Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

  • Issues
    • Weekly Column
    • Counterfeit Reactor Parts
    • Depleted Uranium
    • Direct Action
    • Lake Superior Barrels
    • Environmental Justice
    • Nuclear Power
      • Chernobyl
      • Fukushima
    • Nuclear Weapons
    • On The Bright Side
    • Radiation Exposure
    • Radioactive Waste
    • Renewable Energy
    • Uranium Mining
    • US Bombs Out of Germany
  • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Newsletter Archives
  • Resources
    • Nuclear Heartland Book
    • Fact Sheets
    • Reports, Studies & Publications
      • The New Nuclear Weapons: $1.74 Trillion for H-bomb Profiteers and Fake Cleanups
      • Nuclear Power: Dead In the Water It Poisoned
      • Thorium Fuel’s Advantages as Mythical as Thor
      • Greenpeace on Fukushima 2016
      • Drinking Water at Risk: Toxic Military Wastes Haunt Lake Superior
    • Nukewatch in the News
    • Links
    • Videos
  • About
    • About Nukewatch
    • Contact Us
  • Get Involved
    • Action Alerts!
    • Calendar
    • Workshops
  • Donate

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Co-Director to Report to Prison in Germany

Nukewatch staffer and Quarterly co-editor John LaForge has been sentenced to a 50-day jail term in Germany, for refusing to pay fines resulting from trespass convictions for several “go-in” nuclear weapons protests involving uninvited entry into Germany’s Büchel Air Base, where up to 20 US hydrogen bombs are stationed. The sentence will begin January 10 at the Billwerder prison in Hamburg.

LaForge appealed the convictions all the way to the Constitutional Court, which has yet to issue a decision. The appeal complains that expert witnesses — who were prepared to validate LaForge’s defense of “crime prevention” — were not allowed to testify. That decision, LaForge argues, effectively eliminated his right to present a defense.

The trial court in Cochem fined LaForge 1,500 Euros, which the appeal court in Koblenz later reduced to 600 Euros. In the US court system, refusal to pay the court-ordered fines is often ruled to be “contempt of court,” which can be considered a separate offense. Over four decades, LaForge has been jailed in the United States many times in anti-nuclear and anti-war actions.

Billwerder prison houses up to 734 adult male prisoners with relatively short sentences or held on pre-trial detention. It also holds up to 96 female adults or juveniles. Over a dozen German anti-nuclear resisters and one Dutch citizen have been jailed recently for nonviolent actions taken at the controversial NATO “nuclear sharing” base.

John LaForge entering Billwerder prison in Germany on January 10, 2023 (Photo by Marion Küpker)

If you write to John, remember mail takes two weeks to reach Germany.

John LaForge
JVA Glasmoor
Am Glasmoor 99
22852 Norderstedt
Germany

Before entering prison he was joined by other activists that have endured jail time for their anti-nuclear protests in a zoom meeting. Watch it here: John’s Jail Send-Off Zoom Meeting
Nukewatch Talks – an Exclusive

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

January 20, 2023 by Nukewatch 4 Comments

John’s Letter from Jail – January 15, 2023

Sent by Marion Küpker and typed by Felice Cohen-Joppa.

January 15, 2023

This month has three important political anniversaries, anti-war and anti-nuclear holidays if you will, events I’ll celebrate privately for a change, since I’m temporarily cooling my heels in a German prison on the west end of Hamburg. It’s not that I killed or robbed very many people, but I have acted contemptuously toward the court system here and have refused to cooperate with its deeply corrupt and thoroughly dishonest protection of the nuclear weapons establishment.

Because Susan Crane and I had the gall to occupy the top of a nuclear weapons bunker that holds U.S. hydrogen bombs here in Germany, and then refuse to apologize by paying a fine for trespassing, the court has decided that seven weeks in this modern prison ought to mend my ways, or at least discourage other abolitionists.

The three war-weary events are Martin Luther King Day, January 16; the second anniversary of the Entry into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, January 22; and the yearly setting of the “Doomsday Clock”, January 24 – that weirdly formulaic gauge of nuclear armageddon’s likelihood concocted by a group of scientific nuclear eggheads.

The establishment of the MLK holiday and of the TPNW were both monumental achievements made against fierce, wealthy, bigoted and colonialist forces of reaction. Advocates of nonviolent action and campaigners for a world free of nuclear weapons this Monday and next Sunday, then get back to work Tuesday when the alarm goes off again on the Doomsday Clock. Of course the clock’s “up one year, down the next” assessment of nuclear war risks has been ignored as a worn out rewrite of the Chicken Little tale. Yet the five metric tons of plutonium dust that was lofted into the upper atmosphere by nuclear weapons tests is all making its way back down to earth. So yes Mr. Watson, in fact the worst part of the sky is falling.

Dr. King and opposition to nuclear weapons will always be connected in my mind because MLK said, “We have guided missiles and misguided men” and “the ultimate logic of racism is genocide,” and because nuclear weapons are nothing if not genocidal.

Dr. King’s books, and the hard-won triumphs of the fearlessly nonviolent Civil Rights Movement, inspired a group of us in the 1980s to repeatedly blockade the entrance to the Grand Forks air force base in North Dakota which then controlled 150 land-based, long-range nuclear-armed missiles. Over a ten-year period, our band of nuclear resisters served enough county jail time after staging so many marches, protests and stunts – once pouring blood across the 100-ton concrete lid of a locked-and-loaded Minuteman III missile silo – that when the air force later decided to eliminate over half of its land-based missiles, the Grand Forks nukes were some of the first to go.

Our small group efforts were encouraged back then by news of hundreds of thousands across Europe who took to the streets demanding – successfully it turned out – the ouster of U.S. Cruise and Pershing missiles. Any prospective use of the weapons was almost universally viewed in Europe as suicidal. 

We never know if our demands will be realized only that nothing is gained without venturing. Anti-nuclear marchers in the ‘80s never guessed they’d see the U.N. General Assembly vote 122-to-3 to endorse a treaty banning nuclear weapons. This overwhelming majority of the world’s governments have agreed that nuclear weapons can only produce massacres, that any chance of a successful medical response to their effects is impossible, that these effects would illegally cross neutral borders, do long-term criminal damage to the environment, and then recoil to maim and destroy the very militaries that unleash them. (That’s why I wrote “B61 = Suicide” on the weapons bunker just before being detained.)

Today, the groundbreaking TPNW has permanently shamed and stigmatized the nuclear weapons states as hypocrites, scofflaws and rogues who ridicule and ignore the treaty’s means, while cynically claiming to desire its ends.

The nine-member thermonuclear cartel, like a gang of coldblooded mobsters, acts outside and above the law by rewarding their judicial, police and prison authorities for the cover they provide, authorities who then wink and pretend that the protection racket is necessary and that the Bomb is legal.

Maybe our marching, our rebellion and the law of nations can’t denuclearize the cabal of atomic weaponeers. Maybe the nuclear mobsters won’t re-direct their war chests to useful purposes before they run our earthly train off the rails. But then nothing changes unless we demand it.

John LaForge
Billwerder Prison, Hamburg

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

October 17, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Büchel Resisters Choose Jail Over Fines

By the Nuclear Resister

Three more Europeans have gone to prison in Germany this year for their protests inside the Büchel Air Base, where US nuclear weapons are deployed. They are the 27th, 28th, and 29th resisters to choose prison over payment of fines during the long campaign to send those nukes back home. COVID had delayed the imposition of their sentences.

In May, Ria Makein, 70, surrendered to serve 30 days for her April 2019 arrest. She chose prison because she wanted to “continue our campaign.” Asked after her release what gave her the strength “to swim against the tide,” she replied, “Through all the mail I received during those four weeks, I became aware of this great network.”

In July, Amsterdam Catholic Worker Frits ter Kuile reported and served 30 days.

Holger-Isabelle Jänicke lost his appeal for taking part in an April 2019 action at Büchel and began serving his 30-day sentence in mid-August. Jänicke, a legal aid worker, dedicated his arrest to the late Fr. Carl Kabat, noting that, “In 1983, he also took part in the ploughshares campaign in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany in which a tractor for the Pershing II [nuclear missile] was damaged. From 1987 to 1995, I lived in Mutlangen in a community of peace workers. We named our house after Carl Kabat.”

Next in lockup for actions at Büchel may well be US activist John LaForge, who has refused to pay and has been ordered to serve 50 days in a German prison starting Jan. 10, 2023. Last spring, following his convictions in district and appeal courts for twice entering the base in 2018, LaForge appealed to the Constitutional Court. However, in Germany, imposition of sentence is separate from the legal appeal. The appeal argues that two lower courts erred by refusing to consider his defense of “crime prevention,” thus violating his right to present a defense. LaForge argues that Germany’s stationing of US nuclear weapons is a criminal violation of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, which forbids transferring nuclear weapons to other countries. He also asserts that attempting to stop their use is not unlawful but a justified act to prevent the crime of threatening vast, disproportionate, and indiscriminate destruction from the US nuclear weapons.

While LaForge may become the first US activist to be jailed in Germany for protesting the US nuclear weapons there (Kabat having been released on his own recognizance and never returning to Germany for trial), at least two more Americans, both Catholic Workers who have joined the international protests at Büchel, could follow him into prison next year if they refuse to pay.

Susan Crane from Redwood City, California was convicted on January 18 on four counts of trespass from 2019. Once again, the Cochem court rejected her defenses of international law and competing harms, instead focusing for the record on the cost of hardware to repair the fence she’d helped to cut through. On September 20 Crane was retried in Koblenz Regional Court, contesting the trial court’s refusal to consider her defenses to the four 2019

charges as well as the charges for twice entering the base in 2018. She was convicted and given a sentence of 230 days or a fine of €1,000 ($968.00) and is considering another appeal.

While vigiling at Büchel in July for this summer’s international week of protest, Brian Terrell from Maloy, Iowa was served papers to appear in court on November 23 for the appeal of his conviction from a 2019 fence-cutting action there. He is weighing his options.

A final update: Uwe Lutz-Scholten was summoned to court in his hometown of Korbach, a three-hour drive from Büchel, on September 8, charged with inciting an illegal act. His name was on the website for the July 2021 “Digging for Life” action at Büchel as manager of the solidarity account to support the activists who were arrested.

Last winter the prosecutor discontinued the investigation of those arrested at the scene. Lutz-Scholten, drew a young judge who expressed interest in the issues, admitting she didn’t know anything about them before the trial but had learned a lot in preparation. She allowed him to speak at length about the consequences of nuclear war and the weapons stockpiled at Büchel, and at the end simply terminated the proceedings with no judgment or penalty.

—Felice & Jack Cohen-Joppa, editors of The Nuclear Resister in Tucson, Arizona, where this article first appeared, gave us permission to reprint.

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Office News, Quarterly Newsletter, US Bombs Out of Germany, War

October 17, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

International Meetings Shame Nuclear Weapons, Promote Reactors

By John LaForge

There were several major gatherings focused on nuclear weapons this summer. In Vienna in June there was the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Forum, the Vienna Conference on the effects of nuclear weapons, and the First Meeting of Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW); and in August was the Review Conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty at the UN in New York City. I was lucky and fascinated to observe all of them.

The formal UN sessions in Vienna and New York reminded the world that the nine nuclear-armed governments are out of step with the overwhelming majority of governments that want nuclear weapons abolished, and that the nine don’t intend to give up their arsenals. The five nuclear powers that have ratified the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) have, for 50 years, ignored the treaty’s binding obligations, principally its Article VI promise to denuclearize. All of the nuclear powers boycotted the Vienna meetings and urged their allies to stay away, betraying their fear of the TPNW’s power to stigmatize and delegitimize the Bomb.

Diplomatic sparks flew just once in New York, when China pointed out August 2 that stationing US nuclear weapons at NATO air bases in Europe violated the NPT’s articles I and II against transferring nuclear weapons to other countries. Germany hastily replied in writing that its “nuclear sharing” was legal because it was instituted long before the NPT became law. I thought of the 19th Century slaver who may have said he could keep his people in chains because he had enslaved them before the Emancipation Proclamation.

At the NPT RevCon in New York, I was alarmed to hear nearly every member state speaker promote nuclear reactor production like they were hucksters at an industry expo. In contrast, Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear International, speaking in Vienna, explicitly pointed out that nuclear reactors in war zones like Ukraine are stationary time bombs constantly posing a risk of catastrophic radiation releases. Sadly, the spectacular success of the TPNW is tainted by the treaty’s embrace of “peaceful” reactor development.

The dilemma of opposing nuclear weapons while promoting nuclear reactors was accidentally revealed in New York by the representative of the Philippines. He said power reactor sales are an “equity” issue in which the Global South shouldn’t be denied the “benefits” of nuclear-powered electricity that the North enjoys. The speaker then immediately noted that the world can’t tell whether or not Iran’s reactor fuel program is weapons related.

Because power reactors are simultaneously dirty targets in wartime, and H-bomb proliferation machines all the time, nuclear power and weapons proliferation are two lethal sides of the same poison coin.

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, Office News, Quarterly Newsletter, US Bombs Out of Germany

June 21, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Welcomes Lindsay Potter

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2022
Lindsay Potter carrying 14-month-old Riley this past winter on the Plowshares Land Trust, home to Nukewatch.

We are happy to welcome Lindsay Potter to the Nukewatch staff! Our part-time IT support and writer Christine Manwiller had to step back because of growing responsibilities at her full-time job. Lindsay is a writer, farmer, activist, and a full-time mother. After completing two BA’s, in Poetry and Journalism, Lindsay has spent several years farming and now dedicates her time to getting back to the land, caring for family, and participating in community grassroots organizing for social, racial, and environmental/climate justice. Most recently Lindsay focused on two projects: working in Osceola, Wisconsin to protect the groundwater and the St. Croix River from harmful frac sand mining practices at the North 40 Mine, particularly as a member of the Town Board Committee drafting a new ordinance limiting and regulating the mine; and working with Amery (WI) United, a community group dedicated to racial justice organizing, that planned monthly rallies throughout the summer of 2020 and now focuses on building awareness of racism in rural Wisconsin by hosting diverse educational speakers, working with local school boards to address discussions and curricula around race, and creating events encouraging celebration and centering of Black American culture.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Office News, Quarterly Newsletter

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 5
  • Next Page »

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Subscribe

Donate

Facebook

Categories

  • B61 Bombs in Europe
  • Chernobyl
  • Counterfeit Reactor Parts
  • Depleted Uranium
  • Direct Action
  • Environment
  • Environmental Justice
  • Fukushima
  • Lake Superior Barrels
  • Military Spending
  • Newsletter Archives
  • North Korea
  • Nuclear Power
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Office News
  • On The Bright Side
  • Photo Gallery
  • Quarterly Newsletter
  • Radiation Exposure
  • Radioactive Waste
  • Renewable Energy
  • Sulfide Mining
  • Through the Prism of Nonviolence
  • Uncategorized
  • Uranium Mining
  • US Bombs Out of Germany
  • War
  • Weekly Column

Contact Us

(715) 472-4185
nukewatch1@lakeland.ws

Address:
740A Round Lake Road
Luck, Wisconsin 54853
USA

Donate To Nukewatch

News & Information on Nuclear Weapons,
Power, Waste & Nonviolent Resistance

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

© 2023 · Nukewatch