Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

by Leave a Comment

Resistance to US Weapons in Germany Spreads to Courtrooms

Protest and nonviolent “go-in” actions at Büchel Air Base in Germany have increased over the last four years, and 36 resisters have recently been charged with civil offenses. Court hearings are held first in Cochem District Court, about 10 miles from the air base. Two appeals have been made from Cochem to the Regional Court in Koblenz, and one appeal has been made from Koblenz to the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany’s highest court.

Following the 18-person go-in on July 15, 2018, “penalty orders” have been issued to at least 12 people. Four defendants were convicted of property damage and trespass on Jan. 22, 2020, and three more on May 11, 2020. Four of the seven have appealed, while three others go on trial June 10, 2020. I too have been charged for joining this large go-in, but no trial date has been set.

For two April 30, 2019 go-in actions,15 resisters are to be tried—five on June 3, and ten on June 24, 2020. In other cases, organizer Beate Körsgen has a June 8, 2020 trial for allegedly violating the Public Assembly Law. Another goes on trial Sept. 2, 2020 charged with illegally photographing the air base fence. Marion Küpker, coordinator of annual “20 Weeks for 20 Bombs,” goes on trial Sept. 7, 2020, charged with resisting arrest. This eye witness saw a policeman grab Marion who was on her phone, drag her from her car while she yelled in pain, force her into the grass face-down, and then kneel on her back.

Five German activists have appealed to the Constitutional Court where, like the US Supreme Court, judges first decide whether to hear a case or let stand the lower court ruling. It has yet to decide. The five were convicted after going in and occupying the air base runway Sept. 12, 2016. Another case against four resisters who made a July 23, 2018 go-in, is on appeal to the Regional Court in Koblenz, but no hearing has been set. Following a June 18, 2018 action, one physician/organizer is also waiting for an appeal date in Koblenz. This case also alleges the doctor violated the Public Assembly law.

The increased prosecutions can be seen as reaction to growing resistance, and the absurd “resisting arrest” charge as an attempt to intimidate and quash the protests. Having faced nuclear weapons for decades, these realists don’t scare that easy. —JL

—Martin Otto, a long-time volunteer with Nonviolent Action to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (NAAA), provided prosecution details for Nukewatch.

by Leave a Comment

As Urgent Crises Abound, Pentagon Dreams of Hiroshima

By Bob Mayberry and John LaForge
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

While the coronavirus and climate change, war, famine, floods, hurricanes and typhoons cause social and economic disruption at home and abroad, some in the United States military plod along with routine nuclear war planning. Instead of mobilizing relief efforts and supplies for Covid-19 response and for refugees and other people displaced or endangered by war or climate chaos, our “great” country—or as Finian O’Toole recently described it in Irish Times, “the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, [and] a military complex with stunning logistical capacity”—is blindly doubling down on its nuclear war readiness.

The German military analyst Otfried Nassauer (director of the Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic Security) reported recently:

“At the end of 2019, the USA sent a strategic missile submarine [the USS Tennessee] on patrol for the first time, carrying at least one Trident II D5 missile with only a small [sic] W76-2 [nuclear] warhead of about 8 [kilotons] of explosive power. The use of this sub-strategic warhead considered for ‘initial nuclear use’—in response to an assumed Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployment in Europe was announced in February in a small war game at STRATCOM [US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska].”

This ‘war game’ was reported widely, including by Julian Borger in the Guardian, Feb. 24, under the heading: “US staged ‘limited’ nuclear battle against Russia in war game.”[1]

Of course, some of these nuclear war exercises are anything but games.

In August last year, it’s now been reported, the US air force flew all 20 of the thermonuclear bombs it stations in Germany back to the United States for a very short time. According to the April 11 edition of the German weekly Der Spiegel, the H-bombs were loaded aboard a giant US air force C-17 “Globemaster” cargo plane, and sent on the highly secret round trip in order to install new software in the bombs. [2] The new parts reportedly deal with codes used for arming and detonating the bombs.

According to Nassauer, who spoke in a conference call May 4, the US nuclear weapons were flown to Kirtland air force base, in the southeast corner of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The H-bombs went to Kirtland air base because it is home to the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center and the so-called Air Delivered Capabilities Directorate, responsible for maintaining air-launched nuclear weapons in the US and Europe.

Kirtland AFB is also the home of the Defense Nuclear Weapons School, which teaches nuclear war. Current courses include “Theater Nuclear Operations,” which the website says “provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners,” and teach, “the targeting effects of nuclear weapon employment.”

Another course is “Integrated Munitions Effects Assessment” which instructs students in “creating target models, [and] developing attack plans using … nuclear weapons,” where they learn to “calculate probabilistic attacks against predefined targets,” and “consequence assessment to WMD [weapons of mass destruction] scenarios….”

For the curious, Kirtland air base is also home to the Nuclear Weapons Instructions Museum which  “contains displays of all stockpiled US nuclear weapons and their associated components and delivery systems, as well as related training aids.

This is real, but you don’t have to take Nukewatch’s word for it. You could see the Defense Nuclear Weapons School on-line at nukewatchinfo.org/us-mass-murder-school. The Pentagon recently put it behind a wall but Nukewatch downloaded some relevant sections in time.

[1] The Guardian, 24 February 2020

[2] Der Spiegel, No. 16, 11 April 2020, pp. 26, 28, 29

by Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Staffer Charged for Actions at German Nuclear Base

Sixteen of 18 nuclear abolitionists who conducted a mass “go-in” protest at the Büchel Air Force Base in Germany on July 15, 2018, upon being released by the military. The 18, including activists from the US, Germany, The Netherlands and the UK—one in a wheel chair and another on crutches—gained entry by clipping through perimeter fences and razor wire in five separate places, in broad daylight, on a Sunday morning to bring attention to US hydrogen bombs deployed there. Charges are still being brought by German authorities. Photo: Rolf Schlesener.
By John LaForge
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

Charges of trespass and damage to property have been issued to several dozen peace activists that have joined “go-in” actions at the Büchel Air Base.

Now, after 22 months of delay, authorities have brought two minor criminal charges against me, your Nukewatch co-director.

The alleged offenses are presented in the “penalty order” as if already proven, like a traffic ticket. “On the basis of the facts established by the Public Prosecutor, you are charged to have on July 15, 2018 at Büchel, in two legally independent acts, acted jointly and in concurrent offenses: a) intruded illegally into the fenced property of another; b) damaged or destroyed illegally a chattel belonging to another.”

This action was one of the largest single go-ins in the long campaign of civil resistance at the base. Eighteen people in five groups went through openings cut in the fence in five places, in broad daylight, on a Sunday morning. The resisters were unhindered in the process and the group included elders and one person in a wheelchair. News of the bold breach of the fence—one headline asked “How could this happen?”—reached the German parliament where one member asked from the floor whether the nuclear weapons base was an “amusement park.”

The second alleged offense was a go-in by Susan Crane and me on Hiroshima Day 2018. When we were found after over an hour inside, we were given a robust military police reaction, presumably because we had gotten very close to some of the US nuclear bombs.

The penalty order imposes a fine of 1,500 Euros (50 “day fines” of 30 Euros per day), or, alternately, if the fine goes unpaid, “One day in prison per-day fine.” Like with petty crimes in the US, this offense could be resolved out-of-court by paying the fine.

I have contested the charges, and the order says “there will be a hearing in court.” No date has been set.

However, in several previous cases of charges brought against nuclear resisters from outside Germany, court trials were never scheduled. Penalty orders sometimes appear to have been bluffs, mere attempts to coerce the activists into paying fines.

Other Suspects Named and Unnamed

In the paperwork issued to me, Susan Crane, a plowshares activist from the Redwood City, California Catholic Worker, is named as being “subject to separate prosecution”—along with “other persons who are unknown at this stage.” It may be that Susan and others will eventually be charged. At press time neither Susan nor other US citizens that joined “go-in” actions at the base in 2017, 2018, and 2019 have been charged.

The charges against me appear to be the first time that a US citizen not living in Germany has been charged for civil resistance at the base. Only Dennis DuVall, a US citizen formerly of Arizona now living near Dresden, Germany has been convicted of damage to the fence and trespass—for joining the July 15, 2018 action. (See cover story.)

In my work for Nukewatch, I helped coordinate delegations of US peace activists to the protest camp near Büchel in the summers of 2017, 2018, and 2019, and I participated in four different go-in actions. This effort may explain the authorities’ interest in me.

Writing from Germany May 31, in the thick of several upcoming court trials and ongoing appeals court cases of resisters, we are all looking forward to bringing international attention to the lawless US deployment of nuclear weapons here—and to their inevitable ouster. I’ll keep you posted about ongoing events while I’m in Germany and after I get home.

by Leave a Comment

Manufacturing Consent: Creation of Cultural Triage to Take Yucca Mountain

By Shoshone artist Jack Malotte. Used with permission.
By Ian Zabarte
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

The Shoshone have lived in the Great Basin, home to Yucca Mountain, for more than 12,000 years. The Shoshone primary use of the land and water is their identity.

By the time nuclear weapons testing ended, over 1,000 nuclear tests were conducted on Shoshone land and people. In 1992, the Shoshone began to investigate their radiation exposure.

The Native Community Action Council (NCAC) was created to investigate and found, after review of the 1990 Department of Energy (DOE) Off-site Radiation Exposure Review, that Indian tribes received significantly higher radiation dose in fallout than non-Indians. Higher risk of exposures was found based on lifestyle differences that include: diet, mobility and shelter. The NCAC found increased exposure: 15 times greater for adults, 30 times for youth, and 60 times greater in utero. The results were used as a contention at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing of Yucca Mountain for a deep geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste.

Despite spending $10 billion, the administration failed to meet the licensing requirements of the NRC under 10 CFR 960 121.12 OWNERSHIP. Even with the Bureau of Land Management master title plats, the DOE could not prove ownership to Yucca Mountain because the Treaty of Ruby Valley is controlling and, in “full force and effect.” Shoshone title remains unextinguished.

The DOE’s 1990 Yucca Mountain Cultural Resource Study created a study protocol of cultural triage.* Triage is appropriately used in natural disasters to determine where limited resources are used to maximize survival. Cultural triage is defined as, “a forced choice situation in which an ethnic group is faced with the decision to rank in importance equally valued cultural resources that could be affected by a proposed development project.” In Shoshone country, there is no natural disaster to invoke triage; there is no development project that justifies requiring the Shoshone to choose whether water or land is more important. As said earlier, water and land are Shoshone identity. What the Shoshone people experience with the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste proposal is a deliberate act to dismantle Shoshone living lifeways in relation to the land—an ethnic cleansing—for the benefit and profit of the nuclear industry.

The DOE-funded research, organizing the Consolidated Group of Tribes and Organizations in 1988, paving the way for this cultural triage. Tribes unwittingly participated, manufacturing consent for the Yucca Mountain project by their consultation. The tribes involved include the Pahrump Paiute Tribe, an invented tribe, and the Las Vegas Indian Center, an urban social-welfare organization. Both entities were directed by the same individual who is not an Indian enrolled in any tribe. The remaining 14 federally recognized Indian tribes created by the US are “incompetents” under the guardianship of the Department of Interior. Federally recognized tribes, due to their dependency, are unable to give consent to involvement, research on them, or research outcomes.

The Consolidated Group of Tribes and Organizations has a new name, meeting as the Nuclear Energy Tribal Working Group at the National Conference of State Legislatures. It includes the fabricated tribe that misleads federally recognized tribes to this day with the funding and support of the DOE.

The Shoshone seek collaborators in the persistent struggle to create understanding of the health disparities and to mitigate the cascading effects suffered from radioactive fallout exposure. The Shoshone do not consent to Yucca Mountain or any other part of Shoshone country being used for nuclear waste disposal.

* Native American Cultural Resource Studies at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, 1990, Richard Stoffle

—Ian Zabarte is Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians and Secretary of Native Community Action Council.

by Leave a Comment

NRC Okays Unlawful Licensing Language in Planned NM Radioactive Waste Site

Beyond Nuclear to Challenge Decision in Federal Court

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

In an astounding, extra-legal ruling April 23, 2020, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) acknowledged that a company’s formal application to place a large quantity of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear reactor fuel waste in southeast New Mexico violates federal law, and yet ruled that the unlawful provisions of the company’s license application could be ignored and the license approved.

The national watchdog organization Beyond Nuclear formally challenged the NRC’s authority to approve the application. The basis for the challenge was that the application suggests that the US Department of Energy (DOE) may become the owner of the waste reactor fuel even as it is stored on the property of the private, for-profit firm Holtec International (See “Public Weighing in on Environmental Impact Statement of Holtec and ISP CIS”) The US Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) prohibits the federal government from taking ownership, and therefore financial liability, of waste reactor fuel rods (currently the private property of reactor companies) until after a federal repository for permanent disposal is operating. This illegality was explicitly acknowledged in the NRC’s decision.

Liability for the waste is a game-ending challenge for the nuclear industry, since its high-level radioactive waste is ferociously deadly for about one-million years. Once ownership of the waste changes hands, liability for radiation accidents—failed waste cask loading, transport crashes, breaks or leaks from faulty casks, failure of underground storage containers or systems (like one in February 2014 at New Mexico’s WIPP site)—moves from the industry that created the cancer-causing waste to US tax payers.

Nevertheless the NRC threw out Beyond Nuclear’s challenge to the project on the grounds that Holtec could be depended on not to implement the unlawful provision if the license were granted. Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear, said about the shocking NRC decision: “On behalf of our members and supporters in New Mexico, and across the country along the road, rail, and waterway routes in most states, that would be used to haul the high risk, high-level radioactive waste out west, we will appeal the NRC Commissioners’ bad ruling to the federal court.” —JL

— Carlsbad Current-Argus, May 2; and Beyond Nuclear, Apr. 27, 2020

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