Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

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The Secret of Joy is Resistance

John LaForge blowing his B-flat cornet at main gate of Büchel Air Force Base in Germany, host of U.S. nuclear  bombs.

March 2020

Hi Friends,

I am sorry to hit you with this shocker, but your Nukewatch senior staff member, yours truly, has to take a leave of absence from regular official duties because of a carcinoma that has developed on my left tonsil. This is a treatable cancer that has already taken a hit with the application of a very strict diet, prescribed medications and surgery. The cancer is of a sort that is unlikely to spread to other places or organs. I can still blow the B-flat cornet like an eighth grader…

The industrial cancer system in the U.S. proposed treatment methods that do not appeal to my sense of well-being and are being mostly rejected by me. The Ear-Nose-&-Throat (ENT) experts I’ve seen in the U.S. say the recommended schedule is whole-body PET/CT radiation scans [using fluorine-18 “contrast” inside the body, the equivalent of 500 to 1,000 chest X-rays from outside], followed by surgery, followed by heavy radiation (one ENT told me “the PET scan is nothing compared to what you’ll get afterwards”… namely “radiation 5 days a week, for 7 weeks”), and then “chemo.” However, high-dose PET and CT scans, radiation treatments, and chemotherapy are not successful if one reads the statistics without wearing the proponents’ rose-tinted glasses.

After considering and declining industrial medicine’s suggestions made to me, I have returned to Germany, where the diagnosis was first made, for treatment by specialists in alternative methods (which are well-respected in Germany) that boost, support, strengthen, and enliven the immune system, while starving and killing cancer cells, and shrinking tumors. Although my insurance will not cover medical expenses in Germany, I now have the financial boost of a GoFundMe appeal.

In the next 6 months or so, I have to deeply focus on my health and on trying to learn enough German to do a blitzkrieg on this cancer.

Who says irony is dead? After 40 years of speaking out against poisoned weapons and reactors, cancer hits me right in the mouth. The profound Alice Walker was both demanding and affirmative to declare that “resistance is the secret of joy.” We know she’s right.

I am being lovingly looked after by my anti-nuclear family Marion Küpker in Germany, Bonnie Urfer, & Nukewatch Co-director Kelly Lundeen at home; and by my sister Peg (DON’T call her Margaret Mary!) from my good old nuclear family in Duluth, Minnesota. I am embarrassed by all the concern, although some of it is beautifully comic: recently I got a card from Arianne Peterson (co-editor of our book Nuclear Heartland—Revised), with a hog pictured on the front that reads: “As we say down at the pig farm … You cured yet?”

Well, “pretty soon” is what I say.

Thanks for your love and support.

P.S. Update: surgery was completed on March 5 and we are overjoyed to report that there is no sign of additional cancer.

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Meanwhile, Back at the Office

Spring Quarterly 2020

Dear Friends of Nukewatch,

While John is taking a temporary leave of absence to beat off cancer (see The Secret of Joy is Resistance), there will be a few changes in the office. You may notice that this newsletter is half its usual length. We will return to our full length for the Summer Quarterly Nukewatch newsletter.

Volunteers get our newsletter out to your mailbox.

In the office I will continue to serve as Co-Director with the essential help of our Board of Directors, Bonnie Urfer, Arianne Stewart Peterson, Gail Vaughn, Jeff Peterson and YOU!

Did you ever wonder how Nukewatch does it all? Here is your chance to find out!

Nukewatch is currently seeking volunteers to fulfill programming and administrative duties necessary for the organization to function temporarily while our beloved Co-Director and Editor John LaForge is away (We know he is returning, because he left a sink full of dirty dishes). Nukewatch has a mission to fulfill, and we need your help to do it. Be part of an anti-nuclear group with a 40-year history! For a minimal time commitment you can help shape our anti-nuclear advocacy and resistance. Volunteer positions have the potential to become paid employment depending on future needs.

A busy Nukewatch office

We have an in-office “Alpha” Volunteer Team which will meet biweekly, with childcare provided. There is a remote “Gamma” Team who contributes from the comfort of their homes, wherever they may be, to the abolition of nuclear weapons. We also have a Newsletter Team to get the Nukewatch Quarterly newsletter sent off by the deadline. We hope you’ll join us as we build our community and capacity, educate a larger audience, and become more inclusive for future sustainability. Please call or email nukewatch1@lakeland.ws to support the continuity of Nukewatch with your time and talents.

In addition, do you like mud? Cutting wood? Keeping fires going? The solar-powered Plowshares Land Trust, home to Nukewatch, also has space for new community members. In the peace and quiet of rural Luck, Wisconsin, where the blue sky frames the white birch trees, there is a home waiting for the right person or people. Responsibilities are seasonally dependent — summertime gardening, winter fires, and springtime maple syruping. Call the Nukewatch office, (715) 472-4185, for more info.

For a nuclear-free future!

Kelly Lundeen

Nukewatch Co-Director

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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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