Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

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Winter 2019-2020 Letter to Supporters

December 2019

Dear Friend of Nukewatch,

The winter’s cold and snow remind us that it takes donations to keep Nukewatch going year round. Please send a contribution to heat the office, plow the driveway, and keep the snow off of our 10,000-watt solar power array — and this is only the beginning.

I’m sure you noticed in the last that the Plowshares Land Trust, home to Nukewatch, was hit by 100 mph winds that did a lot of damage on July 19. As shocking as the downing of 1000 trees is, in our research and reporting for the Quarterly, Nukewatch keeps track of diverse communities that have been hit by far worse than straight-line winds:

  • Failed decontamination efforts plague the Fukushima disaster response.
  • Uranium mining contamination is continuing to poison Native Americans who are organizing to demand clean up and reparations.
  • Climate disruption is threatening to disperse US radioactive waste from the Pacific Islands and the Greenland icecap.
  • Environmental racism is targeting the desert Southwest with radioactive waste dumping.
  • Nuclear war attack plans are still being rehearsed by the United States and NATO.
  • Kings Bay Plowshares 7 disarmament activists face decades in prison for their symbolic protest, while the federal court system protects nuclear weapons.
Thanks to your support, Nukewatch is keeping tabs on the national and international scene by scouring the news, staying in close contact with sister organizations, and by joining events around the country:

–  Staff and volunteers and your financial gift helped send a disarmament delegation to Germany in July.

– Nukewatch attended the federal court trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares-7 in Brunswick, Georgia in October.

– We travelled to New York in June to participate in a national Strategic Planning Training for radioactive waste activists.

– Nukewatch joined the Strategic Planning meeting in September in Washington, DC.

– In November, Nukewatch joined the Grassroots Radioactive Waste Summit in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Your donations keep Nukewatch’s plans on track for another year of local, regional and international anti-war and anti-nuclear work:

– Providing much-needed, under-reported information in our Quarterly, Fact Sheets, Special Reports, and on our web site.

– Our May 2020 conference “Stop the New Nuclear Arms Race” in Maryville Tennessee, sponsored by Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Nukewatch, and The Nuclear Resister. The conference is focused on promoting and expanding compliance with the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. You are invited! Please make plans to attend the gathering which will also be a celebration of Nukewatch’s, The Nuclear Resister’s, and the Plowshares movement’s 40th anniversaries: 1980 to 2020!

– This July will see the fourth Nukewatch-sponsored US peace delegation to the International Week at the Peace Camp outside Germany’s Büchel Air Base, home to 20 US nuclear bombs. You’re invited to join this delegation as well!

These activities are only a small part of why Nukewatch needs your donation.

Phone and internet services allow us to conduct research, organize, answer inquiries, share information, and work with other groups to broaden the scope of understanding and action. Electricity bills keep our computers, copiers, printers, rechargers and efficient lights going. The Progressive Foundation, parent to Nukewatch, has to cover insurance premiums — some mandated by the state — as well as auto, property and injury insurance.

Printing and copying of educational materials, flyers and the Nukewatch Quarterly are a necessary part of our outreach. These costs grow every year. As the size of the Quarterly has increased from the original 4-page format, the price has doubled. At times we are able to print a 12-page issue, such as the one you received in September which doubles the cost. Nukewatch also purchases books, reports, news stories and reference materials as a part of our research library.

The price of postage takes a huge chunk of our funds as we mail and distribute thousands of Quarterly newsletters every year.

Office supplies such as paper, ink cartridges and resource materials take a fair portion of our budget.

Without your financial support, Nukewatch cannot follow through on our 40-year-long mission of alerting people to the wasteful, dangerous and unnecessary hazards of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

Your donation will help us keep at it. Please send a gift today.

Sincerely,

John LaForge, Co-director

 

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Plowshares Land Trust Takes a Hit!

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019

Home to Anathoth Community Farm and Nukewatch Slammed by 100 mph Summer Storm

All 25 big red oaks looked like this.

On July 19, a storm with 100 mph straight-line winds and localized twisters smashed across the Plowshares Land Trust, where the Nukewatch office is located, downing over 1,000 trees and forever altering the landscape and the skyline. Nobody here was injured, and the five houses we’ve built here were spared serious damage. A few outbuildings and pieces of farm equipment were tossed like salad. Garden hoop houses, the mobile chicken coop, a tool shed, an outhouse, and a couple of hay wagons were either broken up or knocked over or both.

The only tamarack we had on the land.

There were so many trees downed across paths and roads that several days of cutting and hauling were needed just to walk between houses, get to the office, move cars, and get out of the driveway. As we go to press, our wood splitting machine was only just freed from the fallen oaks, ash, elms, and birches that had it surrounded.

Oaks, maples and ash missed the solar house.

Retired Nukewatch co-director Bonnie Urfer, whose house is 300 yards from the office, was at home during the howling tempest and heard the “locomotive noise” associated with tornados. Bonnie said, “The worst part only lasted ten minutes”—an amazingly short maelstrom considering the depth of the damage. I was at the Büchel peace camp in Germany when the storm hit, and over the phone everybody at the farm said there was no reason to change my ticket and hurry back, “because it is going to take years to clear the trees.”

Six ash together
Giant red oak

This is the emotionally hurtful reality of living so close to the woods and spending so may days out in them. Living here on the Land Trust for 30 years, and collecting fire wood for as many as three houses and the sauna, has taught me a lot about our nearly 30 acres of trees, and the damage to our little patch of forest is overwhelming. Nearly every big oak and maple—including the biggest—was blown down, many of them well over 100 years old. A week later when I got home, Barbara Kass met me in the driveway and said, “All your friends are gone.”

Long, 40-foot-tall windrows of pine and spruce that we’d planted to keep paths and the driveway free of winter snowdrifts were toppled or snapped. Amazingly, some 600-pound, oversized round hay bales were tossed around and even thrown into the trees like beach balls.

Heavy hay bales were tossed into the windrow.

We are lucky that no one was hurt and that houses or cars weren’t smashed. But it’s also fact that material things can be fixed or replaced, but the big trees are really gone.

Nukewatch’s 10,000-watt photovoltaic system, which powers the office and the whole land trust, was only made possible by a generous bequest from Ethel and Carl Sanjines.

Besides the new office that we build in 1998, Nukewatch’s single largest investment here—the $38,000 solar panel array that produces more electricity than the whole farmstead needs, including the Nukewatch office—was somehow spared any damage, even though four tall trees stand directly behind it. In September we cleared everything within 50 feet of the panels in anticipation of the increasing frequency and strength of chaotic wind storms.

The Nukewatch office roof had only light damage.

We wish to thank people who’ve come out and helped clear roads and paths, free-up fences and trails, and cut and split stove wood including: Barb Katt and Randy Surbaugh, Oma “Vic” McMurray, Chris, Mike, and Kristen Boland, Jen and Paul Vos Benkowski, Chris Paul, Sadie Green, Jeff Peterson, José Morales, Andrew Claeys, Adina Stackhouse, Greg Klave, Kurt Seaburg, Jason Malmquist, Michael Aldarbrook, Joel Kilgour, Drew Anderson, Donna Howard, Shelly Braecken, Chelsea Froemke, Maweja “Mo” Henderson, Günes Henderson, Kenji Xiong, and Leela Xiong. — John LaForge

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Committed Loudmouths against Nuclear Lawlessness

Homeland Security or Abbott and Costello meet the Keystone Kops?
By John LaForge

HAMBURG, Germany — You have to wonder if the Department of Homeland Security is insecure or just lame.

On Dec. 31, I was just about to board a flight to Hamburg, when a pair of its employees stopped me and asked a few questions. My mistake was to forget to ask their names, their jobs, and if I was under arrest. Instead I calmly answered their irrelevant queries. Nothing they asked related to anybody’s homeland.

Three pieces of paper that one officer handed me did not concern me or my international travel plans. They were sections of the United States Code regarding “subversive activities” at United States military sites. I’m in Germany to attend the appeal court hearing of a nuclear weapons abolitionist, Gerd Büntzly, whom I joined in 2017, along with three other US citizens, in a protest at the German Air Base Büchel. There are 20 US-manufactured nuclear weapons (B61-4s) at the base, but it’s a German air base. The USAF just works there (under the name 702nd Munitions Support Squadron) to guard, support and train German pilots in use of the US H-bombs.

Gerd, 68, a German language teacher, pianist, orchestral arranger and former music teacher from Herford, Germany, intends to testify at his own appeal that nonviolent resistance at the Büchel base is a lawful act of crime prevention because Germany and the United States deploy the US nuclear bombs there in violation of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The NPT prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to or from other states that have signed it. Both the US and Germany are parties to the NPT. (What the US has said to rationalize its nuclear lawlessness is: 1. The H-bombs are under USAF control at the base until war starts; and 2. The NPT doesn’t apply in wartime when the bombs would be transferred to German Tornado fighter jets.) Now that’s subversive activity at a military base!

One inquiring officer wanted a look inside my cornet case even though it had already passed two sets of airport security. (Of course, you never know about cornet players!) The other officer asked if I knew it was unlawful to enter a military installation without permission. I should know after having done so in at least two dozen protests. I said Yes.

After skimming the badly copied sections of the US Code, I asked why the officer was giving them to me. One said, “So you can’t say you haven’t been warned.” But none of the text I was given involved warnings, just federal statutory facts. The US Code is addressed to the US population as a whole. The material was neither addressed to me, nor had a date or the name of an issuing officer. Two pages had a DHS seal shabbily stamped in red. The pages were just photocopies or web page print-outs, complete with comical errors: One elaborately defined federal misdemeanor was said to have a penalty upon conviction of “a fine not to exceed ,000.” Wow, some warning.

The airport interruption was perhaps a sort of “proof of surveillance” demonstration by the cops — a useless and absurd one. One officer then felt the need to inform me that, “‘No trespassing’ signs at military bases are written in English.” I thought, What would become of the nation without the stern Dept. of Homeland Security!  I walked down the causeway to my seat.

Regular readers know that your Nukewatch reporter has protested and engaged in civil resistance against nuclear weapons and war since long before the advent of the Dept. of Homeland Security. Perhaps the attempted scare tactic was actually a message meant for everyone else. By reporting on the airport delay, maybe I only help the DHS put on notice those readers who may be considering opposition to US militarism.

What the DHS hasn’t figured out is that hokey theatrics used to shoo people away from political dissent only succeed against those few activists who were born yesterday. There are just too many time-honored, practical, hard-headed, ethical and strategic reasons for nonviolent political action (against the tyranny of the war system, misogyny, homophobia, racism, sexism and human exploitation) to ever intimidate committed loudmouths.

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It’s official. Nukewatch turns 40 in 2019!

Dear friend of Nukewatch,

It’s official. Nukewatch turns 40 in 2019! Across four decades, this small but effective group has diligently monitored, reported on, and organized opposition to nuclear weapons, the nuclear industry and the war system. Our commitment to peace and disarmament remains as steadfast today as when Nukewatch started in 1979. It’s a birthday year. Help Nukewatch celebrate with a gift to make sure this organization survives to see 50.

Donate

Many times over the decades Nukewatch nearly closed its doors because of financial hardship, and each time an appeal went out, dedicated supporters came through to save the day. Thus, our work continues. Through the years, staff, volunteers and activists have stood at the fences, crossed the lines, faced the guns, argued in court, gone to jail or prison, written letters, marched, lobbied, published and leafletted to educate people across the country about nuclear dangers, military and civilian. For this, we continue to rely on your contribution.

Nuclear weapons and reactor programs have grossly contaminated our soil, air and water. And the perpetrators have no intention of stopping. But thanks to a renewed struggle toward nuclear disarmament—nuclear abolitionists having won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and a huge effort to ban the Bomb internationally—the global movement for prohibition and elimination is gaining strength once again. Nukewatch has been there all along; from the beginning Nukewatch has been a partner of the coalition group ICAN that received the Nobel!

Nukewatch banner over Wisconsin Hwy 53 in Rice Lake, for “Women Ban the Bomb Day!”

With the US government galloping ahead with new nuclear weapons development—a gargantuan $1.7 trillion plan to replace the nuclear arsenal and its whole production complex—decontamination of radioactive wastelands from past weapons production gets short shrift or lip service (see Woolsey fire report on cover in your enclosed Quarterly).

As ever, with more and more cancers and diseases being linked to workplace or environmental radiation exposure, the White House—to save the nuclear industry money—is pushing the debunked notion that a little radiation is good for you. It has proposed an official weakening of radiation exposure protections (see Quarterly cover story).

While Congress and presidential administrations routinely add tens of billions to the military budget every year, they slash funds for food stamps, education, pollution control and healthcare. No major effort is afoot to wind down, much less roll back, or even audit Pentagon spending or its endless adventurism around the world. Some in Congress have proposed minimal but welcome cancellations of the most destabilizing and dangerous nuclear weapons programs. Where in the United States are there official calls for denuclearization or support for the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?

Your donation to Nukewatch helps amplify and broaden the demand for peace and disarmament.

Donate

While the Pentagon gets more money than it sometimes requests (and then loses large sums), organizations working for peace and reconciliation receive no government slush. Not a dime. Nukewatch’s grassroots work depends solely on you to get us through the years.

Without you there can be no printing of the Nukewatch Quarterly. Without you no one will answer the phone, do the research, write the reports, maintain the books, organize the next event, show up to speak, or join a protest delegation… Nukewatch needs funds for postage, heating bills, wages, insurance, paper, printing, phone, internet, and the list goes on.

Please help us cover the costs of:

Printing one issue of the Quarterly and other materials                                 $2,000

Annual liability insurance                                                                                                   $1,500

One scholarship for Germany delegation (US Nukes Out campaign)         $1,200

Tabling and fees for one conference                                                                              $100

Six months of website hosting                                                                                           $50

One book of stamps                                                                                                                 $9.80

Please give so that Nukewatch carries on. With you, Nukewatch will continue to struggle and strive for a nuclear free world.

Sincerely,

John LaForge, for Nukewatch

 

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Mining Industry Repealing Wisconsin Anti-Pollution Laws

By Kelly Lundeen

On November 8, Wisconsin lawmakers repealed the state’s “Prove-It-First” sulfide mining statute and sent it to Gov. Scott Walker for his signature. The law allowed for a mine to be licensed if its proponents could demonstrate that a similar mine had operated for 10 years and been closed for 10 years without causing acid mine drainage or polluting water. Since the requirement was never met, the statute has protected Wisconsin waters from sulfide mines since 1998. But beginning in 2013, Gov. Walker and Koch brothers-funded mining industry backers made repeal of the moratorium a top priority. Meanwhile, Republican Rep’s Jesse Kremer of Kewaskum, Rep. Cody Horlacher of Mukwonago, and Sen. Duey Stroebel of Saukville introduced bills to repeal state laws limiting air and water pollution not regulated under federal law.

A coalition of indigenous, environmental, and sports organizations mobilized to protect “Prove it first.” Over 20 years ago, many of the same groups had united around opposition to the metallic sulfide mining at Flambeau and Crandon, and saw the successful passage of the moratorium.

Back in the late ‘90s, both current Nukewatch staffers, John LaForge and I, were independently active in the anti-pollution struggle. For me, collecting postcards to support the Mining Moratorium and protesting the Crandon Mine was an early introduction to environmentalism as a geology student at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; and for John it meant organizing nonviolent action with Flambeau mine opponents from across the state.

Exxon’s Crandon mine proposal was stopped and the mine site sold to the Mole Lake Ojibway and the Forest County Potawatomi. The Flambeau Mine came and went, and the closed mine site has never been fully reclaimed after 20 years even though tailings were shipped off site. The Flambeau copper/gold operation was one of the major tools used by both sides of the moratorium repeal debate. Mining advocates claimed falsely that the site had been cleaned up, while opponents referred to the company’s own records to prove the site is polluting Stream 3, which feeds the Flambeau River. Flambeau mine site owners have never secured a mine reclamation “Certificate of Completion” due to the pollution—proven by 45 violations of water quality standards documented in a report by the Flambeau Mining Co. itself (a subsidiary of Rio Tinto). Unfortunately, industry-manufactured lies that “the Flambeau River remains fully protected” have dominated public discussion of the repeal.

At the state’s legislative hearings to repeal the moratorium, Nukewatch members and supporters joined dozens of others to testify. We gathered with our local network and used presentations, letters to the editor, and protest to educate the public and Assembly representatives.

“After hearing this,” said State Representative Romaine Quinn who attended a Nukewatch-organized presentation by Dr. Laura Gauger, “no, I don’t find myself supporting the mining bill.” However, Quinn voted for repeal.

Prior to the repeal bill’s passage, the author, Sen. “Toxic” Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, said, “exploratory companies tell me they are back in play (in Wisconsin) if we change the law.” Tiffany predicted that the bill could prompt companies to start early exploration work for copper, zinc, gold and silver as early as 2018.

—Dr. Robert E. Moran, “Summary: Flambeau Mine: Water Contamination and Selective ‘Alternative Facts,’” April 2017; Ecowatch, Jan. 4, 2013

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