NATO HQ blocked by Greenpeace protest
international |
anti-war / imperialism |
news report 
Tuesday June 27, 2006 12:21
by Eoin Dubsky - Greenpeace
Amsterdam, Netherlands
24 activists arrested protesting US nukes in Europe
Twenty-four Greenpeace activists from Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK were arrested earlier this month at NATO’s Brussels Headquarters. A Greenpeace truck carrying a 3.6 meter (12 feet) full-size replica of a US B61 nuclear bomb blocked the entrance to NATO with activists bearing banners saying “Nukes out of NATO.” Their demand: remove the 480 US-owned and controlled nuclear weapons from Europe!
More activists entered the site carrying banners onto the NATO symbol statue, while others dropped a two-meter-square banner repeating the message from NATO’s main building. Some of the media who covered the action quoted a NATO spokesperson saying that it was "dangerous". None of them that I read made anything of the dangers of NATO nukes, or the hypocracy of NATO telling Iran off for enriching uranium.
background
Sixteen years after the end of the cold war, 480 US Nuclear weapons remain in Europe. They are currently stationed in Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK. Each of these nuclear weapons has a destructive capacity of up to ten times that of the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima.
Last week a report released by the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDC) chaired by Hans Blix called for the 480 US-owned and controlled nuclear weapons to be removed from Europe and returned to US soil. The WMDC report provides great detail on the dangers of US nuclear weapons. The Commission also explains how these weapons impede international efforts to negotiate further nuclear reductions with Russia.
Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3There's a Big Brother spoof video of the protest on videobomb:
http://videobomb.com/posts/show/2886
Is that right?
Dubsky is a member of Greenpeace? I dont recall them supporting his big courtcase for hitting the warplane at Shannon. Did they pay his fine. He did pay his fine?
If my memory serves me correctly he said he wouldnt pay it but then he would have gone to jail like Mary Kelly, the Pitstop Ploughshares or Fintan Lane.
No I cant recall him going to jail can you? No that I think going to jail is the best tactic but if you say you on national TV that you are not going to pay the fine then if you want to keep your credability you would got to jail.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/71263
Well Ms. or Mr. "Required"... so nice of you to remember me. :-)
I didn't hit the warplane at Shannon Airport, though I probably should have ( See http://www.indymedia.ie/article/29109 ). Friends and fellow travellers helped me pay my fine, and I never received any donations from Greenpeace or any other NGO.
The original trial in Tulla District Court was a good one. The appeal before the Circuit Court was a waste of time. I've posted about it and others have too many times before. I could have continued the case to a higher court again -- the judge, for example, relied in his judgment on an "immediacy clause" in the Criminal Damage Act lawful excuse defence which doesn't exist anymore.
But by then I was already living in France (now in the Netherlands), and anyway, I wouldn't be sure anymore what exactly I would be fighter for if I carried on that legal path (to stop US military overflights and refueling, or to clear my name?). I think that if you find yourself doing something "to keep your credability", and if it doesn't also serve a clear campaign objective, then maybe its time to take a break and think it over.
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