Hundreds arrested as Europeans act against NATO

Posted on April 2, 2012

Police pursue Swedish activists entering NATO headquarters. Photo: AP/Virginia Mayo

Press release from NATO Game Over campaign at Peace Action in Belgium

http://www.vredesactie.be/item.php?id=313

Around 2:00 a.m. April 1,  800 peace activists from more than ten European countries gathered near NATO headquarters in Evere, Brussels. 500 people tried nonviolently to enter the NATO compound. About 20 activists succeeded to enter the military site, 483 people were arrested. At the main entrance of the NATO headquarters 300 supporters cheered the intervention teams.

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Another activist resisting Jeju naval base to be sent to prison, and more Jeju resistance updates

Posted on March 31, 2012
‎[March 31] One more activist is to be imprisoned: Mr. Lim Ho-Young, village media team leader
Mr. Lim Ho Young, village media team leader who has done important media work with the nickname ‘thinkunit’ and has initiated a small peace park in the Samgeori (three way intersection) was arrested on March 29.  He got a warrant of arrest yesterday and the court made the decision to imprison him on March 31. He is told to be moved to the Jeju prison next week. When he was taken to the police station, he was bleeding in his forehead hit by police camera. The arbitrary charge against him is “obstruction of government affairs.”

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Koodankulam fasters relent; government lifts siege of villagers

Posted on March 30, 2012

Bernard Pierre Wolff / Getty Images

Copyright © 2012 The Telegraph, Calcutta, India
Chennai, March 27:
The hunger strike by the protesters against the Kudankulam nuclear power station was withdrawn this evening.

Members of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, led by convener S.P. Udayakumar, had been on hunger strike at Indinthakarai village, 3km from the plant, for the last 10 days after the Jayalalithaa government announced on March 16 its decision to have the plant commissioned.
The state government had also clamped prohibitory orders in four villages around the plant and arrested 80 people for staging a roadblock near the site.

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Persistent resistance continues on Jeju Island

Posted on March 25, 2012
from Sung-Hee Choi
‎
[March 24] 17th day of people’s war against blast/ 13 times of blast-the 2nd biggest after March 21

Only a day after March 23 when the Prime Minister Office and Jeju Island government made an agreement to go through layout verification process on the docking capacity of 150,000 ton cruise ships in the so called civilian-military dual use port, though based only on the simulation result analysis by the Ministry of National Defense, the navy enforced blast on the exposed rock parts of the Gureombi-13 times, starting at 3:50pm, March 24.

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Largest number of arrests at a U.S. anti-nuclear power demonstration in more than 20 years

Posted on March 24, 2012

Police arrest the first protesters to cross the line onto Entergy property in Brattleboro. Photo by Alan Panebaker

ACTIVISTS IN 3 STATES DEMAND:  SHUT DOWN VERMONT YANKEE

On March 22, the day after the original operating license for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant expired, nearly 150 people in three states were arrested at protests demanding that the reactor be shut down now.

Civil resistance actions organized by the Safe and Green Energy Alliance took place at reactor owner Entergy Nuclear’s local office in Brattleboro, as well as corporate offices in White Plains, New York and New Orleans, Louisiana.

It was the largest single-day tally of arrests for opposing nuclear energy in the United States since October 14, 1989, when 475 people were cited for trespass when they went over the fence at the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire.

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Resistance continues as blasting for naval base accelerates on Jeju Island

Posted on March 23, 2012

Activists struggle to remove razor wire and enter naval base construction site. Jejusori.net photo.

by Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa, the Nuclear Resister

Despite growing condemnation at home and abroad, Korean navy contractors backed by hundreds of special police brought in from the mainland to repress local protest have for the last two weeks been dynamiting the unique volcanic coastline on Jeju Island to prepare the site for construction of a new navy base. The area near Gangjeong village is known as the Gureombi for its rounded rock forms that have long been regarded by locals as sacred. Scores of people – from local residents to church and NGO leaders and international observers – have been arrested, beaten, jailed and some deported during that time.

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Hundreds more arrested in Tamil-Nadu nuclear power protest

Posted on March 23, 2012

SP Udayakumar, right, and Justin Amalraj Leon in Idinthakarai village. The Australian photo.

Protest leader Dr. S.P. Udayakumar, threatened with sedition charges, sends letter from besieged activists behind police lines.

Action alert from Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

March 23, 2012

Dear Friends,

Dr. S.P. Udayakumar (Kumar to his friends, and I consider myself one of them) is a longtime leader in the peaceful resistance to nuclear power in India, as well as a leader in the NIRS/WISE international network. The Indian government has threatened to charge him with terrorism and “waging war” for his role in leading the nonviolent citizens movement against operation of the nearly-completed Kudankulam nuclear reactors in the Tamil Nadu section of southern India.

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No prison time for David Corcoran

Posted on March 22, 2012

photo by Felice Cohen-Joppa

On March 21, the last of a group of 13 nuclear disarmament activists arrested at a July 5, 2010 action at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee went to court.  David Corcoran was sentenced to 150 hours of community service, a $1000 fine and 2 years of probation.  Three dozen supporters in attendance at the hearing applauded when he walked out of the Chicago courtroom.

The July 2010 action culminated the Resistance for a Nuclear-Free Future gathering, marking the 30th anniversaries of Nukewatch, the Nuclear Resister and the Plowshares Eight.

Information about the gathering and action can be found here.

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Bradley Manning prosecution incurably infected by government misconduct

Posted on March 22, 2012

Attorney argues that prosecution’s misconduct leaves dismissal as the only option

By Kevin Zeese. March 20, 2012 – Bradley Manning Support Network

Courtroom sketch, Bradley Manning’s pretrial hearing

Last week I spent two days in court for a pretrial motions hearing in the court martial of Bradley Manning, the private accused of leaking documents to WikiLeaks that showed widespread unethical and illegal behavior by the Department of Defense and State Department.  Manning has suffered the fate the Queen put on Alice when she was in Wonderland, ” Sentence first — verdict afterwards. ” By the time his court martial is actually held he will have been incarcerated for more than two years, one of those years was spent in solitary confinement. But, that is only one of many obvious injustices Manning is being subjected to.

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Seven women arrested after closing Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant on originally scheduled date

Posted on March 21, 2012

Locking the Gate, from left, Frances Crowe, Hattie Nestel, Anneke Corbett, Ellen Graves, and Paki Wieland. photo by Marcia Gagliardi

from the Shut it Down affinity group

Seven women of the Shut It Down Affinity Group chained the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant gate shut at about 10 a.m. on Wednesday, March 21, 2012, the power plant’s fortieth birthday and the date it was originally scheduled to close.

The plant’s operating license expired on Wednesday. Entergy Corporation continues the nuclear plant’s function courtesy of a twenty-year extension and the recent decision of federal Judge J. Garvan Murtha, whose order allows the plant to operate despite appeals surrounding lawsuits from concerned citizens who want Vermont Yankee to close.

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