects, emotions and experiences showed up at Büchel. Büchel is Everywhere.

Peace Camp outside of Büchel Air Force Base, Germany.

Friends, comfort, food, chores, chats, and resistance to nuclear weapons embody my reflection of this year’s “Nuclear Weapons-Free Now!” peace camp in Germany. This camp turned out to be as invigorating as last year, and was made even better by the introduction of a camp shower which made bonding with dozens of others in hot summer days even more pleasant.

I made new friends. Petra, I love you and thank you for all of the delightful kitchen time and the variety in meals. Max, you are not forgotten. Hubert, thanks for bringing Kami.

The gathering turned into a reunion of many precious friends made last year and of those I knew from the US—brought together for the single purpose of getting H-bombs removed from Germany. Since the vast majority of Germans want those weapons removed, I felt constantly in good company.

The hubbub of camp repeatedly included action planning, banner painting, blockades of the base gates, fence transgressions, rallies, and then doing it all again. I helped cut through the fence and occupied the base school yard, an action that would result in months if not years in prison if done in the US. In Germany, police served tea and escorted us off the property. It’s a pleasure to be arrested in that country and everyone, including you dear reader, has a chance to join-in next summer. The bombs are still there in spite of our colossal efforts.

Even the sounds offered a wide-range of reflection. Every day except weekends, the massive jets take off from the base saturating the airspace with thick thunder. Once the pilots finished for the day, sweet guitar, harmonica, drums, flutes and voices filled the air. Between war plane takeoffs, presenters presented, travelers shared stories, and conversations in a circle around the campfire constant. We ate together, sang, painted, chatted, and laughed.

Camp art supplies- umbrella base and yarn

The hard work of Marion Küpker and John LaForge, Wolfgamg, Beate, Thomas, our wonderful camp cooks Petra and Stephanie, the talented camp tenders, Rainer, Martin, Hubert, Heiko, and so many others, made this event, filled with a variety of events, worth attending. Special thanks to Sharon Cody for making possible this journey filled with the colors of the rainbow and peace.

From left: CeeCee Anderson, Max Smay and Ann Suellentrop spoke at a press conference in the large meeting tent about resistance to nuclear weapons in their communities of Atlanta, Boise and Kansas City, respectively.

Susan Crane:

Peter Kropotkin is often remembered for his ideas about mutual aid: about the power and energy that is released when people work together. Instead of Darwin’s ideas of competition and survival of the fittest, Kropotkin liked to study nature to witness how life thrives where there is cooperation. He studied bees and ants, observed flocks of birds and studied human history. He found that in the struggle to cooperate, in mutual aid, we build a hive, a colony, a future.

And that is what I saw at the Peace Camp. People able to make their own decisions while working together sparked bursts of energy. Respect for each individual’s contribution, and the love of direct action with others created a safe place to imagine actions. Mutual aid was practiced by internationals and 50 peace groups coming together, across languages and borders, with nonviolence and fierce determination to make this planet home for our 7th generation of grandkids.

I didn’t get to meet people from each of these 50 groups, but I was astounded with the diversity of people who came at different times to focus on the abolition of nuclear weapons and getting the US nuclear warheads out of the Büchel air force base. It was heartening to work with the DKP, the “no money for war” tax resisters, the artists, the Quakers, the work camp youth from Mutlangen, the Lutherans, the Dusseldorf Peace Group, and the individual people who came to contribute so much to the camp who could build and fix anything. Kropotkin was right: “Mutual Aid” is the answer.

Anthony Donovan:

The Peace Camp’s July 15th action was a great honor to take part in—to bring attention to the unspeakable horror and the sheer illegality of this hidden industry, and to our colleagues the Kings Bay Plowshares now challenging US courts for similar actions. I arrived in Büchel without doubt in my heart for good reasons. I was inspired in this work by Sisters Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert, with whom I shared a month-and-a-half of daily meetings at the UN during the negotiations for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Ardeth and Carol left the day after the treaty’s breathtaking adoption (July 7, 2017), to hand the treaty directly to Büchel Air Base’s commanding officer. It was their enthused recommendation along with a call for support, recognizing some 93% of German citizens who want our bombs out. My early morning routine each day at Büchel’s gate would be putting up Nukewatch’s banner U.S. H-Bombs Out of Germany. For years I’ve been waiting for one ally in NATO to say, “US we appreciate you, but not these most dangerous lies.” The intimate bonds of newly formed wider community remain with the deepest gratitude.

Dennis DuVall:

The “go-in” direct action was the high point and most fun of International Week at Büchel. I was inspired by the solidarity in planning and doing the action. I look forward to future actions to remove the B61 H-bombs from Germany, and to disrupt and prevent the US and NATO from replacing existing H-bombs in Europe with 250 smaller, low-yield H-bombs, the B61-12. The “modernized” B61-12 is said to be more “usable,” meaning it’s more likely to be used, making global resistance to nuclear weapons more urgent than ever, in Büchel and everywhere.

October 11, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Hiroshima/ Nagasaki Day Call-to-Action

The following was adapted from a speech by Kelly Lundeen of Nukewatch at Peace Action Wisconsin’s Hiroshima/Nagasaki Commemoration event in Milwaukee, August 10, 2018

Nukewatch co-director Kelly Lundeen presented the keynote at the Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration in Milwaukee August 10.

Nukewatch has been around since the last anti- nuclear movement and survived the chill after the Cold War. Right now the world is in a renewed anti-nuclear movement. I’m sure you’ve heard about International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) who received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to ban nuclear weapons through the United Nations last year. Nukewatch is working to bring this movement back to the United States. Trump is helping us.

A movement against nukes is necessary because we cannot stand for another Hiroshima and too many people have forgotten what that means. We are just lucky that Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the atomic bomb tests were the only times bombs were dropped on humans. It is really something I can’t even fathom. I don’t know how someone could have ever conceived of doing this in the first place. To lose 140,000 lives in Hiroshima in one instant? And 90,000 more in Nagasaki? How could anyone ever have done this? And how can we continue to develop and research new nuclear weapons? It’s total insanity.

If it would have been here

I want to give you an idea of what a Hiroshima-size bomb would look like here in Milwaukee. That’s highly unlikely, but this helps us understand what happened. Milwaukee is a city with a population of 600,000. In the immediate 1.7 square miles there would be an estimated 50,000 fatalities.

Unfortunately, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was very small compared to today’s weapons. Bombs of Hiroshima size no longer exist in the US arsenal. The smallest warheads are the W80-4s and they are 16 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. The ironic thing is that the W80s are considered “low yield,” which has some legislators concerned that they might actually get used, as opposed to the big ones which are considered off-limits by most.

The nuclear weapons budget

These W80s are part of what we thought was going to be a $1 trillion budget to upgrade the nuclear weapons arsenal. It is actually going to be $1.7 trillion. This isn’t coming from Trump. This is nothing new. Every single president since these weapons were created has threatened to use them. At the height of the Cold war we had around 61,000 nuclear warheads and now we’re down to about 7,000. We need to acknowledge that this is a success.

Our nuclear arsenal has three parts. There are land-based missiles, launched out of silos buried underground, sea-based missiles launched off submarines, and air-based bombs and missiles fired from planes. During the Cold War, the US had 1,000 Minuteman land-based missiles or inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and now we are down to 450. Nukewatch has a book on the ICBMs originally published in 1988. Our volunteers went out and visited every single missile silo, made maps of them and published it so people could protest. In 2015, since the drawdown of weapons, we revised the book.

With the current state of the US arsenal, nobody can take us seriously when we say it is for deterrence. If it were truly for deterrence we would have 100 or 200 warheads and they wouldn’t be designed as first strike weapons to be used in surprise, unprovoked attacks on other countries’ air bases and nuclear weapons — the opposite of deterrence. Unfortunately ex-president Obama authorized the $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons rebuild. The full $1.7 trillion proposal may not receive Congressional approval. A mistake of around a half-a-trillion dollars was brought to light by former Department of Energy advisor Robert Alvarez, who pointed out the cost of environmental restoration and waste management inside the nuclear weapons complex. When you break it down, that is $7 million per hour for every hour from 2017 to 2046. What does that mean for Milwaukee?

In 2017, the taxpayers of the city spent about $80,000 on nuclear weapons. That’s $132 per person. I’m sure those who live here could think of better ways to spend that money. Spending $7 million per hour on nuclear weapons means stealing from every homeless person that does not have a bed. It means $7 million that does not help schools struggling to meet Adequate Yearly Progress. It means $7 million that is being taken from every one of us who need real health care.

We Can Resist!

The CEOs at the top of the military industrial complex are part of the “1 percent.” We cannot afford to subsidize them anymore. The military budget is part of a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The three wealthiest people in the United States have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50 per cent. There are way more of us than them. If we are the 99 percent, then there are 99 of us for every one of them. So what can we do? We can resist!

We need to do the things that we are good at to make the world better in our homes, in our communities, in our cities, or whatever scale we choose to work on. We can follow the example of the Kings Bay Plowshares. They snuck into the Kings Bay Naval Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, April 4. The Kings Bay Naval Base is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world. It is home to six ballistic missile subs and two guided missile subs based there. For breaking into the base, pouring their own blood in order to raise awareness about the horrors of nuclear weapons, each one of these activists could be facing many years in prison. Currently Nukewatch is involved in similar direct action in Germany. In the past month my colleague John LaForge,and dozens of others in solidarity with a German campaign to have the bombs removed, has cut through fences to enter the German air base which is home to 20 US nuclear bombs. They hope to fight the issue in court.

Do we need more actions like this? Yes! But we also need more people to make independent media, raise food in a way that will nourish our bodies and our world, teach our children the truth. We should value the part we are playing.

Then we need to break out of our comfort zones and do more of the things in solidarity with other struggles. If we are people with privilege we need to support struggles of people of color and the poor and recognize the impacts that they have lived with. In the case of the nuclear industry it is easy to see that the people on the frontlines are the people of North and South Korea, Japan, Russia or anyone who has ever been the target of a nuclear weapon.

While the nuclear bomb is the most horrific thing humankind has ever created, it is part of the nuclear industry that comes as a package deal. The entire nuclear industry needs to be stopped, because we will always be facing all the same dangers that come with the entire nuclear fuel and weapons cycle, which is riddled with radiation and death from uranium mining, to nuclear power and weapons testing, to transport and storage of radioactive waste.

You may be surprised to hear that way more people died from nuclear weapons testing (as many as 695,000 deaths from 1951-1973) than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. McClatchy Newspapers reported in 2015 that at least 33,000 workers in the nuclear weapons industry died of cancers caused by workplace radiation.

Native people all over the world have been disproportionately affected by uranium mining — in Niger, Australia, Canada and the US. Indigenous people in the southwest US are the survivors of uranium mining radiation, nuclear weapons tests, milling, and radioactive transportation.

I want to highlight the work of one of the groups doing great work in New Mexico to oppose a centralized radioactive waste storage dump proposal that would involve 10,000 train cars of high-level radioactive waste travelling from nuclear reactors to the site. The group “Halt Holtec” has worked in coalition with many groups to encourage the public to comment on the proposed dump. This work produced 25,000 letters to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission! Here is what Micheáilín Butler of Gallup, New Mexico said in an interview with Halt Holtec:

I’m out here at the NRC public scoping meeting to stand and speak out against the proposed nuclear waste site. I’ve been involved in a lot of issues around uranium mining, nuclear colonialism and the legacy of New Mexico as a nuclear sacrifice for the United States. I oppose this very strongly. It is a really terrible and awful idea. It will have a lasting impact that we should not have to face in addition to all the other issues we face in nuclear New Mexico.

I’m also here representing the Red Nation. The Red Nation is an organization that is very strongly opposed to anything to do with nuclear from the mining, the milling, and the processing, to the creation of the bombs, and to using land for nuclear waste storage. The United States and the people on this continent should be thinking about how to shut down and deactivate all the nuclear facilities so that we don’t create the need for anymore storage.

Obviously we are going to have to think about a way in which all of the waste gets stored properly. We are already dealing with that legacy: the legacy of contamination from the mines, the legacy of the contamination from Los Alamos and other areas. What a lot of us don’t understand is why we have to create new issues to have to deal with new waste. We shouldn’t have to be dealing with this.

The only reason why they’re dumping it on New Mexico is that we are a poor state. They know that we are desperate for cleanup jobs, waste jobs. They know that no one cares, that it’s a politically safe move to dump it on the poor people of New Mexico. So just say no to nuclear waste.

The work that is being done to oppose the centralized radioactive waste dump in New Mexico is also helping us. If one of these dumps opens and radioactive waste begins to be transported, waste from two closed nuclear reactors in Wisconsin will be transported through Milwaukee by train. A single train car of this radioactive waste would carry as much plutonium as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. This is why Milwaukee is more likely to be hit with a radioactive waste transportation accident than by any enemy attack.

Call-to-Action

Right now there are some specific actions we can take related to the nuclear industry to take part in the growing anti-nuclear movement to make sure Hiroshima never happens again. Legislatively, there are a few proposals that you can urge representatives to support.

Yes!—H.R.669 is the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017. It is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction to prevent the US from dropping a first strike nuclear weapon without a Declaration of War by Congress.

No!—H.R. 3053 is a bill that would authorize the New Mexico dump Micheáilín opposes and revive the option for Yucca Mountain, which is not an option. Yes we need a safe place to store this dangerous waste, but Yucca Mountain is not it. It is not even on our land. It was never ceded by the Western Shoshone people. No! – All the separate parts of the $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons rebuild need to be opposed.

Outside of lobbying work, we need to be in the streets opposing war and the bomb. Campaigns like Don’t Bank on the Bomb and Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Compliance are moving forward. If radioactive waste begins to be transported we might need people out to stop the trains or out watching for radioactive transport vehicles. So I hope to see you in the streets!

August 8, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Two from US Detained Inside Büchel Air Base during “Nuclear Weapons Inspection”

“Weapons Inspectors” Susan Crane and John LaForge break onto German Air Force Base housing US nuclear weapons.

BÜCHEL, Germany — Two US citizens calling themselves “Weapons Inspectors” were detained Monday August 6, after they gained access to the Büchel Air Force Base, a reported deployment site for 20 US nuclear weapons near here. Monday was the 73^rd anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.

The two, Susan Crane, 74, from the Redwood City, California Catholic Worker, and John LaForge, 62, from the group Nukewatch in Wisconsin, clipped through exterior fencing and NATO wire around 5:30 p.m. to gain access to the inner security area of the base.

“Nuclear weapons are immoral and illegal because they indiscriminately kill everything in their wake,” said Crane. “Their effects, the fires and radiation, can’t be controlled in any way, so any use of them violates the rules of war,” she said.

LaForge added, “Any deployment of US nuclear weapons in Germany also violates the Nonproliferation Treaty which prohibits any transfer of nuclear weapons between parties to the treaty.” “The NPT also requires signatories like the US and Germany to pursue negotiations for nuclear disarmament, like the recently adopted Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons of July 7, 2017,” he said.

“We hoped to confirm that the US has removed its nuclear bombs in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but our investigation was halted by the military,” Crane said. Once inside, the two located several “protected airplane shelters” surrounded by another barrier of NATO wire, and that they spent one hour on top of one shelter to take radiation measurements.

After climbing down to inspect a second bunker, the two were observed and detained by a large number military personnel. “The extra razor wire around the bunker, the near access to the jet runway, and the massive heavily armed military reaction to us, indicates the US nuclear weapons are here,” Crane said. Nuclear weapons experts including Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists have reported that the highly secure shelters in this area of the base contain underground “vaults” capable of holding the US B61 gravity bombs.

Crane and LaForge noted the national security threat of wild fires in Germany brought on by record-breaking heat and draught. “The German government continues wasteful training missions for nuclear war here , and intends to spend billions on a new Eurofighter, while the country had no planes available 12 days ago for fire suppression efforts in the eastern part of Germany” (as Annalena Baerbock, the head of the Greens in the state of Brandenburg, said in a television interview August 5).

The US activists wore signs reading “Weapons Inspector,” and searched part of the base with a radiation monitor for signs of nuclear weapons deployment. The two were eventually observed, detained, and kept face down in the grass for an hour. After being searched, identified, and turned over to local police, they were released without conditions around 20:45 p.m.

The Hiroshima Day inspection came toward the end of a 20-week-long series of protests which began March 26, organized by “Büchel is Everywhere: Nuclear Weapons-Free Now!”, a nation-wide coalition of 50 peace and justice groups and organizations working for nuclear disarmament. The campaign’s three goals are removal of all nuclear weapons from Germany, cancellation of plans to replace the B61s with new weapons, and Germany’s ratification of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

August 6, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment