North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO

Trident Ploughshares Press Release 17 November, 2009 - For immediate release

From 15-18 October a series of meetings took place in Berlin, to discuss the continuation of work against NATO and the war in Afghanistan after Strasbourg. A special focus was on European and international co-operation.

I would like to invite you all to the UK in February next year. Trident Ploughshares is organising a big blockade of Aldermaston for Monday 15th February 2010 from 7am – all day - and we need European help.

Saturday, October 17th and Sunday, October 18th 2009:
International working conference “No to war - No to NATO”

The "bombodrom" is a 120 square kilometers big area in Germany, 80 km north of Berlin. This area was used by the Russian Air Force as bombing and shooting training area (therefore named with the Russian word "bombodrom".). The people in this area suffered for the noise and the poisoning of the environment for more than 30 years. After the unification of Germany. they had hoped that this will stop. But since 1992 the German government wanted to use this area for the German Air Force.

Late last night the six peace activists currently inside the NATO bombing range in northern Sweden heard three strong explosions. The first was around 22:00, the second at 22:40 and the third at 22:42. All the peace activists are unhurt but shocked that NATO choose to bomb the area despite the presence of civilians in the firing range. Of the 2000 personnel involved in the exercise approximately 1000 are British, based aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. We have no information on the nationality of the planes which bombed the area last night.

NATO has threatened to continue a live-fire bombing exercise in Swedish Lapland despite the presence of six (6) peace activists in the bombing area. The activists, all members of the Swedish anti-militarist network Ofog, aim to disrupt the exercise and prevent NATO from practising for war.

Four peace activists are inside the live-fire bombing range currently being used for a large NATO exercise in Swedish Lapland. Their aim is to draw attention to the preparations for war crimes currently under way under the name of exercise “Loyal Arrow” and to prevent NATO from bombing the area further.

Dear supporters of NATO-ZU/Shut down NATO,

welcome to our fourth and last newsletter. We did it! With your support, we managed a successful NATO-ZU/Shut down NATO blockade! Even though the action in Strasbourg was overshadowed by acts of violence, we can say that we blockaded nonviolently and successfully!

“The
more violence, the less revolution,” Bart
de Ligt wrote in The Conquest of
Violence in
1936. If we accept this, then there
was very little revolution in Strasbourg, despite all the romantic
revolutionary rhetoric from certain groupings.

Our UK group travelled over to Strasbourg in a mini-bus getting to the camp on Tuesday 31st March in the evening. Once at the camp we were joined by a German friend who works for nuclear disarmament of the US nuclear base at Buchel. This made 9 of us in our affinity group that we named 'Odd Socks'. Most of us knew each other and some of us had worked together before. We were members of Trident Ploughshares, CND, GAAA and other peace organisations. We found it easy and fun to work together because we had been involved in peaceful nonviolent direct action before and shared a similar philosophy.

On 4 April 2009, more than 200 activists of NATO-ZU/Shut down NATO (an international nonviolent initiative co-founded by War Resisters' International) managed a successful nonviolent blockade of the northern access road to the Palais de Musique et de Congres, where the NATO summit took place. At the same time, other groups of the coalition Block-NATO (of which NATO-ZU/Shut down NATO is a member) managed successful blockades in the inner city on the main road connecting both orange zones (Av.