Monthly Archive for January, 2014

by Jack Cohen-Joppa

Today’s sentencing hearing in federal court in Knoxville, Tennessee for three nuclear disarmament activists was continued to February 18 after a winter storm forced early closure of the courthouse.

By the time Federal Court Judge Amul Thapar suspended proceedings shortly after lunch, he had heard mitigating arguments and testimony from character witnesses on behalf of defendants Greg Boertje-Obed, Sr. Megan Rice SHCJ, and Michael Walli. The prosecution had asked that the court impose the maximum sentence recommended under federal guidelines, and pay $52,000 restitution. The defendants have yet to address the court, and will be heard along with closing arguments from their attorneys and prosecutors when the court reconvenes in February.

photo by Ralph Hutchison

Christopher Spicer, a graduate student at Boston College’s Master of Divinity program, was arrested by Oak Ridge City Police and charged with trespass when he apparently stepped across the blue-line boundary at the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on Sunday, January 26, 2014.

Spicer was attending the Sunday vigil sponsored by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance and had been listening to a reading of the testimony of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who testified in federal court in Knoxville in April 2013 at a motions hearing in the Transform Now Plowshares case.

photo by Hattie Nestel

from Shut it Down affinity group

BRATTLEBORO, Vermont—Acting on their conviction that governments, regulatory agencies, and corporations fail to honor the public trust, nine women of the Shut It Down Affinity Group went to Entergy Corporation headquarters on Old Ferry Road January 15 to demand the immediate shut down of Entergy’s 42-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.

Brattleboro police arrested the women when they refused to move from the main headquarters door when Entergy officials ignored their demands. Lieutenant Jeremy Evans led the police detachment. The women were booked on site and released pending charges and a court date.

from The Irish Times by Lorna Siggins
[trial report from the Nuclear Resister follows this update]

Margaretta D’Arcy arrested in Galway yesterday

A 79-year old feminist, peace activist, film-maker and member of Aosdána has been jailed for three months in Limerick Prison in relation to protests over US military use of Shannon Airport. [Send her a card – address here]

Margaretta D’Arcy, who is undergoing cancer treatment, was arrested at her Galway home yesterday morning after she refused to sign a bond to uphold the law and keep away from unauthorised zones at Shannon.

Photo by Choi Hye-Young

by Jack Cohen-Joppa, the Nuclear Resister, December 18, 2013

This fall the Korean Prime Minister’s office declared that the conflict over the naval base in Gangjeong village had been resolved. “The disclosure came as a surprise to the villagers, who still meet hundreds of police every day,” reports Gangjeong Village Story (GVS). “They denounced the Park government, asking how the situation could be considered resolved when the village is under a Martial Law-like situation with even rallies prohibited. They further criticized the government for pretending that the villagers’ claims are unreasonable or that there is nothing wrong with the base construction.”

GVS reports that Jeju congresswoman Jang Ha-Na declared in October that recent independent surveys demonstrate that, “Compared to last year, the soft corals, endangered species in the Gangjeong Sea, are dying from mysterious causes or have stopped growing. It has also been confirmed that floating detritus from the construction is forming deposits in various locations.” Furthermore, she said that the police and prosecutors have unjustly arrested and imprisoned citizen monitors 55 times between January 2012 and September 2013.