International CO Day: May 15th
Editorial
Welcome to our first issue of wri-info in 2008, our very irregular
newsletter from the WRI office.
War Resistes' International and its Belgian section Vredesactie are preparing a joint
action and seminar on resisting military globalisation, under the
slogar "NATO - Game over", over Easter 2008 in Brussels. Read the main
article on the right to find out more, and join us in Brussels.
On 1 February 2008 we received the sad news that Ralph DiGia, second
World War conscientious objector, and involved for most of his very
long life with the US War
Resisters League (WRL) and War Resisters' International, died in
New York. Read below a letter of WRI's chair to Ralph, written a day
before he died.
Andreas Speck
Upcoming events
22/03/08 NATO Game Over:
NATO Game Over
Resist Military Globalisation!
Five years after the Iraq war started: an international action
weekend at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Followed by the seminar organised by Bombspotting and War Resisters'
International "Military globalisation and nonviolent resistance in
Europe"
Interested? contact: international[at]bombspotting.be
http://vredesactie.be/
http://wri-irg.org
Donate to WRI!
War Resisters' International depends on your donations to be able to
carry out its work. Donate to WRI online now at http://wri-irg.org/en
/donate-en.htm.
WRI-INFO
Information from the office of War Resisters' International
5 Caledonian Road - London N1 9DX - Britain
tel +44-20-7278 4040 - fax +44-20-7278 0444
email info@wri-irg.org
http://wri-irg.org
Subscribe
/Unsubscribe
To subscribe, you can go to the website of
this list, or send an email.
To unsubscribe, send an email to wri-info-unsubscribe@lists.wri-irg.org,
and reply to the confirmation request
you will receive.
Resist Military Globalisation!
Five years after the Iraq war started: an international action
weekend at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Europe serves as a staging ground for military interventions
worldwide. The framework can differ: NATO, EU, US coalition of the
willing, UN. The target as well: Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, ....
But the departure points not: military bases, airports and harbours
in Europe.
Europe hosts a large military intervention machinery. The 5th
anniversary of the war in Iraq is a good moment to again make the
resistance against military globalisation visible. We do not need a
machinery for global military intervention. We do not need military
alliances that threaten the rest of the world. Enough! Security is too
important to leave it to the military.
Economic globalisation also has its military correlary. New York
Times' columnist Thomas Friedman said: "The hidden hand of the market
will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish
without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist
that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley 's technologies is called
the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." This fist is
not solely a US phenomenon. Europe builds its own intervention capacity
through the militarisation of European Union, with or without the US
and NATO. In Africa EU humanitarian interventions support and
legitimate the neo-colonial policies of the bigger European states or
the former colonial powers. Within NATO energy security is now openly
being discussed as a NATO task.
A broad and international movement challenges the legitimacy of the
G8-leaders and blocked the G8-summit in Germany last year. It is time
to also challenge the legitimacy of their military power tools. NATO is
one of the most important institutions of this military globalisation,
just like the G8 is for the economic globalisation. And just like we
said no to the G8, we have to say no to NATO. Stop these war games!
NATO—Game Over.
NATO—Game Over
Through NATO, Europe is involved in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. European states train military forces for the NATO
Response Force and partly due to NATO the US still maintains military
bases in Europe used for military interventions worldwide. During the
war in Iraq US soldiers deployed from their bases in Europe to the
Persian Gulf. In Afghanistan NATO has taken the lead role in the
military occupation and many European states have soldiers in
Afghanistan. Last but not least, US, French and British nuclear weapons
– with a role in the NATO strategy – are still deployed in Europe. And
they are as illegal here as elsewhere. Peace activists from all over
Europe will join in Brussels, Belgium on 22 March 2008 for the first
action of 'NATO—Game Over'. We will go to the NATO headquarters and
close them. We will enter and inspect the NATO headquarters for
evidence of war preparations and the deployment of nuclear weapons.
Military globalisation and nonviolent resistance in Europe Linked to
the action Bombspotting and War Resisters' International organise a
seminar on military globalisation and nonviolent resistance in Europe.
Five years ago the war in Iraq strengthened public awareness of
Europe's role in the military globalisation. In 2003 all over Europe
nonviolent direct actions took place against the deployment of US and
UK troops to Iraq. Today, military bases are met with local resistance
– from the Czech Republic, to Italy and Poland, to mention just a few.
At this seminar we will bring together the local resistance against
bases and nonviolent direct action groups from several European
countries to share knowledge on the military complex and to build
partnerships and common strategies. We create a common awareness of the
military intervention machinery (NATO, EU and other) and of the role of
our local military base in it. We investigate how we together can be
the sand in the machine: how can co-ordinated local and international
actions raise our impact.
More information: http://wri-irg.org/news/2008/nato-game-over-en.htm
Ralph DiGia 1914-2008
Ralph DiGia died on 1 February,
2008, at the age of 93. A Second World War conscientious objection,
Ralph had been one of the prisoners who went on hunger strike to end
racial segregation in prisons. On his release, he was one of the
generation of radical pacifists who transformed the War Resisters
League and pioneered the use of nonviolent direct action in the USA, on
issues of war preparation (such as civil defence drills) and on racial
segregation.
David McReynolds, former WRI chair, wrote an obituary, which has been
published on WRI's
website.
As Ralph was the US financial representative for War Resisters'
International for decades, Howard Clark, chair of WRI, wrote to him -
actually the day before his death - to thank him for his work. We
publish his letter below.
Dear Ralph
I've just heard about your illness and that you've had to hand over the
job of being WRI financial agent. Now that I'm chair of WRI it falls
to me to thank you for your decades of work with us.
Dear Ralph, you have been an absolute inspiration to so many people for
so many years. I met you for the first time at the Sheffield triennial
in 1972, nearly 36 years ago, and you were already a living legend. It
felt an incredible privilege for a young man like me to be hanging
around with such a pioneer of radical pacifism, passing the evening
singing and joking. If Emma Goldman hadn't said "if I can't dance,
it's not my revolution", I'd believe it was you.
You know my favourite peace movement office in the world has been 339
Lafayette Street, a place that's known it's fair share of disputes I
know, but a place whose very pores seem to breathe the joy of
commitment. The good cheer you brought into the office, and your
talent for seeing the humour in life, always gave me a big lift when I
visited.
To have had such a prominent activist as WRI's financial agent has been
great - a way of telling everyone, "look, book-keeping's important
too!" I once heard that one of the reasons that Gandhi was a
successful fundraiser was that he always made sure that the
book-keeping was immaculate - I guess Narayan Desai's father Mahadev
had something to do that - and in this respect you've been a true
Gandhian for us. When the manual is written on "revolutionary
book-keeping", you'll be in there as a shining example!
I don't think anybody else knows how many years you've been our
financial agent. But for all that work, and for so much more, I thank
you with all my heart.
Yours in peace (but in struggle too!)
Howard Clark
(chairperson, War Resisters' International)
