Backcountry Resisters Infiltrate Vandenberg AFB

Editor's Note:  News release below.  Click here to read an article in the Santa Maria Times announcing the ‘backcountry non-violent resistance action’.  Among those trekking the beautiful Vandenberg backcountry was Fr. Louis Vitale (can't keep a good resister down).  Resistance is NOT futile my Friends; and actions speak louder than words.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 21, 2012

Contact: tierralinda@live.com

Nonviolent Backcountry Resisters Cause Disruptive Breach

of Vandenberg Air Force Base Security Zones



Vandenberg has lots of backcountry!!!

For the first time in nearly a decade, nonviolent civil resisters caused a disruptive breach of the backcountry security zones at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), coinciding with the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. VAFB enforces a sweeping global pattern of violent high-tech military abuse. Three participants were arrested for federal trespass and others eluded base security patrols. One participant [Theo Kayser] was hand-cuffed face down on the ground with an M-16 automatic rifle trained on his back during his 2 a.m. arrest, while search lights swept the surrounding hills. He was then held under armed guard for nine hours at a special security command post which VAFB had set up to deal with the backcountry occupation. Vandenberg security stated that they believed at least 15 individuals were spotted in base security zones between 0ctober 20^th and 21^st. 

Action participants hope that others will follow their example in the months ahead. They entered the huge US Strategic Command facility at widely dispersed points and hiked miles into the base, crossing fences and rough terrain under cover of night, hanging banners on nuclear first-strike missile silos deep inside Vandenberg. They also conducted an unauthorized Christian prayer liturgy and exorcism of evil inside VAFB boundaries. Multiple sources, including contacts within VAFB, confirmed that the announced plans and the backcountry security zone occupation caused days of disruptive base alerts, interrupting Vandenberg’s business as usual to prepare for and deal with the security zone breaches.

Backcountry action participants and their supporters say that “Vandenberg, built on land stolen from the Chumash nation, launches and controls key satellites which run worldwide drone strikes that kill civilians, and are positioning US forces for a catastrophic peak-oil war with Iran. VAFB is making nuclear world war more likely by its first-strike Minuteman III flight tests, which seriously contaminate stolen indigenous territory at the Earth’s largest coral atoll, Kwajalein.”

Arrested action participants include Franciscan Priest Louie Vitale and Los Angeles Catholic Worker community members Theo Kayser and Rebecca Casas.

Mr. President: Law or Lawlessness???

Dedicated peace activist Brad Lyttle wrote the following letter to President Obama after hearing the most recent news of his unseemly, active pursuit of targeted killings.  Beyond the direct questions asked here, Brad asks an even deeper and fundamental question of not only Obama, but also of each and every one of us - If we do not stand against this reprehensible practice, what is to become of our collective spirit???  Is this not just one more step toward the abyss?  At what point is there no return?

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June 1, 2012

President Barack Obama
The White Hosue
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

The recent article in the New York Times maintaining that you study and approve lists of people that the CIA and other “intelligence” services recommend for assassination, is deeply disturbing. The report reminds me of Lavrenti Beria’s practice of submitting “liquidation” lists to Stalin for his approval and signature. I hope that you are not approving the assassination of anyone. I do not see how such killings, completely outside of, “the rule of law,”can make the world a safer place.

Consider the situation in Chicago. Chicago has had a high violence level this spring. Just last weekend about 20 people were shot. Several died. Suppose that Chicago judges tried to reduce this violence level by studying lists of suspects submitted by the police, and then ordered that certain people be summarily executed. If judges did that, I do not think that what is left of civil society in Chicago would last long. To maintain civil society, it is always necessary to proceed against suspected criminals by means of due process. Everyone accused of a crime should have his or her day in court, the right to counsel, and a public and fair trial. That method of resolving conflicts is one characteristic of a democratic, workable, society.

I believe that you should do everything that you can to create and strengthen international processes for resolving conflicts that at least suggest the rule of law rather than the rule of arbitrary violence. Two days ago, the Special Court of Sierra Leone sentenced Charles Taylor to 50 yeas in prison for crimes against the people of Liberia. That is a step in the right direction. Shouldn’t we try to bring those we regard as terrorists to trial in U.N. sponsored international courts, rather than assassinating or summarily imprisoning them? If the United Nations had just put Taylor in prison for 50 years without giving him his “day in court,” would we be closer to peace and more secure?

The condition of war tends to obliterate all processes of justice. World War II may have begun with national leaders proclaiming limits to their use of violence. Almost all stated their opposition to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. However, before the war ended, there do not seem to have been any restraints in regard to the use of violence on the part of anyone. Nazi Germany was operating extermination centers like Treblinka and Auschwitz. The U.S. fire bombed Dresden, Tokyo, and other Axis cities, and annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. The bombings were justified on the grounds that they hastened the end of war, but had dreadful implications for everyone. Thousands of hydrogen bombs are now aimed at cities. No national leader maintains that civilians are illegitimate targets. This is not progress in security and civilization.

The “War on Terror” contains the danger of a similar “progression.” It may have begun with the assumption that we would not torture and assassinate people, but we now find ourselves doing these things. We may kill many of our enemies, but we can’t kill all of them, and what kind of world society results from such activity? It is a society where there is no “law,” only the power to kill that can be used arbitrarily by anyone who has the means. The President of the United States should take the lead in trying to create a world society based on law and justice, not arbitrary violence.

Sincerely,

Bradford Lyttle
Chicago, IL

Honoring King by Resisting Endless War

Friends,

On the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday 10 people in Tucson, Arizona chose to honor his legacy with a peace vigil at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, which has played a central role in the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, and is also home of the Arizona Air National Guard's 214th Predator Unit.

If Dr. King was alive today I have no doubt that he would be one of the most vocal critics of the endless cycle of war perpetrated on the world by the United States. He would most likely be on the front lines of nonviolent civil resistance to the war machine. And so three of the ten, Dennis DuVall, John Heid, and Jean Boucher walked into the base carrying a letter to present to the base commander opposing depleted uranium munitions and armed drones.

They never made it past the front gate, and the military police called the Tucson Police to arrest the men. Here (below) are the resisters' Action Statement and the letter carried into the base on January 17th. If the base commander won't get it, at least others will have the chance to read it.

Thanks to all who participated in nonviolent civil resistance actions on or around Dr. King's birthday. As Dr. King said the night before he died in 1968, “For years now, we have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can we just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.” Indeed, we must learn that nonviolence IS the only way, and we as members of civil society must lead the way through nonviolent action.

Peace,

Leonard

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Action Statement, January 17, 2011, Tucson, Arizona

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy· returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An entire generation has grown up under the deep darkness of war. Across two decades thousands of U.S. and U.N. soldiers have been killed. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. The wounded are innumerable. The cost immeasurable. The end nowhere in sight.

War is bipartisan. It knows no limits. And takes no sides. Everyone becomes its casualty. Its appetite insatiable. Its destruction total. War is perpetual. It cannot stop itself. "Only love can do that."

Today, our country commemorates the birth of Nobel Peace laureate Martin Luther King Jr. His words are as timely as the day they were first spoken. They echo across the decades. Clarion and compelling. Today, animated by Dr. King's words, we walk. Both on Tucson's public streets and where we are prohibited, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. We walk under the midday sun, pursuing an end to "a night devoid of stars."

We are mindful too that January 17 marks the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell speech. We recall his indictment:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every missile fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense."

Davis-Monthan has played a central role in the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq. Today we call upon General William M. Fraser III, Air Combat Command Leadership and Colonel John A. Cherry to comply with the recent United Nations mandate to reveal the sites where the U.S. has fired depleted uranium shells in Iraq. Today we redouble our twenty year long call for an end to the war. Disarm and disclose!

With a spirit of nonviolence, we carry the U.N. resolution along with our own resolve in seeking the ways of peace to Davis-Monthan, at once both symbol and substance of our nation's commitment to the use of armed force, spending the hopes of our children. And Iraq's.

One step at a time we can usher in the light, ending this decades long darkness devoid of stars.

Letter Carried into Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, January 17, 2011

Dear Col. Inman:

At a time when Tucson is mourning senseless violence in its own community, we must also mourn the victims of the U. S drone attacks 7,000 miles away.

Tucson's complicity in the drone air war is another Tucson tragedy. The tragedy is that Arizona Air National Guard's 214th Predator Unit here at Davis-Monthan AFB is helping to murder hundreds of innocent people by remote control in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By guiding "Hellfire" missiles to their targets in homes and villages, ANG's Predator Unit will typically kill 10-50 innocent people for each targeted victim. Even more tragically for the people of Arizona and aircrews of the 214th Predator Unit, international killing is a war crime! No U. S. court has ever ruled on the legality of "targeted assassinations' by drones.

Col. Inman, I urge you to end the military operations for the 214th Predator Unit and stop bombing the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Blowing people apart with Hellfire missiles only unites people in outrage and incites more revenge, violence and retaliation. Drone air attack do not prevent or eliminate terrorism. They are terrorism! I implore you to ground the 214th Predator Unit and use diplomacy and other nonviolent means for opposing terrorism. As a veteran, and in the spirit of Martin Luther King, I would welcome the opportunity to enter into a dialog with you and your aircrews.

As President Obama said in Tucson just a few days ago, "Only an honest discourse and debate" can honor those who die in senseless acts of violence.

Toward peace and a nonviolent world,

Dennis DuVall
January 17, 2011