Easter Sunday Services End in 16 Arrests at Nuclear Test Site

At 12 noon today, April 24th 2011, 38 people gathered near the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The group held interfaith prayers and then eight women and eight men were arrested for alleged trespassing onto the NNSS. The prayer-action included local members of the Western Shoshone National Council, Buddhist Nipponzan Myohoji monks from Washington state and Catholic Workers from Nevada. Other demonstrators came from Arizona, California, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wisconsin, The Netherlands , and Japan. Today’s Easter services were the climax of a 60-mile walk from Las Vegas to Mercury along US Highway 95. The annual pilgrimmage is the interfaith “Sacred Peace Walk”, which included a musical ritual at the NNSS.

The demonstrators include members of Nevada Desert Experience (NDE) and Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, including Fr. Jerry Zawada who celebrated Mass at less than half an hour prior to the ritual line crossing. NDE is an interfaith group based in Las Vegas which resists nuclear weapons and war. NDE has a long history of activity in this region near Creech Air Force Base, and NDE’s work helped lead to a cessation of full-scale nuclear testing in the early 1990's.

The prayer-action today focused on stopping the flow of money into nuclear weapons development, protecting the Nevada Desert, and protecting all people from nuclear disasters such as the recent one ongoing in Fukushima, Japan and the Chernobyl incident from April 26th 1986. One of the demonstrators from The Netherlands, Annabelle Parker said, “It’s a terrible crime that the US government has committed by stealing and contaminating this beautiful land from Western Shoshone people. I found this week’s Sacred Peace Walk to be a very strong spiritual action—I felt very much connected to the earth and everyone else.”

Another demonstrator, Iris Wolfe from Arizona, went further, “We must also consider the powerful effect of nuclear radiation on the earth and her capacity to support life including ladybugs, bees, earthworms and others. We are wholly dependent and cannot survive without the interaction of all life forms together.” Tomorrow and Tuesday, April 25th and 26th , NDE will hold 7:00AM vigils at Creech AFB and the NNSS respectively, in concert with global events commemorating the Chernobyl disaster.

Nuclear weapons testing has been conducted worldwide on lands taken from indigenous people. In the case of the Nevada National Security Site (formerly the "Nevada Test Site"), the land legally belongs to the Western Shoshone Nation by the Treaty of Ruby Valley (1863). Nuclear weapons despoil delicate ecosystems held sacred by those with the least political power, and declared expendable by those with the most. More than a thousand atomic weapons have been detonated at the NNSS making it the most bombed place on the planet. We come to the desert to engage the destruction of violence with the constructive nonviolence. We seek reconnection with each other and the earth, by understanding and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Since the birth of NDE in 1982, thousands of people have come to our retreats and conferences to learn about the related issues of nuclear testing and gathered at the edge of Security Site for vigil, religious services, and nonviolent civil disobedience. NDE’s organizing seeks to honor all of God’s creation and the Beloved Community as we bear witness to sixty years of nuclear destruction. While the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Non-proliferation Treaty have been resounding victories for our movement toward nuclear abolition, the United States is currently spending more American tax dollars on the nuclear weapons’ program than at any point during the Cold War. The Department of Energy has admitted the legacy of nuclear testing has left four tons of plutonium (the single most carcinogenic substance known to humans) in the desert soil. Now the government seeks to expand the repository capacity at the Test Site for highly radioactive materials. When we consider that all of this devastating reality resides up the road from Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in the nation, our call to action is deeply clarified.

-thanks to the Nevada Desert Experience

William Rivers Pitt: Free Bradley Manning

Video: Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, discusses the 'extraordinarily thin' evidence used to hold prisoners and the 'nonsense' cooked up by a group of serial informers to get privileges.

-thanks to the Guardian for the video

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which established authorities are wrong.
- Voltaire

Free Bradley Manning

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout, Tuesday 26 April 2011

I have a confession to make: I have been on the fence about Bradley Manning as the drama of his detention and the Wikileaks documents have unfolded. While I believe deeply that those who leak classified materials are acting out of conscience and for the good of the people, I also believe criminal acts - even ones of conscience - must be met with punishment as required in any society that wishes to live by the rule of law. Arrest and detention are part of any illegal act of civil disobedience, and are to be expected as the natural consequence of such an act.

Chain yourself to a fence, and expect to be arrested for trespassing. Pour blood on the nose cone of a nuclear missile, and expect to be arrested for destruction of property. The threat of arrest, detention and possible conviction is part of the package that is civil disobedience, and those who take part in it must accept the consequences as part of their act of conscience. Indeed, it is the acceptance of punishment that lies at the heart of that conscience: they are breaking a law to highlight a wrong, are willing to be punished to underscore that wrong, and in doing so, demonstrate how far they are personally willing to go in order to end that wrong and inspire others in the process.

That's where I've been with Bradley Manning - his was an act of conscience that broke the law, and the consequences of that act must be accepted - until now.

How wrong I was.

This situation goes far beyond such a simplistic cut-and-dried viewpoint. It cuts to the core of what we are as a nation, what we wish to be, and what must be done to honor the values we pay so much lip service to, even as we fail time and again to practice what we preach. What Manning has been charged with goes far beyond an act of conscience; they were, in fact, an attempt to save the very soul of these United States.

It is widely considered facile and weak to make Nazi comparisons in any argument, but unfortunately for every citizen of this country, the comparison here is all too apt. During the Nuremberg trials in the aftermath of World War II, accused war criminals were often heard to claim, "I was only following orders," as a means of justifying their savage and barbaric activities. The excuse was rejected out of hand, further enshrining the idea that soldiers and officers are more than mere automatons who are expected only to do as they are told. Criminal acts, even in a military situation, are not to be condoned, coddled or tolerated. Men were hanged by the judges at Nuremberg to emphasize the point.

And here is Bradley Manning, who like every enlisted American soldier, swore an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies both foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That same oath requires the oath-taker to follow the orders of the president and superior officers, but if those hanged men at Nuremberg prove anything, it is that unlawful orders are by definition void, and should not be followed if the oath sworn to the Constitution is to mean anything at all.

Make no mistake: the documents Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking are prima facie evidence of illegal orders being given and executed all along the chain of command. This has been made even more abundantly clear with the recent revelation of some 700 pages of documents detailing the ongoing travesty that is America's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to various reports:

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members. One Briton, Jamal al-Harith, was rendered to Guantánamo simply because he had been held in a Taliban prison and was thought to have knowledge of their interrogation techniques. The US military tried to hang on to another Briton, Binyam Mohamed, even after charges had been dropped and evidence emerged he had been tortured.

The files also detail how many innocents or marginal figures swept up by the Guantánamo dragnet because US forces thought they might be of some intelligence value.

One man was transferred to the facility "because he was a mullah, who led prayers at Manu mosque in Kandahar province, Afghanistan ... which placed him in a position to have special knowledge of the Taliban". US authorities eventually released him after more than a year's captivity, deciding he had no intelligence value.

Another prisoner was shipped to the base "because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver".

The files also reveal that an al-Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years, partly in order to be interrogated about the Arabic news network.

[EMPHASIS ADDED]

Also illuminated in these leaked documents is the shameful use of torture, described through the cruel euphemism of "enhanced interrogation," that was rampant at Guantanamo Bay. Thanks to such disgraceful practices, the prisoners currently detained there now find themselves in a ridiculous legal limbo; they may be innocent or guilty, but because they were tortured, they cannot be brought to trial because evidence obtained against them was gathered illegally. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before, refuses to let the legal process do its work, nor are they willing to release these prisoners, so there they sit.

In a filthy irony, Bradley Manning was exposed to a number of grotesquely similar "stress tactics" used against Guantanamo prisoners while detained at Quantico. He was deprived of sleep, humiliated and berated by his captors, isolated, exposed to cold, and made to stand naked for extended periods of time. Such acts are straight out of the War on Terror handbook, and like the prisoners at Guantanamo, were used against a man who has yet to be convicted of anything. The mistreatment tactics against prisoners that Manning allegedly exposed have been used against him, one more crime in a symphony of crimes.

Bradley Manning sits today in Leavenworth prison awaiting a hearing to determine whether or not he will face a court martial. The case against him seems as disorganized and specious as the cases against many of the prisoners at Guantanamo, but let us accept for the moment that he did, in fact, release those classified documents. If so, he should be thanked for his actions. As Glenn Greenwald so eloquently argued, "WikiLeaks is responsible for more newsworthy scoops over the last year than all media outlets combined: it's not even a close call. And if Bradley Manning is the leaker, he has done more than any other human being in our lifetime to bring about transparency and shine a light on what military and government power is doing."

Moreover, if there is actually justice to be found in this morally crippled nation, Bradley Manning should be cleared of all charges and released. His was not some casual act of disobedience, nor was it an attack against his country. Bradley Manning was fulfilling the oath he swore to protect and defend the Constitution. He exposed serial criminal acts perpetrated by his superiors, which is a moral necessity for anyone who has taken such an oath.

We know the truth of the acts made by both the Bush and Obama administrations in Guantanamo, and they are illegal on their face. We are a better nation today because we know this, and we have Bradley Manning to thank for it. By exposing war crimes, he has been labeled a criminal even before any hearings have been held. He has been mistreated in a way you would not treat a dog. He showed us the war crimes committed in our name, and has been crushed for it.

Justice demands his release. Furthermore, justice demands a wide inquiry into the criminal acts of both the Bush and Obama administrations as pertaining to the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Justice demands prosecution for those acts against the real criminals responsible for them. They have driven our nation into the gutter, and to punish Bradley Manning for attempting to haul us back from that abyss is to admit, in broad daylight and with no shame, that justice has no meaning anymore.

-thanks to truthout

Giles Watson's tribute to Ethan McCord, Bradley Manning and the victims of "Collateral Murder".

http://www.youtube.com/user/GilesConradWatson




Collateral Murder
(Words and Music by Giles Conrad Watson)

Somewhere in New Baghdad, one morning in July,
Two Apache helicopters cruising in the sky;
Two journalists out walking: Saeed and Namir,
Cameras hanging casually, not a sign of fear,
And up in the Apache, the troops are so bored sick,
One shouts, "That's a weapon! Yeah! Fuckin' prick!
Get on 'em an' open up. Set 'em all alight!"
He's laughing as New Baghdad dust is rising in his sight.
This is your collateral murder.
Saeed falls to ground at once; Nameer makes a dash,
The Apache circles round, and hurries in to splash
His blood upon the pavement, he judders and he falls,
And still he's groping forward, trying to make it to the wall.
"Come on now buddy," the murderers all shout,
"Pick up a weapon!" though his guts are spilling out,
Nameer on his cellphone is running out of breath
And the finger on the trigger is itching to deal death.
They're coming to his rescue: a family in a van,
Heedless of the danger: a brotherhood of man,
But inside the Apache, they're boiling up with rage,
Like boys on Nintendo: "Let me engage!"
The shells, they fly in flurries, the rescuers, they fall:
Two run for cover and are shot straight through the wall,
And while they're up there laughing, "Look what we did!"
Someone else sees movement: "Seems like it's a kid."
Ethan McCord, a US soldier on the ground,
Hears Apaches shooting -- he's familiar with the sound --
He comes to the van and he opens up the door:
A little gut-shot girl -- casualty of war --
And as she's rushed away, her father lolling dead,
He pulls out a boy with shrapnel in his head.
"What the fuck you doin'?" his C.O. demands,
"They're just Iraqi kids! We got war on our hands!"
Later in the barracks, Ethan McCord
Sees the scene inside his head; it cannot be ignored.
He goes to the psychologist, who says "You're just a whiner.
Quit being a pussy -- get the sand out your vagina.
You need to suck that shit up -- a soldier's got to take it."
But when we know the truth, there's some of us can't fake it,
'Cause when the Iraqi sun is setting like a flood,
Ethan sees his tunic dappled with Iraqi blood.
Bradley Manning finds the video - his emotions hurled
Into tumult -- and he baulks -- and he leaks it to the world:
"A battle with insurgents", the Army spokesmen claimed -
The killing of two journalists, two children orphaned, maimed -
And Bradley is arrested: he's the one who's made to pay
For telling us the things we should all know anyway:
That terrorists fill New Baghdad, they hoard it like a swarm,
And more than half are wearing US Army uniform.
Now Manning has no window; he is never left alone,
Manning has no internet, Manning has no phone,
Manning has no underwear, he sleeps inside a smock,
No sheets upon his bed, no contact and no clock.
Obama in your White House, with your smiles and your ties,
Will you let them get away with it, perpetuating lies?
And those Iraqi children, with wounds in guts and head,
Are they forever crippled, do they weep, or are they dead?

Song Lyric by Giles Watson, 2011. My sources are the three videos on the WikiLeaks site collateralmurder.com, and various internet and newspaper resources on the plight of the heroic 22 year-old Private Bradley Manning, who leaked a video of the disgusting events described above, along with other documents revealing war-crimes committed by US forces in Iraq, and is now detained by the US government in conditions which have aroused the suspicion and criticism of Amnesty International and the United Nations. I have tried to stick as close as possible to the dialogue recorded on the helicopters, augmented with the testimony of Ethan McCord.

VFP: Obama declares Manning guilty before trial. Can military officers judge him impartially and contradict their commander-in-chief?

President Barack Obama said on April 21 that PFC Bradley Manning “broke the law.” This statement casts serious doubt on whether Manning can receive a fair trial from officers subordinate to Obama, their Commander-in-Chief.

“Members of the military are trained to follow orders. President Obama is the commander of all armed forces,” said Elliott Adams, president of Veterans For Peace. “Any officer who wants to advance in his military career would be wise not to contradict their commander-in-chief, especially after the military's brutal treatment of Manning this past year. The President seems to have forgotten what he taught his constitutional law classes about being innocent until proven guilty.”

The government has already violated Bradley Manning’s due process rights by keeping him in pretrial solitary confinement for nearly a year and the President bears ultimate responsibility for the abusive treatment Manning has endured since July 2010 at Quantico Marine Base, and possibly before that in Kuwait. He has been confined to a 6-by-12-foot cell for 23 hours a day, prevented from sleeping during the day, denied exercise, woken up constantly, given limited access to books and writing materials, stripped at night and forced to endure inspection naked, and deprived of his eyeglasses. Many mental health professionals characterize this as psychological torture. President Obama could have stopped this mistreatment at any time with one phone call.

The President made another critical misstatement in his comments. He claimed that Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, was less culpable because the documents he leaked were “not classified in the same way.” In fact, the Pentagon Papers were classified at the highest level of secrecy while the WikiLeaks documents were at the lowest level.

“It’s time to free Bradley Manning and pin a medal on the man. He has already been punished beyond constitutional limits and now President Obama has made a fair trial impossible,” said Leah Bolger, vicepresident of Veterans For Peace. “If indeed he’s the one who released those documents, he is a hero for blowing the whistle on war crimes and other misbehavior by U.S. officials.”

TRANSCRIPT AND LINK TO VIDEO

Obama: “So people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]… That’s not how the world works. And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d
be breaking the law. We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.” [Emphasis added]

Q: “Didn't he release evidence of war crimes?”

Obama: “What he did was he dumped…”

Q: “Isn't that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?”

Obama: “No it wasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way.”

The video can be viewed here: http://youtu.be/IfmtUpd4id0
Veterans For Peace website: http://veteransforpeace.org

Indictment protestors attempted to deliver to the base

The 37 Protestors who were arrested at Hancock Field April 22, 2011 protesting the Reaper Drones

In addition to the hundreds of protestors at Hancock Air Field in Syracuse, NY on April 22nd, the following 37 individuals raised the level of protest at the air field by participating in non-violent direct action and were arrested. They ranged in age from 17 to 91.

One of the speakers, Brian Terrell, asked the question that would guide him to cross the line and risk arrest:

You come upon a house and it is on fire, there's a 'no trespassing' sign on the door, there's a child in the window screaming.

"Is it a crime to break down that door, ignore the 'no trespassing' sign and go to the child?"

List of names of the arrested adapted by Ed Kinane from the april 23, 2011

Syracuse Post-Standard, p. A-7 and according to the Onondaga County Sheriff's office:

from Syracuse:

Jerry Berrigan, 91

Paul Wittjung, 67

Ed Kinane, 66

Ann Tiffany, 75

Rae Kramer, 50

Julienne Oldfield, 73

Kathleen Rumpf, 59

Rich Vallejo, 24

from Ithaca:

Ellen Grady, 48

Marion “Susie” Kyssack, 68

Richard Saddler, 46

Mary Anne Grady-Flores, 54

Dannie Burns, 50

from Trumansburg:

Craver Scibilia, 58

from Buffalo:

Vickie Ross 56

from Binghamton:

George Homanich, 63

Jim Clune, 63

from Johnson City:

Mary Snyder, 86

from Sharon Springs:

Elliott Adams, 64

from Spencer:

Ian Stone, 17

from Utica:

Patricia Powers, 55

M.W. Wadsworth, 32

from Vernon:

Cynthia Banas, 81

from Vew Hartford:

Pete Bianco, 32

from Rochester:

Harry Murray, 59

from Webster:

Judy Bello, 60

from Brooklyn:

Joan Pleune, 72

from NYC:

Beverly Rice, 73

out of state:

Fr. Bernie Survil, 70, Bradford, PA

Jules Orkin, 72, Bergenfield, NJ

Martha Hennessy, 55, Perkinsville, VT

Col. Ann Wright, 64, Honolulu, HI

Kathy Kelly, 58, Chicago, IL

Brian Terrell, 54, Maloy, IA

Beth Adams, 65, Leverett, MA

Some of the protestors outside the court after most were released later that evening

Anti-drone Walk of Transformation, Syracuse, NY, April 22nd

Elliot Adams, Brian Terrell , Ann Wright & Kathy Kelly address the protesters before the arrests at Hancock Air base in Syracuse, NY.

Flower Memorial at drone protest at Hancock Air Field

37 arrested Apr. 22nd at Hancock AB protesting the drones that do assassinations & kill innocent people from the base just outside of Syracuse, NY