Disarm Now Plowshares sentenced: 6 to 15 months in prison

The Disarm Now Plowshares activists who entered U.S. Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor to symbolically disarm the nuclear weapons stored there were sentenced today at the Tacoma Federal Courthouse, receiving sentences of 6 months to 15 months confinement, plus one year supervised release.  About two hundred fifty people gathered at the courthouse to support the Plowshares activists with their presence, song, and prayer.  After the trial, they sang peace songs and processed out as a group, celebrating the beacon of hope the five activists have been for their community.

Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and others testified on behalf of the defendants.  Bishop Gumbleton, retired bishop of Detroit and founding president of the peace group Pax Christi, testified that the Catholic Church has spoken out very strongly against nuclear weapons, saying that no use of nuclear weapons can be justified morally.  "We must abolish these weapons before the earth is destroyed." Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson, testified that never in his life has he encountered such unselfish people as those who participate in the Plowshares tradition of direct action against nuclear weapons.  Regarding their decision to live a life of civil resistance, he said, "Their consciences tell them they have to do it.  God will bless them for it and the courts of the United States should too."

Speaking as part of the Disarm Now Plowshares legal team, Anabel Dwyer and Bill Quigley laid out the broader legal picture of the case. "The problem is that nuclear weapons and the rule of law can't exist side by side," Dwyer said.  "The other problem is, we cannot disarm nuclear weapons unless through the rule of law.  We are in a conundrum here." Quigley submitted that lawyers are obligated to "understand difference between law and justice and to narrow that gap."  He encouraged the judge to look back one hundred years and consider how many of the laws of that time were "legal but manifestly unjust."  Dwyer is a Michigan attorney and Board Member of The Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP), and an expert in humanitarian law and nuclear weapons.  Quigley is the Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and Professor at Loyola New Orleans.

Each of the five co-defendants, Bill "Bix" Bichsel, SJ, Susan Crane, Lynne Greenwald, Steve Kelly, SJ, and Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, read statements in court.  They focused on the personal responsibility they feel to disarm nuclear weapons, and their desire to prevent pain, suffering, and death for "those deprived by our wars and military budget of a human way of life."

Character witnesses spoke to the defendants' solidarity with Native people, children, working people, and the wider Tacoma community.  Rosella Apel, age 11, said in her character witness for Steve Kelly, "I have a clear image that when I grow up I'm going to do the exact same thing that these five have."

Crane and Kelly have each been sentenced to 15 months prison and one year supervised release.  Greenwald has been sentenced to six months prison, one year supervised release, and 60 hrs community service. Bichsel has been sentenced to three months prison, six months electronic home monitoring, and one year supervised release.  Montgomery has been sentenced to two months prison, four months electronic home monitoring, and one year supervised release.

Roger Hunko, standby counsel for the Plowshares activists, disagreed with the outcome of the trial but expressed his respect for Judge Settle as a fair man.  Dwyer was also impressed by the judge's civility and his thoughtful attention to the case, but she too disagrees with the judge's decision.  "Every citizen has the right to ensure nonviolent complete nuclear disarmament.  Trident is grotesquely illegal and criminal, and Disarm Now Plowshares should not be in prison for pointing that out."

More information see the Disarm Now Plowshares Website disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com

Contacts:

Chrissy Nesbitt, 610-316-3243

Leonard Eiger, 425-445-2190, subversivepeacemaking(-at-)comcast.net

Jackie Hudson, 360-930-8697

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action

16159 Clear Creek Road NW Poulsbo, WA 98370

University of Washington honored the Disarm Now Plowshares with Legacy Award

The members of Disarm Now Plowshares were presented the Legacy Award by The University of Washington Tacoma for their commitment "to public service.  As a group, they have a proven record of community activism and community engagement. The Trident submarine base at Bangor, just 20 miles from Seattle, is home to the largest single stockpile of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal, housing more than 2000 nuclear warheads.  Fr. Bichsel and his colleagues entered Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, to call attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the first strike Trident weapons system.  With this award, we salute them for their courageous acts and continued efforts to keep Dr. King's Dream alive!"

At the university's annual Unity Breakfast The University of Tacoma recognized "UW Tacoma citizens and organizations that consistently address diversity, social justice and civil rights."  They also honored "external persons who have made significant contributions to the UW Tacoma community" in these areas.

Bill Bichsel, Susan Crane, Lynne Greenwald and Anne Montgomery were present to receive the award on behalf of the entire Disarm Now Plowshares group.  I will have more details and a photo or two shortly in a post at the Disarm Now Plowshares Blog.

The Disarm Now Plowshares will appear for sentencing at the U.S. District Court, Tacoma, Washington on March 28th, 2011.

Dual disarmament in Sweden - final verdict

Press release 5th of November 2010

DUAL DISARMAMENT IN SWEDEN BILLED AT €70k (£6,540)
Historic peace action received final verdict yesterday

The striking double disarmament action in Sweden on Oct 16, 2008, when 12 grenade launchers and parts to 9 howitzers at two different facilities were damaged beyond repair, yesterday got what will probably be its final sentence from the courts.

A local judge in Eskilstuna town, where the € 2 645 (£250bn) arms and aerospace corporation Saab AB is headquartered, ordered yesterday peaceniks Anna Andersson, 28, and Martin Smedjeback, 37, to return the arms giant expenses equivalent to € 50 586 (£4,720) in costs interred in one of the nightly civil disobedience acts two years ago.

The couple, who say they took action to prevent the greater evil of the transfer of arms to the US military, which would employ them in the carnage in Iraq, have earlier been sentenced to four months imprisonment.

"I regret our court was not yet ready to rule on the level of its counterparts in Ireland, England and Germany, who have all vindicated peace activists following disarmament and ploughshares actions," said Martin Smedjeback, a nonviolence consultant since many years.

Smedjeback's and Andersson's co-activists Catherine Laska and Pelle Strindlund received a  €  20 682  (£2,000) in reparations and one of them served three months in jail for their act against a Saab Bofors and British Aerospace
enterprise, where they broke in and damaged inter alia nine howitzer coolers, bound for India.

The peace campaigners of the Disarm effort all refuse to pay the damages, instead calling it a reminder of Western privilege that they despite such arrears will continue to lead lives of relatively high standard. They intend to continue their nonviolent struggle against war profiteers.

"Arms made in Sweden cause wanton destruction overseas, hence it is the manufacturers who ought to be paying repairs," said Anna Andersson, a web designer, in a comment from her prison cell.

This coming summer, a multinational peace action camp will be held at an aerospace test range in northernmost Sweden, where Nato and Israeli military aircraft test weapons and systems.

Interview Anna Andersson in prison (Call Hinseberg correctional
facility, +46-581-79 78 10, office hours, and ask for her to call back.

Contact Martin Smedjeback, +46-70-2579097,
smedjeback(-at-)gmail.com and

See also:

http://ofog.org/press-releases - all the press releases from the disarm campaign
www.warstartshere.com - an action camp in July 2011 against training grounds for war in northern Sweden.

www.avrusta.se - The Disarm ("Avrusta") campaign was launched in September of 2008 and has been condoned by i.a. the Arch Reverend Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn and Francis Boyle.

www.ofog.org - The Anti-Militarist Network Mischief ("Ofog"), has been working against nuclear arms and militarism, thru civil disobedience and peaceful direct action, since 2002.

Plowshares slide shows on resistance

The Plowshares Movement - A Chronology

This slide show presents a chronology of the plowshares actions from 1980 until 2010. (Produced by Susan Crane and Sr Ardeth Platte OP from the Jonah House Community in Baltimore, USA, 2010, mp4.)

Celebrating Nuclear Resistance & Plowshares

A slide show with music celebrating 30 years of the Nuclear Resister, Nukewatch, and the Plowshares Movement. Prepared for the Resistance for a Nuclear Free Future gathering, July 3-5, 2010, at Maryville College, Tennessee. (Produced by Felice & Jack Cohen-Joppa, mp4.)

Seven disarmers in Brighton, England, found not guilty - preventing British-Israeli war crimes

Read EDO Decommissoners Trial Blog http://decommissioners.co.uk/blog/

On 17th January 2009, as Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza, the disarmament group 'EDO Decommissioners' broke into the EDO factory in Brighton and nonviolently disarmed the production line, damaging their capability to make weapons to be used against Gazan civilians. The seven causing nearly £200,000 of damage and shutting down production, offered no defense other than the prevention of imminent war crimes. EDO produces components for the Israeli F 16's that were wreaking extensive damage, and claiming 'hundreds of lives, in Gaza' at the time.

5 of the defendants were acquitted by the unanimous jury, Wednesday afternoon June 30, 2010, during the fourth week of the trial. On Friday morning July 2nd. the Judge directed the jury to acquit the two remaining defendants.

Chris Osmond said "We brough the suffering of ordinary Palestinians into a British courtroom and confronted with the evidence they took the brave decision to find that our actions were justified"

to the Plowshares 8, with love by Daniel Berrigan - 30th anniversary

SOME
(to the Plowshares 8, with love)
by Daniel Berrigan

Some stood up once, and sat down.
Some walked a mile, and walked away.
Some stood up twice, then sat down.
"It's too much," they cried.
Some walked two miles, then walked away.
"I've had it," they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
they were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked –
they walked the earth,
they walked the waters,
they walked the air.
"Why do you stand?" they were asked, and
"Why do you walk?"
"Because of the children," they said, and
"Because of the heart," and
"Because of the bread."
"Because the cause is
the heart's beat, and
the children born, and
the risen bread."


Honoring the Plowshares 8
30th anniversary of the Plowshares Eight action
On September 9, 1980, eight people entered a General Electric weapons factory in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where critical components for nuclear warheads were manufactured. With hope and a prayer, the activists entered the secure facility with relative ease. On the shop floor, they took household hammers and began beating on the missile warhead cones, giving substance to the biblical call of the prophet Isaiah to "beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks."

The symbolism – indeed, the manifest reality – of people with hand tools simply beginning the work of nuclear disarmament inspired a movement now thirty years old, and international in scope. Scores of action groups, involving hundreds of people as activists and supporters, have kept this vision of disarmament alive despite jail and prison sentences of up to 18 years.

Waihopai Ploughshares acquitted on all counts by jury

March 17, 2010

Adrian Leason, Father Peter Murnane and Sam Land – the three men who were charged with intentional damage and unlawful entry at Waihopai spy base – have today expressed their thanks to the jury, the judge, and the prosecution and defense lawyers.

At the conclusion of the trial, Father Peter, Sam and Adrian said they feel privileged to have helped uncover the true nature of the spy base. "Our actions in disabling the spy base and stopping the flow of information helped save lives in Iraq", added Adrian.

"What has been humbling for us to realize is how our witness has impacted on so many people around the world and at home", said Sam.

"We did not try to avoid the consequences of our actions, because we respect the rule of law although we do believe we are ultimately
accountable to a higher authority. We damaged property at the spy base in order to save victims of war and torture. It's all about Jesus' command for us to treat all people as our brothers and sisters", said Father Peter.

The jury heard that the Waihopai Echelon spy base is New Zealand's largest contribution to the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The ongoing war has resulted in horrific war crimes, including more than one million dead Iraqi civilians, torture, and permanent poisoning of parts of Iraq by the use of depleted uranium munitions.

The jury also heard evidence from a former British Echelon intelligence analyst, Katherine Gunn. She blew the whistle on secret Echelon spying operations when she was instructed by the US National Security Agency to spy on United Nations Security Council members leading up to the US invasion in 2003.

"Evidence presented in the court confirmed that the ongoing war in Iraq is illegal, and causing massive human suffering", said Adrian. "As an outcome of this trial, we hope that New Zealanders will insist on an enquiry into the activities of the spy base and its links to US-led illegal wars".

Father Peter, Sam and Adrian expressed gratitude for all the support they have received from family, friends and the New Zealand public.

Commenting at the conclusion of the trial, Graham Bidois Cameron, Waihopai Ploughshares media spokesperson, said this Ploughshares action is part of an ongoing tradition: "The practice of non-violent resistance and direct action in the cause of peace has a long history in this country – the peaceful resistance to the invasion of Parihaka, and non-violent direct action against nuclear armed warships entering our harbours being just two examples", he said.

"The actions of Waihopai Ploughshares also need to be understood in relation to an international movement for disarmament and peace", said lawyer Moana Cole, herself a Ploughshares activist. "Adrian, Sam and Father Peter are part of rich history of activism in support of those without a voice and the movement is certainly growing".

Contact: Graham Bidois Cameron, tel 021 642 414, email
bidoiscameron(at)paradise.net.nz

Stay tuned more details to come on this historic decision... and what it might mean for the future of prophetic witness in Aotearoa.

For more information about the trial:
http://www.ploughshares.org.nz

Links can also be found on the Jonah House website: www.jonahhouse.org

Manuals for resistance with the help of Internet

Here are some manual-collections for disobedience with the help of Internet. How do you use darknet, cryptography, creative collaborative tools, etc? Some might be more in the spirit of civil disobedience and others more about integrity or avoiding surveillance. Some are for everyone and others more advanced. Quite a few of my postprotest hacker friends are involved in making the manuals.

Manual collections for Internet-resistance

werebuild.eu
instruction.telecomix.org
crypto.telecomix.org

Satirical video on Disarm Now Plowshares action

Quite funny satirical video on Disarm Now Plowshares action (5 1/2 min)

For continued updates on the plowshares action:

On Nov. 2, five senior citizens, using bolt and wire cutters, broke into Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor to disarm part of its storehouse of nuclear weapons.

Sign your support to Disarm Now Plowshares

Sign direct on the Disarm Now Plowshares blog!
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/support-us/

Support Letter for Disarm Now Plowshares

We support the nonviolent disarmament action that took place in the U.S. on November 2, 2009 at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor where Trident nuclear weapons are stored or deployed on Trident submarines. These weapons constitute the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the US.  Bill Bichsel, S.J., 81;  Steve Kelly, S.J.,60;  Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, 83; Lynne Greenwald, 60; and Susan Crane, 66, carried hammers into the secure nuclear bunker area  to symbolically carry out Isaiah's injunction to "hammer swords into plowshares." Plowshares actions call for conversion of weapons of war into what is necessary for human life. They also poured out their own blood from baby bottles to make clearly visible the violence the bunkers hide. They sowed sunflower seeds: seeds of hope and international symbols of nuclear disarmament. They walked in the nonviolence of Jesus whose message has often been obscured by the drumbeats of Empire.

During the civil rights and social change struggles in the US, South Africa, the Philippines, Poland, India and many other countries, nonviolent civil resistance has been recognized as a necessary and responsible method for people seeking real justice and peace. In the spirit of these international struggles, the Plowshares cut through the fences at the Strategic Weapons Facility-Pacific to draw attention to the presence and intended use of these weapons.

We join with these five to move away from the catastrophic path of self extinction and away from destroying all life on earth through the mining, production, research, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. Not only are these weapons killing people now through the funding that ought to be used for human needs, but the production, testing and use inflict indiscriminate slaughter, devastation of the environment, excruciating suffering, genetic damage for generations and wholesale destruction of cultural inheritance.

 Nuclear weapons preparation, planning, threat or use violates the most basic tenets of humanitarian law, human rights law and environmental law including the Nuremberg Principles, Hague regulations, Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. In addition the International Court of Justice in 1996 declared that the threat or use of nuclear weapons stands in opposition to international law. Thus the threat of use of nuclear weapons, the cornerstone of US national security policy, is also a violation of international law.

Consequently, every person has a right and responsibility under the Nuremberg Principles to nonviolently oppose the existence of nuclear weapon systems and call for their abolition. All people can act responsibly in their local areas to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well as demand that the parties to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty at the May 2010 Review Conference set a firm date for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. International bodies such as Mayors for Peace are calling for all nuclear weapons to be eliminated by the year 2020.  As nations turn their swords into plowshares, we become a human family that can eliminate war.

To sign this support letter
Fax Number if you want to put the letter on your letterhead and fax it:  253-272-6285
or mail to Disarm Now Plowshares, 1417 South G Street, Tacoma, Washington 98405
or, contact us (and sign the support letter) through http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com

New plowshares disarmament: 60-83 year old activists - Disarm Now

(I was arrested with Anne Montgomery 1984 for hammering on Pershing II missiles in Florida. I was 22, she 57 then, and now 83! Sorry I missed your birthday! Here in Sweden, our three plowshares got released this summer. But we are just behind you guys in the US! Love Per)

Five People Arrested for Plowshares action on Naval Base Kitsap- Bangor

The Disarm Now Trident Plowshares Action

Bill Bix Bischel, S.J., 81, of Tacoma, Washington; Susan Crane, 65, of Baltimore MD; Lynne Greenwald, 60, of Bremerton, Washington; Steve Kelly, S.J., 60, of Oakland, CA.; Anne Montgomery RSCJ, 83, of New York, New York, were arrested on Naval Base Kitsap- Bangor November 2, 2009. They entered the Base in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, with the intention of calling attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the Trident weapons system. They entered thru the perimeter fence, made their way to the Strategic Weapons Facility - Pacific ( SWFPAC) where they were able to cut through the first chainlink fence surrounding SWFPAC, walked to and cut the next double layered fence, which was both chain link and barbed wire, onto the grounds of SWFPAC. As they walked onto the grounds, they held a banner saying ”Disarm Now Plowshares : Trident: Illegal + Immoral”, left a trail of blood and hammered on the roadway (Trigger Ave. and Sturgeon) that are essential to the working of the Trident weapons system, hammered on the fences around SWFPAC and scattered sunflower seeds throughout the base. They were then thrown to the ground face down, handcuffed and hooded and held there for 4 hours on the wet, cold ground. They were taken, hooded, and carried out through the very holes in the fence that they had made, for questioning by Base security, FBI and NCIS. They refused to give any information except their names, and were cited as of now, for trespass and destruction of government property, given a ban and bar letter and released.

There have been approximately 100 Plowshares Nuclear Resistance Actions worldwide since 1980. Plowshares actions are taken from Isaiah 2:4 in Old Testament (Hebrew) scripture of the Christian Bible, ”God will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many people. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not take up swords against nations, nor will they train for war anymore.”

Disarm Now Plowshares Bios

Steve Kelly, S.J. During his religious formation in our inner cities, in Sudan, Africa, as well as refugee work in Central America following ordination, he encountered the messiah, Jesus incarnate in the poor. At the same time, the relevance of Jesus as a real shepherd inserting himself between the danger of wolf or thief and the flock in his care inspired this Jesuit to try to imitate Jesus. His current collaboration with Catholic Workers and the Pacific Life Community confirms the analysis that the nukes represent, just in their making, a contemporary larceny from the poor, while the wolf, the imminent danger of their use, demands the embodiment of Isaiah 2:4. Will that hammering wake us, those professing faith in a loving God, from our idolatrous slumbers?

Lynne Greenwald is the mother of three children and has worked professionally as a Registered Nurse, Family Therapist and Social Worker for nearly 40 years. She has also been actively involved in the Nonviolent Peace Movement since the mid-1970s. Lynne moved to Kitsap County in Washington State 26 years ago to join Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and to become a neighbor to families involved with the Trident Base and other facilities in this predominately military community. ³While the existence of Trident is obvious, the truth of Trident's nuclear threats and illegality remains hidden. My action of conversion today is one committed out of love for all life.³

Anne Montgomery is an eighty-three year old Religious of the Sacred Heart and former teacher in high schools and programs for dropouts and learning disabled children. As a member of the Gulf Peace Team in 1991 and of Christian Peacemaker Teams from 1995 to 2009 she served in Iraq and Palestine. Since 1980 she has been active in the Plowshares movement and other forms of civil resistance to U.S. militarism, especially nuclear weapons. Since 2005 she has also participated in Witness Against Torture and the Free Gaza boat trip to open the port of Gaza. She acts now to support all efforts to convert weapons of death into resources for human life, especially for the most neglected and oppressed of the threatened earth.

Susan Crane is the mother of two sons, and has taught at a school for marginalized youth in California. More recently she has lived at Jonah House, a nonviolent community in Baltimore, which speaks out against all warmaking, and specifically nuclear weapons. Aware that we take better care of nuclear weapons than of our nation's children, and that we spend more than half of every federal tax dollar on warmaking rather than human needs, she acts to transform these weapons of mass destruction to life- giving materials.

Bill Bichsel, a Tacoma native, entered the Jesuit Order in 1946 and after studies and teaching was ordained a Jesuit in 1959. He has served in parishes, taught in high schools, and was Dean of Students at Gonzaga from 1963-1966. In 1969 he returned to Tacoma where he served at St. Leo's Parish for over 7 years and then co-founded the Tacoma Catholic Worker (Guadalupe House) which offers hospitality and transitional housing to the homeless. The Guadalupe Community lives in the nonviolent tradition of Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker foundress. Bichsel still resides and serves at the Tacoma Catholic Worker-one mile from where he was born and raised. He has served jail and prison terms many times for his resistance to the violence of the Trident nuclear weapon system and the violence of the S.O.A. training at Ft. Benning, GA. He believes that unless we, the American people, actively work to abolish nuclear weapons we as a people will continue to threaten destruction to the global community and continue to deprive the poor of the world of resources necessary for life.

Resistance manuals for net-activism

Some net-activist friends (filesharing, hacking, free software etc) have developed different activist-manuals on internet-tools which can be used for resistance on-line. Please, feel free to use, add, rewrite and share back:

Activist manuals for internet-activism

Homeless people who connect via internet

Here's an interesting photo reportage on homeless people in San Francisco that connect via the Internet. Key problems seems to be how to get power and wireless connection. Some solutions are shown in the photo reportage: Homeless and Online in San Francisco.

Send letter to Carl Kabat in prison for plowshares action at Hiroshima day at Missile Silo

Fr. Carl Kabat OMI has spent 17 years in jail for nonviolent resistance to nuclear weapons. Carl was arrested last Friday on Hiroshima Day cutting into a Minuteman 3 nuclear weapon silo in Colorado/USA and beginning a plowshares action. The first strike missile is on hair trigger alert.

Please send solidarity letters and postcards to

Fr. Carl Kabat OMI
Weld County Jail
2110 O Street
Greeley, CO 80631
USA

Full plowshares action report .
Photos of Fr. Carl Kabat cutting into the silo.
News articles on the action .

Carl-Gustaf granade launchers & Haubitz cannons disarmed

October 16, 2008, saw two coordinated disarmament actions at leading weapon factories in two different cities in central Sweden. Equipped with hammers and bolt cutter the disarmers gained access to the manufacturing halls where they found and disarmed fourteen Carl-Gustaf bazookas, granade launchers, used in the American led war on Iraq and one Haubitz cannons destined for India.

Read the story of the disarmament actions
Videos and
pictures from the disarmament

Plowshares trial in Sweden - Hope & Resistance Festival

You are invited to
the SAAB Microwave 'Becoming² Ploughshares' trial
and the Hope & Resistance festival
31 March to 1st April, 2009, in Gothenburg, Sweden

On April 1^st, 2009, Ulla Røder and Per Herngren will be standing trial for disarming parts of the test range and a military radar. The ploughshares disarmament happened on June 24 and 26 in 2008, at Saab Microwave factories in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The ploughshares group calling themselves SAAB Microwave Becoming2 Ploughshares did their action together with Deleuze philosophy seminars in Gothenburg. The philosophers additionally took part in the intervention. Becoming resistance, becoming justice, and the becoming of becoming, are important parts of the philosophy of Deleuze.

Hope & Resistance Festival

A ploughshares trial is to create a resistance community - there are no spectators. Lizzie and Les from the British ploughshares will bring art tools to make the trial into an art workshop. The day before the trial we start with a party! So you are invited and welcome to participate in the Hope & Resistance Festival from March 31 - April 1st 2009 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Please contact Per Herngren at the following email address: Contact: herngrenper(at)gmail.com.

Potluck and resistance techniques in biology

In the potluck supper on March 31st, the evening before the trail starts, the biologist Adam Brenthel will be reflecting with us on "What can ploughshares learn from resistance in biology and in the body". (this is regarding seed ideas like; cascades, creating niche spaces, implanting, singularities, non-linear dynamics, rhizome, etc.)

Organizers

The organisers of the disarmament intervention and the trial support come from the Fig-Tree Jona House Resistance Community in Gothenburg and also the local Fellowship of Reconciliation, Sweden.

Web page with pictures from the disarmament action

See pictures and read more about the ploughshares disarmament at Microwave: http://ickevald.net/plowshares/

Resistance is not to awaken consciousness

Interesting dialog between Foucault and Deleuze:

FOUCAULT: The intellectual’s role is no longer to place himself “somewhat ahead and to the side” in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity; rather, it is to struggle against the forms of power that transform him into its object and instrument in the sphere of “knowledge,” “truth,” “consciousness,” and “discourse. “

In this sense theory does not express, translate, or serve to apply practice: it is practice. But it is local and regional, as you said, and not totalising. This is a struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious. It is not to “awaken consciousness” that we struggle (the masses have been aware for some time that consciousness is a form of knowledge; and consciousness as the basis of subjectivity is a prerogative of the bourgeoisie), but to sap power, to take power; it is an activity conducted alongside those who struggle for power, and not their illumination from a safe distance. A “theory ” is the regional system of this struggle.

DELEUZE: Precisely. A theory is exactly like a box of tools. It has nothing to do with the signifier. It must be useful. It must function. And not for itself. If no one uses it, beginning with the theoretician himself (who then ceases to be a theoretician), then the theory is worthless or the moment is inappropriate.

Reference
Foucault blog
The whole conversation
“Intellectuals and Power” a 1972 conversation between Foucault and Deleuze. It was previously published in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (ed. Donald Bouchard, 1977), and in Foucault Live ( ed. Sylvere Lotringer, 1996).

Deleuze & Becoming resistance

During the disarmament of military radar, June 26, SAAB Microwave Becoming² Ploughshares worked together with Deleuze philosophers from Gothenburg University in Sweden. During one day they were plugged into each other to examine how resistance and Deleuze’s philosophy could intensify each other. On the web site I have collected Deleuze quotes which might be interresting for developing postprotest resistance. Here are some on becoming; other quotes on rhizome and multiplicity are collected on the site.

Becoming

"becoming is creation" Thousand Plateaus p 106

"A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification." Thousand Plateaus p 237

"Above all, becoming does not occur in the imagination" "They are perfectly real." "Becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself" "it is in the domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms, with no possible filiation." "Becoming is involutionary, involution is creative." Thousand Plateaus p 238

"Becoming is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something; neither is it regressing-progressing; neither is it corresponding, establishing corresponding relations; neither is it producing, producing a filiation or producing through filiation. Becoming is a verb with a consistency all its own; it does not reduce to, or lead back to, "appearing," Thousand Plateaus p 239

"powers (puissances) of becoming that belong to a different realm from that of Power (Pouvoir) and Domination" Thousand Plateaus p 106

"become operative and lines of deterritorialization positive and absolute, forming strange new becomings, new polyvocalities. Become clandestine, make rhizome everywhere, for the wonder of a nonhuman life to be created." Thousand Plateaus p 191

"to have dismantled love in order to become capable of loving. To have dismantled one's self in order finally to be alone and meet the true double at the other end of the line. A clandestine passenger on a motionless voyage." Thousand Plateaus p 197

"The genius is someone who knows how to make everybody/the whole world a becoming" Thousand Plateaus p 200

"becoming-molecular that undermines the great molar powers of family, career, and conjugality" Thousand Plateaus p 233

"Although there is no preformed logical order to becomings and multiplicities, there are criteria, and the important thing is that they not be used after the fact, that they be applied in the course of events, that they be sufficient to guide us through the dangers." Thousand Plateaus p 251

Plowshares action in Sweden hammering on military radar

Press release

Ploughshares action in Sweden

With blacksmith hammers, Ulla Røder and Per Herngren disarmed a military radar and parts of the Test Range at SAAB Microwaves in Sweden, Thursday 26 June, 2008.

The Ploughshares group calling themselves, SAAB Microwave Becoming² Ploughshares were arrested inside SAAB Microwave after half an hour. Beside the disarmament they also planted figs and talked with workers and guards.

“The word of the prophet Micah makes us move”, explains Ulla Røder. “We beat swords into ploughshares. We do not protest against the missile firing system of SAAB Microwave or the military radar system. We choose to drop the protest as it becomes reactive and negative. The time has come to intervene and become creative.”

See the side bar for the words of Micah.

“ We do have the ability of direct intervention”, Ulla Røder believes. “It becomes a duty when there are violence and suffering in the world. We use nonviolence. Contrary to my friend Per, I do not believe that we are practicing civil disobedience, but rather upholding international law. It is SAAB Microwave which breaks the law delivering the missile firing system used during the war in Iraq.”

”Becoming²” (like a mathematical 'becoming-squared'⁾ in the middle of our name might look strange,” says Per Herngren. “During the ploughshares action, we worked together with Deleuze philosophers from Gothenburg University in Sweden. We were during one day plugged into each other. Together we examined how resistance and Deleuze’s philosophy will intensify each other. Deleuze highlights the double becoming rather than being: To become becoming, rather than to become something. To produce production rather than isolated actions! Resistance and philosophy are ongoing processes giving no final result. Deleuze forces us in the ploughshares to avoid thinking in "means and ends", or the Big Action. An action are not the destination, but rather where we get on the train. For Deleuze resistance is about movement, speed, rest, slowness and intensity.”

Pictures of the ploughshares action

Beating swords into ploughshares

“they will hammer their swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they train for war. Each of them will sit under his vine And under his fig tree, With no one to make them afraid,” Micah 4:3-4

This quote is found in text tradition from Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

Ulla Røder

Ulla Røder, 53, from Denmark, disarmed a test laboratory for the nuclear submarine Trident system at Loch Goil, Scotland in 1999 together with the Trident Three Ploughshares group. They won the trial. In the week before the war on Iraq in 2003 Ulla Røder disarmed a Tornado jet going to be used for the attack in Iraq. Ulla has spent more than a year in jail for these actions and other non-violent direct actions.

Per Herngren

Per Herngren served 15 months of a eight year sentence in the US having in 1984, together with seven others in Pershing Plowshares, disarmed a Pershing II nuclear missile. During the first war on Iraq 1991, he and Gunfactory Plowshares disarmed two Carl Gustaf bazookas at FFV, Eskilstuna in Sweden. Together with people from Sweden and Germany Per Herngren initiated the Ploughshares movement in Europe in the mid eighties. He is 46 years old and lives in Fig Tree – a Jona House resistance community in Hammarkullen, Sweden. His books have been published in Swedish, Polish, and English.

The Ploughshares Movement

The Ploughshares have since 1980, disarmed hundreds of weapons, airplanes, helicopters, nuclear weapons, trident submarines. According to the estimated, and not scientific account of Per Herngren, the ploughshares movement has with blacksmith hammers disarmed more explosive powers than what have been used during all wars from the stone age until today.

Contact and information

Web site for SAAB Microwave Becoming² Ploughshares

Ulla Røder: bur200854 (at) hotmail.com

Per Herngren: perherngren (at) post.utfors.se

Deleuze and resistance

Per’s web page

Path of Resistance (the whole book on internet)

Post protest (article)

Foucault & resistance

"Foucault denied two crucial commonplaces of political thought: one, that there was a singular locus of power that could be contested and countered by those who were subject to specific rules of power, and two, that there were specific singular principles that organize such resistance. In his view, acts of resistance generally were not singular instances of binary oppositions or antinomies, but rather were multiple, mobile and transitory."

"Thus, for Foucault, 'when one defines the exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions of others' (i.e. as government in the broadest sense) then one must of necessity include resistance as an exercise of freedom (Foucault, 1982: 790; 000d: 292). Thus . . . power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individuals or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized.

. . . [A]t the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly rovoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. (Foucault, 1982: 790)"

"While power relations are determined within the diagram, understood as a non-unifying immanent cause, resistance arises from the fold in the outside of thought. Here the resonance with Spinoza is too strong to ignore. In rejecting transcendental concepts of reason, sovereign power and transitive causality in favour of constitutive power and immanent causality Spinoza foreshadowed a mode of political engagement that wasbrought to fruition by Deleuze and Foucault."

 

Source

James Juniper and Jim Jose, "Foucault and Spinoza: philosophies of immanence and the decentred political subject", History of the Human Sciences 2008, 21, 1.

Foucauldian Reflections

Ploughshares disarmament in New Zealand

Waihopai Spy Base Penetrated

by WAIHOPAI ANZAC PLOUGHSHARES

“The morning, 30 April 2008, we entered the Waihopai Spy Base near Blenheim.

Our group, including a Dominican Priest, temporarily closed the base by padlocking the gates and proceeded to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes.

At 6am we cut through three security fences surrounding the domes - these are armed with razor wire, infrared motion sensors and a high voltage electrified fence. Once inside we used sickles to cut one of the two 30-metre white domes, built a shrine and knelt in prayer to remember the people killed by United States military activity.

We have financed our disarmament through personal savings, additional part-time employment and a small interest-free loan from one of our supporters."

"Sam, Peter and Adi have been denied bail and will remain in custody. The next hearing at Blenheim District Court."

"There have been over 100 Ploughshares actions over the last twenty years around the world. Ploughshares direct actions are linked through the common factors of: entry to locations connected to military activity, and involve some form of property destruction, which is called disarming weapons or dismantling weapon systems."

Read more:

http://ploughshares.org.nz/

See the video:

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1320238/1755601

Revolutions without causal explanations - Foucault

Here is an interesting Foucault-quote undermining the notion that revolutions are causally explained: 

Foucault: "The man in revolt is ultimately inexplicable. There must be an uprooting that interrupts the unfolding of history, and its long series of reasons why, for a man ’really’ to prefer the risk of death over the certainty of having to obey."

Per Herngren

Source

Foucauldian Reflections

Hacktivism and postprotest

In ”Abstract Hacktivism” (2006) von Busch and Palmås use the difference between hacking and cracking to illustrate a break between the protest era of ’68 and the constructive hacking era of ‘99.

“In line with Eric Raymond’s distinction between hackers (who ‘build things’) and crackers (who ‘destroy things’) , the hacktivism discussed in this publication is concerned with construction rather than (…) destruction.” “The traditional, cracker-inspired meaning of hacktivism is, after all, largely an extrapolation of the 1968 ideas (culture jamming, detournement, (…)). As already hinted, contemporary theorists are increasingly moving towards a break with this era.” (p 17)

Protest stuck in the metaphor of a motor with steering wheel

Busch and Palmås also show how the metaphor of a motor which someone is steering is explaining how the protest gets caught in reactive, counter-activism:

‘68 “was actually not a radical departure from the worldview that they revolted against. The countercultural revolution maintained the view of society as a motor – based upon reservoirs of fuel, differentials in pressure, circulation.” (p 76)

As “new types of machines enter the social world, they may end up changing our ways of seeing the world. The logic of the motor did not only appear in the contraptions studied by engineers and natural scientists: it also shaped the theories of modern social scientists, philosophers and artists.” (p 21)

“As late as in the 1960s, the field of management was still preoccupied with how to steer the giant corporate hierarchies that had emerged during the first half of the century. Thus, management theorists were elaborating upon how the new breed of salaried professional CEOs was to plan and thus control these huge structures. This preoccupation with bureaucracy, planning and control was clearly reflected in the vocabulary they used in their key texts.” (p 67)

“For the countercultural youth, the only way out of this total system (which operates as a motor) was to throw gravel into the machinery, jamming its modes of operation, thus baring the monstrosity of the machine for all of the world to see. Public demonstrations, (…) and various ways of ‘dropping out’ mainstream culture were all different approaches to achieve this effect.” (p 75)

Blockading is the paradigm for the motor era

With the motor worldview blockades (jamming) and demonstrations (ask the leader steering to turn the wheel) would be the paradigmatic methods for change.

“Counterculture activists do not strive for piecemeal introductions of ways to make the motor circulate in new, and hopefully better, ways. Instead, they aim to ‘jam’ mainstream culture, blocking its circulation.” (p 76)

Innovations are collective processes rather than entrepreneurs and chief engineers

Hacktivism is, for Busch and Palmås, not about computers. They use the concept to show a shift from reactive methods for change to more innovative ways of rearranging products and societies. “Capitalism – no longer a closed, motor-like machine that circulates capital and desire – is seen as an open structure, subject to rearrangement.” (p 79) “The aim is (…) to modify (…) in a very tangible manner.”

Hacktivism, as productive innovation and rearrangement, doesn’t come out of the creativity of a few leaders, chief engineers or entrepreneurs, it is rather a collective process. Busch and Palmås “bring out the fact that users or consumers are engaging in the process of innovation. This body of work has shown that ‘user innovation’ has been around for a long time: There are many of examples of not-so-recent innovations – in automobiles, sports equipment etc. – that have emerged from users’ tinkering with readymade products. It is just that before the ‘widely publicized’ success of the Linux project, researchers simply could not conceive of such processes of innovation. Thus, interestingly, Linux has alerted researchers of a previously unseen mode of innovation.” (p 71)

Per Herngren

2007-11-03, version 0.1

Sources

Otto von Busch and Karl Palmås, abstract hacktivism: the making of a hacker culture, London and Istanbul, 2006, copyleft by the authors, ISBN: 9780955479625.s

Stephen Hancock and Per Herngren, Beyond protest-resistance, 2005.

Per Herngren, Postprotest resistance, 2005.

Postprotest and Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard is important for the reflection on postprotest. Postprotest sometimes proposes a combination of civil disobedience and production of positive alternatives, to create some kind of constructive or proactive resistance. In this text, however, Baudrillard criticizes the focus on “alternatives” as a way to defeat a dominant system; instead he suggests singularities. Here he also criticizes reactive protest movements:

”Who can defeat the global system? Certainly not the anti-globalization movement whose sole objective is to slow down global deregulation. This movement's political impact may well be important. But its symbolic impact is worthless. This movement's opposition is nothing more than an internal matter that the dominant system can easily keep under control. Positive alternatives cannot defeat the dominant system, but singularities that are neither positive nor negative can. Singularities are not alternatives. They represent a different symbolic order. They do not abide by value judgments or political realities. They can be the best or the worst. They cannot be "regularized" by means of a collective historical action. [6] They defeat any uniquely dominant thought. Yet they do not present themselves as a unique counter-thought. Simply, they create their own game and impose their own rules.”

Source

Jean Baudrillard, The Violence of the Global, Translated by François Debrix, Initially published as "La Violence du Mondial," in Jean Baudrillard, Power Inferno, Paris: Galilée, 2002, pp. 63-83.

How does Foucault use "strategic"?

Undermining the idea that the meaning in a political action are placed somewhere else in, an instrumental reason, and that this “other” meaning is defining the value of the action, Foucault regards himself antistrategic.

In his own texts though, he is using strategic in different ways. Ali Rizvi suggests three distinct meanings of strategic in Foucault’s usage:

“1) Strategic as related to the space of freedom. In this sense Foucault contrasts strategic to what he calls “techne.”

2) Strategic in the sense of instrumentalism (explained earlier here).

3) Strategic as belonging to an ethos, certain value system. This belonging is strategic to the extent that one cannot give ultimate justification for it.”

Per Herngren

2007, version 0.1

Protest trapped in transport-metaphor

The protest movement is trapped in the metaphor of transport. The protesters have special information, an insight or knowledge, which needs to get out and then transport itself through some kind of medium into the consciousness of those in power or the public. Speakers, leaflets, web pages or actions, are supposed to transmit the protest message to an audience. Something is then happening inside the recipient and the result will be change. Political work, actions, dialogues are understood as a transportation of information or insights to somewhere else - instead of ways to live the society one wants. I would propose more constructive metaphors like production, imprint and tools. And I still think the resistance metaphor from electricity and biology for disobedience and obstruction is useful. Displacement might be a metaphor to connect resistance and constructive work.

 

Per Herngren

September 10, 2007, version 0.11