The Nuclear Resister

Construction gate blockade with street art by Jang Joonhu. Photo via savejejunow.org

Construction of the controversial navy base on Jeju Island, South Korea, is accelerating. In the last week, after months of delays due to local protest, a 24/7 operation has begun. Two hundred low-wage Vietnamese laborers are now housed on site, producing 80 3,000-ton concrete caissons that will create the first breakwater and mooring docks. Round-the-clock resistance in Gangjeong village has followed with dozens of people sustaining a blockade at the construction gate, sometimes in pouring rain and at night under the glare of broad banks of bright lighting installed to illuminate the work yard.

The police battalions brought in from the mainland have doubled in size to 500 riot-equipped officers suppressing the nonviolent demonstrators. Every two hours for the last four days, demonstrators are pushed, roughly dragged and carried from the road, then surrounded by multiple lines of police. A few more cement mixers enter the site, police fall back, and the blockade resumes. Sometimes arrests are made and activists have been taken into custody. One man, Catholic Fr. Lee Young-Chan, remains jailed on multiple charges

David Omondi, Theo Kayser, Fr. Louis Vitale

NONVIOLENT BACKCOUNTRY RESISTERS CAUSE DISRUPTIVE BREACH OF VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE SECURITY ZONES

from tierralinda@live.com

For the first time in nearly a decade, nonviolent civil resisters caused a disruptive breach of the backcountry security zones at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) on October 20 and 21, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. VAFB enforces a sweeping global pattern of violent high-tech military abuse.

Three participants were arrested for federal trespass and others eluded base security patrols. One participant, Theo Kayser, was hand-cuffed face down on the ground with an M-16 automatic rifle trained on his back during his 2 a.m. arrest, while search lights swept the surrounding hills. He was then held under armed guard for nine hours at a special security command post which VAFB had set up to deal with the backcountry occupation. Vandenberg security stated that they believed at least 15 individuals were spotted in base security zones between 0ctober 20th and 21st.

[Editor’s note:  We are trying to find out the names and prison addresses of all of the anti-nuclear protesters in prison in India.  Here is a conversation with some of the women in Trichy Central Prison.]

from dianuke/org

The two year old Trichy Central Prison for women wears an old colonial look. It houses more than 600 women charged with various acts of violence and law- breaking. But never would it have seen the like of the 7 women from Koodankulam. Since September 9, 2012 when the people from several villages like Idinthakarai, Koodankulam, Kootapulli and Kuthankuzhi got together to say No to the Nuclear Power Plant, there has been news about the struggle headed by the People’s movement against Nuclear Energy. As the name of the movement implies, this struggle is not just against one nuclear power plant. But it is for a world free from Nuclear Energy.

Elizabeth McAlister, Philip Berrigan and baby Frida

from wagingnonviolence.org

by Frida Berrigan

October 19, 2012

Seamus Philip celebrated his three month birthday on Thursday. It was just like every other day — nursing and pooping, laughing and cooing, chewing on his hands and slobbering. He giggles and smiles and looks deep into your eyes now. He can hold his head up and has mounted an aggressive conditioning regime with the goal of turning over and crawling ASAP. Watching him, loving him, caring for him, living with his constant changes — all of this provides daily opportunities for me to reflect on my own early years and upbringing.

I wonder how his dad and I will impart our values and core beliefs, I wonder what kind of man he will grown up to be; I wonder what stories he will tell his friends and his children about his childhood. I already know they won’t be the same stories I tell.

By Jane Stoever

Father Carl Kabat, OMI (Oblates of Mary Immaculate), of St. Louis, in a Municipal Court trial Oct. 12 in Kansas City, Mo., got “time served” on two charges—trespassing this July 4 at the site for the new KC Plant, and breaking probation from his July 4, 2011, trespass. The city earlier dropped a property charge against Kabat, now 79, who had used a bolt-cutter to open the chain-link fence and enter the 180-acre site late July 3. The time served came during his overnight in jail this July 4-5.