Monthly Archive for April, 2013

photo by Chris Nelson

TWO HOUR BLOCKADE PREVENTS HUNDREDS OF MILITARY PERSONNEL FROM ENTERING DRONE SUPPORT BASE

Marysville, California – Five people were arrested around 8 a.m. on April 30 after dozens of anti-drone demonstrators blocked the entrance to Beale Air Force Base for hours, resulting in hundreds of vehicles being prevented from entering the base.

The California Highway Patrol had to be called in to clear traffic, which had lines of hundreds of cars in several directions after peace advocates from Sacramento, San Francisco, Nevada City and as far away as Fresno protested President Obama’s U.S. killer drone program.

The protesters made a number of demands before being arrested in Kanyakumari on April 20. Photo: A. Shaikmohideen

from The Hindu

The police on Saturday, April 20 arrested as many as 146 activists, including 105 men, 36 women and five children of the Anti-Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project People’s Federation when they tried to take out a procession from Kanyakumari to Kudankulam.

The activists, who gathered in front of Gandhi Mandapam in Kanyakumari, urged the government to take immediate steps to close the Kalpakkam Atomic Power Project as well as Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, as it would adversely affect the livelihood of fishermen, farmers and other people.

Rivera family (photo courtesy War Resisters Support Campaign)

From the War Resisters Support Campaign, Canada

TORONTO — On Monday afternoon, during a court-martial hearing at Fort Carson, Colorado, Kimberly Rivera was sentenced to 14 months in military prison and a dishonourable discharge after publicly expressing her conscientious objection to the Iraq War while in Canada. A pre-trial agreement capped the sentence at 10 months of confinement and a bad conduct discharge.

Private First Class Kimberly Rivera deployed to Iraq in 2006 and sought asylum in Canada in 2007 because she decided she could no longer be complicit in the war. A mother of four young children—including two who were born in Canada—she was forced back to the United States of America by the Conservative government after receiving a negative decision on her pre-removal risk assessment (PRRA).

photo from oakridgetoday.com

Dear Friends,

Next  week (May 6th) our friends from the Transform Now Plowshares community will begin trial before Federal District Judge Amul Thapar in Knoxville, TN.

Since last year their disarmament action has kept the government and its contractors hopping as they have sought to downplay the significance of this witness and kept the focus off the dangerous criminality of the nuclear arsenal itself and the role of the Oak Ridge Y12 plant in that continuing threat to creation.  For their truthfulness on July 28th and subsequently, Greg Bortje-Obed, Megan Rice and Michael Walli are facing two felony charges, including a charge under the Sabotage Act, and risking 30 years in prison.

from The Progressive

by Stephen C. Webster

DALLAS, TEXAS — Two activists wearing large paper mache masks resembling former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney were arrested Thursday, April 25 for stepping into a street during a protest of the George W. Bush presidential library.

The arrests, mere blocks away from the library on the Southern Methodist University campus, were the high-water mark of a protest that drew about 200 people, many of them wearing black clothing and white masks, carrying cards with the names of soldiers and civilians who died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and from suicide here in the U.S.