Posts Tagged ‘protests’
83-Year-Old Nun Receives 20-Year Prison Sentence For Civil Disobedience At Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility
Friday, 10 May 2013 14:00
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83-year-old nunA nun who peacefully protested against radioactive weapons of war has received a 20-year sentence for embarrassing the military-industrial complex. Via Nuclear News:

An 83-year-old nun who broke into a Tennessee depleted uranium storage facility in 2012, exposing a massive security hole at the nation’s only facility used to store radioactive conventional munitions, was convicted Wednesday and sentenced to a term of up to 20 years in prison.

Sister Megan Rice and two other peace activists were convicted of “invasion of a nuclear facility” in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, even though investigators admitted they did not get close to any actual nuclear material. (Read more…) The three activists are part of a group called “Transform Now Plowshares,” a reference to the book of Isaiah, which says, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares.”

As they invaded the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, a perimeter fence was cut, several surfaces were spray-painted, banners were hung and activists read from the Bible. They also spread human blood on several surfaces, saying its use was symbolic, meant to remind people “of the horrific spilling of blood by nuclear weapons.”

Depleted uranium munitions like the kind stored at the facility Sister Rice targeted are blamed for some of the worst birth defects and soaring cancer rates seen in post-war Iraq, particularly in the city of Fallujah following the siege of 2004, in which U.S. soldiers killed thousands of civilians.

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London Throws Party Celebrating Death Of Margaret Thatcher
Saturday, 13 April 2013 18:00
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Anti-Margaret Thatcher badge, 1980sReuters reports that only “hundreds” of people turned up for “the party of a lifetime” celebrating the death of reviled (and occasionally revered) former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher in London today:

Several hundred people turned up for a “party” in central London on Saturday to celebrate the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a mass protest predicted by some failed to materialize.

The British capital’s mayor had warned of potential rioting as organizers promised thousands of opponents of Thatcher, who died aged 87 on Monday, would descend on London’s Trafalgar Square to mark the passing of a leader who was loved and loathed in equal measure.

(Read more…)

Current British politicians and world leaders past and present have paid tributes to the former premier, Britain’s longest serving prime minister in over a century, but she continues to divide Britons over policies which saw her crush trade unions and privatize swathes of industry.

The event, which had been planned by left-wing activists in the event of her death decades ago, had been billed as “the party of a lifetime”.

But in cold and rainy conditions, it attracted only several hundred jovial and noisy supporters, chanting “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, dead, dead, dead”…

[continues at Reuters]

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Anti-Austerity March Hoped To Be The Biggest Protest In U.K. History
Thursday, 28 March 2013 15:00
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Organizers of the largest protest in history to this point, the 2003 march against the invasion of Iraq, are among those hopping to orchestrate a watershed moment for the global movement against austerity, writes the Independent:

The new “People’s Assembly Against Austerity” will march through London on 22 June, and, with the help of the Stop The War Coalition, intends to break that group’s record for the largest public rally in the nation’s history. The group claims it will be “an alternative democratic forum to a Parliament that has failed the people it is supposed to represent.” It will be, they hope “the launch-pad for mass resistance to austerity”.

(Read more…)

Green Party Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas, Labour’s Katy Clark, Director of Executive Policy at the Unite trade union Steve Turner, head of the National Union of Teachers Kevin Courtney, comedian and disabled activist Francesca Martinez, as well as Independent columnists Owen Jones and Mark Steel, are the figureheads of a group they hope will appeal to anyone against austerity, regardless of background.

John Rees, a national officer for the Stop The War Coalition, said the planned march on 22 June would “have to be bigger than the ‘stop the war’ march”, which took place on the 15 February 2003, in protest at the growing likelihood of an invasion of Iraq, a march which “we now know” he says, “came very close to stopping the war”. Estimates for numbers at that rally range from 750,000 to 2,000,000 people.