The Nuclear Resister

Photo © Frederik Sadones via Vredesactie

from Vredesactie Belgium and Istopthearmstrade.eu

For the fourth year in a row, peace activists took action at a conference in Belgium of the European Defense Agency (EDA). Four hundred arms dealers, lobbyists from the arms industry and policy makers met together about the future of European defense. The conference took place behind closed doors, where critical voices may not enter. Dozens of peace activists, including a member of the European Parliament, presented themselves at the entrance to the conference on the morning of November 23. They were dragged away by the police. Seventeen peace activists were arrested. 

Occupy Beale photo

BEALE AFB/MARYSVILLE, CALIFORNIA – To draw attention to the 16th anniversary of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, northern California anti-drone activists expanded their protest to include three major commute gates at Beale Air Force Base on October 16 and 17. October 7 marked the 16th year since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, now the longest war in U.S. history.

One activist, Toby Blomé from the San Francisco area, was arrested while blocking early morning rush hour traffic into the Marysville, California drone base on Tuesday, October 17.  She was later cited and released, and faces federal trespass charges.  Scores of activists have been arrested at anti-drone protests at Beale Air Force Base over the past several years.

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  Daniel and Sam with their lawyer

  Sam Walton and Rev. Daniel Woodhouse have been acquitted after breaking-in to BAE Systems factory to “disarm” Typhoon fighter jets.

• BAE’s Typhoon fighter jets are being used by Saudi-led forces in the ongoing bombardment of Yemen
• The UK has licensed £3.8 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the bombing began in March 2015

Mordechai Vanunu

by Kathy Kelly

October 14, 2017

Mordechai Vanunu was imprisoned in Israel for eighteen years because he blew the whistle on Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. He felt he had “an obligation to tell the people of Israel what was going on behind their backs”  at a supposed nuclear research facility which was actually producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. His punishment for breaking the silence about Israel’s capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons included eleven years of solitary confinement.   

Yesterday, reading about President Donald Trump’s new strategy on Iran, Vanunu’s long isolation and sacrificial commitment to truth-telling came to mind.

Early on the morning of September 20, at least 150 French police were involved in raids on the House of Resistance in the small village of Bure and other activists’ residences. Dozens of police broke through the door at the house of Resistance to enter, and also forced their way into camp trailers and vehicles parked on the property to gain entrance. Residents were held for up to ten hours in the rooms or camp trailer where they were found, many asleep at the time.

At the same hour, fifteen police raided and searched an old railway station in Lumeville occupied by dump opponents, while three homes of activists in nearby Commercy and Mandres were also searched. Police acted on a warrant related to vandalism last June at an affiliated hotel/restaurant at the research center outside Bure. The identities of all who police encountered were recorded, while the entire contents of the office in Bure were seized as evidence, including a copy machine, computers, hard drives, phones, papers, books and other property. Similar property seizures took place during the other four raids.  Two people in Bure were taken into custody and to separate local police stations, then released later in the day.