----- Original Message -----
From: Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2000 2:01 PM
Subject: VANDENBERG NMD TEST NON-VIOLENT OCCUPATION SET
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 30, 2000
. Vandenberg Action Coalition .
. Resource Center for Nonviolence .
for more information contact:
Peter Lumsdaine (206) 525-6981 / [EMAIL PROTECTED] through July 3,
(831)423-1626 / [EMAIL PROTECTED] July 4 and early July 5,
(805)688-7610 from July 5 on
Tracie De Angelis (831) 421-9794 through July 4; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Vieques west" looms for pivotal Star Wars missile test July 7:
PROTESTORS VOW TO INVADE PACIFIC MISSILE RANGE SECURITY
ZONES, DISRUPT KEY NMD LAUNCH
* "The globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a
widening between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' ... military forces have
evolved to protect national interests and investments - both military and
economic. ... [the] U.S. Space Command: dominating the space dimension
of
military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment. Integrating
Space Forces into warfighting across the full spectrum of conflict." - '
Vision for 2020 ' (1998 U.S. Space Command document assembled under General
Howell M. Estes III)
(Vandenberg AFB, California) An international alliance of peace and
global justice activists vowed today to carry the "spirit of Seattle and
Vieques" into the brushy coastal security zones of Vandenberg Air Force Base
to disrupt a pivotal "Star Wars" or "National Missile Defense" (NMD) flight
test scheduled for July 7. Those planning to take on the physical and legal
risks of backcountry civil disobedience at Vandenberg include dissidents
from
China, Russia, Great Britain and the United States.
Organizers involved in planning the recent Seattle and Washington DC
upheavels against corporate globalization, local residents from California's
central coast, and veterans of an historic 1983 backcountry showdown at
this west coast missile base have banded together in the Vandenberg Action
Coalition, backed by the endorsement of the long-established national Peace
Action organization (membership 78,000) and the Global Network Against
Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. The Resource Center for Nonviolence
(founded in 1976) and the Casa Guadalupe Catholic Worker House, just north
of
Vandenberg, are also involved; and a local World War II veteran has offered
his nearby house and farmland as a base camp for the civil resistance teams.
Activists say that - much like similar actions at Vieques in Puerto Rico
this year, at Kwajalein Atoll in 1982 and 1996, at Cape Canaveral in 1987,
and at Vandenberg itself in 1983 - small teams of nonviolent resisters will
clandestinely hike into the rugged launch-security zones of the base by July
7 to block flight testing of the Star Wars/NMD system, which they denounce
as
"a defensively-wrapped Trojan Horse of offensive global terror and a tool of
nuclear first-strike warfare."
"We are going to rip the mask of lies off of this cleverly camouflaged
offensive Star Wars program," declared Coalition spokespeople Peter
Lumsdaine
and Tracie DeAngelis, "and we will confront the New World Order's space-age
missile power with what Gandhi and Martin Luther King called the
'soul-power'
of nonviolent direct action -
re-occupying the backcountry, putting ourselves at risk near the launch
point
to stand in the way of this these global war machines and denounce the
continued military theft of indigenous lands, from California to the South
Pacific. The U.S. Space Command's
little-known plan for global domination, expressed in their own document
'Visi
on for 2020', must be exposed and stopped."
Vandenberg's intercontinental test missiles, including a Minuteman ICBM
slated to be used the July 7 test, are fired at Kwajalein - the Earth's
largest coral atoll - which is occupied by the U.S. military, despite years
of protests and nonviolent resistance actions by the indigenous Marshallese
people who once lived around the South Pacific island ring. The new NMD
interceptor missile is scheduled to be launched from Kwajalein Atoll on July
7, aimed to collide with Vandenberg's Minuteman. Vandenberg Air Force Base
itself is built on the traditional lands of California's Chumash Indians,
who
were almost exterminated by European forces in previous centuries, but whose
descendents still live in the area, near Point Conception, which they call
the Western Gate - the bridge to the afterlife.
The Vandenberg Action Coalition has stated that they oppose the NMD/Star
Wars project and related space warfare programs because these military
technologies will facilitate the use of the Pentagon's devastating offensive
weaponry against movements and nations that resist the 'New World Order' of
corporate globalization, while simultaneously igniting a perilous new
nuclear
arms race. "Star Wars/NMD weapons are not being built to stop an attack on
the United States but to make sure that the U.S government and corporate
leadership can securely launch a 'conventional' or nuclear
first-strike against any country on Earth" said Lumsdaine and De Angelis.
The Coalition denounces the forced relocation of Kwajalein Atoll's
indigenous
people and calls for the U.S. Space Command to respect the traditional land
rights of the Marshallese and Chumash peoples.
Coalition activists will also gather at noon on July 1 for a legal
protest vigil at Vandenberg's main gate, less than a week before the test
launch resistance action. They plan a public educational event on Hiroshima
Day (August 5), and a larger backcountry mass resistance action on October
7.
Vandenberg is the largest U.S. Space Command facility in the world, with
a
55-mile land boundary, and Coalition spokespeople believe that their
resistance teams will be able to clandestinely slip into the rugged
backcountry. Military secrecy and security regulations require that large
areas of the base be cleared of all unauthorized people before a launch
countdown can proceed. Futhermore, missile exhaust can endanger people near
the launch point and accidental launch explosions can blast shrapnel,
burning
debris and super-heated toxic gasses for more than a mile in all directions.
The nonviolent resistance teams may make their presence in these areas
known by the use of banners, flares, balloons, noise or night-time
flashlights, while avoiding capture for as long as possible. Some likely
participants are veterans of similar actions that disrupted base operations
in the 1980s. Others have emerged from the clouds of peppper spray and
rubber bullets at recent Washington DC and Seattle globalization protests
with a renewed determination to confront what Lumsdaine calls "the military
enforcement wing of a slowly crumbling corporate world order, its space-age
global web of counterinsurgency terror and thermonuclear brinkmanship."
- 30 -
For more information contact:
[see detailed contact information at the top of this news release]
Peter Lumsdaine (206) 525-6981; [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tracie De Angelis (831) 421-9794; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 90083
Gainesville, Fl. 32607
(352) 337-9274
http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
